Nerves Quotes

• Nerves and butterflies are fine - they're a physical sign that you're mentally ready and eager. You have to get the butterflies to fly in formation, that's the trick.

  Steve Bull

  Butterfly, Worry, Tricks

  47 Copy quote

• It is not uncommon in modern times to see governments straining every nerve to keep the peace, and the people whom they represent, with patriotic enthusiasm and resentment over real or fancied wrongs, urging them forward to war.

  Elihu Root

  Real, War, Patriotic

  Elihu Root (1916). “Addresses on International Subjects”

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pessimism is only the name that men of weak nerve give to wisdom.

  Mark Twain

  Wisdom, Men, Names

  11 Copy quote

• Anything's possible if you've got enough nerve.

  J. K. Rowling

  Inspirational, Strength, Inspiring

  Twitter post from Jun 6, 2016

  57 Copy quote

  Show source

• People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called *character,* a quality which, although approved in the abstract, sometimes loses ground to the other, more instantly negotiable virtues.... character--the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life--is the source from which self-respect springs.

  Joan Didion

  Spring, Responsibility, Character

  FaceBook post by Joan Didion from Jul 09, 2011

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• To speak, therefore, of an electric current in the nerves, is to use quite as symbolic an expression as if we compared the action of the nervous principle with light or magnetism.

  Johannes Peter Muller

  Expression, Light, Electric Current

  12 Copy quote

• Once conform, once do what other people do because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; dull, callous, and indifferent.

  Virginia Woolf

  Numbness, People, Soul

  Virginia Woolf (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Virginia Woolf (Illustrated)”, p.2280, Delphi Classics

  50 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't like money actually, but it quiets the nerves.

  Joe E. Lewis

  Funny, Money, Politics

  13 Copy quote

• Before I was a year old I walked and talked and I was even potty trained. When I started going to school I think I got on everyone's nerves because I used to ask adult questions rather than settle for the stuff usually fed to kids.

  Sharon Stone

  Kids, School, Thinking

  6 Copy quote

• Commitment means that it is possible for a man to yield the nerve center of his consent to a purpose or cause, a movement or an ideal, which may be more important to him than whether he lives or dies.

  Howard Thurman

  Mean, Commitment, Yield

  Howard Thurman (1963). “Disciplines of the spirit”, Friends United Pr

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• I thought I was bulletproof or Superman there for a while. I thought I'd never run out of nerve. Never.

  Evel Knievel

  Running, Bulletproof

  24 Copy quote

• In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty.

  Christopher Morley

  Beauty, Faith, Fall

  Christopher Morley, Ken Kalfus, Walter Jack Duncan (1990). “Christopher Morley's Philadelphia”, p.38, Fordham Univ Press

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• I don't get nervous in any situation. There's no such thing as nerves when you're playing games.

  Shaquille O'Neal

  Motivational, Basketball, Playing Games

  6 Copy quote

• Physiology has, at last, gained control over the nerves which stimulate the gastric glands and the pancreas.

  Ivan Pavlov

  Adrenal Glands, Lasts, Pancreas

  Ivan Petrovich Pavlov (1957). “Experimental psychology, and other essays”

  24 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's a funny thing, the less people have to live for, the less nerve they have to risk losing nothing.

  Zora Neale Hurston

  Funny, People, Risk

  Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker (1979). “I Love Myself when I Am Laughing ... and Then Again when I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader”, p.224, Feminist Press at CUNY

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• And as I started reaching deeper I realized that most of the blues of that day was done by men. Women just didn't have the nerve.

  Etta James

  Men, Done, Reaching

  6 Copy quote

• I wish I had the nerve not to tip.

  Paul Lynde

  Funny, Life, Witty

  6 Copy quote

• Acting touches nerves you have absolutely no control over.

  Alan Rickman

  Theatre, Acting

  "Emma Watson attacked for 'exploiting' Alan Rickman's death 'to push her own feminist agenda'" by Helen Pye, www.mirror.co.uk. January 15, 2016.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• A husband is what is left of a lover, after the nerve has been extracted.

  Helen Rowland

  Love, Funny, Marriage

  A Guide to Men prelude (1922)

  14 Copy quote

  Show source

• You think, eventually, that nothing can disturb you and that your nerves are impregnable. Yet, looking down at that familiar face, I realized that death is something to which we never become calloused.

  Eliot Ness

  Thinking, Faces, Familiar

  16 Copy quote

• His nerve, his memory, and I can't remember the third thing.

  Lee Trevino

  Memories, Golf, Remember

  10 Copy quote

• I'm still trying to re-create a Ray Charles concert that I heard when I was fifteen years old, and all my nerve endings were fried and transformed, and electricity shot through me.

  Boz Scaggs

  Years, Trying, Rays

  51 Copy quote

• The city is the nerve center of our civilization. It is also the storm center.

  Josiah Strong

  Civilization, Cities, Storm

  Josiah Strong (1963). “Our Country”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• I couldn’t sleep for two years, they tried to break my nerves. They used a lot of psychology to brainwash.

  Mordechai Vanunu

  Sleep, Years, Two

  Interview with Amy Goodman, www.counterpunch.org. August 18, 2004.

  83 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great events make me quiet and calm; it is only trifles that irritate my nerves.

  Queen Victoria

  Events, Calm, Quiet

  154 Copy quote