Pressure Quotes - Page 18

• Around 1998, I went through lots of pressures and struggles. My children got married within eight months of each other, my son was diagnosed with cancer and went through major surgery and radiation, my mother had five life-threatening hospitalizations where I stayed with her, my husband's dental office burned to the ground.

  Anne Graham Lotz

  Mother, Husband, Children

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• Contrary to the utopian rhetoric of social media enthusiasts, the Internet often makes the jump from deliberation to participation even more difficult, thwarting collective action under the heavy pressure of never-ending internal debate.

  Evgeny Morozov

  Media, Action, Internet

  "The Digital Dictatorship". www.wsj.com. February 20, 2010.

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• I feel more at home knowing I'm not really at home. It takes all the pressure off you trying to fit in!

  John Oliver

  Home, Knowing, Trying

  "A very funny Englishman in New York" by Hermione Hoby, www.theguardian.com. July 23, 2011.

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• we left about midnight and walked down the hill in silence. the night was muggy, and all around me i felt the same pressure, a sense of time rushing by while it seemed to be standing still. whenever i thought of time in puerto rico, i was reminded of those old magnetic clocks that hung on the walls of my classrooms in high school. every now and then a hand would not move for several minutes -- and if i watched it long enough, wondering if it had finally broken down, the sudden click of the hand jumping three for four notches would startle me when it came.

  Hunter S. Thompson

  Wall, Moving, School

  Hunter S. Thompson (2011). “The Rum Diary: A Novel”, p.101, Simon and Schuster

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• I like that: a little pressure on the understood boundaries of yourself. Sounded like something out of a self-awareness class, probably with yoga. See what kind of a pretzel you can tie yourself into and press on the understood... I was raving, if only to myself.

  Robin McKinley

  Yoga, Self, Class

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• Theirs is the mystery of continuous creation and all that providence implies: the uncertainty of vision, the horror of the fixed, the dissolution of the present, the intricacy of beauty, the pressure of fecundity, the elusiveness of the free, and the flawed nature of perfection.

  Annie Dillard

  Perfection, Vision, Elusiveness

  Annie Dillard (2016). “The Abundance”, p.100, Canongate Books

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• And yet, just as our body would burst asunder if the pressure of the atmosphere were removed from it, so would the arrogance of men expand, if not to the point of bursting then to that of the most unbridled folly, indeed madness, if the pressure of want, toil, calamity and frustration were removed from their life. One can even say that we require at all times a certain quantity of care or sorrow or want, as a ship requires ballast, in order to keep on a straight course.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Frustration, Men, Order

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• Pressure makes diamonds

  George S. Patton

  Clever, Military, Diamond

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• There are a dozen different ways of delivering destruction in impersonal wholesale, via ships or missiles of one sort or another, catastrophes so widespread, so unselective that the war is over because that nation or planet has ceased to exist. What we do is entirely different. We make war as personal as a punch in the nose. We can be selective, applying precisely the required amount of pressure at the specified point at a designated time. We've never been told to go down and kill or capture all left-handed redheads in a particular area, but if they tell us to, we can. We will.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  War, Down And, Way

  "Starship Troopers". Book by Robert A. Heinlein, 1959.

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• The mad sometimes drilled holes in their own heads to let the demons out. To relieve the pressure of thoughts they could no longer bear. Jude understood the impulse. Each beat of his heart was a fresh and staggering blow felt in the nerves behind his eyes and in his temples. Punishing evidence of life.

  Joe Hill

  Eye, Heart, Blow

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• The shape of my life is, of course, determined by many things; my background and childhood, my mind and its education, my conscience and its pressures, my heart and its desires.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Heart, Childhood, Mind

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1975). “GIFT FROM THE SEA”

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• Lady Glossip: Mr. Wooster, how would you support a wife? Bertie Wooster: Well, I suppose it depends on who's wife it was, a little gentle pressure beneath the elbow while crossing a busy street usually fits the bill.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Wife, Support, Elbows

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• ...Goldfinger could not have known that high tension was Bond's natural way of life and that pressure and danger relaxed him.

  Ian Fleming

  Relaxation, Way, Natural

  Ian Fleming (1992). “Goldfinger”, Chivers North Amer

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• Sometimes, though, I feel that pushing books is a whole lot like pushing medicine. Think of books as pills. I have pills that cure ignorance and pills that cure boredom. I have pills to elevate moods and pills to open people's eyes to the awful truth: uppers and downers as they were. I sell pills to help people find themselves and pills to help them lose themselves when they require escape from the pressures and anxieties of life in a complex society.

  Tom Robbins

  Book, Ignorance, Eye

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.86, Bantam

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• Increasing pressure on students to subject themselves to ever more tests, whittling themselves down to rows and rows of tight black integers upon a transcript, all ready to goose-step straight into a computer.

  Leah Hager Cohen

  Black, Tests, Steps

  Leah Hager Cohen (2003). “Heart, You Bully, You Punk”, Viking Press

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• I cannot think of a better way to spread the faith. No thundering from a pulpit, no condemnation from bad churches, no peer pressure, just a book of scripture quietly waiting to say hello, as gentle and powerful as a little girl's kiss on your cheek.

  Yann Martel

  Girl, Powerful, Book

  Yann Martel, Canongate Books (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.217, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Pain! Deep, tearing, throbbing, needle-sharp, hammer-blunt pain – ripping through his body and through his mind, twisting deep in his guts and slicing at his skin with razors and broken glass. Oskan wanted to scream, but his vocal cords had burned away. He was desperate for water and he could hear it dripping all around him, but his charred tongue found nothing in his mouth but blisters and scorched flesh. For hours he lay on the ropes of the low bed, unable to move, the pressure of the hemp on his destroyed skin sending new agonies deep into his body.

  Stuart Hill

  Pain, Moving, Glasses

  Stuart Hill (2011). “The Icemark Chronicles #1: Cry of the Icemark”, p.352, Scholastic Inc.

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• Walking along past the store windows, into which she peers with her usual eagerness, her usual sense that maybe, today, she will discover behind them something that will truly be worth seeing, she feels as if her feet are not on cement at all but on ice. The blade of the skate floats, she knows, on a thin film of water, which it melts by pressure and which freezes behind it. This is the freedom of the present tense, this sliding edge.

  Margaret Atwood

  Past, Feet, Ice

  Margaret Atwood (2012). “Bluebeard's Egg”, p.257, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• In the immemorial style of young men under pressure, they decided to lie down for a while and waste time.

  Michael Chabon

  Lying, Men, Style

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• The following doodle: a girl with pigtails is bent under the weight of a gigantic boulder. Her cheeks puff out, and her rounded lips expel steam. One widening steam cloud contains the word Pressure, darkly retraced.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Girl, Clouds, Boulders

  Jeffrey Eugenides (1993). “The Virgin Suicides: A Novel”, p.137, Macmillan

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• Anxiety was not an emotion I could ever remember feeling when I went out in New York, and I wondered why tonight felt so different. Maybe it was because I no longer had a boyfriend or fiance. I suddenly recognized that there was safety in having someone, as well as a lack of pressure to shine. Ironically, this had cultivated a certain free-spiritedness that had, in turn, allowed me to be the life of the party and hoard the affection of additional men....But that had all changed. I didn't have a boyfriend, a perfect figure, or alcohol-induced outrageousness to fall back on.

  Emily Giffin

  New York, Fall, Party

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• As we passed over the dark bridge her wan face fell lazily against my coat's shoulder and the formidable stroke of thirty died away with the reassuring pressure of her hand.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Dark, Hands, Bridges

  F. Scott Fitzgerald (2016). “(The Great Gatsby)”, p.80, F. Scott Fitzgerald

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• Man cannot become attached to higher aims and submit to a rule if he sees nothing above him to which he belongs. To free him from all social pressure is to abandon him to himself and demoralize him.

  Emile Durkheim

  Men, Social Pressure, Aim

  Emile Durkheim (2005). “Suicide: A Study in Sociology”, p.357, Routledge

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• The cut in Nick's arm was starting to throb dully with the pressure he was putting on it. He kept looking at Alan. 'How many times have you lied to me?' he asked in a soft voice. Alan replied, equally softly, 'I've lost count.

  Sarah Rees Brennan

  Cutting, Voice, Arms

  Sarah Rees Brennan (2010). “The Demon's Lexicon”, p.247, Simon and Schuster

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• I am a child of Cosmopolitan culture, have been traumatized by supermodels and too many quizzes and know that neither my personality nor my body is up to it if left to its own devices. I can't take the pressure.

  Helen Fielding

  Children, Personality, Culture

  Helen Fielding (2013). “The Bridget Jones Omnibus: The Singleton Years: Bridget Jones's Diary & The Edge of Reason”, p.40, Pan Macmillan

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