Strain Quotes - Page 2

• A man can spend several hours sitting cross-legged in the same position if he knows that noting prevents him from changing it; but if he knows that he has to sit with his legs crossed like that, he will get cramps, his legs will twitch and strain towards where he would like to stretch them.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Men, Sitting, Legs

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• A rat called Possible New Strain was sitting under a spaghetti strainer held down with a pile of journalism textbooks, saying rude things in rat-speak.

  Scott Westerfeld

  Rude, Textbooks, Sitting

  Scott Westerfeld (2006). “Peeps”, p.79, Penguin

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• When a bachelor of philosophy from the Antilles refuses to apply for certification as a teacher on the grounds of his color I say that philosophy has never saved anyone. When someone else strives and strains to prove to me that black men are as intelligent as white men I say that intelligence has never saved anyone: and that is true, for, if philosophy and intelligence are invoked to proclaim the equality of men, they have also been employed to justify the extermination of men.

  Frantz Fanon

  Teacher, Philosophy, Intelligent

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• Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still.

  T. S. Eliot

  Cracks, Decay, Slides

  Four Quartets "Burnt Norton" pt. 5 (1936)

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• Every congresswoman surely endures the same strains that drive some of her male colleagues to have affairs: lots of travel, families far away, heady work that makes a domestic routine seem distant and boring. But the stakes are much higher for women, because they are still judged by a different standard.

  Hanna Rosin

  Males, Different, Routine

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• I've always known that sporting people frequently suffer from joint problems because of the repeated strain they put on their bodies to get to the top. But somehow I never thought it would happen to me.

  Carl Lewis

  People, Suffering, Body

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• It is always a strain when people are being killed. I don't think anybody has held this job who hasn't felt personally responsible for those being killed.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Jobs, Thinking, People

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• As a result, the highly civilized man can endure incomparably more than the savage, whether of moral or physical strain. Being better able to control himself under all circumstances, he has a great advantage over the savage.

  Lafcadio Hearn

  Men, Savages, Literature

  Lafcadio Hearn (1922). “Books and Habits”

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• I hadn't even released my first proper single when I started to feel the strain of attention. But I don't believe that it was the attention that was giving me panic attacks. I think it was everything in my life colliding at the same time. It really did get to a serious point where I couldn't even walk down the street without getting the pain.

  Ellie Goulding

  Pain, Believe, Thinking

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• Following the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, $3 per gallon gasoline became common and our nation has come under considerable strain.

  Paul Gillmor

  Gasoline, Devastation, Hurricanes

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• Let architects sing of aesthetics that bring Rich clients in hordes to their knees; Just give me a home, in a great circle dome Where stresses and strains are at ease.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Stress, Home, Circles

  53 Copy quote

• It's about mass immigration at a time when 21% of young people can't find work. It's about giving £50 million a day to the EU when the public finances are under great strain.

  Nigel Farage

  People, Giving, Immigration

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• The enemy is not just terrorism. It is the threat posed specifically by Islamist terrorism, by Bin Ladin and others who draw on a long tradition of extreme intolerance within a minority strain of Islam that does not distinguish politics from religion, and distorts both.

  John Cornyn

  Long, Enemy, Islam

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• But what if I fail of my purpose here? It is but to keep the nerves at strain, to dry one's eyes and laugh at a fall, and baffled, get up and begin again.

  Robert Browning

  Fall, Eye, Laughing

  Robert Browning (1994). “The Works of Robert Browning”, p.241, Wordsworth Editions

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• With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Happiness, Smile, Laughter

  Abraham Lincoln (1999). “The Wit & Wisdom of Abraham Lincoln: A Treasury of Quotations, Anecdotes, and Observations”, Gramercy

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• As a great man's influence never ends, so also there is not definite finality, no end, to a great survey; it runs along for centuries, ever responsive to the strain of the increasing needs of a growing population and an enlarging domain.

  Cleveland Abbe

  Running, Men, Growing

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• Ever since viewing screens entered the home, many observers have worried that they put our brains into a stupor. An early strain of research claimed that when we watch television, our brains mostly exhibit slow alpha waves - indicating a low level of arousal, similar to when we are daydreaming.

  Hanna Rosin

  Home, Brain, Arousal

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• All real capitalisms are impure hybrids, mongrels mixed with other strains.

  Geoff Mulgan

  Real, Capitalism, Hybrid

  Geoff Mulgan (2015). “The Locust and the Bee: Predators and Creators in Capitalism's Future”, p.7, Princeton University Press

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• I'd rather play a tune on a horn, but I've always felt that I didn't want to train myself. Because when you get a train, you've got to have an engine and a caboose. I think it's better to train the caboose. You train yourself, you strain yourself.

  Don Van Vliet

  Thinking, Play, Horny

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• The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education.

  John Updike

  Education, Children, Father

  John Updike (1963). “The Centaur”, Ballantine Books

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• Let me be accurate in everything, for though you and I have seen some strange things together, you may at the first think that I, Van Helsing, am mad. That the many horrors and the so long strain on nerves has at the last turn my brain.

  Bram Stoker

  Thinking, Mad, Long

  Bram Stoker (1904). “Dracula”, p.330, Hayes Barton Press

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• If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.

  Arlen Specter

  War, Cancer, Thinking

  "Specter Claims Kemp Would Be Alive if Congress Better Funded Medical Research", www.foxnews.com. May 4, 2009.

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• Europe unified its monetary policy through the euro before it unified politically, therefore sustaining member countries' abilities to pursue the kind of independent fiscal policies that can strain a joint currency.

  Amity Shlaes

  Country, Independent, Europe

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• For myself, I haven't been content to carry on producing books that merely strain against the conventions - as I've grown older, and realised that there aren't that many books left for me to write, so I've become determined that they should be the fictive equivalent of ripping the damn corset off altogether and chucking it on the fire.

  Will Self

  Book, Writing, Fire

  "Will Self: modernism and me" by Will Self, www.theguardian.com. August 3, 2012.

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• When we won the league championship, all the married guys on the club had to thank their wives for putting up with all the stress and strain all season. I had to thank all the single broads in New York.

  Joe Namath

  New York, Stress, League

  "Ladies love Teflon Tom -- no matter what" by Jemele Hill, www.espn.com. January 31, 2008.

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