#lie

A little later, when breakfast was over and I had not yet gone up-stairs to my room, I had my first interview with Doctor Brandon, the famous alienist who was in charge of the case. I had never seen him before, but from the first moment that I looked at him I took his measure, almost by intuition. He was, I suppose, honest enough -- I have always granted him that, bitterly as I have felt toward him. It wasn't his fault that he lacked red blood in his brain, or that he had formed the habit, from long association with abnormal phenomena, of regarding all life as a disease. He was the sort of physician -- every nurse will understand what I mean -- who deals instinctively with groups instead of with individuals. He was long and solemn and very round in the face; and I hadn't talked to him ten minutes before I knew he had been educated in Germany, and that he had learned over there to treat every emotion as a pathological manifestation. I used to wonder what he got out of life -- what any one got out of life who had analyzed away everything except the bare structure. ↗

— Ellen Glasgow

#analysis #pathology #psychiatrist #psychiatry #psychologist

Good digestions, the gray monotony of provincial life, and the boredom—ah the soul-destroying boredom—of long days of mild content. ↗

— Jean-Paul Sartre

#mundane #the-flies #zeus #life

For desired conclusions, we ask ourselves, "Can I believe this?", but for unpalatable conclusions we ask, "Must I believe this? ↗

— Thomas Gilovich

#human-behavior #logic #mind #psychology #life

Socrates said the perfect society would be based on a great lie. People would be told that lie from the cradle, and they would believe it, because human beings need to make order out of chaos. ↗

— Anne Frasier

#life #religion #life

I have so often been asked the question: "But how did you come to think of The Scarlet Pimpernel?" And my answer has always been: "It was God's will that I should." And to you moderns, who perhaps do not believe as I do, I will say, "In the chain of my life, there were so many links, all of which tended towards bringing me to the fulfillment of my destiny. ↗

— Emmuska Orczy

#chain-of-life #destiny #god #god-s-will #life

When it's all over and the dust from our Ancestors bodies and our own settle from the four winds only then will we see that we were here! ↗

— Stanley Victor Paskavich

#belief #metaphysics #reincarnation #religion #spirituality

See that the mind is honest, first; the rest may follow or not as God wills. [That] the fundamental treason to the mind ... is the one fundamental treason which the scholar's mind must not allow is the bond uniting all the Oxford people in the last resort. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#falsification #honesty #integrity #lies #oxford

To point out nonepistemic motives in another’s view of the world, therefore, is always a criticism, as it serves to cast doubt upon a person’s connection to the world as it is. ↗

— Sam Harris

#criticism #skepticism #motivational

Now and then I see something in her eyes, and I wonder if I’ve ever grasped how much pain she’s really in. ↗

— Stephenie Meyer

#bella #charlie #edward #wonder

You must remember, my dear lady, the most important rule of any successful illusion: First, the people must want to believe in it. ↗

— Libba Bray

#deceit #success