Horrible Quotes

“The ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.

Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told. Murder will out. Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims.

The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory, and fragmented manner that undermines their credibility and thereby serves the twin imperatives of truth-telling and secrecy. When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom.

The psychological distress symptoms of traumatized people simultaneously call attention to the existence of an unspeakable secret and deflect attention from it. This is most apparent in the way traumatized people alternate between feeling numb and reliving the event. The dialectic of trauma gives rise to complicated, sometimes uncanny alterations of consciousness, which George Orwell, one of the committed truth-tellers of our century, called "doublethink," and which mental health professionals, searching for calm, precise language, call "dissociation." It results in protean, dramatic, and often bizarre symptoms of hysteria which Freud recognized a century ago as disguised communications about sexual abuse in childhood. . . .”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“The character of Moses, as stated in the Bible, is the most horrid that can be imagined. If those accounts be true, he was the wretch that first began and carried on wars on the score or on the pretence of religion; and under that mask, or that infatuation, committed the most unexampled atrocities that are to be found in the history of any nation. Of which I will state only one instance:

When the Jewish army returned from one of their plundering and murdering excursions, the account goes on as follows (Numbers xxxi. 13): 'And Moses, and Eleazar the priest, and all the princes of the congregation, went forth to meet them without the camp; and Moses was wroth with the officers of the host, with the captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, which came from the battle; and Moses said unto them, 'Have ye saved all the women alive?' behold, these caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the congregation of the Lord. Now therefore, 'kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him; but all the women- children that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for Yourselves.'

Among the detestable villains that in any period of the world have disgraced the name of man, it is impossible to find a greater than Moses, if this account be true. Here is an order to butcher the boys, to massacre the mothers, and debauch the daughters.

Let any mother put herself in the situation of those mothers, one child murdered, another destined to violation, and herself in the hands of an executioner: let any daughter put herself in the situation of those daughters, destined as a prey to the murderers of a mother and a brother, and what will be their feelings?

In short, the matters contained in this chapter, as well as in many other parts of the Bible, are too horrid for humanity to read, or for decency to hear.”
― Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason

“To lose the approbation of my dog is a thing too horrible to contemplate.”
― Barbara Dana, A Voice of Her Own: Becoming Emily Dickinson

“The horrible thing about the Two Minutes Hate was not that one was obliged to act a part, but that it was impossible to avoid joining in.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“There are certain themes of which the interest is all-absorbing, but which are too entirely horrible for the purposes of legitimate fiction.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, The Premature Burial

“Prehistory of mankind is way too horrible to be remembered.
But if we choose to ignore it, then we'll be doomed to repeat it.”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

“No doubt, he is horrible, he is abject, he is a shining example of moral leprosy, a mixture of ferocity and jocularity that betrays supreme misery perhaps, but is not conductive to attractiveness.
He is ponderously capricious.
Many of his casual opinions on people and scenery of this country are ludicrous.
A desperate honesty that throbs through his confession does not absolve him from sins of diabolical cunning.
He is abnormal.
He is not a gentleman.
But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring it’s author!”
― Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

“He's handsome, but that makes his horribleness worse, somehow. As though he's taken something nice and made it awful. Being the single focus of his attention made me feel like a bug that a child was going to burn with a magnifying glass.”
― Holly Black, The Lost Sisters

“You will never feel as desperate and fucked up and horrible as you do when you hear those things.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“It's only horrible if you see it that way," Morrie said. "It's horrible to watch my body slowly wilt away to nothing. But it's also wonderful because of all the time I get to say good-bye."
He smiled. "Not everyone is so lucky.”
― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie: An Old Man, a Young Man, and Life's Greatest Lesson

“I remember a bully once telling me that he was going to beat the stuffing out of me. After numerous blows it was evident to both of us that I didn't have any!!”
― Neil Leckman

“Gosnell turned almost no one away from the Women’s Medical Society clinic. This is not meant as a compliment. Repentant Gosnell employee Adrienne Moton testified he would perform abortions on any girls or women with no concern about the age of their babies. The only times she could recall Gosnell refusing to perform an abortion was when somebody’s Social Security number couldn’t be verified. In those cases, Gosnell was worried that the “patient” was an undercover cop.”
― Ann McElhinney, Gosnell: The Untold Story of America's Most Prolific Serial Killer

“Life is horrible, horrible, horrible, said the philosopher.”
― Iris Murdoch, The Black Prince

“He was a wooden puppet. Some kind of marionette, Marra thought, the kind that traveling performers used to entertain very young children. He had the carved hands and the clacking jaw, the articulated arms and legs. But the only string on him was a black cord that looped Miss Margaret's throat, and the puppet held it in one hand.

He moved as they watched. It was a slow, considered movement, like a tortoise turning its head in the sun, and it set Marra's nerves crawling.”
― T. Kingfisher, Nettle & Bone

“The more horrible the story, the more it is cherished. Faeries may not be able to lie, but stories grow here as they do anywhere, fed on ambition and envy and desire.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“There is a horrible rot in the Denver Police Department.”
― Steven Magee

“It was such a horrible experience to helplessly watch someone die. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the first time he had to do so. He was getting very tired of it.”
― Jason Medina, The Manhattanville Incident: An Undead Novel

“Time to wreck this little shit [A College Student]. The irony of his rant is that once we make his ass famous for this, he will never accomplish anything, his white male-ness notwithstanding...Columbia should expel him. His future should be bleak...Good luck Chip”
― Tim Wise

“With them, it is all horrible
Like anything could happen”
― Dorothea Lasky, Rome: Poems

“Yadabaoth's Earth is not real. The point for the reader to remember is that when a person feels and thinks that the world, in which he or she is living, is a horrible and loveless place, he or she has entered Yaldabaoth's mind.”
― Laurence Galian, Alien Parasites: 40 Gnostic Truths to Defeat the Archon Invasion!

“Self diagnosis using affordable devices saved me from a horrible decline into premature death.”
― Steven Magee, Magee’s Disease

“The hurricane Ian disaster brought back horrible memories of my time working in Florida.”
― Steven Magee

“What makes a place horrible?
Finding no love amongst the walls that I have built.”
― Anthony T. Hincks

“Males are horrible creatures, aren't they?' Amren said.

'Repulsive,' Mor said, clicking her tongue.

Some surviving, small part of my heart wanted to... laugh at that.”
― Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury

“It only took one flight with a budget airline to discover how horrible their airline was!”
― Steven Magee

“Because while cheaters make for feel horrible, they also make you feel... They make you feel special, I guess. They make you feel seen and important”
― Maggie Dallen, The Prom Kiss

“Yet instead of being there for me, that human came and beat the hell out of me.”
― Casey Yun, A Life for a Life

“When you’re used to constant toxicity, you feel lost without it.”
― Dominic Riccitello

“I hated him and I loved him. That was our relationship.”
― Dominic Riccitello

“I'm accustomed to toxicity and can’t control myself when I’m near it.”
― Dominic Riccitello