Stiffness Quotes

• Whenever we find stiffness in the body, our mind should be especially supple. It is never the stiffness in our bodies that limits our practice, it is always the stiffness of our mind.

  Geeta Iyengar

  Yoga, Practice, Mind

  59 Copy quote

• Eutrapelia . "A happy and gracious flexibility," Pericles calls this quality of the Athenians...lucidity of thought, clearness and propriety of language, freedom from prejudice and freedom from stiffness, openness of mind, amiability of manners.

  Matthew Arnold

  Mind, Quality, Prejudice

  "Irish Essays. A Speech at Eton" by Matthew Arnold, 1882.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else.

  Henry Adams

  Strong, Reality, Men

  Henry Adams (2015). “The Education of Henry Adams”, p.101, Booklassic

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• No man, however strong, can serve ten years as schoolmaster, priest, or Senator, and remain fit for anything else. All the dogmatic stations in life have the effect of fixing a certain stiffness of attitude forever, as though they mesmerised the subject.

  Henry Adams

  Strong, Attitude, Men

  Henry Adams (2015). “The Education of Henry Adams”, p.101, Booklassic

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The public must suffer untold pangs from the stiffness, the deliberate stifling of emotion, on the part of many British actors.

  Ivor Novello

  Suffering, Actors, Emotion

  17 Copy quote

• People that keep stiff upper lips find that it's hard to smile.

  Judith Guest

  Life, Depression, People

  21 Copy quote

• I'm a working stiff, baby, just like everybody else.

  Peter O'Toole

  Baby

  7 Copy quote

• Everybody's for democracy in principle. It's only in practice that the thing gives rise to stiff objections.

  Meg Greenfield

  Freedom, Democracies Have, Practice

  12 Copy quote

• A stiff apology is a second insult... The injured party does not want to be compensated because he has been wronged; he wants to be healed because he has been hurt.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Forgiveness, Im Sorry, Hurt

  34 Copy quote

• Trouble has no necessary connection with discouragement. Discouragement has a germ of its own, as different from trouble as arthritis is different from a stiff joint.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Connections, Different, Literature

  F. Scott Fitzgerald, James L. W. West (2005). “Fitzgerald: My Lost City: Personal Essays, 1920-1940”, p.147, Cambridge University Press

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• Even when I have to write a simple letter I'm scared stiff as if faced with looming seasickness.

  Gustav Klimt

  Fear, Writing, Simple

  24 Copy quote

• Misfortune had made Lily supple instead of hardening her, and a pliable substance is less easy to break than a stiff one.

  Edith Wharton

  Substance, Literature, Lilies

  Edith Wharton (2016). “The House of Mirth: Edith Wharton”, p.33, VM eBooks

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Firmness or stiffness of the mind is not from adherence to truth, but submission to prejudice.

  John Locke

  Mind, Adherence, Prejudice

  John Locke (1828). “An essay concerning human understanding ... The twentieth edition, etc”, p.560

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness; benevolence indulged beyond measure sinks into weakness.

  Date Masamune

  Weakness, Excess, Rectitude

  37 Copy quote

• No, women like you don't write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness, the rebelliousness.

  Edwidge Danticat

  Writing, Dark, Hair

  4 Copy quote

• Your body's ability to function as a clean and efficient channel is limited by stiffness, lack of strength, and lack of endurance. Your mind's ability is limited by the way it thinks about itself, by the way you think about you. The process of yoga is one of undoing the obstructions and limitations in your body and mind that inhibit the free flow of creative life force.

  Erich Schiffmann

  Yoga, Thinking, Creative

  Erich Schiffmann (2013). “Yoga The Spirit And Practice Of Moving Into Stilln”, p.65, Simon and Schuster

  45 Copy quote

  Show source

• The weed crushed and pressed by the heavy rock may slowly and gently grow up anew helped by the fresh air, sunshine, and sympathetic rain. On the other hand, the rock is often broken through exposure to nature and weathering. Life is a strong power to grow in tenderness; this fact may be considered as having a close relation with human life. At the same time tenderness has sometimes stronger power against stiffness or hardening due to extreme strain.

  Kyuzo Mifune

  Weed, Strong, Growing Up

  "The Canon of Judo". Book by Kyuzo Mifune, 1956.

  25 Copy quote

  Show source

• The winter oak... is very useful in buildings but when in a moist place it takes in water to its centre... and so it rots. The Turkey oak and the beech both... take in moisture to their centre and soon decay. White and black poplar, as well as willow, linden, and the agnus castus... are of great service from their stiffness... they are a convenient material to use in carving.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Winter, Turkeys, White

  "De architectura (Ten Books on Architecture)". Book by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (Book II, Chapter IX, Section 9), circa 15 BC.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pedantry, in the common acceptation of the word, means an absurd ostentation of learning, and stiffness of phraseology, proceeding from a misguided knowledge of books and a total ignorance of men.

  Henry Mackenzie

  Book, Ignorance, Mean

  13 Copy quote

• Mostly getting old is boring. I hate the stiffness in the bones. I was physically arrogant for years. I don't like it now that I have difficulty getting around. But a certain equanimity sets in, a certain detachment. Things seem less desperately important than they once did, and that's a pleasure.

  Doris Lessing

  Hate, Years, Important

  Interview with Jonah Raskin, progressive.org. November 19, 2013.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Very often, I confess, the teller of dreams bores me. His dream could perhaps interest me if it were frankly worked on. But to hear a glorious tale of his insanity! I have not yet clarified, psychoanalytically, this boredom during the recital of other people's dreams. Perhaps I have retained the stiffness of a rationalist. I do not follow the tale of justified incoherence docilely. I always suspect that part of the stupidities being recounted are invented.

  Gaston Bachelard

  Dream, Boredom, People

  6 Copy quote

• Bread may not always nourish us; but it always does us good, it even takes stiffness out of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew not what ailed us, to recognize any generosity in man or Nature, to share any unmixed and heroic joy.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Men, Generosity, Joy

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.243, Penguin

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Vipassana arises as you pay awareness to the inner and outer experience unfolding at the present moment. Vipassana is not associated with any rigid formula or methods. Whenever you are aware of your mental or physical feelings like tension in the muscles, movement of limbs, stiffness, heat or cold, you have begun to develop special understanding of realities.

  Amit Ray

  Reality, Understanding, Feelings

  10 Copy quote