The ingenuity of self-deception is inexhaustible.
He said she went around with her feelings out in front of her with an arm around the feelings' windpipe and a Glock 9mm. to the feelings' temple like a terrorist with a hostage, daring you to shoot.
Your choice of armor was your intellect.
Dogma is a defensive reaction against doubt in the mind of the theorist, but doubt of which he is unaware.
Many years later, a psychiatrist friend of mine said something to us. He said, "Respect denial." It's a powerful force.
Stress is something that's created in the mind, basically. It's how we look at things. So ovr greatest defense against stress is the ability to change ovr minds; to change ovr thinking.
[P]erhaps you notice how the denial is so often the preface to the justification.
Words can only hurt you if you try to read them. Don't play their game!
A considerable number of persons are able to protect themselves against the outbreak of serious neurotic phenomena only through intense work.
My unhappiness protects me from life.
Wit is the only wall between us and the dark.
My greatest enemy is reality. I have fought it successfully for thirty years.
Sleep marks passing time, giving us distance from the things that have hurt us. When a person is wounded they will often fall unconscious. Similarly, someone who hears traumatic news will often swoon or faint. This is the mind's way of protecting itself from pain.
I suppose it's a very highly developed form of denial, but some part of me completely denies that I'm a performer.
Shooters shoot. The worst thing a shooter can do is think. That's the best defense out there.
The mind is the terriblest force in the world, father, Because, in chief, it, only, can defend Against itself. At its mercy, we depend Upon it.
The poet represents the mind in the act of defending us against itself.
You know those bumpers in the two lanes when you go bowling? I go out there with two of them, metaphorically, every day.
The human mind likes a strange idea as little as the body likes a strange protein and resists it with a similar energy.
The acquirements of science may be termed the armour of the mind; but that armour would be worse than useless, that cost us all we had, and left us nothing to defend.
There may be a million microbes of misery floating about us. Never mind! They dare not approach us, they have no power to get a hold on us, until the mind is weakened.
