Overwhelmed

Famous quotes containing the word overwhelmed:

    She has problems with separation; he has trouble with unity—problems that make themselves felt in our relationships with our children just as they do in our relations with each other. She pulls for connection; he pushes for separateness. She tends to feel shut out; he tends to feel overwhelmed and intruded upon. It’s one of the reasons why she turns so eagerly to children—especially when they’re very young.
    Lillian Breslow Rubin (20th century)

    I believe that no characteristic is so distinctively human as the sense of indebtedness we feel, not necessarily for a favor received, but even for the slightest evidence of kindness; and there is nothing so boorish, savage, inhuman as to appear to be overwhelmed by a favor, let alone unworthy of it.
    Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.)

    Sometimes my wife complains that she’s overwhelmed with work and just can’t take one of the kids, for example, to a piano lesson. I’ll offer to do it for her, and then she’ll say, “No, I’ll do it.” We have to negotiate how much I trespass into that mother role—it’s not given up easily.
    —Anonymous Father. As quoted in Women and Their Fathers, by Victoria Secunda, ch. 3 (1992)