Quotes About Ambivalence

But the biggest clue seemed to be their expressions. They were hard to explain. Good-natured, friendly, easygoing – and uninvolved. They were like spectators. You had the feeling they had just wandered in there themselves and somebody had handed them a wrench. There was no identification with the job.

Progress would be wonderful — if only it would stop.

there are two of you, one who wants to write and one who doesn't. The one who wants to write has to keep fooling the one who doesn't.

I'm glad and I'm sorry. I'm always sorry when pleasant things end. Something still more pleasant may come after, but you can never be sure. And it's so often the case that it isn't more pleasant.

Do you know, that is a question I often ask myself—If I could would I go back to my old self? —and I can never answer it. I can never dare to say either no or yes. The fruit of the tree of knowledge may leave a bitter taste in the eater's mouth, but there is something in its flavor that can never be forgotten or counterfeited.

Because I simply couldn't make up my mind to do it. I never can make up my mind about anything myself—I'm always afflicted with indecision. Just as soon as I decide to do something I feel in my bones that another course would be the correct one. It's a dreadful misfortune, but I was born that way, and there is no use in blaming me for it, as some people do.

La terapia es una nueva industria que debe su onerosa existencia a la idea festiva de que la ambivalencia puede curarse, la madurez es una adaptación a las condiciones del entorno y la indocilidad una forma de neurosis.

I was caught between going yippy-skippy i get to play with them both, and running like hell.

Judge for yourself. I've hated him and tried to love him for so many years I can't see him clearly.

He walked away through the crowd before i could decide if i'd been insulted or not. Just as well. For the life of me, i couldn't think of a good comeback line.

I don't know whether to yell at you or hug you.' 'I affect a lot of people that way

A challenge forever," I said. "For all eternity," he whispered. I let him draw me down into a kiss, and part of me was still not sure if I'd done a good thing or a bad thing. But just for tonight, I didn't care.

Ik kan er niet mee ophouden, maar ik kan er ook niet mee doorgaan.

Great system: the poison and the antidote come in the same bottle

I wasn't sure I liked him, but I was just as happy not to like the men I worked for. It bothered me less that way if I felt I was giving them less than full value.

He sits all day on the terrace of the Brokers' Club watching women pass, with the restless eye of someone endlessly shuffling through an old soiled pack of cards.

I realize that, while often happy and often cheerful, I am always sad.

I know I'm bitter and a little jaded, and mildly enjoy it, but am I a sad person? Am I happy? I plan on being happy in the future for sure, but it isn't here yet. So what does that make me, exactly?

Modern science knows much about such conflicts. We call the mental state that engenders it "ambivalence": a collision between thought and feeling.

Nature's fortuitous manifestation of her purposeless objectionableness.

Modern science is necessarily a double-edged tool, a tool that cuts both ways. ... There is no doubt that a Zeppelin is a wonderful thing; but that did not prevent it from becoming a horrible thing.

God, how that stings! I've spent a lifetime loving science fiction and now I find that you must expect nothing of something that's just science fiction.

Part of me can't understand how Mom could do this. But there's that other part of me that can readily relate. Because I feel a pull in two different directions too.

Smiling is confusing, she thought. This is why I don´t do it