#tension

I felt like I was some kind of primitive spring-loaded machine, placed under far more tension than it had ever been built to sustain, about to blast apart at great danger to anyone standing nearby. I imagined my body parts flying off my torso in order to escape the volcanic core of unhappiness that had become: me. ↗

— Elizabeth Gilbert

#tension #unhappiness #imagination

Life lived amidst tension and busyness needs leisure. Leisure that recreates and renews. Leisure should be a time to think new thoughts, not ponder old ills. ↗

— C. Neil Strait

#leisure #life #recreate #renew #tension

Do you know what I see in you now? The usual aura. A steady golden yellow, healthy and strong, with spikes of purple here and there. But when I do this. . . .” He rested a hand on my hip, and my whole body tensed up. That hand moved around my hip, slipping under my shirt to rest on the small of my back. My skin burned where he touched me, and the places that were untouched longed for that heat. “See?” he said. He was in the throes of spirit now, though with me at the same time. “Well, I guess you can’t. But when I touch you, your aura . . . it smolders. The colors deepen, it burns more intensely, the purple increases. Why? Why, Sydney?” He used that hand on me to pull me closer. “Why do you react that way if I don’t mean anything to you?” There was a desperation in his voice, and it was legitimate. ↗

— Richelle Mead

#angst #attraction #aura #denial-of-feelings #feelings

He(Prophet Muhammad) was Caesar and Pope in one; but he was Pope without Pope's pretensions, Caesar without the legions of Caesar: without a standing army, without a bodyguard, without a palace, without a fixed revenue; if ever any man had the right to say that he ruled by the right divine, it was Muhammad, for he had all the power without its instruments and without its supports. ↗

— Reverend B. Smith

#atheist #bodyguard #caesar #christian #divine

Right now, politics follows the rules of talk radio - using conflict, tension, fear, and resentment to find new recruits. ↗

— John Avlon

#fear #find #follows #new #now

There's always been a lot of pressure and tension on the line. If 'Pi' didn't work out, I have no idea what my career would be. I don't think I would have gotten another shot at it. If 'Requiem for a Dream' didn't work out, they would have called me a 'one-hit wonder with a sophomore slump'. ↗

— Darren Aronofsky

#another #been #called #career #dream

The privilege of ruling would be in the hands of the skilled and the learned, with a wide scope left for profitable crooked deals carried on by the Jews, who would be attracted by the enormous extension of the international speculations of the national banks. ↗

— Mikhail Bakunin

#banks #carried #crooked #deals #enormous

There is a strong tendency in explanatory prose to invoke quantities of tension, energy, and whatnot to explain the genesis of pattern. I believe that all such explanations are inappropriate or wrong. ↗

— Gregory Bateson

#energy #explain #explanations #genesis #i

But for me, it feels like a natural extension of what I've been doing: exploring relationships. Here you have two relationships and we can explore how difficult it is for people to be together. ↗

— Neil LaBute

#difficult #doing #explore #exploring #extension

Throughout America's young history there has been a necessary tension between the individual and the group. ↗

— Harold Evans

#been #between #group #history #individual