Best Involuntary Sayings
83 Involuntary quotes by 74 unique authors
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Concupiscence and force are the source of all our actions; concupiscence causes voluntary actions, force involuntary ones.
— Blaise Pascal
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Pursuing employment or climatic relief, we live in voluntary exile from our extended families and our longer past, but in an involuntary exile from ourselves…
— John Thorn
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Any emotion, if it is sincere, is involuntary.
— Mark Twain
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I have always thought it rather interesting to follow the involuntary movements of fear in clever people. Fools coarsely display their cowardice in all its…
— Alexis de Tocqueville
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Jealousy is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins.
— Iris Murdoch
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Illness reduces man to his basic state: a cloaca in which the chemical processes continue. The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary.
— Paul Bowles
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Detestation of the high is the involuntary homage of the low.
— Charles Dickens
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Beauty, midnight, vision dies: Let the winds of dawn that blow Softly round your dreaming head Such a day of welcome show Eye and knocking…
— Wystan Hugh Auden
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We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision and involuntary when they happen without decision. But if a decision itself were…
— Alan Watts
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A scene should be selected by the writer for haunted-ness-of-mind interest. If you're not haunted by something, as by a dream, a vision, or a…
— Jack Kerouac
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Next time I’ll just send the three of you e-mails. What was I thinking when I decided to have this meeting? (Acheron) Oh, I know.…
— Sherrilyn Kenyon
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I am lithe, but fragile from constant involuntary self-analysis.
— Mary MacLane
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What was happening was only the working-out of a process that had started years ago. The first step had been a secret, involuntary thought, the…
— George Orwell
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Tunstell, this is your Alpha speaking. Do as I tell you. You must regurgitate now. Regurgitation is an involuntary action. You cannot simply order me…
— Gail Carriger
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You had this young man with you for... what, six years?" Halt shrugged. "Near enough," he replied. "And did you ever understand a word he…
— John Flanagan
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It was suicide, wasn't it?" "In an involuntary sort of way," said Vorob'yev. "These Cetagandan political suicides can get awfully messy, when the principal won't…
— Lois McMaster Bujold
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What had survived - maybe all that had survived of Trism - was Liir's sense of him. A catalog of impressions that arose from time…
— Gregory Maguire
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For me chivalry isn't dead; it's an involuntary reflex.
— Jim Butcher
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And leaning out the window, enjoying the day above the varying volume of the entire city, only one thought swells my soul – the intimate…
— Fernando Pessoa
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We fall in love or stay in love with people who are unsuitable or who no longer love us and, conversely, we feel no love…
— François Lelord
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It’s lovely,” I said, taking an involuntary half step back. “Really, though. I don’t like to handle other people’s cookware.” “That’s the best you can…
— Mira Grant
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No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation , an unrewarded duty or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be…
— Ayn Rand
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I like to think of it less as embezzling and more as an involuntary goodwill contribution.
— Jim Butcher
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The stillness of the calm is awful. His voice begins to grow strange and portentous. He feels it in him like something swallowed too big…
— Herman Melville
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An involuntary return to the point of departure is, without doubt, the most disturbing of all journeys.
— Iain Sinclair
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Who Wrote These Involuntary Quotes
74 authors contributed a total of 83 Involuntary Quotes, led by these top contributors: