Emotional Strain Quotes

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I read somewhere, one, that crying defies scientific explanation. Tears are only meant to lubricate the eyes. There is no real reason for tear glands to overproduce tears at the behest of emotion. I think we cry to release the animal parts of us without losing our humanity. Because inside of me is a beast that snarls, and growls, and strains toward freedom, toward Tobias, and, above all, towards life. And as hard as I try, I cannot kill it.
Veronica Roth (Insurgent (Divergent, #2))
Love is a feeling, a real, raw, and unscripted emotion so sensationally pure, unable to dull even under the strain of a world against it, strong enough to heal the broken and warm even the coldest of hearts. Innate. Unavoidable. Undeniable. And sometimes, love is unconventional and it breaks all the rules and blurs all the lines and basks in its glory, shining as bright as the sun, unapologetically glowing even under the narrowed stares of society and its screaming, self-righteous morals, berating and judging that which it doesn’t understand.
Madeline Sheehan (Unbeautifully (Undeniable, #2))
The caption reads, “Emperor Andon-Roon enjoys a surge in popularity after brokering a peace deal with Caderyn after twelve cycles of war.” For some reason this evokes strong emotions in her—deep sorrow, anger—and she stares at the screen transfixed, as if straining to find herself in the story.
Stephen Alder (Deehabta’s Song)
In the dull twilight of the winter afternoon she came to the end of a long road which had begun the night Atlanta fell. She had set her feet upon that road a spoiled, selfish and untried girl, full of youth, warm of emotion, easily bewildered by life. Now, at the end of the road, there was nothing left of that girl. Hunger and hard labor, fear and constant strain, the terrors of war and the terrors of Reconstruction had taken away all warmth and youth and softness. About the core of her being, a shell of hardness had formed and, little by little, layer by layer, the shell had thickened during the endless months.
Margaret Mitchell (Gone with the Wind)
You are the ghost king, a voice said. I am, Nico thought. This is where you belong. But then Nico raised his head. Looked at the other two passengers. Will, whose face was strained as he reached down with a shaking hand to grab at him. Nico took it, gripped his boyfriend’s hand tight, and thought, No. This is where I belong.
Rick Riordan (The Sun and the Star: A Nico di Angelo Adventure (Camp Half-Blood Chronicles, #17))
Love is a feeling, a real, raw, and unscripted emotion so sensationally pure, unable to dull even under the strain of a world against it, strong enough to heal the broken and warm even the coldest of hearts. Innate. Unavoidable. Undeniable.
Madeline Sheehan (Unbeautifully (Undeniable, #2))
My experience has been that there are times to teach and times not to teach. When relationships are strained and the air charged with emotion, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection.
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
There is something sustaining in the very agitation that accompanies the first shocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an excitement which is transient strength. It is in the slow, changed life that follows--in the time when sorrow has become stale, and has no longer an emotive intensity that counteracts its pain--in the time when day follows day in dull unexpectant sameness, and trial is a dreary routine--it is then that despair threatens; it is then that the peremptory hunger of the soul is felt, and eye and ear are strained after some unlearned secret of our existence, which shall give to endurance the nature of satisfaction.
George Eliot (The Mill on the Floss)
Our leaders strain every nerve and with success, to get the next war going, while the rest of us, meanwhile, dance the fox trot, earn money and eat chocolates...And perhaps...it has always been the same and always will be, and what is called history at school, and all we learn by heart there about heroes and geniuses and great deeds and fine emotions, is all nothing but a swindle invented by the schoolmasters for educational reasons to keep children occupied for a given number of years. It has always been so and always will be. Time and the world, money and power belong to the small people and shallow people. To the rest, to the real men belongs nothing...eternity...it isn't fame. Fame exists in that sense only for the schoolmasters. No, it isn't fame. It is what I call eternity...The music of Mozart belongs there and the poetry of your great poets. The saints, too, belong there, who have worked wonders and suffered martyrdom and given a great example to men. But the image of every true act, the strength of every true feeling, belongs to eternity just as much, even though no one knows of it or sees it or records it or hands it down to posterity. In eternity there is no posterity...It is the kingdom on the other side of time and appearances. It is there we belong. There is our home. It is that which our heart strives for...And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness.
Hermann Hesse (Steppenwolf)
Love is a feeling, a real, raw and unscripted emotion so sensationally pure, unable to dull even under the strain of a world against it, strong enough to heal the broken and warm even the coldest of hearts. Innate. Unavoidable. Undeniable
Madeline Sheehan (Unbeautifully (Undeniable, #2))
How could one express in words these emotions of the body? Express that emptiness there? It was one's body feeling, not one's mind. To want and not to have sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have - to want and want - how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again.
Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)
It’s strange how what drives us may abandon us midstream, how what tickles our ears with lies one moment may tell us truths that knock us on our emotional ass the next. After all, it is an unbelievably real world, with Darwin scribbling his thoughts into books and telling us what monkeys we are. Each of us explores possibility, hungry for sustaining adoration, yet we know enough to render ourselves helpless. We strive and strain, bellow and believe, we learn, and everything we learn tells us the same thing: life is one great meaningful experience in a meaningless world. Brilliance has many parts, yet each part is incomplete. We live, heal and attempt to piece together a picture worth the price of our very lives. The picture I saw presented demonic executioners, who crippled those daring to look and consumed souls without defense. They’re everywhere. Some are people we know. Others are the great fears and addictions of our lives.
Christopher Hawke
Love is a feeling, a real, raw, and unscripted emotion so sensationally pure, unable to dull even under the strain of a world against it, strong enough to heal the broken and warm even the coldest of hearts.
Madeline Sheehan
... He didn't know how to say good-bye. His throat ached from the strain of holding back his emotions. “I don't want to leave you,” he said humbly, reaching for her cold, stiff hands. Emma lowered her head, her tears falling freely. “I'll never see you again, will I?” He shook his head. “Not in this lifetime,” he said hoarsely. She pulled her hands away and wrapped her arms around his neck. He felt her wet lashes brush his cheek. “Then I'll wait a hundred years,” she whispered. “Or a thousand, if I must. Remember that, Nikki. I'll be waiting for you to come to me.
Lisa Kleypas (Prince of Dreams (Stokehurst, #2))
This talk of love means very little. Love is not a feeling. It can be tested. Love is action, it is silence. It's not the emotional straining and scheming for possession that you used to think it was.
Iris Murdoch (Under the Net)
And she wanted to say not one thing, but everything. Little words that broke up the thought and dismembered it said nothing. “About life, about death; about Mrs. Ramsay”—no, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. Then one gave it up; then the idea sunk back again; then one became like most middle-aged people, cautious, furtive, with wrinkles between the eyes and a look of perpetual apprehension. For how could one express in words these emotions of the body? express that emptiness there? (She was looking at the drawing-room steps; they looked extraordinarily empty.) It was one’s body feeling, not one’s mind. The physical sensations that went with the bare look of the steps had become suddenly extremely unpleasant. TO want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have—to want and want—how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again! Oh, Mrs. Ramsay! She called out silently, to that essence which sat by the boat, that abstract one made of her, that woman in grey, as if to abuse her for having gone, and then having gone, come back again. It seemed so safe, thinking of her. Ghost, air, nothingness, a thing you could play with easily and safely at any time of day or night, she had been that, and then suddenly she put her hand out and wrung the heart thus. Suddenly, the empty drawing-room steps, the frill of the chair inside, the puppy tumbling on the terrace, the whole wave and whisper of the garden became like curves and arabesques flourishing around a centre of complete emptiness.
Virginia Woolf (To the Lighthouse)
Family dysfunction is progressive. It never stays the same. As it progresses, appropriate boundaries between parent and child may become nonexistent and communication becomes increasingly strained.
Kenneth Adams (Silently Seduced, Revised & Updated)
Instead I just stand there, tears running down my cheeks in nameless emotion that tastes of joy and of grief. Joy for the being of the shimmering world and grief for what we have lost. The grasses remember the nights they were consumed by fire, lighting the way back with a conflagration of love between species. Who today even knows what that means? I drop to my knees in the grass and I can hear the sadness, as if the land itself was crying for its people: Come home. Come home. There are often other walkers here. I suppose that’s what it means when they put down the camera and stand on the headland, straining to hear above the wind with that wistful look, the gaze out to sea. They look like they’re trying to remember what it would be like to love the world.
Robin Wall Kimmerer (Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants)
The moment I formulated this thought, everything aroud me seemed to droop heavily toward the earth. Outside in the garden, the eaves of the roof dripped rain like beads of weighted glass. Even the mats themselves seemed to press down upon the floor. I remember thinking that I was dacing to express not the pain of a young woman who has lost her supernatural lover, but the pain I myself would feel when my life was finally robbed of the one thing I cared most deeply about. I found myself thinking,too,of satsu; I danced the bitterness of our eternal separation.By the end I felt almost overcome with grief; but I certainly wasn't prepared for what I saw when I turned to look at the Chairman.He was sitting at the near corner of the table so that, as it happened, no one but me could see him. I thought he wore an expression of astonishment at first, because his eyes were so wide. But just as his mouth sometimes twitched when he tried not to smile, now I could see it twitching under the strain of a different emotion. I couldn't be sure, but I had to impression his eyes were heavy with tears. He looked toward the door, pretending to scratch the side of his nose so he cold wipe a finger in the corner of his eye; and he smoothed his eyebrows as if the were the source of his trouble. I was so shocked to see the Chairman in pain I felt almost disoriented for a moment.
Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha)
The most spiritually credible people I know are humble and soft-spoken. They don’t strut around like peacocks, enchanted by how wonderful they are. My heroes are the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela, and Rosa Parks—gentle persuaders to a more noble path, not power-hungry egomaniacs. Don’t get me wrong. I advocate a healthy ego. It’s our conscious sense of self, the “I” of the human equation. However, egotism is having an inflated identity, a strain of negativity that infects spirituality and the liberation it brings.
Judith Orloff (Emotional Freedom: Liberate Yourself from Negative Emotions and Transform Your Life)
Someone on my other side nudged my shoulder, and I shifted closer to Jenna to make room. And then a hand closed over mine. Before I even turned my head, I knew. “Mercer.” Archer smiled down at me. “Fancy meeting you here.” As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t just throw my arms around his neck and kiss the heck out of him. And I really wanted to. So I settled for lacing my fingers with his and pulling him slightly closer. Archer here, safe, his hand in mine. And Jenna, pressed tight to my other side. My heart was so full, I could hardly breathe, and even though I tried to keep it light, my voice was strained when I said, “Of course. Everything going to hell, and you turn up. I should’ve know.” He shrugged, even though his eyes were burning with the same emotion currently racing through my veins. “Eh, Italy was getting boring. Figured I might as well see what you ladies were up to.
Rachel Hawkins (Spell Bound (Hex Hall, #3))
You tug and strain like a young horse when it's first tied up at the stake, whenever you are tied by your heartstrings.
Sigrid Undset (The Wife (Kristin Lavransdatter, #2))
Coddly slammed a fist on the table. “No one will take you seriously if you do not act decisively.” There was a beat of silence after his voice stopped echoing around the room, and the entire table sat motionless. “Fine,” I responded calmly. “You’re fired.” Coddly laughed, looking at the other gentlemen at the table. “You can’t fire me, Your Highness.” I tilted my head, staring at him. “I assure you, I can. There’s no one here who outranks me at the moment, and you are easily replaceable.” Though she tried to be discreet, I saw Lady Brice purse her lips together, clearly determined not to laugh. Yes, I definitely had an ally in her. “You need to fight!” he insisted. “No,” I answered firmly. “A war would add unnecessary strain to an already stressful moment and would cause an upheaval between us and the country we are now bound to by marriage. We will not fight.” Coddly lowered his chin and squinted. “Don’t you think you’re being too emotional about this?” I stood, my chair screeching behind me as I moved. “I’m going to assume that you aren’t implying by that statement that I’m actually being too female about this. Because, yes, I am emotional.” I strode around the opposite side of the table, my eyes trained on Coddly. “My mother is in a bed with tubes down her throat, my twin is now on a different continent, and my father is holding himself together by a thread.” Stopping across from him, I continued. “I have two younger brothers to keep calm in the wake of all this, a country to run, and six boys downstairs waiting for me to offer one of them my hand.” Coddly swallowed, and I felt only the tiniest bit of guilt for the satisfaction it brought me. “So, yes, I am emotional right now. Anyone in my position with a soul would be. And you, sir, are an idiot. How dare you try to force my hand on something so monumental on the grounds of something so small? For all intents and purposes, I am queen, and you will not coerce me into anything.” I walked back to the head of the table. “Officer Leger?” “Yes, Your Highness?” “Is there anything on this agenda that can’t wait until tomorrow?” “No, Your Highness.” “Good. You’re all dismissed. And I suggest you all remember who’s in charge here before we meet again.
Kiera Cass (The Crown (The Selection, #5))
My theory was that readers just thought they cared nothing but the action; that really, although they didn't know it, they cared very little about the action. The things they really cared about, and that I cared about, were the creation of emotion through dialog and description. The things they remembered, that haunted them, were not for example that a man got killed, but that in the moment of his death he was trying to pick a paper clip off the polished surface of a desk, and it kept slipping away from him, so that there was a look of strain on his face and his mouth was half open in a kind of tormented grin, and the last thing in the world he thought about was death. He didn't even hear death knock on the door. That damn little paper clip kept slipping away from his fingers.
Raymond Chandler
I realized clearly, perhaps for the first time, what strained and anxious lives dogs must lead, so emotionally involved in the world of men, whose affections they strive endlessly to secure, whose authority they are expected unquestioningly to obey, and whose mind they never can do more than imperfectly reach and comprehend.
J.R. Ackerley (My Dog Tulip)
She pushed and elbowed and knocked and strained to catch him, and finally, she did, reaching out for his hand--adoring the fact that neither of them wore gloves, loving the way their skin came together, the way his brought wonderful heat in a lush, irresistible current. He felt it too. She knew it because he stopped the instant they touched, turning to face her, grey eyes wild as Devonshire rain. She knew it because he whispered her name, aching and beautiful and soft enough for only her to hear. And she it because his free hand rose, captured her jaw and titled her face up to him even as he leaned down and stole her lips and breath and thought in a kiss that she would never in her lifetime forget. The was like food and drink, like sleep, like breath. She needed it with the same elemental desire and she cared not a bit that all of London was watching. Yes, she was masked, but it did not matter. She would have stripped to her chemise for this kiss. To her skin. Their fingers still intertwined, he wrapped their arms behind her back and pulled her to him, claiming her mouth with lips and tongue and teeth, marking her with one long luscious kiss that went on and on until she thought she might die from the pleasure of it. Her free hand was in his hair then, tangling in the soft locks, loving their silky promise. She was lost, claimed and fairly consumed by the intensity of the kiss, and for the first time in her life, Pippa gave herself up to emotion, pouring every bit of her desire and her passion and her fear and her need into this moment This caress. This man. This man, who was everything she had never allowed herself to dream she would find. This man, who made her believe in friendship. In partnership.. In love
Sarah MacLean (One Good Earl Deserves a Lover (The Rules of Scoundrels, #2))
Impatiently I waited for evening, when I might summon you to my presence. An unusual– to me– a perfectly new character, I suspected was yours; I desired to search it deeper, and know it better. You entered the room with a look and air at once shy and independent; you were quaintly dress– much as you are now. I made you talk; ere long I found you full of strange contrasts. Your garb and manner were restricted by rule; your air was often diffident, and altogether that of one refined by nature, but absolutely unused to society, and a good deal afraid of making herself disadvantageously conspicuous by some solecism or blunder; yet, when addressed, you lifted a keen, a daring, and a glowing eye to your interlocutor’s face; there was penetration and power in each glance you gave; when plied by close questions, you found ready and round answers. Very soon you seemed to get used to me – I believe you felt the existence of sympathy between you and your grim and cross master, Jane; for it was astonishing to see how quickly a certain pleasant ease tranquilized your manner; snarl as I would, you showed no surprise, fear, annoyance, or displeasure, at my moroseness; you watched me, and now and then smiled at me with a simple yet sagacious grace I cannot describe. I was at once content and stimulated with what I saw; I liked what I had seen, and wished to see more. Yet, for a long time, I treated you distantly, and sought your company rarely, I was an intellectual epicure, and wished to prolong the gratification of making this novel and piquant acquaintance; besides, I was for a while troubled with a haunting fear that if I handled the flower freely its bloom would fade – the sweet charm of freshness would leave it. I did not then know that it was no transitory blossom, but rather the radiant resemblance of one, cut in an indestructible gem. Moreover, I wished to see whether you would seek me if I shunned you – but you did not; you kept in the school-room as still as your own desk and easel; if by chance I met you, you passed me as soon, and with as little token of recognition, as was consistent with respect. Your habitual expression in those days, Jane, was a thoughtful look; not despondent, fro you were not sickly; but not buoyant, for you had little hope, and no actual pleasure. I wondered what you thought of me– or if you ever thought of me; to find this out, I resumed my notice of you. There was something glad in your glance, and genial in your manner, when you conversed; I saw you had a social heart; it was the silent school-room– it was the tedium of your life that made you mournful. I permitted myself the delight of being kind to you; kindness stirred emotion soon; your face became soft in expression, your tones gentle; I liked my name pronounced by your lips in a grateful, happy accent. I used to enjoy a chance meeting with you, Jane, at this time; there was a curious hesitation in your manner; you glanced at me with a slight trouble– a hovering doubt; you did not know what my caprice might be– whether I was going to play the master, and be stern– or the friend, and be benignant. I was now too fond of you often to stimulate the first whim; and, when I stretched my hand out cordially, such bloom, and light, and bliss, rose to your young, wistful features, I had much ado often to avoid straining you then and there to my heart.
Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre)
She looked now at the drawing-room step. She saw, through William’s eyes, the shape of a woman, peaceful and silent, with downcast eyes. She sat musing, pondering (she was in grey that day, Lily thought). Her eyes were bent. She would never lift them. . . . [N]o, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. Then one gave it up; then the idea sunk back again; then one became like most middle-aged people, cautious, furtive, with wrinkles between the eyes and a look of perpetual apprehension. For how could one express in words these emotions of the body? Express that emptiness there? (She was looking at the drawing-room steps; they looked extraordinarily empty.) It was one’s body feeling, not one’s mind. The physical sensations that went with the bare look of the steps had become suddenly extremely unpleasant. To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have – to want and want – how that wrung the heart, and wrung again and again! Oh, Mrs. Ramsay! she called out silently, to that essence which sat by the boat, that abstract one made of her, that woman in grey, as if to abuse her for having gone, and then having gone, come back again. It had seemed so safe, thinking of her. Ghost, air, nothingness, a thing you could play with easily and safely at any time of day or night, she had been that, and then suddenly she put her hand out and wrung the heart thus. Suddenly, the empty drawing-room steps, the frill of the chair inside, the puppy tumbling on the terrace, the whole wave and whisper of the garden became like curves and arabesques flourishing round a centre of complete emptiness. . . . A curious notion came to her that he did after all hear the things she could not say. . . . She looked at her picture. That would have been his answer, presumably – how “you” and “I” and “she” pass and vanish; nothing stays; all changes; but not words, not paint. Yet it would be hung in the attics, she thought; it would be rolled up and flung under a sofa; yet even so, even of a picture like that, it was true. One might say, even of this scrawl, not of that actual picture, perhaps, but of what it attempted, that it “remained for ever,” she was going to say, or, for the words spoken sounded even to herself, too boastful, to hint, wordlessly; when, looking at the picture, she was surprised to find that she could not see it. Her eyes were full of a hot liquid (she did not think of tears at first) which, without disturbing the firmness of her lips, made the air thick, rolled down her cheeks. She had perfect control of herself – Oh, yes! – in every other way. Was she crying then for Mrs. Ramsay, without being aware of any unhappiness? She addressed old Mr. Carmichael again. What was it then? What did it mean? Could things thrust their hands up and grip one; could the blade cut; the fist grasp? Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world? No guide, no shelter, but all was miracle, and leaping from the pinnacle of a tower into the air? Could it be, even for elderly people, that this was life? – startling, unexpected, unknown? For one moment she felt that if they both got up, here, now on the lawn, and demanded an explanation, why was it so short, why was it so inexplicable, said it with violence, as two fully equipped human beings from whom nothing should be hid might speak, then, beauty would roll itself up; the space would fill; those empty flourishes would form into shape; if they shouted loud enough Mrs. Ramsay would return. “Mrs. Ramsay!” she said aloud, “Mrs. Ramsay!” The tears ran down her face.
Virginia Woolf
Your past experiences are past indeed; those strains and emotions of sensuous life are gone and what has remained is the temple of your own building, that edifice not built by hands. The reality of you is in the invisible, the intangible. In retrospect your spiritual milestones stand stronger to you in their fixed position than any outward experience. Having arrived at this understanding try now, quietly, gently, without too much effort of self-discipline, to keep to the invisible, train yourself to keep immaterial. Watching and praying are essential. When hard pressed by old habits and you are under the heavy blanketings of times and events, you, as it were, disappear. This is the moment to step back into the invisible, for then the invisible will enfold you and give you great power in the visible world.
Mary Strong (Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood)
It is natural to speak of hymns as "poems," indiscriminately, for they have the same structure. But a hymn is not necessarily a poem, while a poem that can be sung as a hymn is something more than a poem. Imagination makes poems; devotion makes hymns. There can be poetry without emotion, but a hymn never. A poem may argue; a hymn must not. In short to be a hymn, what is written must express spiritual feelings and desires. The music of faith, hope and charity will be somewhere in its strain.
Hezekiah Butterworth (The story of the hymns and tunes)
it was a traumatic time for him, but that’s as far as it goes. There is a blackout—emotional amnesia for any negative memory. It’s how he coped. The pain and the stress and the strain have been deleted. As if it didn’t occur. He remembers uncomplicated, joyful times; sunshine and white sand. The darkness of this memory is mine alone.
Ariel Leve (An Abbreviated Life: A Memoir)
By and by your attention becomes so intensely focused that you no longer notice the raw knuckles, the cramping thighs, the strain of maintaining nonstop concentration. A trancelike state settles over your efforts; the climb becomes a clear-eyed dream. Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-today existence—the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes—all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand. At such moments something resembling happiness actually stirs in your chest, but it isn’t the sort of emotion you want to lean on very hard. In solo climbing the whole enterprise is held together with little more than chutzpah, not the most reliable adhesive.
Jon Krakauer (Into the Wild)
Blame is the lie by which we convince ourselves that we are victims. It is the lie that robs us of our serenity, our generosity, our confidence, an our delight in life . . . For it is the act of blaming that can't co-exist with self-responsibility -- or with freedom from inner agitation and strained relationships. Abandon the practice of blaming, and we see the fear melt away that we have associated with being honest about ourselves and taking the full measure of responsibility for our emotional and spiritual condition.
C. Terry Warner
I feel emotions well Inside my heart Pulsating in rhythm Straining for expression I reach for pen & paper And I am set free On a blank page
Collette O'Mahony (The Soul in Words: A collection of Poetry & Verse)
Negative emotions constantly strain your mental fortitude.
Santosh Kalwar (Nothing Shakes The Smiling Heart)
Can you hear it?” she whispers. I pause, ears straining, but all I hear are faint sounds from the city below and the constant draw of the waterfall at the base of the mountain. “Hear what?” And she smiles, through the tears dried on her cheeks, through the glassiness of her eyes. The sight is so damn beautiful that it’s hard to breathe. “The sun,” Auren answers quietly, tone filled with a tentative, innocent joy. One that you’re afraid of saying too loud in case it breaks. “She’s singing to me.” Emotion clogs in my throat as I watch her tip her head back again. Watch her eyes close. I draw a knuckle down her soft cheek. “And what does she sing, Goldfinch?” I murmur. Her smile breaks through like the sunlight above us. “The song of home,” she says. “The sun is singing the song of home.” My chest swells, and when she reaches a hand up and tugs at my arm, I lie back with her, situating until we’re arm to arm, leg to leg. “Listen,” she whispers. So I do. I thread my fingers through her own, and I listen. But my song of home doesn’t come from the sun. Mine comes from her.
Raven Kennedy (Glow (The Plated Prisoner, #4))
At least you kept your promise. You stayed alive long enough to stab me in the back." He laughs bitterly, remembering the attack after the first ball when I tended to his wound. "And now I promise to return the favor." His voice strains with emotion. "Run, Paedyn. Because when I catch you, I will not miss. I will not falter. I will not make the mistake of feeling for you.
Lauren Roberts, Powerless
If I was set an essay on Friday, I’d spend three hours on Saturday morning in the library. Was that normal? I didn’t know. What I did know was that I felt less prone to depression and more normal walking through Venice or staring out over the lake in Zurich. At home I wrestled continually with my moods. The black thing inside me gnawed like a rat at my self-esteem and self-confidence. I felt there was a happy person inside me too, who wanted to enjoy life, to be normal, but my feelings of self-loathing and the deep distrust I had towards my father wouldn’t allow that sunny person to come out. When the black thing had an iron grip on me, I couldn’t even look at my father: Did you do bad things to me when I was little? Like a line from a song stuck in your brain, the words ran through my head and never once came out of my mouth. Not that I needed to say what was in my mind. I was sure Father could read my thoughts in my moods, in the blank, dead stare of my eyes. It was hardly surprising that there was always an atmosphere of strain and awkwardness in the house, and the blame was always mine: Alice and her moods, Alice and her anorexia; Alice and her low self-esteem; Alice and her inescapable feelings of loss and emptiness.
Alice Jamieson (Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind)
Sara,” he said in a strained voice as he touched his forehead to mine. I sat very still, battling the onslaught of emotions that threatened to push my heart from my chest. “Yell at me. Tell me to go,” he whispered.
Karen Lynch (Refuge (Relentless, #2))
Why is it the most unoriginal thing we can say to one another is still the thing we long to hear? 'I love you' is always a quotation. You did not say it first and neither did I, yet when you say it and when I say we speak like savages who have found three words and worship them. It's the cliches that cause the trouble. A precise emotion seeks a precise expression. If what I feel is not precise then should I call it love? It is so terrifying, love, that all I can do is shove it under a dump bin of pink cuddly toys and send myself a greetings card saying 'Congratulations on your engagement.' But I am not engaged I am deeply distracted. I am desperately looking the other way so that love won't see me. I want the diluted version, the happy language, the insignificant gestures. The saggy armchair of cliches. It's all right, millions of bottoms have sat here before me. The springs are well worn, the fabric smelly and familiar. I don't have to be frightened, look, my grandma and grandad did it, he in a stiff collar and club tie, she in white muslin straining a little at the life underneath. They did it, my parents did it, now I will do it won't I, arms outstretched, not to hold you, just to keep my balance, sleepwalking to that armchair. How happy we will be. How happy everyone will be. And they all lived happily ever after.
Jeanette Winterson (Written on the Body)
God help me if I should ever lose my looks." "I wouldn't mind." He gave her a quizzical smile. "What?" "If..." Evie paused, suddenly embarrassed. "If anything happened to your looks... if you became... less handsome. Your appearance wouldn't matter to me.I would still..." She paused and finished hesitantly, "...want you as my husband." Sebastian's smile faded slowly. He gave her a long, intent stare, her wrist still clasped in his hand. Something strange crossed his expression... an undefinable emotion wrought of heat and vulnerability. When he answered, his voice was strained from the effort to sound cavalier. "Without a doubt, you're the first one who's ever said that to me.
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3))
He cannot do anything deliberate now. The strain of his whole weight on his outstretched arms hurts too much. The pain fills him up, displaces thought, as much for him as it has for everyone else who has ever been stuck to one of these horrible contrivances, or for anyone else who dies in pain from any of the world’s grim arsenal of possibilities. And yet he goes on taking in. It is not what he does, it is what he is. He is all open door: to sorrow, suffering, guilt, despair, horror, everything that cannot be escaped, and he does not even try to escape it, he turns to meet it, and claims it all as his own. This is mine now, he is saying; and he embraces it with all that is left in him, each dark act, each dripping memory, as if it were something precious, as if it were itself the loved child tottering homeward on the road. But there is so much of it. So many injured children; so many locked rooms; so much lonely anger; so many bombs in public places; so much vicious zeal; so many bored teenagers at roadblocks; so many drunk girls at parties someone thought they could have a little fun with; so many jokes that go too far; so much ruining greed; so much sick ingenuity; so much burned skin. The world he claims, claims him. It burns and stings, it splinters and gouges, it locks him round and drags him down… All day long, the next day, the city is quiet. The air above the city lacks the usual thousand little trails of smoke from cookfires. Hymns rise from the temple. Families are indoors. The soldiers are back in barracks. The Chief Priest grows hoarse with singing. The governor plays chess with his secretary and dictates letters. The free bread the temple distributed to the poor has gone stale by midday, but tastes all right dipped in water or broth. Death has interrupted life only as much as it ever does. We die one at a time and disappear, but the life of the living continues. The earth turns. The sun makes its way towards the western horizon no slower or faster than it usually does. Early Sunday morning, one of the friends comes back with rags and a jug of water and a box of the grave spices that are supposed to cut down on the smell. She’s braced for the task. But when she comes to the grave she finds that the linen’s been thrown into the corner and the body is gone. Evidently anonymous burial isn’t quite anonymous enough, after all. She sits outside in the sun. The insects have woken up, here at the edge of the desert, and a bee is nosing about in a lily like silk thinly tucked over itself, but much more perishable. It won’t last long. She takes no notice of the feet that appear at the edge of her vision. That’s enough now, she thinks. That’s more than enough. Don’t be afraid, says Yeshua. Far more can be mended than you know. She is weeping. The executee helps her to stand up.
Francis Spufford (Unapologetic: Why, Despite Everything, Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense)
I READ SOMEWHERE, once, that crying defies scientific explanation. Tears are only meant to lubricate the eyes. There is no real reason for tear glands to overproduce tears at the behest of emotion. I think we cry to release the animal parts of us without losing our humanity. Because inside me is a beast that snarls, and growls, and strains toward freedom, toward Tobias, and, above all, toward life. And as hard as I try, I cannot kill it. So I sob into my hands instead.
Veronica Roth (Insurgent (Divergent, #2))
Love is a feeling, a real, raw, and unscripted emotion so sensationally pure, unable to dull even under the strain of a world against it, strong enough to heal the broken and warm even the coldest of hearts. – Madeline Sheehan, UnBeautifully
Ashley Suzanne (Destined Series Box Set: Mirage, Inception, Awakening, Facade and Epiphany (Destined, #1-4))
It’s your fault that I’ve been reduced to such behavior,” he continued. “I assure you, I myself find it appalling that the only pleasure I obtain these days is chasing after you like an adolescent lordling with a housemaid.” “Did you chase after the housemaids when you were a boy?” “Good God, of course not. How could you ask such a thing?” Sebastian looked indignant. Just as she felt a twinge of guilt and began to apologize, he said smugly, “They chased after me.” Evie raised a cue stick as if to crown him with it. He caught her wrist easily in one hand and pried the stick from her fingers. “Easy, firebrand. You’ll knock out the few wits I have left—and then of what use would I be to you?” “You would be purely ornamental,” Evie replied, giggling. “Ah, well, I suppose there’s some value in that. God help me if I should ever lose my looks.” “I wouldn’t mind.” He gave her a quizzical smile. “What?” “If…” Evie paused, suddenly embarrassed. “If anything happened to your looks…if you became…less handsome. Your appearance wouldn’t matter to me. I would still…” She paused and finished hesitantly, “…want you as my husband.” Sebastian’s smile faded slowly. He gave her a long, intent stare, her wrist still clasped in his hand. Something strange crossed his expression…an undefinable emotion wrought of heat and vulnerability. When he answered, his voice was strained from the effort to sound cavalier. “Without a doubt, you’re the first one who’s ever said that to me. I hope you won’t be such a pea goose as to endow me with characteristics that I don’t have.” “No, you’re endowed enough as it is,” Evie replied, before the double meaning of the statement occurred to her. She burned a brilliant scarlet. “Th-that is…I didn’t mean…” But Sebastian was laughing quietly, the odd tension passing, and he pulled her against him. As she responded to him eagerly, his amusement dissolved like sugar in hot liquid. He kissed her longer, harder, his breath striking her cheek in rapid drives. “Evie,” he whispered, “you’re so warm, so lovely…oh, hell. I’ve got two months, thirteen days and six hours before I can take you to my bed. Little she-devil. This is going to be the death of me.
Lisa Kleypas (Devil in Winter (Wallflowers, #3))
In the presence of this mental anguish the physical tortures of the crucifixion retire into the background, and we may well believe that our Lord, though he died on the cross, yet died not of the cross, but, as we commonly say, of a broken heart, that is to say, of the strain of his mental suffering.
Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (The Emotional Life of our Lord)
he was clear about his parameters from the beginning (he pretty much told me: ‘I am emotionally withdrawn and can only offer you two to three big spoons per annum’), but I pressed myself against those parameters and strained and pushed until he and I were both exhausted. I thought, at the time, that love was perseverance.
Lindy West (Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman)
What our human emotions seem to require, is the sight of struggle going on. The moment the fruits are being merely eaten things become ignoble. Sweat and effort, human nature strained to the uttermost and on the rack, yet getting through it alive, and then turning back on its success to pursue another more rare and arduous still—this is the sort of thing that inspires us.
William James
She thought suddenly that she was wrong about his lack of emotion: the hidden undertone of his manner was enjoyment. She realized that she had always felt a sense of light-hearted relaxation in his presence and known that he shared it. He was the only man she knew to whom she could speak without strain or effort. This, she thought, was a mind she respected, an adversary worth matching.
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
Tharion was in no mood to joke, though. “Holstrom, I … Look, I said some shit earlier that I—” He shook his head. “If you can get me out of here, I’ll make it count. It means a lot that you’d even try. That you care.” “We’re a pack,” Ithan said to Tharion, Flynn, and Dec. “It’s what we do for each other.” None of them contradicted it. His heart strained. Tharion’s eyes glimmered with emotion. “Thanks.
Sarah J. Maas (House of Flame and Shadow (Crescent City, #3))
I think most people are wired to be monogamous for short periods at a time. The partner who is right for me at age twenty is not the partner who is necessarily right for me at age thirty, and so on. I think from my experiences, that about 20 percent of people are truly monogamous. By that I mean, when they're in love, they truly don't want or need anybody else. For them, monogamy is not a strain at all. Twenty percent of people are polyamorous or swinger types. They'll never be monogamous and don't want to be. The remain 60% of the population are stuck somewhere on a spectrum between happy monogamy and nonhappy monogamy. Some of because thats the vow they took and they're basically okay with it, and they don't want to be liars or cheaters. Some are actively angry about it and pick fights. Some are unhappy with it and, while they don't cheat, they do withdraw emotionally from their partners, giving themselves the worst of both worlds. Some are actively cheating but won't leave the marriage. Some people would be happy at home if they could get a little "strange" a few times a year and not have it be a big deal. They don't want o lose all they've built with their mates but just want a taste of something different.
Nina Hartley
Whether we know it or choose to admit it, we are either an Encourager or a Discourager. We each make a choice as to which type we will be… every day. Discouragers bring “stresspools.” I call any of those places that add unnecessary stress and aggravation “stresspools.” They are just as stinky and rotten as cesspools, but “stresspools” wreak of tension, strain, anxiety, worry, hassle, pressure, and emotional trauma.
Cathy Burnham Martin (The Bimbo Has Brains: And Other Freaky Facts)
Yet when she returned to the house, Sarsine had a smile on her face. “Go into the salon,” she said. Her piano. Its surface gleamed like wet ink. An emotion flooded through Kestrel, but she didn’t want to name it. It wasn’t right that she should feel it, simply because Arin had given back to her something that he had more or less taken. Kestrel shouldn’t play. She shouldn’t sit on that familiar velvet bench or think about how transporting a piano across the city was no mean feat. It meant people. Pulleys. Horses straining to haul a cart. She shouldn’t wonder how Arin had found the time and begged his people’s goodwill to bring her piano here. She shouldn’t touch the cool keys, or feel that delicious tension between silence and sound. She remembered that Arin had refused to sing for who knows how long. Kestrel didn’t have that particular kind of strength. She sat and played.
Marie Rutkoski (The Winner's Curse (The Winner's Trilogy, #1))
Thus, the question for astronauts was not How skilled a pilot are you, but Can you keep an even strain? Can you fight the urge to panic and instead focus only on what you can change? On the task at hand? Life is really no different. Obstacles make us emotional, but the only way we’ll survive or overcome them is by keeping those emotions in check—if we can keep steady no matter what happens, no matter how much external events may fluctuate.
Ryan Holiday (The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph)
And secondly. I am not falling for her. I broke my rules, but it doesn’t mean anything. My mission statement is still clear in my head. But, my chest… Moaning, I roll over on my back, rubbing the spot at the center of my sternum. I’m too young for a heart attack, right? It’s got to be heartburn. Or a pulled muscle. I did put a lot into that whipping. I probably strained something. It’s definitely not emotions. I am not feeling things for her. I. Am. Not.
Laurelin Paige (Chandler (Fixed, #5))
Early on a difficult climb, especially a difficult solo climb, you constantly feel the abyss pulling at your back. To resist takes a tremendous conscious effort; you don't dare let your guard down for an instant. The siren song of the void puts you on edge; it makes your movements tentative, clumsy, herky-jerky. But as the climb goes on, you grow accustomed to the exposure, you get used to rubbing shoulders with doom, you come to believe in the reliability of your hands and feet and head. You learn to trust your self-control. By and by your attention becomes so intensely focused that you no longer notice the raw knuckles, the cramping thighs, the strain of maintaining nonstop concentration. A trancelike state settles over your efforts; the climb becomes a clear-eyed dream. Hours slide by like minutes. The accumulated clutter of day-to-day existence — the lapses of conscience, the unpaid bills, the bungled opportunities, the dust under the couch, the inescapable prison of your genes — all of it is temporarily forgotten, crowded from your thoughts by an overpowering clarity of purpose and by the seriousness of the task at hand. At such moments something resembling happiness actually stirs in your chest, but it isn't the sort of emotion you want to lean on very hard. In solo climbing the whole enterprise is held together with little more than chutzpah, not the most reliable adhesive.
Jon Krakauer
Ignoring our emotions is turning our back on reality; listening to our emotions ushers us into reality. And reality is where we meet God … Emotions are the language of the soul. They are the cry that gives the heart a voice … However, we often turn a deaf ear — through emotional denial, distortion, or disengagement. We strain out anything disturbing in order to gain tenuous control of our inner world. We are frightened and ashamed of what leaks into our consciousness.
Peter Scazzero (The Emotionally Healthy Church, Updated and Expanded Edition: A Strategy for Discipleship That Actually Changes Lives)
I READ SOMEWHERE, once, that crying defies scientific explanation. Tears are only meant to lubricate the eyes. There is no real reason for tear glands to overproduce tears at the behest of emotion. I think we cry to release the animal parts of us without losing our humanity. Because inside me is a beast that snarls, and growls, and strains toward freedom, toward Tobias, and, above all, toward life. And as hard as I try, I cannot kill it. So I sob into my hands instead.
Anonymous
Immune to the blandishments of religions, countries, families, and whatever else that—with a smattering of emotive images and strains of maudlin music—can move the average citizen to tears or violence, the pessimist is invisible in both history books and the media. Without belief in gods or ghosts, unmotivated by a comprehensive delusion, he could never plant a bomb, plan a revolution, or shed blood for a cause. Pessimists are indeed lackadaisical as partisans in the human drama.
Thomas Ligotti (The Conspiracy Against the Human Race)
The symbolic and ritual tools of magical practice can be used to set off the same set of reactions that allow a child, or for that matter a baby baboon, to stock its social self with the nonverbal and emotionally charged patterns of its social group. In a capable initiation ritual, this is done in a careful and controlled way, with patterns that further the process of magical training, and the candidate – the person going through the initiation – is taught nonverbal signals that allow him or her to activate the new patterns when it’s time to use them, and deactivate them when it’s time to deal with the nonmagical world. In the short term, this makes it possible to practice magic without too much psychological strain; in the long term, the experience of shifting from one set of arbitrary social patterns and emotional charges to another teaches the reasoning mind to get some distance from the social self, and think its own thoughts rather than those it has been spoonfed by its society.
John Michael Greer (The Blood of the Earth: An essay on magic and peak oil)
Love is a feeling, a real, raw, and unscripted emotion so sensationally pure, unable to dull even under the strain of a world against it, strong enough to heal the broken and warm even the coldest of hearts. Innate. Unavoidable. Undeniable. And sometimes, love is unconventional and it breaks all the rules and blurs all the lines and basks in its glory, shining as bright as the sun, unapologetically glowing even under the narrowed stares of society and its screaming, self-righteous morals, berating and judging that which it doesn’t understand.
Madeline Sheehan (Unbeautifully (Undeniable, #2))
There is something sustaining in the very agitation that accompanies the first shocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an excitement which is transient strength. It is in the slow, changed life that follows; in the time when sorrow has become stale, and has no longer an emotive intensity that counteracts its pain; in the time when day follows day in dull, unexpectant sameness, and trial is a dreary routine,–it is then that despair threatens; it is then that the peremptory hunger of the soul is felt, and eye and ear are strained after some unlearned secret of our existence, which shall give to endurance the nature of satisfaction.
George Eliot (Complete Works of George Eliot)
Otto felt a profound emptiness as he considered the constant disappearances in his life, as if people simply vanished without reason or explanation. The words echoed in his head, "Where are you going? Please stop dying. Please stop passing away. Please stop disappearing with no explanation." He desperately wanted to feel some sense of security and permanence from those he loved. His father, acknowledging the strain between them, attempted to offer reassurance. "Otto, I know I've been hard but just know I'm not mad at you." Dad said gently. However, even with these words, Otto didn't feel any relief, and his yearning for genuine warmth continued. Utterly disheartened, Otto curled up on the carpet – the blue blanket symbolizing a distant past when days were simpler and happier – only to cry himself to sleep. Chilled to the core by an unshakable feeling of abandonment, he added blanket after blanket in a futile attempt to find comfort. He came to realize that no number of blankets could replace the warmth provided by genuine human connection. What he desperately craved was not mere physical warmth but the emotional warmth that comes from being held, hugged, and truly loved. A simple "I love you," whether heartfelt or forced, would have at least offered him a momentary sense of solace. In the end, all he desired was the gentle embrace of those who cared for him – even if it lasted merely a few seconds.
﹁ Aʟʟᴍɪɢʜᴛ ﹂ Oꜰꜰɪᴄɪᴀʟ
Once the criminal has served his time, he returns to his old neighborhood. There’s a good chance he’s been psychologically damaged by his time behind bars. His employment prospects have plummeted. While in prison, he’s lost many of his noncriminal friends and replaced them with fellow-criminal friends. And now he’s back, placing even more strain emotionally and financially on the home that he shattered by leaving in the first place. Incarceration creates collateral damage. In most cases, the harm done by imprisonment is smaller than the benefits; we’re still better off for putting people behind bars. But Clear’s point is that if you lock up too many people for too long, the collateral damage starts to outweigh the benefit.
Malcolm Gladwell (David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants)
July 1st It’s as though everything stood still. There is no movement, no stirring, complete emptiness of all thought, of all seeing. There is no interpreter to translate, to observe, to censor. An immeasurable vastness that is utterly still and silent. There is no space, nor time to cover that space. The beginning and the ending are here, of all things. There is really nothing that can be said about it. The pressure and the strain have been going on quietly all day; only now they have increased. 2nd The thing which happened yesterday, that immeasurable still vastness, went on all the evening, even though there were people and general talk. It went on all night; it was there in the morning. Though there was rather exaggerated, emotionally agitated talk, suddenly in the middle of it, it was there. And it is here, there’s a beauty and a glory and there’s a sense of wordless ecstasy. The pressure and the strain began rather early. 3rd Been out all day. All the same, in a crowded town in the afternoon, for two or three hours the pressure and the strain of it was on. 4th Been busy, but in spite of it, the pressure and the strain of it was there in the afternoon. Whatever actions one has to do in daily life, the shocks and the various incidents should not leave their scars. These scars become the ego, the self, and as one lives, it becomes strong and its walls almost become impenetrable. 5th Been too busy but whenever there is some quiet, the pressure and the strain was on. 6th Last night woke up with that sense of complete stillness and silence; the brain was fully alert and intensely alive; the body was very quiet. This state lasted for about half an hour. This in spite of an exhausting day. The height of intensity and sensitivity is the experiencing of essence. It’s this that is beauty beyond word and feeling. Proportion and depth, light and shade are limited to time-space, caught in beauty-ugliness. But that which is beyond line and shape, beyond learning and knowledge, is the beauty of essence. 7th Woke up several times shouting. Again there was that intense stillness of the brain and a feeling of vastness. There has been pressure and strain. Success is brutality. Success in every form, political and religious, art and business. To be successful implies ruthlessness.
J. Krishnamurti (Krishnamurti's Notebook)
The careful, embroidered stitches delineated a coil of some sort. It looked rather like a halved snail shell, but the interior was divided into dozen of intricate chambers. "Is that a nautilus?" he asked. "Close, but no. It's an ammonite." "An ammonite? What's an ammonite? Sounds like an Old Testament people overdue for smiting." "Ammonites are not a biblical people," she replied in a tone of strained forbearance. "But they have been smited." "Smote." With a snap of linen, she shot him a look. "Smote?" "Grammatically speaking, I think the word you want is 'smote.' " "Scientifically speaking, the word I want is 'extinct.' Ammonites are extinct. They're only known to us in fossils." "And bedsheets, apparently." "You know..." She huffed aside a lock of hair dangling in her face. "You could be helping." "But I'm so enjoying watching," he said, just to devil her. Nonetheless, he picked up the edge of the top sheet and fingered the stitching as he pulled it straight. "So you made this?" "Yes." Though judging by her tone, it hadn't been a labor of love. "My mother always insisted, from the time I was twelve years old, that I spend an hour every evening on embroidery. She had all three of us forever stitching things for our trousseaux." 'Trousseaux.' The word hit him queerly. "You brought your trousseau?" "Of course I brought my trousseau. To create the illusion of an elopement, obviously. And it made the most logical place to store Francine. All these rolls of soft fabric made for good padding." Some emotion jabbed his side, then scampered off before he could name it. Guilt, most likely. These were sheets meant to grace her marriage bed, and she was spreading them over a stained straw-tick mattress in a seedy coaching inn. "Anyhow," she went on, "so long as my mother forced me to embroider, I insisted on choosing a pattern that interested me. I've never understood why girls are always made to stitch insipid flowers and ribbons." "Well, just to hazard a guess..." Colin straightened his edge. "Perhaps that's because sleeping on a bed of flowers and ribbons sounds delightful and romantic. Whereas sharing one's bed with a primeval sea snail sounds disgusting." Her jaw firmed. "You're welcome to sleep on the floor." "Did I say disgusting? I meant enchanting. I've always wanted to go to bed with a primeval sea snail.
Tessa Dare (A Week to be Wicked (Spindle Cove, #2))
That the result is far less a triumph for the human spirit than the work of the group of Dante, that the result is suspect in its nature and dangerous, that it is a substitution of human feelings rather than an extension of them, is another matter. In Dante, as I have said again and again, you get a system of thought and feeling; every part of the system felt and thought in its place, and the whole system felt and thought; and you cannot say that it is primarily “intellectual” or primarily “emotional”, for the thought and the emotion are reverse sides of the same thing. In Donne you get a sequence of thoughts which are felt; in Crashaw you might say, by slightly straining an antithesis, that you have a sequence of feelings which are thought. In neither do you find a perfect balance.
T.S. Eliot (The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry)
The role played by stress in the causation of cancer is so great that it would not be an exaggeration to say that 80% or more cancer cases have their immediate origin in some form of mental pressure or strain. Grief, distress, fear, worry, and anger are emotions which have horrible effects on the body's functions. Researchers have discovered that these emotions cause the release of chemicals from the brain called neuropeptides. These potent compounds have a profound immune-suppressive action. Scientists have traced a pathway from the brain to the immune cells proving that negative emotions can stop the immune cells dead in their tracks. This results in part from the release of chemicals from nerve endings. Once this happens, harmful microbes or cancer cells can invade any tissue in the body.
Cass Ingram (Eat Right or Die Young: When Will Your Biological Clock Stop?)
The extermination of the Jews has sometimes been seen as a kind of industrialized, assembly-line kind of mass murder, and this picture has at least some element of truth to it. No other genocide in history has been carried out by mechanical means - gassing - in specially constructed facilities like those in operation at Auschwitz or Treblinka. At the same time, however, these facilities did not operate efficiently or effectively, and if the impression given by calling them industrialized is that they were automated or impersonal, then it is a false one. Men such as Hess and Stangl and their subordinates tried to insulate themselves from the human dimensions of what they were doing by referring to their victims as 'cargo' or 'items.' Talking to Gerhard Stabenow, the head of the SS Security Service in Warsaw, in September 1942, Wilm Hosenfeld noted how the language Stabenow used distanced himself from the fact that what he was involved in was the mass murder of human beings: 'He speaks of the Jews as ants or other vermin, of their 'resettlement', that means their mass murder, as he would of the extermination of the bedbugs in the disinfestation of a house.' But at the same time such men were not immune from the human emotions they tried so hard to repress, and they remembered incidents in which individual women and children had appealed to their conscience, even if such appeals were in vain. The psychological strain that continual killing of unarmed civilians, including women and children, imposed on such men was considerable, just as it had been in the case of the SS Task Forces, whose troops had been shooting Jews in their hundreds of thousands before the first gas vans were deploted in an attempt not only to speed up the killing but also to make it somehow more impersonal.
Richard J. Evans (The Third Reich at War (The History of the Third Reich, #3))
I asked him what he thought would happen if he were to honestly tell Kayla about the strain he felt, and he said, “She would be devastated and furious if I tried to talk to her about it.” I believed sharing his honest feelings might have enraged someone in his past, but it didn’t sound like how Kayla would respond. It sounded more like what he had told me about his angry mother, who was quick to blow up if people didn’t do what she wanted. When I told Jake that maybe this safe new relationship was giving him a chance to finally be loved for himself, he was uncomfortable with the reference to his emotional needs. He looked embarrassed and said, “When you say it like that, I sound pitiful and needy.” During childhood, Jake had gotten the message from his mother that showing any emotional needs meant he was weak. Further, if he didn’t act how she wanted him to, he felt inadequate and unlovable.
Lindsay C. Gibson (Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents)
There are times when even the best leaders lose their emotional balance. Leadership brings with it responsibility, and responsibility, in times of serious adversity, brings emotional turmoil and strain. In this sense responsibility is like a lever, which can upset a leader’s emotional balance when adversity presses down hard on one end. When the adversity is threatening enough or comes without warning, it can unbalance the leader at a single stroke. Even a leader as great as Lincoln was floored more than once in this way. Other times the effect is cumulative, coming after a period of sustained high tension—of pressure on one end and resistance on the other—until finally the leader’s equanimity begins to give way. The point is that every leader has her emotional limits, and there is no shame in exceeding them. What distinguishes effective leaders from inferior ones, rather, is their ability to restore their emotional balance.
Raymond M. Kethledge (Lead Yourself First: Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude)
It’s hard to imagine calling the dairy industry anything but “inhumane” when you consider that on dairy farms, cows are artificially inseminated and forced to give birth, only to have their beloved babies torn away from them so the milk that nature intended for them can instead be consumed by humans. Both mother cows and their calves are emotionally traumatised when forcibly separated from one another. The mother cows bellow in desperation, and their calves bawl in distress. They cry out for each other for days – in vain. The male calves – often referred to as “by-products” – are either shot at birth or destined to become veal. The female calves, like their mothers, face a lifetime of repeated forcible impregnation and anguish over their stolen babies. Their bodies are strained to the limit in order to squeeze out every last drop of milk. Today, British cows typically produce 10 times more milk than they would naturally in order to feed their calves.
Mimi Bekhechi
And she wanted to say not one thing, but everything. Little words that broke up the thought and dismembered it said nothing. “About life, about death; about Mrs. Ramsay”—no, she thought, one could say nothing to nobody. The urgency of the moment always missed its mark. Words fluttered sideways and struck the object inches too low. Then one gave it up; then the idea sunk back again; then one became like most middle-aged people, cautious, furtive, with wrinkles between the eyes and a look of perpetual apprehension. For how could one express in words these emotions of the body? express that emptiness there? (She was looking at the drawing-room steps; they looked extraordinarily empty). It was one’s body feeling, not one’s mind. The physical sensations that went with the bare look of the steps had become suddenly extremely unpleasant. To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have—to want and want—how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again!
Virginia Woolf (Virginia Woolf: The Complete Works)
As the Harvard Gazette summarized in 2017: Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives. . . . Those ties protect people from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes. That finding proved true across the board among both the Harvard men and the inner-city participants.[7] Men who’d had warm childhood relationships with their parents earned more as adults than men whose parent-child bonds were more strained. They were also happier and less likely to suffer dementia in old age. People with strong marriages suffered less physical pain and emotional distress over the course of their lives. Individuals’ close friendships were more accurate predictors of healthy aging than their cholesterol levels. Social support and connections to a community helped insulate people against disease and depression. Meanwhile, loneliness and disconnection, in some cases, were fatal.
Daniel H. Pink (The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward)
Through the fall, the president’s anger seemed difficult to contain. He threatened North Korea with “fire and fury,” then followed up with a threat to “totally destroy” the country. When neo-Nazis and white supremacists held a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and one of them killed a protester and injured a score of others, he made a brutally offensive statement condemning violence “on many sides … on many sides”—as if there was moral equivalence between those who were fomenting racial hatred and violence and those who were opposing it. He retweeted anti-Muslim propaganda that had been posted by a convicted criminal leader of a British far-right organization. Then as now, the president’s heedless bullying and intolerance of variance—intolerance of any perception not his own—has been nurturing a strain of insanity in public dialogue that has been long in development, a pathology that became only more virulent when it migrated to the internet. A person such as the president can on impulse and with minimal effort inject any sort of falsehood into public conversation through digital media and call his own lie a correction of “fake news.” There are so many news outlets now, and the competition for clicks is so intense, that any sufficiently outrageous statement made online by anyone with even the faintest patina of authority, and sometimes even without it, will be talked about, shared, and reported on, regardless of whether it has a basis in fact. How do you progress as a culture if you set out to destroy any common agreement as to what constitutes a fact? You can’t have conversations. You can’t have debates. You can’t come to conclusions. At the same time, calling out the transgressor has a way of giving more oxygen to the lie. Now it’s a news story, and the lie is being mentioned not just in some website that publishes unattributable gossip but in every reputable newspaper in the country. I have not been looking to start a personal fight with the president. When somebody insults your wife, your instinctive reaction is to want to lash out in response. When you are the acting director, or deputy director, of the FBI, and the person doing the insulting is the chief executive of the United States, your options have guardrails. I read the president’s tweets, but I had an organization to run. A country to help protect. I had to remain independent, neutral, professional, positive, on target. I had to compartmentalize my emotions. Crises taught me how to compartmentalize. Example: the Boston Marathon bombing—watching the video evidence, reviewing videos again and again of people dying, people being mutilated and maimed. I had the primal human response that anyone would have. But I know how to build walls around that response and had to build them then in order to stay focused on finding the bombers. Compared to experiences like that one, getting tweeted about by Donald Trump does not count as a crisis. I do not even know how to think about the fact that the person with time on his hands to tweet about me and my wife is the president of the United States.
Andrew G. McCabe (The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump)
As a close friend commented: “She seems to dread Charles’s appearance. The days when she is happiest is when he is in Scotland. When he is at Kensington Palace she feels absolutely at a loss and like a child again. She loses all the ground she has built up when she is on her own.” The changes in her are physical. Her speech, normally rapid, energetic, coloured and strong, degenerates instantly when he is with her. Diana’s voice becomes monosyllabic and flat, suffused with an ineffable weariness. It is the same tone that infects her speech when she talks about her parents’ divorce and what she calls “the dark ages”, the period in her royal life until the late 1980s when she was emotionally crushed by the royal system. In his presence she reverts to the girl she was a decade ago. She giggles over nothing, starts biting her nails--a habit she gave up some time ago--and takes on the hunted look of a nervous fawn. The strain in their home when they are together is palpable. As Oonagh Toffolo observes: “It is a different atmosphere at Kensington Palace when he is there. It is tense and she is tense. She doesn’t have the freedom she would like when he’s around. It is quite sad to see the stagnation there.” Another frequent guest simply calls it “The Mad House.
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
There's mainstream pornography--soft-core airbrushed fluff such as Penthouse and Playboy. The folks makin' this stuff do men and their range of desires a disservice; their implication is that anything outside the "big hair, fake tits, tiny waste, no pores, limited body hair" aesthetic is deviant, weird, not normal--and not something that a red-blooded American man would be interested in. The common boys-will-be-boys explanation for porn--that men get turned on visually (in contrast to "feminine" mode of arousal, which is mental and emotional)--is nothing more than an insult, making men out to be Pavlovian dogs who salivate uncontrollably and strain at their trousers upon contact with nudie pictures. Antiporn arguments, however well-meaning, are no better. Folks like Catherine MacKinnon also believe that men are inherently drawn to porn. And to them, porn is by definition violent, suggesting that it's somehow in men's nature to be aroused by hurting others. Furthermore, antipornography activists think that porn leads men to commit violence--as if men have no self-control or capacity to separate fantasy from reality, as if an erection is a driving force that can't be stopped once it's started... The only difference is one of perspective: Antiporn folk believe that male sexuality is always threatening, while men's-magazine editors think it's always fabulous.
Lisa Jervis (BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine)
Our leaders strain every nerve and with success, to get the next war going, while the rest of us, meanwhile, dance the fox trot, earn money and eat chocolates...And perhaps...it has always been the same and always will be, and what is called history at school, and all we learn by heart there about heroes and geniuses and great deeds and fine emotions, is all nothing but a swindle invented by the schoolmasters for educational reasons to keep children occupied for a given number of years. It has always been so and always will be. Time and the world, money and power belong to the small people and shallow people. To the rest, to the real men belongs nothing...eternity...it isn't fame. Fame exists in that sense only for the schoolmasters. No, it isn't fame. It is what I call eternity...The music of Mozart belongs there and the poetry of your great poets. The saints, too, belong there, who have worked wonders and suffered martyrdom and given a great example to men. But the image of every true act, the strength of every true feeling, belongs to eternity just as much, even though no one knows of it or sees it or records it or hands it down to posterity. In eternity there is no posterity...It is the kingdom on the other side of time and appearances. It is there we belong. There is our home. It is that which our heart strives for...And we have no one to guide us. Our only guide is our homesickness.
HERMAN HESSEE (Steppenwolf)
Otto felt a profound emptiness as he considered the constant disappearances in his life, as if people simply vanished without reason or explanation. The words echoed in his head, "Where are you going? Please stop dying. Please stop passing away. Please stop disappearing with no explanation." He desperately wanted to feel some sense of security and permanence from those he loved. His father, acknowledging the strain between them, attempted to offer reassurance. "Otto, I know I've been hard but just know I'm not mad at you." Dad said gently. However, even with these words, Otto didn't feel any relief, and his yearning for genuine warmth continued. Utterly disheartened, Otto curled up on the carpet – the blue blanket symbolizing a distant past when days were simpler and happier – only to cry himself to sleep. Chilled to the core by an unshakable feeling of abandonment, he added blanket after blanket in a futile attempt to find comfort. He came to realize that no number of blankets could replace the warmth provided by genuine human connection. What he desperately craved was not mere physical warmth but the emotional warmth that comes from being held, hugged, and truly loved. A simple "I love you," whether heartfelt or forced, would have at least offered him a momentary sense of solace. In the end, all he desired was the gentle embrace of those who cared for him – even if it lasted merely a few seconds.
﹁ Aʟʟᴍɪɢʜᴛ ﹂ Oꜰꜰɪᴄɪᴀʟ
Breathe. Pause. Move. Pause. Breathe. Pause. Move. Pause. It is unending. I heave myself over the final lip and strain to pull myself clear of the edge. I clear the deep powder snow from in front of my face. I lie there hyperventilating. Then I clear my mask of the ice that my breath has formed in the freezing air. I unclip off the rope while still crouching. The line is now clear for Neil to follow up. I get to my feet and start staggering onward. I can see this distant cluster of prayer flags semisubmerged in the snow. Gently flapping in the wind, I know that these flags mark the true summit--the place of dreams. I feel this sudden surge of energy beginning to rise within me. It is adrenaline coursing around my veins and muscles. I have never felt so strong--and yet so weak--all at the same time. Intermittent waves of adrenaline and fatigue come and go as my body struggles to sustain the intensity of these final moments. I find it strangely ironic that the very last part of this immense climb is so gentle a slope. A sweeping curve--curling along the crest of the ridge toward the summit. Thank God. It feels like the mountain is beckoning me up. For the first time, willing me to climb up onto the roof of the world. I try to count the steps as I move, but my counting becomes confused. I am now breathing and gasping like a wild animal in an attempt to devour the oxygen that seeps into my mask. However many of these pathetically slow shuffles I take, this place never seems to get any closer. But it is. Slowly the summit is looming a little nearer. I can feel my eyes welling up with tears. I start to cry and cry inside my mask. Emotions held in for so long. I can’t hold them back any longer. I stagger on.
Bear Grylls (Mud, Sweat and Tears)
John Glen, the first American astronaut to orbit the earth, spent nearly a day in space still keeping his heart rate under a hundred beats per minute. That's a man not simply sitting at the controls but in control of his emotions. A man who had properly cultivated, what Tom Wolfe later called, "the Right Stuff." But you...confront a client or a stranger on the streets and your heart is liable to burst out of your chest; or you are called on to address a crowd and your stomach crashes through the floor. It's time to realize that this is a luxury, an indulgence of our lesser self. In space, the difference between life and death lies in emotional regulations. Hitting the wrong button, reading the instrument panels incorrectly, engaging a sequence too early- none of these could have been afforded on a successful Apollo mission- the consequences were too great. Thus, the question for astronauts was not How skilled a pilot are you, but Can you keep an even strain? Can you fight the urge to panic and instead focus only on what you can change? On the task at hand? Life is really no different. Obstacles make us emotional, but the only way we'll survive or overcome them is by keeping those emotions in check- if we can keep steady no matter what happens, no matter how much external events may fluctuate. The Greeks had a word for this: apatheia. It's the kind of calm equanimity that comes with the absence of irrational or extreme emotions. Not the loss of feeling altogether, just the loss of the harmful, unhelpful kind. Don't let the negativity in, don't let those emotions even get started. Just say: No, thank you. I can't afford to panic. This is the skill that must be cultivated- freedom from disturbance and perturbation- so you can focus your energy exclusively on solving problems, rather than reacting to them. p28-9
Ryan Holiday (The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph)
ON THE MODUS OPERANDI OF OUR CURRENT PRESIDENT, DONALD J. TRUMP "According to a new ABC/Washington Post poll, President Trump’s disapproval rating has hit a new high." The President's response to this news was "“I don’t do it for the polls. Honestly — people won’t necessarily agree with this — I do nothing for the polls,” the president told reporters on Wednesday. “I do it to do what’s right. I’m here for an extended period of time. I’m here for a period that’s a very important period of time. And we are straightening out this country.” - Both Quotes Taken From Aol News - August 31, 2018 In The United States, as in other Republics, the two main categories of Presidential motivation for their assigned tasks are #1: Self Interest in seeking to attain and to hold on to political power for their own sakes, regarding the welfare of This Republic to be of secondary importance. #2: Seeking to attain and to hold on to the power of that same office for the selfless sake of this Republic's welfare, irregardless of their personal interest, and in the best of cases going against their personal interests to do what is best for this Republic even if it means making profound and extreme personal sacrifices. Abraham Lincoln understood this last mentioned motivation and gave his life for it. The primary information any political scientist needs to ascertain regarding the diagnosis of a particular President's modus operandi is to first take an insightful and detailed look at the individual's past. The litmus test always being what would he or she be willing to sacrifice for the Nation. In the case of our current President, Donald John Trump, he abandoned a life of liberal luxury linked to self imposed limited responsibilities for an intensely grueling, veritably non stop two year nightmare of criss crossing this immense Country's varied terrain, both literally and socially when he could have easily maintained his life of liberal leisure. While my assertion that his personal choice was, in my view, sacrificially done for the sake of a great power in a state of rapid decline can be contradicted by saying it was motivated by selfish reasons, all evidence points to the contrary. For knowing the human condition, fraught with a plentitude of weaknesses, for a man in the end portion of his lifetime to sacrifice an easy life for a hard working incessant schedule of thankless tasks it is entirely doubtful that this choice was made devoid of a special and even exalted inspiration to do so. And while the right motivations are pivotal to a President's success, what is also obviously needed are generic and specific political, military and ministerial skills which must be naturally endowed by Our Creator upon the particular President elected for the purposes of advancing a Nation's general well being for one and all. If one looks at the latest National statistics since President Trump took office, (such as our rising GNP, the booming market, the dramatically shrinking unemployment rate, and the overall positive emotive strains in regards to our Nation's future, on both the left and the right) one can make definitive objective conclusions pertaining to the exceptionally noble character and efficiency of the current resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And if one can drown out the constant communicative assaults on our current Commander In Chief, and especially if one can honestly assess the remarkable lack of substantial mistakes made by the current President, all of these factors point to a leader who is impressively strong, morally and in other imperative ways. And at the most propitious time. For the main reason that so many people in our Republic palpably despise our current President is that his political and especially his social agenda directly threatens their licentious way of life. - John Lars Zwerenz
John Lars Zwerenz
Students of the theory of ethics call only those acts "good" which are the expression of good impulses and refuse to acknowledge others as such. But society is on the whole guided by practical aims and does not bother about this distinction; it is satisfied if a man adapts his conduct and his actions to the precepts of civilization and asks little about his motives. We have heard that the outer compulsion which education and environment exercise upon a man brings about a further transformation of his impulse life for the good, the change from egotism to altruism. But this is not the necessary or regular effect of the outer compulsion. Education and environment have not only love premiums to offer but work with profit premiums of another sort, namely rewards and punishments. They can therefore bring it about that a person subject to their influence decides in favor of good conduct in the civilized sense without any ennobling of impulse or change from egotistic into altruistic inclinations. On the whole the consequence remains the same; only special circumstances will reveal whether the one person is always good because his impulses compel him to be so while another person is good only in so far as this civilized behavior is of advantage to his selfish purposes. But our superficial knowledge of the individual gives us no means of distinguishing the two cases, and we shall certainly be misled by our optimism into greatly over-estimating the number of people who have been transformed by civilization. Civilized society, which demands good conduct and does not bother about the impulse on which it is based, has thus won over a great many people to civilized obedience who do not thereby follow their own natures. Encouraged by this success, society has permitted itself to be misled into putting the ethical demands as high as possible, thereby forcing its members to move still further from their emotional dispositions. A continual emotional suppression is imposed upon them, the strain of which is indicated by the appearance of the most remarkable reactions and compensations. In the field of sexuality, where such suppression is most difficult to carry out, it results in reactions known as neurotic ailments. In other fields the pressure of civilization shows no pathological results but manifests itself in distorted characters and in the constant readiness of the inhibited impulses to enforce their gratification at any fitting opportunity.
Sigmund Freud (Reflections on War and Death)
Are you interested in medical marijuana but have no idea what it is? In recent years, there is a growing cry for the legalization of cannabis because of its proven health benefits. Read on as we try to look into the basics of the drug, what it really does to the human body, and how it can benefit you. Keep in mind that medical marijuana is not for everyone, so it’s important that you know how you’re going to be using it before you actually use it. What is Marijuana? Most likely, everyone has heard of marijuana and know what it is. However, many people hold misconceptions of marijuana because of inaccurate news and reporting, which has led to the drug being demonized—even when numerous studies have proven the health benefits of medical marijuana when it is used in moderation. (Even though yes, weed is also used as a recreational drug.) First and foremost, medical marijuana is a plant. The drug that we know of is made of its shredded leaves and flowers of the cannabis sativa or indica plant. Whatever its strain or form, all types of cannabis alter the mind and have some degree of psychoactivity. The plant is made of chemicals, with tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) being the most powerful and causing the biggest impact on the brain. How is Medical Marijuana Used? There are several ways medical weed is used, depending on the user’s need, convenience and preference. The most common ways are in joint form, and also using bongs and vaporizers. But with its growing legalization, we’re seeing numerous forms of cannabis consumption methods being introduced (like oils, edibles, drinks and many more). ● Joint – Loose marijuana leaves are rolled into a cigarette. Sometimes, it’s mixed with tobacco to cut the intensity of the cannabis. ● Bong – This is a large water pipe that heats weed into smoke, which the user then inhales. ● Vaporizer – Working like small bongs, this is a small gadget that makes it easier to bring and use weed practically anywhere. What’s Some Common Medical Marijuana Lingo? We hear numerous terms from people when it comes to describing medical marijuana, and this list continually grows. An example of this is the growing number of marijuana nicknames which include pot, grass, reefer, Mary Jane, dope, skunk, ganja, boom, chronic and herb among many others. Below are some common marijuana terms and what they really mean. ● Bong – Water pipe that allows for weed to be inhaled ● Blunt – Hollowed-out cigar with the tobacco replaced with weed ● Hash – Mix of medical weed and tobacco ● Joint – Rolled cigarette-like way to consume medical cannabis How Does It Feel to be High? When consumed in moderation, weed’s common effects include a heightened sense of euphoria and well-being. You’ll most likely talk and laugh more. At its height, the high creates a feeling of pensive dreaminess that wears off and becomes sleepiness. In a group setting, there are commonly feelings of exaggerated physical and emotional sensitivity as well as strong feelings of camaraderie. Medical marijuana also has a direct impact on a person’s speech patterns, which will get slower. There will be an impairment in your ability to carry out conversations. Cannabis also affects short-term memory. The usual high that one gets from cannabis can last for about two hours; when you overindulge, it can last for up to 12 hours. Is Using Medical Marijuana Safe? Medical cannabis is scientifically proven to be safer compared to alcohol or nicotine. Marijuana is slowly being legalized around the world because of its numerous health benefits, particularly among people suffering from mental illness like depression, anxiety and stress. It also has physical benefits, like helping in managing pain and the treatment of glaucoma and cancer.
Kurt
They had been under physical strain for the last few days — days full of brutality, fear, and death. Their lives were at risk every moment in this place and they counted on each other. They had seen each other emotionally naked, and all of a sudden lying there back to back seemed far more intimate than any kind of passion.
James R. Sanford (The Hidden Fire (Knights of the Flaming Blade Book 2))
When Relationships are Strained and the air charged with emotions, An attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of Judgement & Rejection
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When relationships are strained and the air charged with emotion, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection.
Stephen R. Covey (The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change)
From a physical standpoint, anger: Raises your blood pressure Raises your body temperature Throws off your digestive system Prepares your body for ‘battle’ by releasing the fight-or-flight mechanisms Causes headaches Causes insomnia Prevents your immune system from working as it should And if these side-effects are not enough, the emotional strain of anger: Produces anxiety and depression Affects other relationships Affects our job performance Affects our ability to rationalize and make good choices
Peter Cain (Jesus take the Wheel: Start Living the Joyful Rewarding life He has for You)
In this village I attended three meetings on Sunday two and a half hours in the morning, two and a half hours in the afternoon, and two hours at night, when I had to leave to catch the train. At all these meetings the same kind of thing went on, the same kind of congregations assembled, the same strained, intense emotion was manifest. Aisles were crowded. Pulpit stairs were packed and, mirabile dictu! two-thirds of the congregation were men and at least one-half young men.
Evan Roberts (The Story of the Welsh Revival by Eyewitnesses)
At the same time, the Establishment and their media allies were in full cry. Lord McGregor, the Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, issued a statement condemning the hysteria that the book immediately generated as ‘An odious exhibition of journalists dabbling their fingers in the stuff of other people’s souls.’ In fact, this criticism was never made of the book itself; indeed, Lord McGregor has since told me that the issue was the ‘most difficult’ of his tenure. The Archbishop of Canterbury worried publicly about the effects of the publicity on Princes William and Harry; Lord St John of Fewsley condemned the book’s publication, while a pot-pourri of MPs were keen to see me locked away in the Tower; it was, too, a torrid time for Diana’s supporters. As loyalists rallied to the flag, ignoring the message while deriding the messenger, the public gradually began to accept the book’s veracity through statements by Diana’s friends, further confirmed when she visited her old friend Carolyn Bartholomew, who had spoken about the Princess’s bulimia. Unfortunately, that casual call upon an old and trusted friend had bitter consequences for Diana. Senior courtiers, including the Queen’s private secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes, pointed accusing fingers at Diana when they saw the front-page coverage of the visit. Aggrieved and hurt, the Princess flew by helicopter to Merseyside for a visit to a hospice, her first official engagement since Diana, Her True Story hit the headlines. It proved to be an emotional meeting between Diana and her public for, touched by the show of affection from waiting wellwishers, she burst into tears, overcome by the distressing echoes of her morning meeting with Palace officials, and by the underlying strain of the decision she and Prince Charles had taken. As she later told a friend: ‘An old lady in the crowd stroked my face and that triggered something inside me. I simply couldn’t stop myself crying.’ The public tears did not surprise her close friends, who knew only too well the private anguish of her lonely position, the strain she had borne for 18 months. As one remarked: ‘She is a brilliant actress who has disguised her private sorrow.
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
Many listeners have the experience of sharing the feelings that seem to be expressed by a piece of music[.] [T]he listener mirrors the feelings expressed by the music. [...] The problem is that if listeners mirror the negative emotions they hear in music, then we seem to be landed with a paradox; [...] the "paradox of tragedy[.]" [P]eople apparently take great delight in watching and hearing about people in hideously unhappy situations and undergoing terrible suffering. [...] The musical version of the paradox is this: If people actually feel sad when they listen to sad music, why do they go on doing it? All they have to do is leave the room or flip the switch, and the music would vanish, along with the pain it causes. Yet people continue to listen, apparently complacently, to the most anguished and wrenching strains. [...] There must be some value to experiencing the sadness in sad music, or otherwise people would not do it; but what value can it have?
Jenefer Robinson (Music and Meaning)
His muscles twitched in anticipation, but he moderated his steps, determined not to let his absolute weakness for the woman propel him into an unmanly display of emotion. Especially here, under her father’s scrutiny. She, on the other hand, began a jog. Then she broke into a skirt-lifting sprint—as she’d done outside the burning fort. Except this time, she was not running to Phillip, and the only object in flames was Totka’s throat as it burned with the effort to swallow. He braced himself to receive her all-out run, but when she loosed his name on a jagged cry, he dropped his bow, quiver, and decorum and hastened to meet her. She flew hard into his arms, laughing and crying at once, knocking the wind from his chest and the good sense from his brain. His rogue mouth went in search of hers. Despite her happy little murmurings and the sighs hot at his ear, he regained himself and angled away, pressing his cheek to hers, unable to draw her close enough. Her body was softer than he recalled, warmer, more eager. And Little Warrior was right—she smelled as sweet as honey. Nose buried in his shirt, she inhaled until her ribs strained against his hold. “Tell me you’ve come to take me home,” she said on a contented discharge of breath.
April W. Gardner (Beneath the Blackberry Moon: The Sacred Writings (Creek Country Saga #2))
Bring her back, Mikhail. Go after her. Guide her back. This is too dangerous for her. Even with my connection to her, she is trapped,” Gregori said. “We are dealing with more than just any vampire. This one is skilled in the black arts and the use of herbs and power stones. I know what he has done and how he is doing it.” Mikhail pulled Raven tightly against him, his black eyes hard with mental strain. Raven blinked, looked around her, seemed surprised to find herself in the rain. Her hand went to her temple in a gesture of pain. “Stop staring at me. I feel like some kind of freak show.” She sounded hurt, hid her face on Mikhail’s chest. His arms circled her, drew her into the shelter of his body, his head bent lovingly toward hers. It was such an intimate gesture, Shea had to turn away. To her dismay, she found the healer studying her. Shea moved closer to Jacques, unconsciously seeking protection from the scrutiny. “You need nourishment.” The healer spoke gently. “When I’m hungry, I’ll eat,” Shea told him haughtily. “You don’t need to worry about all of us. I know how to care for myself.” The silvery eyes slashed through the lie. “Your hunger radiates from you, and your weakness could place all of us in jeopardy.” He turned his powerful stare on Raven. Raven squirmed visibly. “Oh, shut up, Gregori,” she snapped, her blue eyes flashing fire at him. A faint smile curved his mouth, failing to light his eyes. “I did not speak.” “You spoke volumes, and you know it.” Her chin went up belligerently. “Your male sense of superiority is enough to make a woman want to scream. Honestly, Gregori, all that cold logic makes a person crazy.” She allowed Mikhail to lead her onto the porch. “Logic works, unlike emotional women,” Gregori returned unruffled. “Your first duty is to protect your child. Our first duty must be to protect you.” His silver gaze clearly censured Mikhail.
Christine Feehan (Dark Desire (Dark, #2))
Our thoughts and emotions strain our life force, drain our energy, carrying us away, cutting us from the people we are with and the beauty of places we are in.
Canny Gogia
When school is not a good fit for a boy, when his normal expressions of energy and action routinely meet with negative responses from teachers and classmates, he stews in feelings of failure—feelings of sadness, shame, and anger, which can be very hard to detect beneath that brash exterior. Unable to “talk out” the emotional pressure, boys typically act out through verbal or physical aggression that walls them off emotionally from others, straining or severing emotional connections to the people and circumstances they find painful. And the worse a boy behaves, the more he invites negative reactions from teachers and other adults.
Dan Kindlon (Raising Cain: Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys)
There are times to teach and train and times not to teach. When relationships are strained and charged with emotion, attempts to teach or train are often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection. A better approach is to be alone with the person and to discuss the principle privately. But again, this requires patience and internal control—in short, emotional maturity. BORROWING STRENGTH BUILDS WEAKNESS In addition to parents, many employers, leaders, and others in positions of authority may be competent, knowledgeable, and skillful (at day six) but are emotionally and spiritually immature (at day two). They, too, may attempt to compensate for this deficiency, or gap, by borrowing strength from their position or their authority. How do immature people react to pressure? How does the boss react when subordinates don’t do things his way? The teacher when the students challenge her viewpoint? How would an immature parent treat a teenage daughter when she interrupts with her problems? How does this parent discipline a bothersome younger child? How does this person handle a difference with a spouse on an emotionally explosive matter? How does the person handle challenges at work? An emotionally immature person will tend to borrow strength from position, size, strength, experience, intellect, or emotions to make up for a character imbalance. And what are the consequences? Eventually this person will build weakness in three places: First, he builds weakness in himself. Borrowing strength from position or authority reinforces his own dependence upon external factors to get things done in the future. Second, he builds weakness in the other people. Others learn to act or react in terms of fear or conformity, thus stunting their own reasoning, freedom, growth, and internal discipline. Third, he builds weakness in the relationship. It becomes strained. Fear replaces cooperation. Each person involved becomes a little more arbitrary, a little more agitated, a little more defensive. To win an argument or a contest, an emotionally immature person may use his strengths and abilities to back people into a corner. Even though he wins the argument, he loses. Everyone loses. His
Stephen R. Covey (Principle-Centered Leadership)
Cade struggled helplessly for words to convey his feelings, but Lily was already straining against another pain. "Why does it not come?" he demanded sharply of Dove Woman, who was merely sitting cross-legged on the floor, humming to herself. "Because it is not time," she repeated. "But it is killing her! Look how she suffers. We must do something." Cade paced, throwing anxious looks at Lily as she took a deep breath and released the bed once more. "You had better go out with the others, Cade. There is nothing you can do to speed the child's coming." Not understanding the actual words between Cade and Dove Woman, Lily understood their content. "I will fetch Travis. He will give you something for the pain." Before Cade could start for the door, Lily gave a groan of pure agony, and Dove Woman unhurriedly rose from the floor. "She is in pain! Santa Maria, do something!" Cade dropped to his knees beside the bed and tried to lift Lily into his arms, but she reached for the bed rails. "Send him out," Dove Woman enunciated in clear Spanish when Lily rested once more. "It will save pain for both." Lily looked up at Cade's anguished expression, startled by the immense emotion displayed for the first time on his usually implacable features, and her heart took two leaps and a jump before settling more calmly in her chest. "Leave, Cade. There is nothing more you can do here," she said softly. "How can I leave?" he cried. "I have done this to you. I would take the pain away." As Lily's eyes closed with the onset of the next contraction, Cade panicked. "Lily, I can't lose you! Lily, please..." Dove Woman went to the door and murmured to the two boys waiting outside. The eldest looked rebellious at her words, but he disappeared into the opposite cabin. Moments later, he returned with Travis. Travis pounded on the closed bedroom door and shouted, "Cade, get your royal ass out here before I have to come in and get you!" Lily's eyes blinked open, and she half smiled at this command. "Go, Cade. You can't bring the child any faster." "I can't leave you here to suffer alone." Cade touched her brow, unwilling to form even in his mind the words for the fear he felt. He had just watched a man die, but it was Lily’s pain that was ripping him apart, tearing down the walls of his heart and soul. "I wish there was music," Lily whispered, surrendering to the pain once again. Cade caught the wish even as Travis slammed into the room, gun in hand to order him out. "Cade, damn you, the women want you out!" Travis shouted. Seeing only an obstruction between himself and the means to satisfy Lily's wish, Cade coolly knocked Travis's gun aside, floored him with a single punch, and stepping over his friend's fallen body, walked out the door. In
Patricia Rice (Texas Lily (Too Hard to Handle, #1))
If we can see that the ego is purely fictitious—that it is merely an image of ourselves coupled with a sensation of muscular strain occasioned by trying to make this image an effective agent to control emotion and direct the nervous operations of our organism—then it becomes clear that what we have called ourselves isn’t able to do anything at all.
Alan W. Watts (Out of Your Mind: Tricksters, Interdependence, and the Cosmic Game of Hide and Seek)
In the end, the unending strain with his father enhanced, rather than diminished, young Lincoln’s ambition. Year after year, as he persevered in defiance of his father’s wishes, managing his negative emotions and exercising his will to slowly master one subject after another, he developed an increasing belief in his own strengths and powers.
Doris Kearns Goodwin (Leadership: In Turbulent Times)
Our baby must have been a miserable wretch from the strain of trying to disentangle himself from this emotional octopus.
David Bagby (Dance With the Devil: A Memoir of Murder and Loss)