A Quote by Knut Hamsun

An increasing number of people who lead mental lives of great intensity, people who are sensitive by nature, notice the steadily more frequent appearance in them of mental states of great strangeness ... a wordless and irrational feeling of ecstasy; or a breath of psychic pain; a sense of being spoken to from afar, from the sky or the sea; an agonizingly developed sense of hearing which can cause one to wince at the murmuring of unseen atoms; an irrational staring into the heart of some closed kingdom suddenly and briefly revealed.
Careful studies of cases dealing with supposed 'mental disorder' have at times revealed that many thought to be insane or warped in some fashion were actually simply highly sensitive individuals. What they suffered from was not mental debilitation, but personal and communal ignorance of psychic reality.
Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say “My tooth is aching” than to say “My heart is broken.
In our day the feeling of patriotism is an unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which mankind is suffering, and that, consequently, this feeling - should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men.
I believe, in the stock market - that's one of my fields - that most people are irrational. And to be irrational, you can be irrational in so many different ways that, practically, the result is indeterminate.
The impact of the earthquake on mental health was huge and unimaginably deep in people's lives. Some lost all benchmarks and references because of their great loss, we still have people coming to clinics with mental health problems related to the earthquake. They talk about the earthquake, about being under the rubble.
It doesn't sound rational for a Klansman to sit down to dinner with a black man. What you're overlooking is, to be racist is to be irrational. So, they are already irrational, and irrational people do irrational things. That's why a Klansman will sit down with me.
Depending on their psychic make up, for some people, closing the eyes or being quiet produces anxiety and increases mental agitation. In such situations it is better to undertake the practice of yoga-whether physical yoga or meditation-with other people with whom one is comfortable and at ease. Gradually, as we see more and more clearly their roots, the fears and the imaginings will diminish. Mental distractions are harder to overcome when practicing alone. (109)
There are whole states where people [with addiction or mental health issues] can't get to a doctor. If that were true of pancreatic cancer, if that were true of heart disease, if that were true of diabetes, we'd all understand that it made no sense at all. And yet we somehow approach mental health from a very different standard.
I chose the name Pi because it's an irrational number (one with no discernable pattern). Yet scientists use this irrational number to come to a "rational" understanding of the universe. To me, religion is a bit like that, "irrational" yet with it we come together we come to a sound understanding of the universe.
One thing we may be sure of, however: For the believer all pain has meaning; all adversity is profitable. There is no question that adversity is difficult. It usually takes us by surprise and seems to strike where we are most vulnerable. To us it often appears completely senseless and irrational, but to God none of it is either senseless or irrational. He has a purpose in every pain He brings or allows in our lives. We can be sure that in some way He intends it for our profit and His glory.
Feeling different, feeling alienated, feeling persecuted, feeling that the only way to deal with the world is to laugh - because if you don't laugh you're going to cry and never stop crying - that's probably what's responsible for the Jews having developed such a great sense of humor. The people who had the greatest reason to weep, learned more than anyone else how to laugh.
Everybody has a great deal of experience in living. But no one lives in anything like the highest style of the art; and it is very disconcerting to notice how badly one lives in the sense of the extent to which fatigue and other discomforts are connected with one's important dealings with other people.
I think that a society cannot live without a certain number of irrational beliefs. They are protected from criticism and analysis because they are irrational.
The cause of Sense, is the External Body, or Object, which presseth the organ proper to each Sense, either immediately, as in theTaste and Touch; or mediately, as in Seeing, Hearing, and Smelling: which pressure, by the mediation of Nerves, and other strings, and membranes of the body, continued inwards to the Brain, and Heart, causeth there a resistance, or counter- pressure, or endeavor of the heart, to deliver it self: which endeavor because Outward, seemeth to be some matter without.
The animal kingdom exhibits a series of mental developments which may be regarded as antecedents to the mental development of man, for the mental life of animals shows itself to be throughout, in its elements and in the general laws governing the combination of the elements, the same as the mental life of man.
All religions are, in some basic sense, irrational.
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