Catharsis Quotes

People ask all the time what I learned in the camps. But the camps weren’t therapy. What do you think these places were? Universities? We didn’t go there to learn. One becomes very clear about these things. What are you asking for? Forgiveness for her? Or do you just want to feel better yourself? My advice, go to the theatre, if you want catharsis, please. Go to literature. Don't go to the camps. Nothing comes out of the camps. Nothing.

Bernhard Schlink

Is this what she would have wanted, Hawke?" Ronan asked quietly. "Justice at the cost of an innocent man and his child?

Anger was washed away in the river along with any obligation.

Ernest Hemingway

The myth of Oedipus . . . arouses powerful intellectual and emotional reactions in the adult-so much so, that it may provide a cathartic experience, as Aristotle taught all tragedy does. [A reader] may wonder why he is so deeply moved; and in responding to what he observes as his emotional reaction, ruminating about the mythical events and what these mean to him, a person may come to clarify his thoughts and feelings. With this, certain inner tensions which are the consequence of events long past may be relieved; previously unconscious material can then enter one's awareness and become accessible for conscious working through. This can happen if the observer is deeply moved emotionally by the myth, and at the sametime strongly motivated intellectually to understand it.

Bruno Bettelheim

How do you circumvent a mind bent upon lying to get away from the truth?

If you can get to be you, why can't I get to be me?

I ask you, what would you do if you could erase one bad memory and retain all that was beautiful in your life? Would you not move heaven and earth - and get loads of therapy - to have that?

What I've always taken away from his words is the sense that we all have something that confines us, that seeks to define us, label us, belittling us in the process, shortchanging our potential. Can it be that that is our sanctuary, our refuge, our way to liberty?

He wrote to his father every day. His platoon called his dad a girlfriend.

Even in death, her mother was winning.

Aurora, you're a child, live like one, don't act like one. Enjoy the innocence, dump the immaturity.

She had to save herself from every last one of them. All of them, the people at the orphanage, the foster care system, the middle school, they were all outsiders and strangers and a possible threat.....The counselor couldn't prove otherwise.

He also knew the language of The Klingons, but the army had no use for it.

The list of lifesavers left him numb, clueless - the action, indifferent.

. . .from their earliest years children live on familiar terms with disrupting emotions, fear and anxiety are an intrinsic part of their everyday lives, they continually cope with frustrations as best they can. And it is through fantasy that children achieve catharsis. It is the best means they have for taming Wild Things.

The power of music, whether joyous or cathartic must steal on one unawares, come spontaneously as a blessing or a grace--

He thought he vomited out his soul. If ghosts were made of ectoplasm and ghosts were basically souls without bodies, then it was perfectly logical that the green mess all over the ground was his ectoplasmic essence.

And this is the unwritten history of man, his unseen, negative accomplishment, his power to do without gratification for himself provided there is something great, something into which his being, and all beings can go. He does not need meaning as long as such intensity has scope. Because then it is self-evident; it is meaning.

My friend asked me if it had been cathartic, to write my memoir. I looked down at the sculptures—it was cathartic for me to look at them, but I could imagine it might have been hell to make them (I was cheered / when I came first to know / that there were flowers also / in hell). No, I answered—how was it for you to read it? Aristotle, in his Poetics, never promised catharsis for the makers of art, only for the audience.

Seven smirked as he walked back over to me. "I gave you catharsis last night. Twice.

Seven smirked as he walked back over to me. "I gave you catharsis last night. Twice.