Nerves Quotes - Page 21

• No severe or prolonged bodily illness followed this incident of the red-room: it only gave my nerves a shock, of which I feel the reverberation to this day.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Red, Rooms, Illness

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.20, Penguin

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• So much of the way a singer physically damages their voice could be caused by stress or nerves. I would never be so brazen as to assume that it's the only problem but there's got to be a reason that a martial artist can harness enough peace to smash his head through a cinder block without leaving a scratch.

  Brandi Carlile

  Block, Stress, Artist

  "Interrogating Brandi Carlile: I Knew ‘That Wasn’t Me’ Was Our ‘Let It Be‘". Interview with Jesse Kornbluth, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 24, 2012.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• True humanity consists not in a squeamish ear; it consists not in starting or shrinking at tales of misery, but in a disposition of heart to relieve it. True humanity appertains rather to the mind than to the nerves, and prompts men to use real and active endeavors to execute the actions which it suggests.

  Charles James

  Real, Heart, Men

  15 Copy quote

• Heroin spread that soft blanket over everything. But once the blanket was ripped off, it took a layer of skin with it, leaving nothing but nerve ends screaming in the breeze.

  Jerry Stahl

  Leaving, Skins, Layers

  23 Copy quote

• The image of the presence, whatever it was, waiting there for him to go -this image had not yet been so concrete for his nerves as when he stopped short of the point at which certainty would have come to him. For, with all his resolution, or more exactly with all his dread, he did stop short - he hung back from really seeing. The risk was too great and his fear too definite: it took at this moment an awful specific form.

  Henry James

  Fear, Waiting, Risk

  4 Copy quote

• In the meantime the groans changed into the protracted, thunderous roar by which all living creatures are struck with terror, and the nerves of people, who do not know what fear is, shake, just as the window-panes rattle from distant cannonading.

  Henryk Sienkiewicz

  Fear, Window Panes, People

  Henryk Sienkiewicz (2011). “In Desert and Wilderness (橫越撒哈拉)”, p.607, Hyweb Technology Co. Ltd.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• The biggest turn-off for me is people who think the world of themselves. Arrogance is not a sexy quality, and it really gets on my nerves.

  Pixie Lott

  Sexy, Thinking, People

  4 Copy quote

• Money can't buy happiness, but it does quiet the nerves.

  Joe Louis

  Riches, Doe, Quiet

  52 Copy quote

• I don't believe in art like I used to. I believe in something beyond it, something that contains art and everything else. But I just don't quite have the nerve to chuck drawing and painting. Part of it is that I enjoy it too much, and part is that I don't have the courage to renounce the world. I don't want to move out of this nice neighborhood so that I can live in a shed and devote myself to meditating and touching something I can't feel. I'm addicted to the fun of playing in the world.

  Jim Woodring

  Art, Fun, Nice

  Interview with Ross Simonini, staging.believermag.com. 2008.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The idea that writing about characters of another race requires a passage through a critical gauntlet, which involves apology and self-examination of an almost punitive nature, as though the act of writing race was somehow morally suspect, is a dangerous one. This approach appears culturally sensitive, but often it reveals a failure of nerve. I believe the demand that we ought to reveals a species of fascism within the left - an embrace of political correctness with its required silences, which has left people afraid to offend or take a stand.

  C.E. Morgan

  Believe, Writing, Character

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Somewhere in there the grace of a ballet dancer joins with the strength of an SAS squaddie, the dignity of an ancient kind, the nerve of a bomb disposal officer.

  Eamon Dunphy

  Soccer, Football, Media

  13 Copy quote

• Strain every nerve to gain your point.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Gains, Strain

  4 Copy quote

• The only master that exists, the only one that's true and believable is your own conscience. To find it you have to stand in silence-alone and in silence-you have to stand on the naked earth, naked yourself and with nothing around you, as if you were already dead. You don't hear anything at first; the only thing you feel is terror, but then you begin to hear a voice, away in the background, far off; it's a calm voice, and maybe its banality gets on your nerves to begin with.

  Susanna Tamaro

  Voice, Silence, Naked

  16 Copy quote

• Explore thyself. Herein are demanded the eye and the nerve.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Eye, Identity, Self Knowledge

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Henry David Thoreau (Illustrated)”, p.510, Delphi Classics

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.

  Ralph Ellison

  Solitude, Unseen, Sometimes

  Ralph Ellison (2010). “Invisible Man”, p.28, Vintage

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is at once by way of poetry and through poetry, as with music, that the soul glimpses splendors from beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings one's eyes to the point of tears, those tears are not evidence of an excess of joy, they are witness far more to an exacerbated melancholy, a disposition of the nerves, a nature exiled among imperfect things, which would like to possess, without delay, a paradise revealed on this very same earth.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Eye, Imperfect Things, Poetry

  "L'art romantique". Book by Charles Baudelaire, 1869.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Reader, if you are gifted with nerves like mine, aspire to any character but that of a wit.

  Charles Lamb

  Character, Wit, Reader

  Charles Lamb (1835). “Essays of Elia”, p.9

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The relativism which is not willing to speak about truth but only about ‘what is true for me’ is an evasion of the serious business of living. It is the mark of a tragic loss of nerve in our contemporary culture. It is a preliminary symptom of death.

  Lesslie Newbigin

  Loss, Serious Business, Culture

  Lesslie Newbigin (2013). “The Gospel in a Pluralist Society: SPCK Classic”, p.36, SPCK

  33 Copy quote

  Show source

• We Americans commercialize everything. Look at what we did to Christmas. Christmas is Jesus' birthday. Now, I don't know Jesus, but from what I read he was the least materialistic person who ever walked the earth. No bling on Jesus. He kept a low profile and we turned his birthday into the most commercial day of the year. In fact we have a whole Jesus birthday season. And then at the end of it, we have the nerve to have an economist come on TV and say what a horrible Jesus birthday season we had.

  Chris Rock

  Jesus, Years, Looks

  7 Copy quote

• Only enormously talented people could have made Death to Smoochy . Those with lesser gifts would have lacked the nerve to make a film so bad, so miscalculated, so lacking any connection with any possible audience.

  Roger Ebert

  People, Connections, Film

  Roger Ebert (2009). “Your Movie Sucks”, p.68, Andrews McMeel Publishing

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• It was always exciting, but it was also always dangerous. And fear takes a toll finally: when you live in danger from moment to moment, the constant tension becomes very wearying. Every step I took on the roads of Gelderland was nerve-wracking, because I was secretly carrying the very material that could turn out to be my own death warrant.

  Diet Eman

  Steps, Tolls, Moments

  6 Copy quote

• I wasn't used to children and they were getting on my nerves. Worse, it appeared that I was a child, too. I hadn't known that before; I thought I was just short.

  Florence King

  Children, Used, Known

  Florence King (1990). “Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady”, p.59, Macmillan

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• The brave man is intelligent; he faces danger because he understands it and is prepared to meet it. The drunkard who runs, in the delirium of intoxication, into a burning house is not brave; he is only stupid. But the clear-eyed hero who makes his way, with every sense alert and every nerve strung, into the hell of flames to rescue some little child, proves his courage.

  Henry Van Dyke

  Running, Courage, Children

  Henry Van Dyke (2007). “Counsels by the Way”, p.89, Wildside Press LLC

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• For one who is having no personal experience, the passionate disquiet of others is at any rate a titillation of the nerves, like seeing a play or listening to music.

  Stefan Zweig

  Play, Listening, Passionate

  Stefan Zweig (1955). “Stories and Legends”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Once shame touches your being at any point, even the most distant nerve is implicated, whether you know it or not; any fleeting encounter or random thought will rake up the anguish and add to it.

  Stefan Zweig

  Encounters, Add, Rakes

  Stefan Zweig (2008). “The Post-office Girl”, New York Review of Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source