Everybody has their taste in noises as well as in other matters; and sounds are quite innoxious, or most distressing, by their sort rather than their quantity.
There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears, are the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate and the distressed.
Oh, man," Xavier groaned. "See what you've done--now I'm stressing." "You can't! You're the stable one!" Xavier laughed and I realized his distress had been feigned to illustrate a point. He wasn't worried in the slightest. "Just relax. Go and run a bath or have a shot of brandy." "Okay." "That second bit was a joke. We both know you can't hold your liquor.
You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might also pray in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.
Let him who expects one class of society to prosper into highest degree, while the other is in distress, try whether one side of his face can smile while the other is pinched.
We live in an age disturbed, confused, bewildered, afraid of its own forces, in search not merely of its road but even of its direction. There are many voices of counsel, but few voices of vision; there is much excitement and feverish activity, but little concert of thoughtful purpose. We are distressed by our own ungoverned, undirected energies and do many things, but nothing long. It is our duty to find ourselves.
The clear awareness of having been born into a losing struggle need not lead one into despair. I do not especially like the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on—only henceforth in my absence. (It's the second of those thoughts: the edition of the newspaper that will come out on the day after I have gone, that is the more distressing.) Much more horrible, though, would be the announcement that the party was continuing forever, and that I was forbidden to leave. Whether it was a hellishly bad party or a party that was perfectly heavenly in every respect, the moment that it became eternal and compulsory would be the precise moment that it began to pall.
To pity distress is but human; to relieve it is Godlike.
I was much distressed by next door people who had twin babies and played the violin; but one of the twins died, and the other has eaten the fiddle - so all is peace.
What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.