Pariah Quotes

“I swear from the bottom of my heart I want to be healed. I want to be like other men, not this outcast whom nobody wants.”
― E.M. Forster, Maurice

“I was a young, & had deep loves, & my heart would overflow with enthusiasm! And I mingled with the crowd, I mixed with my fellow men, speaking my thought out loud! And they gaped back at me, without understanding. And I withdrew from them, & they said to me: Arrogant one! And from time to time in my solitude, my loves, my repressed enthusiasms broke out into odes, conversation; & my companions laughed and used to point at me as a madman. So I suffered, doubted, cursed, & no one believed me sincere. It’s as if this heart, once so full of strength & love were annihilated.”
― Comte de Lautréamont

“Nobody will read what I say here, no one will come to help me; even if all the people were commanded to help me, every door and window would remain shut, everybody would take to bed and draw the bed-clothes over his head, the whole earth would become an inn for the night. And there is sense in that, for nobody knows of me, and if anyone knew he would not know where I could be found, and if he knew where I could be found, he would not know how to deal with me, he would not know how to help me. The thought of helping me is an illness that has to be cured by taking to one's bed.

("The Hunter Gracchus")”
― Franz Kafka

“With horror he perceived that, by uniting himself as he had with the dead, he had cut himself off from the living. Stripped of all earthly hope, bereft of every consolation, he was rendered as poor as mortal can possibly
be on this side of the grave.”
― Ludwig Tieck, Wake Not the Dead

“... He who innovates will have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of things, and only lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off under the new... partly from the incredulity of mankind, who will never admit the merit of anything new, until they have seen it proved by the event.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“There are dread secrets that none may know and have peace. More, secrets that render whosoever knoweth them an alien unto the tribe he belongs to, that cause him to walk alone on earth, for he who takes, pays.”
― E. Hoffman Price

“I'm tired of everyone
And that includes myself”
― Steven Wilson, Steven Wilson: To The Bone

“His sadistic attitude is allied with a desire for self-abasement which in my opinion constitutes the very foundation of his character: he knows that it is dangerous to stand out and that his behavior irritates society, but nevertheless he seeks and attracts persecution and scandal. It is the only way he can establish a more vital relationship with the society he is antagonizing. As a victim, he can occupy a place in the world that previously ignored him; as a delinquent, he can become one of its wicked heroes…

[He] is impassive and contemptuous, allowing all these contradictory impressions to accumulate around him until finally, with a certain painful satisfaction, he sees them explode into a tavern fight or a raid by the police or a riot. And then, in suffering persecution, he becomes his true self, his supremely naked self, as a pariah, a man who belongs nowhere. The circle that began with provocation has completed itself and he is ready now for redemption, for his entrance into the society that rejected him.”
― Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude and Other Writings

“I was one of the first in the country, perhaps the first in Chicago, to have my character, my commitment, and my very self attacked in such a way by Movement women that it left me torn in little pieces and unable to function. It took me years to recover, and even today the wounds have not entirely healed.

This attack is accomplished by making you feel that your very existence is inimical to the Movement and that nothing can change this short of ceasing to exist. These feelings are reinforced when you are isolated from your friends as they become convinced that their association with you is similarly inimical to the Movement and to themselves. Any support of you will taint them. Eventually all your colleagues join in a chorus of condemnation which cannot be silenced, and you are reduced to a mere parody of your previous self.

I had survived my youth because I had never given anyone or any group the right to judge me. That right I had reserved to myself.

But the Movement seduced me by its sweet promise of sisterhood.

It claimed to provide a haven from the ravages of a sexist society; a place where one would be understood. It was my very need for feminism and feminists that made me vulnerable. I gave the movement the right to judge me because I trusted it. And when it judged me worthless, I accepted that judgment.”
― Jo Freeman

“There are one or two people - I’m not talking about family, about Zhenya or your mother - whom a pariah can trust. He can contact these people without first waiting for a sign.”
― Vasily Grossman

“A savage sense entered me, of being of such small account in the world that I wasn't to be helped, that priest and woman and man had put out an edict that I wasn't to be helped, I was to be left to the elements, just as I was, a walking animal, forsaken.

Maybe it was then that some part of me leapt away from myself, something fled from my brain, I don't know.”
― Sebastian Barry, The Secret Scripture

“Pariah Luggage by Stewart Stafford

I am the last piece of luggage,
On the baggage carousel,
If there's a suitcase deity,
It has cursed and forsaken me.

I see the excited faces drop,
Blank me and turn away,
And around I go yet again,
Condemned to ovoid limbo.

The stumbling supermodel,
On a mortification catwalk,
Bursting at badly-taped seams,
Spilling contents everywhere.

On my next lap of shame,
Those same faces show pity,
For the uninvited leper guest,
At life's most fugacious "party."

© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford

“We were the marines the other Marines avoided. The pariahs, the bad-luck charms. The ones no one wanted to risk being near. As if we didn't just process death. As if we brought it.”
― Barbara Nickless, Ambush

“The route to success often has a pariah phase along the way.”
― Steven Magee

“I had been hired to manage the Desoto Solar Farm due to my expertise in troubleshooting solar photovoltaic farms. When my expertise uncovered it was incorrectly built and was dangerous, I became a pariah in the company.”
― Steven Magee

“Telling the truth about things turns you into a pariah with people that work in those fields!”
― Steven Magee

“It was at my back, the silence, making shivers at my back, and I couldn't turn, though my mind began racing. Don't let it be Milkman. Oh please, don't let it be Milkman. Then I did turn and it wasn't Milkman. It was everybody else. Every single person was staring at me in the shop.”
― Anna Burns, Milkman