#tension

The extension of women's rights is the basic principle of all social progress. ↗

— Charles Fourier

#basic #basic principle #extension #principle #progress

Lazarus had never thought of himself as lovable. Therefore it should come as no shock at all that Temperance did not, in fact, love him. No, not a shock... but it would have been nice had she had some small feeling for him. Lazarus pondered his own sickening craving as he guided his black gelding through the London morning throng the day after he'd walked out on Temperance. It appeared that his own nascent emotions had provoked a new desire as well: the urge to be loved. How banal. And yet, banal or not, he could not change the way his heart felt. A corner of his mouth quirked up humorlessly. It seemed he must be like other men after all. ↗

— Elizabeth Hoyt

#lazarussgextraordinaire #wicked-intensions #change

People like her because she's like a breath of fresh air. Because in the fifth book it gets so dark and Harry's always cross and then every time Luna comes in all the tension goes and she makes you laugh because she's so funny and really honest. I don't know how much I'm like her, there are some similarities but I'm more determined than her. ↗

— Evanna Lynch

#always #because #book #breath #comes

I've missed London so much for its fashion. No disrespect to the girls in Manchester, but some really do look like clones - there's a lot of hair extensions and fake tans. You're free to experiment down here. ↗

— Kaya Scodelario

#disrespect #down #experiment #extensions #fake

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

...what goes on inside believers is mysterious. So far as it can be guessed at - if for some reason you wanted to guess at it - it appears to be a kind of anxious pretending, a kind of continual, nervous resistance to reality. It looks as if, to a believer, things can never be allowed just to be what they are. They always have to be translated, moralised - given an unnecessary and rather sentimental extra meaning. A sunset can't just be part of the mixed magnificence and cruelty and indifference of the world; it has to be a blessing. A meal has to be a present you're grateful for, even if it came from Tesco and the ingredients cost you £7.38. Sex can't be the spectrum of experiences you get used to as an adult, from occasional earthquake through to mild companionable buzz; it has to be, oh dear oh dear, a special thing that happens when mummies and daddies love each other very much... Our fingers must be in our ears all the time - lalala, I can't hear you - just to keep out the plain sound of the real world. The funny thing is that to me it's exactly the other way around. In my experience, it's belief that involves the most uncompromising attention to the nature of things of which you are capable. It's belief which demands that you dispense with illusion after illusion, while contemporary common sense requires continual, fluffy pretending. Pretending that might as well be systematic, it's so thoroughly incentivised by our culture. ↗

— Francis Spufford

#unapologetic #experience

There's a basic kind of tension here. It's between those who say, I'd like to clear cut this forest and reduce it to saw timber because that's an economically productive thing for me to do. ↗

— Bruce Babbitt

#because #between #clear #cut #economically

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