Tension Quotes - Page 31

• Taking the continent as a whole, this religious tension may be responsible for the revival of the commonest racial feeling. Africa is divided into Black and White, and the names that are substituted- Africa south of the Sahara, Africa north of the Sahara- do not manage to hide this latent racism. Here, it is affirmed that White Africa has a thousand-year-old tradition of culture; that she is Mediterranean, that she is a continuation of Europe and that she shares in Graeco-Latin civilization. Black Africa is looked on as a region that is inert, brutal, uncivilized - in a word, savage.

  Frantz Fanon

  Religious, Latin, Black And White

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• I remember how, at first, I had felt the tension in his lips, as if he was trying to make a barrier between us - then they had relaxed, parted slightly. And that's when I had known he wanted to kiss me, wanted to give in. That little parting of the lips, the little sigh that came out... I would hear that sigh forever. That little, little sound when the whole world seemed to open up.

  Maureen Johnson

  Kissing, Giving, Forever

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• “Simon,” she whispered, vaguely surprised that she had just used his first name, for she had never used it even in the privacy of her thoughts. Moistening her dry lips, she tried once more, and to her astonishment, she did it again. “Simon…” “Yes?” A new tension had entered his long, hard body, and at the same time, his hand moved over the shape of her skull in the softest caress possible. “Please… take me to my room.” Hunt tilted her head back gently and regarded her with a sudden faint smile playing on his lips. “Sweetheart, I would take you to Timbuktu if you asked.“

  Lisa Kleypas

  Hands, Names, Skulls

  "Secrets of a Summer Night". Book by Lisa Kleypas, 2004.

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• And I've been waiting for you, because I couldn't do anything else. And we've both known that we would meet again, and then it would be all over with life and everything that gave our existence meaning and tension. A secret of the kind that lurks between the two of us has extraordinary power. It burns through the fabric of life like a scorching beam, and yet at the same time it also gives it tensile strength. It forces us to live.

  Sándor Márai

  Fabric Of Life, Two, Giving

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• There is harmony in the tension of opposites, as in the case of the bow and lyre.

  Heraclitus

  Relationship, Communication, Opposites

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• When I am designing, my aim is to create tension and then gradually proceed into quiet.

  Jacques Wirtz

  Garden, Design, Quiet

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• You live during the match, and you have strong emotions, but you don't want to get too overexcited. My body's totally flat now. I cannot move anymore. I'm totally exhausted, just because of the tension out there.

  Roger Federer

  Sports, Strong, Moving

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• No single tradition monopolizes the truth. We must glean the best values of all traditions and work together to remove the tensions between traditions in order to give peace a chance.

  Nhat Hanh

  Order, Giving, Diversity

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• You empty yourself and wait, listening. After a time you hear it: There is nothing there...You feel the world's word as a tension, a hum, a single chorused note everywhere the same. This is it: This hum is the silence.

  Annie Dillard

  Silence, Waiting, Listening

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• In positive terms, we can state that psychological maturity entails finding greater satisfaction in giving than in receiving; having a capacity to form satisfying and permanent loyalties; being primarily a creative, contributing person; having learned to profit from experience; having a freedom from fear (anxiety) with a resulting true serenity and not a pseudo absence of tension; and accepting and making the most of unchangeable reality when it confronts one.

  William C. Menninger

  Loyalty, Fear, Reality

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• Many problems that challenge us today can be traced back to a profound tension between what is good and desirable for society as a whole and what is good and desirable for an individual. That conflict can be found in global problems such as climate change, pollution, resource depletion, poverty, hunger, and overpopulation.

  Martin Nowak

  Profound, Challenges, Humanity

  Martin Nowak, Roger Highfield (2012). “SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

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• We need more than individual value systems; we need a shared vision. A nation is held together by shared values, shared beliefs, shared attitudes. That is what enables a people to maintain a cohesive society despite the tensions of daily life. That is what enables them to rise above the conflicts that plague any society.

  John W. Gardner

  Attitude, Integrity, People

  "The Recovery of Confidence".

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• The really happy man never laughs - seldom - though he may smile. He does not need to laugh, for laughter, like weeping is a relief of mental tension - and the happy are not over strung.

  Francis Aveling

  Happiness, Laughter, Men

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• Between religion's this is and poetry's but suppose this is, there must always be some kind of tension, until the possible and the actual meet at infinity.

  Northrop Frye

  Religion, Atheism, Infinity

  Northrop Frye (2014). “The Northrop Frye Quote Book”, p.277, Dundurn

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• Any expectation, even the expectation of peace, brings restlessness. The tension has to go. As soon as this happens a divine peace sets in.

  Rajneesh

  Expectations, Divine, Happens

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• It is the difference between men and women, not the sameness, that creates the tension and the delight.

  Edward Abbey

  Men, Differences, Delight

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.44, RosettaBooks

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• Lust was a positive high-tension cable, plugged into my core, activating a near-epileptic seizure of conviction that this was the one thing I had to do in life.

  Will Self

  Lust, Conviction, Epileptics

  Will Self (2013). “How the Dead Live”, p.67, A&C Black

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• Narrative tension is primarily about withholding information.

  Ian Mcewan

  Narrative, Information, Withholding

  "The Background Hum" by Daniel Zalewski, www.newyorker.com. February 23,2009.

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• The photographer hopes, in brief, to discover a tension so exact that it is peace.

  Robert Adams

  Photographer

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• That is what deconstruction is made of: not the mixture but the tension between memory, fidelity, the preservation of something that has been given to us, and, at the same time, heterogeneity, something absolutely new, and a break.

  Jacques Derrida

  Memories, Mixtures, Break

  Jacques Derrida, John D. Caputo (1997). “Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida”, p.6, Fordham Univ Press

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• The current political tension is very serious. We have not yet ruled out a boycott of the election.

  Abhisit Vejjajiva

  Political, Serious, Election

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• I used to build up to sensation, accumulating tension until it released a perceptual experience

  Bridget Riley

  Used, Sensations

  Bridget Riley (2009). “The Eye's Mind: Collected Writings 1965-2009”

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• The reaction against your own thought in itself lends life to thought. How this reaction is born is hard to describe, because it identifies with the very rare intellectual tragedies. The tension, the degree and level of intensity of a thought proceeds from its internal antinomies, which in turn are derived from the unsolvable contradictions of a soul. Thought cannot solve the contradictions of the soul. As far as linear thinking is concerned, thoughts mirror themselves in other thoughts, instead of mirroring a destiny.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Thinking, Destiny, Mirrors

  "The Book of Delusions". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1936.

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• My poems, I think, exist in a state of tension between the love of natural beauty and the fear of natural meaninglessness or absurdity.

  Hayden Carruth

  Thinking, Natural, States

  "Hayden Carruth, Poet and Critic, Dies at 87" by William Grimes, www.nytimes.com. September 30, 2008.

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• All things are in flux; the flux is subject to a unifying measure or rational principle. This principle (logos, the hidden harmony behind all change) bound opposites together in a unified tension, which is like that of a lyre, where a stable harmonious sound emerges from the tension of the opposing forces that arise from the bow bound together by the string.

  Heraclitus

  Opposites, Together, Sound

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