Stiff Upper Lip Quotes

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

Your mother says she will be brave and keep a stiff upper lip,” said Father. “Americans are heartless. I will cry into my pillow every night.

Geez, if I could get through to you, kiddo, that depression is not sobbing and crying and giving vent, it is plain and simple reduction of feeling. Reduction, see? Of all feeling. People who keep stiff upper lips find that it's damn hard to smile.

It was part of war; men died, more would die, that was past, and what mattered now was the business in hand; those who lived would get on with it. Whatever sorrow was felt, there was no point in talking or brooding about it, much less in making, for form’s sake, a parade of it. Better and healthier to forget it, and look to tomorrow. The celebrated British stiff upper lip, the resolve to conceal emotion which is not only embarrassing and useless, but harmful, is just plain commons sense

The smell nearly distracted me from my task, but no-I remained steadfast. Stiff upper lip, Watson! Action! Answers! THEN bacon.

Keeping a stiff upper lip may be needed while around the person invalidating you, but on your own, there is every reason to be compassionate and self-­soothing. It does hurt to be invalidated.

How much of what we think of as an admirable response to trauma - the "stiff upper lip" - is actually dissociation, the mind's attempt to protect us from experiences that are too painful to digest? I can recall the facts, at least some of them. But I don't feel very much. At least, the feelings I have are not kind. They are not sympathetic toward my fifteen-year-old self. It happened. It happens to a lot of women. I survived. Most women do. I am "strong," but in those moments of strength, I don't feel. I will admit that I am very afraid of one thing. Not just afraid. Ashamed. I am afraid that I am incapable of love.

27. So often, we go through our battles in private. As it was with me and with many of the women in my generation. We were taught and reared and molded to keep that stiff upper lip and to never explain in public how deeply some people have hurt us. I cannot get away from that mold. I am comfortable in it. I derive my sanity from it.

After all, the English are really too much. One can't live in that constipated fashion forever.

Stiff upper lips were important and it was one's duty to be brave and to cope with whatever was thrown at one, but that didn't mean that those who eventually crumbled under the strain were cowards. It meant that after years at war, they had reached their personal limit

Jeeves, of course, is a gentleman’s gentlemen, not a butler, but if the call comes, he can buttle with the best of them.

what freedom is to Americans, thoroughness to Germans, and the stiff upper lip to the British, hygge is to Danes.

I shoot from the hip and keep a stiff upper lip. —AC/DC

Joan, Thelma, and Mary, like thousands of others, spent day and night after day and night carrying on with their jobs in the most frightening of conditions. Every day they helped save strangers they didn't know and would never meet. But today it was their friend. Stiff upper lips and getting on with things were all very well, but sometimes there was nothing to do but admit that things were quite simply awful. War was foul and appalling and unfair.

But a thing I’ve often noticed is that when I’ve got something off my mind, it pretty nearly always happens that Fate sidles up and shoves on something else,

WELCOME, ONCE AGAIN, to the beautiful Sinclair family. We believe in outdoor exercise. We believe that time heals. We believe, although we will not say so explicitly, in prescription drugs and the cocktail hour. We do not discuss our problems in restaurants. We do not believe in displays of distress. Our upper lips are stiff, and it is possible people are curious about us because we do not show them our hearts. It is possible that we enjoy the way people are curious about us.

Ah, well,’ I said resignedly, ‘if that’s that, that’s that, what?’ ‘So it would appear, sir.’ ‘Nothing to do but keep the chin up and the upper lip as stiff as can be managed. I think I’ll go to bed with an improving book. Have you read The Mystery of the Pink Crayfish by Rex West?

Human societies train people to "keep a stiff upper lip" and to "be strong" by which they mean the person should endure negative emotions. This is bad advice. Several branches of science have been studying human thriving. The results, when compiled, point to the fact that people thrive when they feel emotionally good and suffer when they do not.

six of the juiciest from a cane of the type that biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder, as the fellow said.

I gave the man one of my looks. My face was cold and hard, like a School Treat egg.

Respectability requires not just a stiff upper lip, but a burying of yourself inside your own flesh in order to be able to maintain the necessary facade.

Why oh why, I thought, are we British brought up to not show emotions? Stiff upper lip and all that. Right now I could have done with the Wailing Wall – all to myself.

A stiff upper lip is much less impressive when its stiffness is caused by its being frozen solid. But

Ignore the stiff upper lip; do not keep calm and carry on. Dig your fingers into your fears and face them head-on. For that is the only way to become free of them.

Stiff upper lip, put on a brave face and pretend that if you can ignore the horrors of the past and think only of the future, then you too will be all right. This was an island of crazy people.

Presenting the world a stiff upper lip was not enough anymore. Now Speke needed to endure—to persevere. Or, as Nile duel moderator David Livingstone liked to say, Speke would need to “Bash on, regardless.

The old saying goes, "keep a stiff upper lip," but as I watch his reflection in the polished, steel walls of the elevator, I think that it isn't the lip we need to worry about. The bottom one gives our terror away. Every single time.

She was heading for the piano, and something told me that it was her intention to sing old folk songs, a pastime to which, as I have indicated, she devoted not a little of her leisure. She was particularly given to indulgence in this nuisance when her soul had been undergoing an upheaval and required soothing, as of course it probably did at this juncture. My fears were realized. She sang two in rapid succession, and the thought that this sort of thing would be a permanent feature of our married life chilled me to the core.

The thing is, though, no matter what you believe about the great beyond, fate, magic—any of it really—sometimes, what you want doesn’t matter. Sometimes, the things waiting in the wings for you will be bigger than you, bigger than all of us, and you have to take it with a sense of grace, compassion, and a stiff upper lip.

You know the only rule you need to know to get on in this country? ‘Never complain, never explain.

Now, clear your minds. It knows what scares you. It has from the very beginning. Don't give it any help, it knows too much already.

I put my chin up and tried to stiffen my upper lip, but found I didn't seem to have any muscles in it.

Show me a delicately nurtured female, and I will show you a ruthless Napoleon of Crime prepared without turning a hair to put the screws on some unfortunate male whose services she happens to be in need of.

My dad was a man of his generation—the Greatest Generation, as it is called, because theirs was the one that grew up in the Depression and fought the Nazis in World War II. But theirs was also the generation of men who never talked about the war, never processed the trauma, kept that stiff upper lip that men were supposed to keep. Which my father did. He also kept his emotional distance from his four daughters.

I found myself gazing into the eyes of the dog Bartholomew, which were fixed on me with the sinister intentness which is characteristic of this breed of animal. Aberdeen terriers, possibly owing to their heavy eyebrows, always seem to look at you as if they were in the pulpit of the church of some particularly strict Scottish sect and you were a parishioner of dubious reputation sitting in the front row of the stalls.

People who often talk about showing a ‘stiff upper lip’ are choosing to suffer in silence, isolating themselves from others and destroying a chance to be authentic and sincere. I have spent time with many male recovering addicts who have healed as a result of talking about their emotional pain and depression. Some of them fought in the first and second wars in Iraq; they are physically hard men and are certainly not ‘weak’.

How? How did you get Torin to Hex Hall?” Dad blinked rapidly, and at first, I thought he was surprised by my question. Then I realized that, no, he was fighting tears. Seeing my father, who practically had a PhD in Stiff Upper Lip, on the verge of crying because he was so happy to see me made my own eyes sting. Then he cleared his throat, straightened his shoulders, and said, “It was exceedingly difficult.” I laughed through my tears. “I bet.” “It was Torin’s idea,” someone said behind me, and I turned to see Izzy standing there. Like my parents and her sister, she was dressed in jeans and a black jacket, although she also had a black cap pulled over her bright hair. “We had tons of old spell books, and after you and Cal disappeared, he started looking through them. Found a spell that would let him travel to a different mirror.” “Of course, the problem was finding your mirror,” Aislinn said, coming out of the darkness. “Aren’t you afraid that he’ll permanently peace out from his mirror and start hanging out in girls’ locker rooms or something?” Aislinn’s eyes slid to Izzy. “Torin has his reasons for wanting to stay with us,” she said, and even in the dim light, I saw red creepy up Izzy’s cheeks. Maybe one day, I’d get to the bottom of whatever was going on there. Preferably once I was done getting to the bottom of the thousand other things on my agenda.

I am not," proceeded Susan firmly, "going to lament or whine or question the wisdom of the Almighty any more as I have been doing lately. Whining and shirking and blaming Providence do not get us anywhere. We have just got to grapple with whatever we have to do whether it is weeding the onion patch, or running the Government. I shall grapple. Those blessed boys have gone to war; and we women, Mrs. Dr. dear, must tarry by the stuff and keep a stiff upper lip.

Tucked away in the English countryside, amid rigid social structures, landed nobility with their stiff upper lips and equally stiff rules about decorum, at a time when the Bennett sisters were worrying about balls, emerged Anne Lister, often called the first modern lesbian. Though "emerged" seems like a rather tame word. Burst. Exploded. Smashed her way double-fisted into a world of men, ran their businesses, and stole their wives. Whatever. Anne Lister arrived.

You wouldn’t think it to look at him, because he’s small and shrimplike and never puts on weight, but Gussie loves food. Watching him tucking into his rations at the Drones, a tapeworm would raise its hat respectfully, knowing that it was in the presence of a master.

You remember the day I lunched at the Ritz?’ ‘Yes, sir. You were wearing an Alpine hat.’ ‘There is no need to dwell on the Alpine hat, Jeeves.’ ‘No, sir.’ ‘If you really want to know, several fellows at the Drones asked me where I had got it.’ ‘No doubt with a view to avoiding your hatter, sir.

He turned, and as I approached him I noted that he seemed even more braced than when last seen. The eyes behind the horn-rimmed spectacles gleamed with a brighter light, and a smile wreathed his lips. He looked like a fish that's just learned that its rich uncle in Australia has pegged out and left it a packet.

You can make sure I look better than Celia, better than all of ’em, in the dailies.” “That’s not what I mean.” “But it’s all you can do.” “Evelyn…” I kept my upper lip stiff. “There’s no move here, Harry.” He understood what I meant. I couldn’t leave Don Adler. “I could talk to Ari.” “I love him,” I said, turning away and clipping my earrings on. It was the truth. Don and I had problems, but so did a lot of people. And he was the only man who had ever ignited something in me. Sometimes I hated myself for wanting him, for finding myself brightening up when his attention was on me, for still needing his approval. But I did. I loved him, and I wanted him in my bed. And I wanted to stay in the spotlight. “End of discussion.

You can't go climbing out of windows under the eyes of an Aberdeen terrier so prone as Bartholomew was always to think the worst. In due season, no doubt, he would learn that what he had taken for a burglar escaping with the swag had been in reality a harmless guest of the house and would be all apologies, but by that time my lower slopes would be as full of holes as a Swiss cheese.

1944 - Exploring London in wartime, a city with stiff upper lip, gritted teeth, clenched fists, makes you realize that Paris is a bit of whore. Every day and every night for weeks now, London has been bleeding and hiding its wounds with impressive dignity. A ‘don’t show off’ attitude prevails. From time to time a sputtering doodle-bug (a VI) shatters the torpor of the overcast sky. One second, sometimes two ... at most three ... of silence. Visualizing that fat cigar with shark fins as it stops dead, sways, idiotically tips over, then goes into a vertical dive. And explodes. Usually it’s an entire building that’s destroyed. Apparently the Civil Defense rescue teams observe a very strict rule of discretion and restraint. You never see any panic. In this impassive city detachment is the expression of panic.

found myself gazing into the eyes of the dog Bartholomew, which were fixed on me with the sinister intentness which is characteristic of this breed of animal. Aberdeen terriers, possibly owing to their heavy eyebrows, always seem to look at you as if they were in the pulpit of the church of some particularly strict Scottish sect and you were a parishioner of dubious reputation sitting in the front row of the stalls.

But a thing I've often noticed is that when I've got something off my mind, it pretty nearly always happens that Fate sidles up and shoves on something else, as if curious to see how much the traffic will bear. It went into its act on the present occasion. Feeling that I needed something else to worry about, it spat on its hands and got down to it, allowing Madeline Bassett to corner me as I was passing through the hall.

Rugby football is more or less a sealed book to me, I never having gone in for it, but even I could see that he was good. The lissomness with which he moved hither and thither was most impressive, as was his homicidal ardour when doing what I believe is called tackling. Like the Canadian Mounted Police he always got his man, and when he did so the air was vibrant with the excited cries of morticians in the audience making bids for the body.

There was a cab standing outside, laden with luggage. From its window Gussie Fink-Nottle’s head was poking out, and I remember thinking once again how mistaken Emerald Stoker had been about his appearance. Seeing him steadily, if not whole, I could detect in his aspect no trace of the lamb, but he was looking so like a halibut that if he hadn’t been wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, a thing halibuts seldom do, I might have supposed myself to be gazing on something a.w.o.l. from a fishmonger’s slab.

Obedience, coercion, severity, and lack of feeling are no longer recognized as absolute values. But the road to the realization of the new ideals is frequently blocked by the need to repress the sufferings of one's childhood, and this leads to a lack of empathy. It is precisely little Katies and Konrads who as adults close their ears to the subject of child abuse (or else minimize its harmfulness), because they themselves claim to have had a "happy childhood". Yet their very lack of empathy reveals the opposite: they had to keep a stiff upper lip at a very early age. Those who actually had the privilege of growing up in an emphatic environment (which is extremely rare, for until recently it was not generally known how much a child can suffer), or who later create an inner emphatic object, are more likely to be open to the suffering of others, or at least will not deny its existence. This is a necessary precondition if old wounds are to heal instead of merely being covered up with the help of the next generation.

She spoke lightly, but I found myself eyeing her with a certain respect. Myself, I’ve never found a host and hostess who could stick my presence for more than about a week. Indeed, long before that as a general rule the conversation at the dinner table is apt to turn on the subject of how good the train service to London is, those present obviously hoping wistfully that Bertram will avail himself of it. Not to mention the time-tables left in your room with a large cross against the 2.35 and the legend ‘Excellent train. Highly recommended.

My father was in the Diplomatic service, and was constantly transferred from one post to another. He was never parted from the clock. It accompanied him in perfect safety from Rome to Vienna, from Vienna to Paris, from Paris to Washington, from Washington to Lisbon. One would have said it was indestructible. But it had still to pass the supreme test of encountering Mr. Wooster, and that was too much for it. It did not occur to Mr. Wooster . . . one cannot think of everything . . . that light may be obtained by pressing a light switch, so he—

This imperative demand for sustenance had probably been coming on during my Erle Stanley Gardnering, but I had been so intent on trying to keep tabs on the murder gun and the substitute gun and the gun which Perry Mason had buried in the shrubbery that I hadn’t noticed it. Only now had the pangs of hunger really started to throw their weight about, and more and more clearly as they did so there rose before my eyes the vision of that steak and kidney pie which was lurking in the kitchen, and it was as though I could hear a soft voice calling to me ‘Come and get it.

It was a superb spectacle while it lasted, and I was able to understand what people meant when they spoke of the Church Militant. A good deal to my regret it did not last long. Spode was full of the will to win, but Stinker had the science. It was not for nothing that he had added a Boxing Blue to his Football Blue when at the old Alma Mater. There was a brief mix-up, and the next thing one observed was Spode on the ground, looking like a corpse which had been in the water several days. His left eye was swelling visibly, and a referee could have counted a hundred over him without eliciting a response.

That's me,' he replied. 'My last year at school. I skippered the side that season. That's old Scrubby Willoughby sitting next to me. Fast wing threequarter, but never would learn to give the reverse pass.' 'He wouldn't?' I said, shocked. I hadn't the remotest what he was talking about, but he had said enough to show me that this Willoughby must have been a pretty dubious character, and when he went on to tell me that poor old Scrubby had died of cirrhosis of the liver in the Federal Malay States, I wasn't really surprised. I imagine these fellows who won't learn to give the reverse pass generally come to a fairly sticky end.

The watching feeling is getting worse. I am not an experiment. I am not a stupid joke, or a trippy game, or an experiment. I will not go insane. Something bad is gonnae happen, though. I can feel it. It’s in the way that crisp bag has faded from the rain. I am not an experiment. If I keep saying it, I’ll start believing it. I have to try. I am not an experiment. It doesnae sound convincing. It sounds stupid. Try it in German. Ich bin nicht eine experiment. My German’s shite. Inhale slowly to the count of four, look hard at the tip of my nose and try again. This time I go for an official BBC broadcaster circa-1940 accent. Today, one finds one is not, in actual fact, a social experiment. One is a real person. This is real actual skin as seen containing the bodily organs of a real actual human being with a heart and soul and dreams. It’s true that I came from real people once too, and they were a jolly old sort, with no naked psycho-ess in any way. I, the young Miss Anais, understand wholly that I am just a human being that no one is interested in. No experiment. No outside fate. I am not that important, and that is just fine by me. I propose a stiff upper lip and onward Christian soldiers, quick-bloody-march! This is Anais Hendricks, telling the nation: to be me is really quite spiff-fucking-spoff, lashings of love, your devoted BBC broadcaster since 1938.

We had reached the upstairs corridor, and Sir Watkyn Bassett was emerging from his room, humming a light air. It died on his lips as he saw me, and he stood staring at me aghast. He reminded me of one of those fellows who spend the night in haunted houses and are found next morning dead to the last drop with a look of awful horror on their faces. ‘Oh, Daddy,’ said Madeline. ‘I forgot to tell you. I asked Bertie to come here for a few days.’ Pop Bassett swallowed painfully. ‘When you say a few days - ?’ ‘At least a week, I hope.’ ‘Good God!’ ‘If not longer.’ ‘Great heavens!’ ‘There is tea in the drawing-room, Daddy.’ ‘I need something stronger than tea,’ said Pop Bassett in a low, husky voice, and he tottered off, a broken man.

My disapproval extended to the personnel of the various native tribes he had encountered in the course of his explorations. On his own showing, he had for years been horning in uninvited on the aborigines of Brazil, the Congo and elsewhere, and not one of them apparently had had the enterprise to get after him with a spear or to say it with poisoned darts from the family blowpipe. And these were fellows who called themselves savages. Savages, forsooth! The savages in the books I used to read in my childhood would have had him in the Obituary column before he could say 'What ho', but with the ones you get nowadays it's all slackness and laissez-faire. Can't be bothered. Leave it to somebody else. Let George do it. One sometimes wonders what the world's coming to.

All this time Bartholomew had been trying to join us, making a series of energetic springs. Fortunately Providence in its infinite wisdom had given Scotties short legs, and though full of the will to win he could accomplish nothing constructive. However much an Aberdeen terrier may bear 'mid snow and ice a banner with the strange device Excelsior, he nearly always has to be content with dirty looks and the sharp, passionate bark. Some minutes later my fellow-rooster came out of the silence. No doubt the haughtiness of my manner had intimidated him, for there was a mildness in his voice which had not been there before. 'Mr. Wooster.' I turned coldly. 'Were you addressing me, Bassett?' 'There must be something we can do.' 'You might fine the animal five pounds.

These patrons of livings with vicarages to bestow always hold rather rigid views as regards the qualifications they demand from the curates they are thinking of promoting to fields of higher activity, and left hooks, however adroit, are not among them. If Pop Bassett had been a fight promoter on the look-out for talent and Stinker a promising novice anxious to be put on his next programme for a six-round preliminary bout, he would no doubt have gazed on him with a kindly eye. As it was, the eye he was now directing at him was as cold and bleak as if an old crony had been standing before him in the dock, charged with having moved pigs without a permit or failed to abate a smoky chimney. I could see trouble looming, and I wouldn't have risked a bet on the happy e. even at the most liberal odds.

The cultural code of the stiff upper lip is not for her boys. She is teaching them that it is not “sissy” to show their feelings to others. When she took Prince William to watch the German tennis star Steffi Graff win the women’s singles final at Wimbledon last year they left the royal box to go backstage and congratulate her on her victory. As Graff walked off court down the dimly lit corridor to the dressing room, royal mother and son thought Steffi looked so alone and vulnerable out of the spotlight. So first Diana, then William gave her a kiss and an affectionate hug. The way the Princess introduced her boys to her dying friend, Adrian Ward-Jackson, was a practical lesson in seeing the reality of life and death. When Diana told her eldest son that Adrian had died, his instinctive response revealed his maturity. “Now he’s out of pain at last and really happy.” At the same time the Princess is acutely aware of the added burdens of rearing two boys who are popularly known as “the heir and the spare.” Self-discipline is part of the training. Every night at six o’clock the boys sit down and write thank-you notes or letters to friends and family. It is a discipline which Diana’s father instilled in her, so much so that if she returns from a dinner party at midnight she will not sleep easily unless she has penned a letter of thanks. William and Harry, now ten and nearly eight respectively, are now aware of their destiny. On one occasion the boys were discussing their futures with Diana. “When I grow up I want to be a policeman and look after you mummy,” said William lovingly. Quick as a flash Harry replied, with a note of triumph in his voice, “Oh no you can’t, you’ve got to be king.

my reworking of that marvellous list. 1. Live as enjoyably as you can within financial reason. 2. If you have a bath, draw an inch or two of cold water and splash about in it. A cold shower will have the same uplifting effect. 3. Never stay up all night watching Netflix Originals about serial killers. 4. DON’T THINK TOO FAR AHEAD. EVENING IS FINE, BUT TOMORROW CAN LOOK AFTER ITSELF. 5. Keep reasonably busy. 6. See as much as you can of the friends who like you, support you and make you laugh. See as little as you can of the friends who judge you, compare you to others and tire you (and don’t pretend you don’t know who they are). 7. Apply the same rules to casual acquaintances. If your instincts tell you they are toxic, walk away and don’t look back. 8. If you are low in the water, do not pretend that you aren’t. It makes it so much worse, and A STIFF UPPER LIP ONLY GIVES YOU A SORE JAW. 9. Good coffee and tea are a genuine help. 10. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES OR FOR ANY REASON AT ANY TIME COMPARE YOURSELF TO ANYONE ELSE. 11. Cultivate a gentle, healthy pessimism. It can result in more nice surprises. 12. Avoid drama about what is wrong with the world (unless it is funny), emotionally powerful music, other sad people, and anything likely to make you feel anxious or that you are not doing enough. 13. RANDOM ACTS OF KINDNESS ARE HUMAN ANTIDEPRESSANTS. 14. Form a close bond with a local tree. 15. Make the room you most like sitting in as much of a comfy nest as you can. 16. Listen to David Attenborough. 17. STOP JUDGING YOURSELF. STOP PUNISHING YOURSELF. IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT. 18. Keep warm. 19. Think as much as you can about space, infinity and the beyond. Anything that much bigger than you can be very relaxing. 20. Trust me.

Name it, Jeeves. Ask of me what you will, even unto half my kingdom.' 'If you could see your way to abandoning your Alpine hat, sir.' I ought to have seen it coming. That cough should have told me. But I hadn't, and the shock was severe. For an instant I don't mind admitting that I reeled. 'You would go as far as that?' I said, chewing the lower lip. 'It was merely a suggestion, sir.' I took the hat off and gazed at it. The morning sunlight played on it, and it had never looked so blue, its feather so pink. 'I suppose you know you're breaking my heart?' 'I am sorry, sir.' I sighed. But, as I have said, the Woosters can take it. 'Very well, Jeeves. So be it.' I gave him the hat. It made me feel like a father reluctantly throwing his child from the sledge to divert the attention of the pursuing wolf pack, as I believe happens all the time in Russia in the winter months, but what would you?

Major Plank?' he said. Plank, too, was goggling. 'Who on earth are you?' 'Chief Inspector Witherspoon, sir, of Scotland Yard. Has this man been attempting to obtain money from you?' 'Just been doing that very thing.' 'As I suspected. We have had our eye on him for a long time, but till now have never been able to apprehend him in the act.' 'Notorious crook, is he?' 'Precisely, sir. He is a confidence man of considerable eminence in the underworld, who makes a practice of calling at houses and extracting money from their owners with some plausible story.' 'He does more than that. He pinches things from people and tries to sell them. Look at that statuette he's holding. It's a thing I sold to Sir Watkyn Bassett, who lives at Totleigh-in-the-Wold, and he had the cool cheek to come here and try to sell it to me for five pounds.' 'Indeed, sir? With your permission I will impound the object.' 'You'll need it as evidence?' 'Exactly, sir. I shall now take him to Totleigh Towers and confront him with Sir Watkyn.' 'Yes, do. That'll teach him. Nasty hangdog look the fellow's got. I suspected from the first he was wanted by the police. Had him under observation for a long time, have you?' 'For a very long time, sir. He is known to us at the Yard as Alpine Joe, because he always wears an Alpine hat.' 'He's got it with him now.' 'He never moves without it.' 'You'd think he'd have the sense to adopt some rude disguise.' 'You would indeed, sir, but the mental processes of a man like that are hard to follow.' 'Then there's no need for me to phone the local police?' 'None, sir. I will take him into custody.' 'You wouldn't like me to hit him over the head first with a Zulu knobkerrie?' 'Unnecessary, sir.' 'It might be safer.' 'No, sir, I am sure he will come quietly.' 'Well, have it your own way. But don't let him give you the slip.' 'I will be very careful, sir.' 'And shove him into a dungeon with dripping walls and see to it that he is well gnawed by rats.' 'Very good, sir.

simple mindful meditation technique for beginners is described below: Find a quiet and well-aerated room to practice your meditation in. Sit comfortably on a chair, or you can sit on the floor. Ensure that your posture is relaxed and that your shoulder and neck muscles are not tense. Your head, neck, and spine should be aligned but not tense or stiff. Bring your mind to the present by pulling all your focus to the here and now. Concentrate on your breathing, feel the breath enter your body as you inhale, and feel the air exit your body as you exhale. Take deep breaths all the time, focusing on the sensation of the rising and falling of your diaphragm. To make it easier to focus on your breathing, you can place one hand on your upper chest and the other above your navel. This will aid you in engaging your diaphragm when breathing in and out. Breath in slowly through your nose, as you inhale, the hand on your navel area should feel your stomach rise gradually as the air enters your body. On the exhale, let the breath out through your mouth with your lips slight pursued. As you exhale, the hand on the navel area should feel the stomach relax and fall back into the starting position. As thoughts pop up in your mind, do not quash or try to suppress them; simply turn your attention back to your breathing and focus on the inhale and exhale motions of rising and falling. Stay in this state for at least 10 minutes, always pulling your focus back to the present and away from thoughts and emotions by simply focusing on your breathing. At the end of the 10 minutes, rise slowly from your position, and allow your mind to become gradually aware of your surroundings.

The fact that we go about our lives as though the survival of the world is not at stake is not the sign of a stiff upper lip. It is the sign, rather, of a society not yet able or willing to hold a conversation about its deepest pain.

It was then and there, while sitting alone at the kitchen table with only a faint glimmer of light from the oven, that Ella realized that despite her high-flying words denying it, and despite her ability to keep a stiff upper lip, deep inside she longed for love.

I felt alone. There is part of this disease that belongs only to me. I never felt comfortable sharing the moments when logic left and the pain of the treatment magnified the risk of dying, when fear did come in. What could the people who love me do, anyway, I figured. It would only make them feel lousy that they could not honestly say anything that would change the reality I was facing. This is the catch-22: We protect them when they want and need to protect us, when they know we want and need protection. With each side protecting the other, neither of us gets what we want or need. But I always figured it was impossible to get what we needed. I had the disease, they could not change that. All I could do was guess what their reaction would be to my expression of my fears—impotence, I guessed—and what was the point of that? I kept from them my greatest fears precisely because they would respond with protestations that this was about tending to me, not about tending to them. And they, though they might keep a stiff upper lip with me, would, I discovered later, fall apart alone in fear and grief. They could not ask me to carry them through this. In our way of being gentle with each other, we never really see it from each other’s perspective. I had to decide what I should share. My conclusion? I have shared very little. Maybe not talking about the fear was better anyway, not allowing it to own any more of me than it already did. And if it is not better, well, fortunately, we have more days to get it right.

For his tears were entirely genuine, born out of a grief that surpassed not only words but the years of upbringing that had taught him to keep a stiff upper lip.

Looking back now, I don’t ever remember talking about it with anyone afterwards. We may have seen the shock and fear in each other’s eyes but there was never any discussion about what we’d experienced. This stunned silence is a feature of the Black experience in the UK, where we seem to have internalised our struggle for so long and our survival strategy is choosing not to speak. Some issues like mental health are often taboo in our community, as if we’ve somehow absorbed the British stiff upper lip culture, a culture of ‘just get on with it’. There’s even widespread denial that these experiences of racism exist. But I’m encouraged by the many older Black people who have approached me after Psychosis and Me aired to tell me: ‘Young man. Just want to say well done. Very important you talk ’bout dem tings deh, bout mental health, very important. Nice, yeah. Well done.

Was it ghastly?" I remembered the sunlit summer of 1940, the crowds rushing from Paris, as from a fire, to join the snake-like lines of mattress-topped cars that drove slow, slower and slowest of all just before their closely packed passengers scattered into ditches where the dive bombers still found them. I remembered Nice with its sea and sky and palm trees still as bright as new travel posters and its sidewalks crowded with the most typical of twentieth-century tourists: displaced persons. I remembered the sensation of living in a dull fear-encircled vacuum and the incredulous joy with which I greeted my husband when he arrived hollow-eyed from his narrow escape and long hitch-hike across two countries. I remembered Lyons in the unheated winters, the wind scything between the cliff-like gray houses and inserting itself into the city's labyrinth of passageways. I remembered the turnip meals, the recurrent colds and chilblains, the disinclination to wash in icy water, the sordid temporary lodgings and false identity cards, the drearily uncomfortable atmosphere, and the exhilarating meetings with friends who had also escaped arrest. And then I remembered my husband's arrest and the nightmare that followed. "Yes," I said, repudiating stiff upper lips, "yes, it was ghastly.

I shivered as I nodded. I could take a few slaps to the ass. If it would dispel the anger in him, then it would be worth it. How bad could it be? I’d employ my British stiff upper lip and get it over with.

Humans are frail in our eyes today, and we secretly wonder whether those with poise and stiff upper lips are merely ticking time bombs. The freak-out allows us to feel we’re not alone in our inner panic.

The taxidermist’s head was much too big for the rest of his body. His face and particularly his enormous ears had ugly patches of stiff bristles that only something like a hedge clipper could remove. He had miniature tusks for his lower incisors that extended in sharp points above his upper lip. Instead of a nose, he had a snout brimming with a yellow mucous that oozed into his mouthful of jagged, discolored teeth.

If he was paralyzed, we'd have to put in ramps and have things altered for wheelchair access; you can get kitchens refitted; bathrooms altered ... I'd get him a really fast wheelchair. It'd be OK. If he couldn't talk, I'd get him a great computer. Anything can be dealt with, everything can be overcome. Just be alive. Just, please God, I beg you, please, please keep him alive for me.

I’m just sick of people who aren’t neurotypical, or who had a hard past, or who can’t be normal, having to have a stiff upper lip and change themselves if they want people to get them or care about them. I’m sorry, but it’s bullshit. Maybe those neurotypical people should consider changing their own thoughts about what’s normal and what’s not, and stop expecting other people to magically change their lives.” The

We called him Mr. Cold. A name, I think, Zeke made up. Anyway, Zeke was the first one I heard say it during third-period art one day, and my laughter turned from tittering to inconsolable, if laughter can be called inconsolable. Mr. Coles had a young, elfin face with tidily groomed hair on his cheeks and chin, none on his upper lip. He was handsome. Impossibly, even freakishly, handsome—strong cheekbones and a smooth dark complexion—a fact I had to reluctantly admit and one that most of the girls never let anyone forget. Hair all black while most of his peers sported grays and bad dye jobs. And Mr. Coles always smiled, even when angry and trying to be stern, especially when angry and trying to be stern. All of this is why we treated him poorly and why he overcompensated, first attempting to come across as a pal, a trustworthy big brother, and when that failed turning into a hard-ass for a time, though he was a phony hard-ass, one we could see clear through. Rarely, if ever, did we tremble in fear at his silly yelling and stiff pointing finger. Marshall, Mr. Coles called to me as I choked on laughter after he grew upset from Zeke’s taunting. Marshall, it’s funny, but that’s enough. This just caused us to laugh more. The warmest man in the school, Mr. Cold, then sent Ezekiel into the hallway as his mentor, Mr. Drayton, probably advised him to do. Damn, that’s cold-blooded, Mr. Cold, a proud and smiling Zeke said on his way out to another rise in laughter. The next time we saw Mr. Coles, he was stiff and stern. Even his movements changed to reflect the new him.

not being around people is what makes you feel safe, then you shouldn’t fucking have to sacrifice that for a man. I’m so sick of people acting like…” The sudden rush of defensiveness and anger inside me led to seriously ragey word vomit. “I’m just sick of people who aren’t neurotypical, or who had a hard past, or who can’t be normal, having to have a stiff upper lip and change themselves if they want people to get them or care about them. I’m sorry, but it’s bullshit. Maybe those neurotypical people should consider changing their own thoughts about what’s normal and what’s not, and stop expecting other people to magically change their lives.” The

You know what they say: All Welshmen sing. All Scots are thrifty. All Englishmen have stiff upper lips. And all Irishmen write plays.

In other words, what freedom is to Americans, thoroughness to Germans, and the stiff upper lip to the British, hygge is to Danes.

Britain: A nation that keeps a stiff upper lip, takes it on the chin without complaining, plays fair at all times and is by and large: “the gentleman of the world.” Anything else old boy, just wouldn’t be cricket … This is the image of itself that Britain likes to promote, at home and abroad. However, the idea that the ‘United Kingdom’ plays fair or by the rules is just as mythical as its status as an imaginary fifth nation that replaced four real sovereign countries. This booklet aims to burst that myth and also aims to provide solid proof that the United Kingdom is anything but ‘united.

She's going to keep up her public facade of stoicism and generosity and getting on with thungs. She knows she can do it, she can do the stiff upper lip thing. I will survive. But behind closed doors the going is rough. It's when she is alone that it hits her. And she is often alone, too often, she things no one should have to be alone as much as she is. It should have been me: her mind is a morass of old songs now, Errol Brown started it. It should have been me.

We encounter this sometimes in our own circles today, as believers often feel obliged to smile in public even if they collapse at home in private despair. Calvin counters, “Such a cheerfulness is not required of us as to remove all feeling of bitterness and pain.” It is not as the Stoics of old foolishly described “the great-souled man”: one who, having cast off all human qualities, was affected equally by adversity and prosperity, by sad times and happy ones—nay, who like a stone was not affected at all. . . . Now, among the Christians there are also new Stoics, who count it depraved not only to groan and weep but also to be sad and care-ridden. These paradoxes proceed, for the most part, from idle men who, exercising themselves more in speculation than in action, can do nothing but invent such paradoxes for us. Yet we have nothing to do with this iron philosophy which our Lord and Master has condemned not only by his word, but also by his example. For he groaned and wept both over his own and others’ misfortunes. . . . And that no one might turn it into a vice, he openly proclaimed, “Blessed are those who mourn.”35 Especially given how some of Calvin’s heirs have confused a Northern European “stiff upper lip” stoicism with biblical piety, it is striking how frequently he rebuts this “cold” philosophy that would “turn us to stone.”36 Suffering is not to be denied or downplayed, but arouses us to flee to the asylum of the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit. It is quite unimaginable that this theology of the cross will top the best-seller lists in our “be good–feel good” culture, but those who labor under perpetual sorrows, as Calvin did, will find solidarity in his stark realism: Then only do we rightly advance by the discipline of the cross when we learn that this life, judged in itself, is troubled, turbulent, unhappy in countless ways, and in no respect clearly happy; that all those things which are judged to be its goods are uncertain, fleeting, vain, and vitiated by many intermingled evils. From this, at the same time, we conclude that in this life we are to seek and hope for nothing but struggle; when we think of our crown, we are to raise our eyes to heaven. For this we must believe: that the mind is never seriously aroused to desire and ponder the life to come unless it is previously imbued with contempt for the present life.37

British toilet paper. A way of life. Coated. Refusing to absorb, soften, or bend (stiff upper lip).

dear little baby of the folks I work for, I got a present for you .. my whole damn life! I'm handin' it over to you & your ma & pa. if you got no money to pay, I wanna stay anyhow, my pleasure is to wait on you forever. to hell with my children & hooray for you!.. you stayin' up all night fixin' up Character Parts for me! givin' 'em what you call dignity! dignity! you know what your dignity is? a black straw hat with a flower stickin' up in front, hands folded cross my stomach, sayin' the same damn fool things .. only nice & easy & proper!" --trouble in mind (1955)

God calls us to have strength in our character and conduct, not simply a stiff upper lip in sorrow or a stubborn persistence during hardship. Secondarily, because the word is “passive voice,” we know that the strength God demands He also provides. The strength does not come from a place inside us but a source beyond ourselves, namely, the Lord.

It’s just such a lost feeling to not know who I am, or how I fit in this world. I had no choice but to forge ahead . . . stiff upper lip and all. But from where I was forging . . . I didn’t have a center post to ground me.

Respectability requires a form of restrained, emotionally neutral politeness that is completely at odds with any concept of normal human emotions. The emotional labor required to be respectable, to never ruffle anyone’s feathers, to not get angry enough to challenge much less confront those who might have harmed you, is incredibly onerous precisely because it is so dehumanizing. Respectability requires not just a stiff upper lip, but a burying of yourself inside your own flesh in order to be able to maintain the necessary facade. It requires erasing your memory of how it felt to be hungry, cold, scared, and so on until all that is left is a placid surface to mask the raging maelstrom underneath. We talk about stress and illness, but the stress of respectability is unparalleled. You muffle yourself over and over, until the screaming is in your veins, in your high blood pressure and lower life expectancy. And then as you look around, you realize that you didn’t even get the respect, the validation, or the comfort that you thought was waiting on the other side. You’ve pulled away from the messy, loud, emotional spaces that represent the less respectable side of you and your culture, but at what cost?

My pa once said to me, ‘Son, keep a stiff upper lip.’ So if things get bad, you bash your face against a wall till your lip bleeds, and you’ll feel better.

Instead of chiding him, John steadily advanced more money in 1884, retired his debts, provided income for his family, and rallied his bruised spirits, saying, “Keep a stiff upper lip, clean up as you go, and the skies will brighten by and bye.

Paul, though, could say not only that he was content but that he could be content “in whatever situation I am.” This is what everyone is searching for! What was the secret, then? It was to ground his sense of self and his outlook on life in the sufficiency of the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul didn’t champion a stiff upper lip in the face of hardship or offer a false gospel of self-sufficiency. No, his contentment was the result of bowing his heart and mind to God’s will, no matter what conditions he faced.

The door in a nook of a stone bridge led me to grandly decorated passages, candlelit. Eerie and beautiful all at once. I became increasingly anxious as I breathed in, out, my air out into the air of the passageway, and the passageway’s air entering me. A cycle of life in stone. Salty, bitter air. Like a night-sweat. Like insomnia. You wake, sweating and you are paralysed and sweat. You lick your upper lip (not such a stiff upper lip now), and that is what you taste. The sweat of stone, the sickly-sweet decorum of history on the palette.

The emotional labor required to be respectable, to never ruffle anyone’s feathers, to not get angry enough to challenge much less confront those who might have harmed you, is incredibly onerous precisely because it is so dehumanizing. Respectability requires not just a stiff upper lip, but a burying of yourself inside your own flesh in order to be able to maintain the necessary facade. It requires erasing your memory of how it felt to be hungry, cold, scared, and so on until all that is left is a placid surface to mask the raging maelstrom underneath. We talk about stress and illness, but the stress of respectability is unparalleled

have been so unhappy’ and then . . . ‘your mother lived a few miles away and didn’t work – why were you even

Kennedy was almost British in his style. Grace under pressure was that much-quoted phrase describing a quality which Kennedy so admired, and so wanted as a description of his own behavior. It was very much a British quality: to undergo great hardship and stress and never flinch, never show emotion. Weaker, less worthy Mediterranean peoples showed emotion when pressure was applied, but the British kept both their upper and lower lips stiff. The British were loath to show their emotions, and so was Jack Kennedy.

Oh shit, I thought, if this isn’t the Low King of the Dwarves then I’m the President of the Cricklewood Branch of the Women’s Institute. It all fit—apart from the fact that he wasn’t a dwarf, nor did he appear to be a king, and they made dinner plates, not swords or rings of power. Still, definitely another bloody genius loci or something almost as powerful. Nightingale was going to throw a fit. Albeit in a restrained stiff-upper-lip fashion. “My name,” whispered the man, “is Mathew Ten-Tons and this is my daughter Elizabeth.

you develop the ability to process complex emotions such as grief, rage, sadness, anxiety, or fear. When you do not know how to allow these feelings to pass through you, how to make sense of them, learn from them, or simply just allow them, you get stuck on them. You bury them, and then everything around you becomes a trigger that threatens to unleash the floodgates. You might think it’s about keeping a stiff upper lip, but it’s not. It’s about crying when life is sad, being angry in the face of injustice, and being determined to create a solution when a problem arises. That responsiveness, instead of reactiveness, defines mental strength.

So I’m not sure what I can actually add to the whole – I’m just not completely down with emoting, you know? Like this. Feels a bit – dickish. Sorry. Fuck it. So basically I was in my dad’s kitchen making a sandwich and then all of a sudden this guy, still in his airline chair, just crashed into the garden. Wee – Bop. Like a cartoon – a really fucking dark Tim Burton cartoon or something. And I – for the first couple of seconds he was alive, and then he wasn’t. And I’m a twat, and I’ll feel guilty for this for the whole of my life, but the first thing I thought was just – that song – ‘It’s Raining Men!’ Sorry. […] And I was just staring at the chair guy, like this – (Eyes wide open.) He looked up at me, and he caught my eye for a moment, and then he just died. The light just went out – quietly, and softly – And the thing is, he looked so kind. Pause. And we had to move out of the house for a week, and when we came back chair guy was gone, and they’d tidied everything up as best they could, jet-washed everything, you know – fucked up the whole garden, actually – but there was still this gash in the grass, and on the wall behind there was this black stain – which was like corpse juice or something. Charming. And for six months me and my dad ignored the black stain on the wall with this sort of studied indifference – I love him for that – we made no mention of it at all – stiff upper lip, all that shit – but neither of us went out into the garden either. And then one day I came back home, and the wall had been painted white, and there was this trellis and like roses or something planted against the wall, and the gash had this chiminea over it. And I missed the black stain on the wall, actually. Weirdly. And when I went to the inquest to give my little spiel – it’ll go on for like four years or something, so it’s awesome that I’ve done mine already – and Chairy – The Man Who Fell to Earth – his name was actually Sunny Mir – Sunny Mir – which is such an awesome name – and he was forty-seven, and he was a doctor from High Barnet. I didn’t say anything, in the inquest, about him still being alive. His family were there and I didn’t want them to – so I totally bossed the inquest – smashed it – I kept that between me and Sunny. Our little secret.

Fun had nothing to do with it, we celebrated whether we felt like it or not, because there was a war on. stiff upper lip, you know!

To be effective in their imperial roles, the sons of the empire needed to have the instinct of pining for home snuffed out, early and forever. The tightly wound “Brit” of caricature often had his stiff upper lip cast in the furnace of English boarding school life, where his emotions were cauterized. The resultant, desensitized functionary could be reliably deployed far from home—whether in Calcutta, Cape Town or Calgary.