confusion Quotes

“There is no confusion like the confusion of a simple mind…”

“Confusion now hath made his masterpiece.”

“The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent.”

“Your tongue has grown as twisted as the roots of a fir tree. Speak not in riddles.”

“So quick bright things come to confusion.”

“Whether this one was that one...or that one was this one or which one was what one...or what one was who.”

When reason fails, the devil helps!

“All were subdued and doubtful at heart. Like the pain of a bad wound, the effect of a deep shock takes some while to be felt. When a child is told, for the first time in his life, that a person he has known is dead, although he does not disbelieve it, he may well fail to comprehend it and later ask—perhaps more than once—where the dead person is and when he is coming back. When Pipkin had planted in himself, like some somber tree, the knowledge that Hazel would never return, his bewilderment exceeded his grief: and this bewilderment he saw on every side among his companions.”

“Here was neither peace, nor rest, nor a moment’s safety. All was confusion and action, and every moment life and limb were in peril.”

“And yet he didn’t know where he came from, or how he’d gotten inside the dark lift, or who his parents were. He didn’t even know his last name. Images of people flashed across his mind, but there was no recognition, their faces replaced with haunted smears of color. He couldn’t think of one person he knew, or recall a single conversation.”

“JUROR #3: He’s an old man. You saw him. Half the time he was confused. How could he be positive about … anything?”

“My inner self was a house divided against itself.”

“Men are no longer bound together by ideas, but by interests; and it would seem as if human opinions were reduced to a sort of intellectual dust, scattered on every side, unable to collect, unable to cohere.”

“I am told that I am vague and confused, and if I am vague and confused now, what shall I be later on?”

“My mother is a fish.”

“I don’t know what I am. I don’t know if I am or not.”

“Reaching the top of Everest is supposed to trigger a surge of intense elation; against long odds, after all, I had just attained a goal I’d coveted since childhood.”

″‘Are you the real Nate?’ Pigeon asked. ‘We’re all the real Nate,’ Nate said. ‘It’s complicated.‘”

“I didn’t feel like I belonged with my family, and now I didn’t feel like I belonged with Adam, except unlike my family, who was stuck with me, Adam had chosen me, and this I didn’t understand.”

“The night she and Ed went to their thirtieth high school reunion, she had been hoping she’d find someone to talk to about what she was feeling. But all the other women there were just as confused as she was, and held on to their husbands and their drinks to keep themselves from disappearing.”

Estragon: “You’re sure it was this evening?” Vladimir: “What?” Estragon: “That we were to wait.” Vladimir: “He said Saturday. (Pause.) I think.”

“Why are we here, that is the question? And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in this immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come...We are not saints, but we have kept our appointment.”

“Any one who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind’s eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye.”

“It seems very pretty,” she said when she had finished it, “but it’s rather hard to understand!” (You see she didn’t like to confess, even to herself, that she couldn’t make it out at all.) “Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas – only I don’t know exactly what they are! However, somebody killed something: that’s clear, at any rate – ”

“More about Howl? Sophie thought desperately. I have to blacken his name! Her mind was such a blank that for a second it actually seemed to her that Howl had no faults at all. How stupid! ‘Well, he’s fickle, careless, selfish, and hysterical,’ she said. ‘Half the time I think he doesn’t care what happens to anyone as long as he’s all right—but then I find out how awfully kind he’s been to someone. Then I think he’s kind just when it suits him—only then I find out he undercharges poor people. I don’t know, Your Majesty. He’s a mess.‘”

“Away from my mother, away from my grandparents, I was engaged in a fitful interior struggle. I was trying to raise myself to be a black man in America, and beyond the given of my appearance, no one around me seemed to know exactly what that meant.”

“When my mother did not return, I imagined all sorts of things. Maybe she had cancer and didn’t want to tell us and was hiding in Idaho. Maybe she got knocked on the head and had amnesia and was wandering around Lewiston, not knowing who she really was, or thinking she was someone else.”

“It is most difficult to understand the disposition of the Bible God, it is such a confusion of contradictions; of watery instabilities and iron firmness; of goody-goody abstract morals made out of words, and concreted hell-born ones made out of acts; of fleeting kindness repented of in permanent malignities.”

“See? I’m almost as good as your father!” She said it in a shy way, laughing a little. I felt betrayed, but I didn’t know why. ”

″‘You couldn’t have it if you did want it,’ the Queen said. ‘The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday – but never jam to-day.’ ‘It must come sometimes to ‘jam to-day,″ Alice objected. ‘No, it can’t,’ said the Queen. ‘It’s jam every other day: to-day isn’t any other day, you know.‘”

“I scanned the group. Faces spoke to their future. I saw courage, anger, fear and confusion. Others were hopeless. They had already given up.”

“I didn’t know what to do or say. In a matter of seconds it seemed, I had gone from being angered by her strength, to being amazed by her innocence, and then frightened by her vulnerability. And now I felt numb, strangely weak, as if someone had unplugged me and the current running through me had stopped.”

″‘I meant by ‘impenetrability’ that we’ve had enough of that subject, and it would be just as well if you’d mention what you mean to do next, as I suppose you don’t mean to stop here all the rest of your life.′ ‘That’s a great deal to make one word mean,’ Alice said in a thoughtful tone.”

“As a kid I understood that people were different colors, but in my head white and black and brown were like types of chocolate. Dad was the white chocolate, mom was the dark chocolate, and I was the milk chocolate. But we were all just chocolate. I didn’t know any of it had anything to do with ‘race.’ I didn’t know what race was. My mother never referred to my dad as white or to me as mixed. So when the other kids in Soweto called me ‘white,’ even though I was light brown, I just thought they had their colors mixed up, like they hadn’t learned them properly. ‘Ah, yes, my friend. You’ve confused aqua with turquoise. I can see how you made that mistake. You’re not the first.’”

“I just can’t see God putting a gift like that in the hands of a man who would kill a child.”

“Confuse not the necessary expenses with thy desires.”

“She didn’t know whether she was running away from something or running to something, but she admitted that deep in her heart she wanted to go home.”

“The Bear lay on the ground, moving feebly. Then it mumbled in its throaty voice, bewildered to the last, ‘I--I don’t--understand,’ laid its big head down on the grass as quietly as a child going to sleep, and never moved again.”

“The surest way to become Tense, Awkward, and Confused is to develop a mind that tries too hard - one that thinks too much.”

“The little waiter’s eyebrows wandered about his forehead in confusion.”

“I am not what I am.”

“Alas, Malvolio, this is not my writing, Though, I confess, much like the character. But out of question, ‘tis Maria’s hand.”

“I think, therefore I am... confused.”

″‘Oh dear,’ said Aziraphale. ‘It’s him.’ ‘Him who?’ said Crowley. ‘The Voice of God,’ said the angel. ‘The Metatron.’ The Them stared. Then Pepper said, ‘No, it isn’t. The Metatron’s made of plastic and it’s got laser cannon and it can turn into a helicopter.‘”

“Firstly, that God moves in extremely mysterious, not to say, circuitous ways. God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players,* to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”

“He ought to tell Crowley. No, he didn’t. He wanted to tell Crowley. He ought to tell Heaven.”

“At first things were very confusing. Everything was so entirely different from the world I had known – even the flowers.”

“I his book Peck rightly emphasizes that most of us ‘confuse cathecting with loving.’ We all know how often individuals of cathecting insist that they love the other person even if they are hurting of neglecting them. Since their feeling is that of cathexis, they insist that what they feel is love.”

“‘Sometimes, the wicked will tell us things just to confuse us - to haunt our thoughts long after we’ve faced them.’”

“There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live. Surely these should never be confused in the mind of any man who has the slightest inkling of what culture is.”

“I wish you would be more true to your demographic profile. Life is confusing enough.”

“Overcome your guilt. Care, but not too much. Take responsibility, but don’t blame yourself. Protect, save, help- but know when to give up. They’re precarious ledges to walk. How do I do it?”

“One corner of his mouth lifts in amusement, then pulls back in confusion before coming to rest on indifference.”

“I was lost . . . but it was like looking at a knot, knowing it was a knot, but not knowing how to untie it. I had no map for this life.”

“Extra information is more than useless. It’s harmful. It confuses the issues. What screws up doctors when they are trying to predict heart attacks is that they take too much information into account.”

“Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. ”

“But her tale, as he did not believe more than half of it, left everything as unaccountable to him as before, and he was nearly as much perplexed as to what he must think of the princess.”

“Years and months had become weak, and people could push against them and wander back and forth in time. Maybe it had always been this way and he was only seeing it for the first time.”

“He could feel it inside his skull—the tension of little threads being pulled and how it was with tangled things, things tied together, and as he tried to pull them apart and rewind them into their places, they snagged and tangled even more.”

“It’s possible to hate someone, to look at them and wish you weren’t aware of their every move, and to want them more than you’ve ever wanted anything in your life.”

“The confusion inherent in the word comics has been apparent to those writing in the filed for years. The word has a plural form but is singular in application.”

“The dangers of not thinking clearly are much greater now than ever before. It’s not that there’s something new in our way of thinking – it’s that credulous and confused thinking can be much more lethal in ways it was never before.”

“They are leaving one world behind and entering another. Once isolated like this, they have no outside support, and in their confusion they are easily led astray.”

“I sat quietly in a kind of daze (...) far from my bubbly little sister.”

“I was a loosened, a top whirling around and around, and I didn’t know who I danced with or what they looked like, only that I had become the music and the fire and the night, and there was nothing that could slow me down.”

“The new constitution in its present form is calculated to produce despotism, thraldom and confusion, and if the United States do swallow it, they will find it a bolus, that will create convulsions to their utmost extremities. ”

“Most adult children of toxic parents grow up feeling tremendous confusion about what love means and how it’s supposed to feel. ”

“The enemy uses lies to confuse people and fill them with anxiety and fear. The apostle John said, “We know that we are of God, and the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one” (1 John 5:19).”

“Zis is cozy, Dodo thought, settling in. Vince was watching her from his window. What the heck is she doing? he wondered.”

″‘You ruined everything!’ Sayle howled. ‘How did you do it? How did you trick me? I’d have beaten you if you’d been a man!‘”

“We live in a disconcerting world. Trying to comprehend what we see around us, we ask ourselves: what is the universe made of? and what is our place in it? where odes the universe come from? and where do we come from?”

“He’s a man of few words, and he doesn’t know what either of them means,” people said, but not when he was within hearing.”

“The Carpet was full of life, but it did not know it was alive. It could be, but it could not think. It did not even know what it was. “And so from the dust came us, the Carpet People. We gave the Carpet its name, and named the creatures, and the weaving was complete.”

“He rushed outside in confusion. There was snow everywhere. It was slippery under his feet. Suddenly he felt himself falling over backwards...”

“feel numb, i can’t feel my emotions my body my heart, i act like it’s there like i’m fine but honestly my own brain is confusing me.”

“I suspect that God’s plan, whatever it is, works on a scale too large to admit our mortal tribulations; that in a single lifetime, accidents and happenstance determine more than we care to admit; and that the best we can do is to try to align ourselves with what we feel is right and construct some meaning out of our confusion, and with grace and nerve play at each moment the hand that we’re dealt.”

“I still can’t figure it out. Chase isn’t Darth Vader or Voldemort; he doesn’t have the Force or dark magical powers. And yet he, Aaron Hakimian, and Bear Bratsky made Joel’s life so miserable that my parents had no choice but to find him a school in another town.”

“Also, how I distrust neat designs of life that are drawn upon half sheets of notepaper. What delights me is the confusion, the height, the indifference, and the fury.”

“I was born happy but when anything that is large, alive and wild gets hurt and confused, I feel so sad, and I notice that I wish I could nurse big scared things.”

The novel itself is excellent. The character journey accompanied by the physical is a favourite. The confusion and disjoint with reality experienced by the characters is palpable.

“Kai cleared his throat. Stood straighter. “I assume you are going to the ball?” “I-I don’t know. I mean, no. No, I’m sorry, I’m not going to the ball.” Kai drew back, confused. “Oh well... but... maybe you would change your mind? Because I am, you know.” “The prince.” “Not bragging,” he said quickly. “Just a fact.”

“Tell General Ewell the Federal troops are retreating in confusion. It is only necessary to push those people to get possession of those heights. Of course, I do not know his situation, and I do not want him to engage a superior force, but I do want him to take that hill, if he thinks practicable.”

“Given a chance, a child will bring the confusion of the world to the woods, wash it in the creek, turn it over to see what lives on the unseen side of that confusion.”

“No one can say that I am not a devoted sister...but the prospect of a visit from Edmund always fills me with alarm. My house is turned upside down, my children behave like wild things, there is nothing but noise and confusion.”

″...he and the Hunters spent many hours patiently tracking down evidence which was sometimes so conflicting and confusing that it was useless, and sometimes so coincidental that it was difficult to believe.”

″...somehow you’ve lost both your necktie and vest...”

‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that an Epsilon embryo must have an Epsilon environment as well as an Epsilon heredity? It evidently hadn’t occurred to him. He was covered with confusion.”

He hurried back to his own house; and his mind was so busy on the way with the hum that he was getting ready for Eeyore that, when he suddenly saw Piglet sitting in his best arm-chair, he could only stand there rubbing his head and wondering whose house he was in. “Hallo, Piglet,” he said. “I thought you were out.” “No,” said Piglet, “it’s you who were out, Pooh.” “So it was,” said Pooh. “I knew one of us was.”

“It’s a funny business,” thought Antony. “The one obvious solution is so easy and yet so wrong. And I’ve got a hundred things in my head, and I can’t fit them together.

“I’m a bit lost for the moment, Bill, and that’s the fact.”

“And each time the joyful bark that trembled in Buck’s throat was twisted into a savage growl.”

“I had only an indistinct understanding of what was passing around me. I said all that a man in such a state could say; but they both assured me that it was a jest they were carrying on, and perfectly harmless.”

“We’re dismal enough without conjuring up ghosts and visions to perplex us.

I was not much surprised to find that Mr. Pocket was a gentleman with a rather perplexed expression of face, and with his very grey hair disordered on his head, as if he didn’t quite see his way to putting anything straight.

I was greatly dejected and distressed, but in an incoherent wholesale sort of way. As to forming any plan for the future, I could as soon have formed an elephant. When I opened the shutters and looked out at the wet wild morning, all of a leaden hue; when I walked from room to room; when I sat down again shivering, before the fire, waiting for my laundress to appear; I thought how miserable I was, but hardly knew why, or how long I had been so, or on what day of the week I made the reflection, or even who I was that made it.

They had pulled one sudden stroke ahead, had got their oars in, had run athwart us, and were holding on to our gunwale, before we knew what they were doing. This caused great confusion on board the steamer, and I heard them calling to us, and heard the order given to stop the paddles, and heard them stop, but felt her driving down upon us irresistibly. In the same moment, I saw the steersman of the galley lay his hand on his prisoner’s shoulder, and saw that both boats were swinging round with the force of the tide, and saw that all hands on board the steamer were running forward quite frantically. Still, in the same moment, I saw the prisoner start up, lean across his captor, and pull the cloak from the neck of the shrinking sitter in the galley. Still in the same moment, I saw that the face disclosed, was the face of the other convict of long ago. Still, in the same moment, I saw the face tilt backward with a white terror on it that I shall never forget, and heard a great cry on board the steamer, and a loud splash in the water, and felt the boat sink from under me.

“What does it mean? Am I still in delirium, or is it real? I believe it is real.... Ah, I remember; I must escape! Make haste to escape. Yes, I must, I must escape! Yes... but where? And where are my clothes? I’ve no boots. They’ve taken them away! They’ve hidden them! I understand!”

“I simply don’t understand it... and... and... it weighs upon me, indeed, because I don’t understand it. I tell you so candidly.”