Function

Famous quotes containing the word function:

    To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward.
    Margaret Fairless Barber (1869–1901)

    To make us feel small in the right way is a function of art; men can only make us feel small in the wrong way.
    —E.M. (Edward Morgan)

    As a medium of exchange,... worrying regulates intimacy, and it is often an appropriate response to ordinary demands that begin to feel excessive. But from a modernized Freudian view, worrying—as a reflex response to demand—never puts the self or the objects of its interest into question, and that is precisely its function in psychic life. It domesticates self-doubt.
    Adam Phillips, British child psychoanalyst. “Worrying and Its Discontents,” in On Kissing, Tickling, and Being Bored, p. 58, Harvard University Press (1993)