Top 100 Tense Quotes

#1. It surprised me that I was already using the past tense. People I knew. As if I didn't know them anymore.

Ashley Newell

#2. Carisoprodol. Comes in a white tablet like a big-ass vitamin, 350 mg of muscle liquefier for those tense, recovering athletes and furniture movers. Too much, and those relaxed muscles include your diaphragm, then your heart.

Craig Clevenger

#3. Musical chairs or Russian roulette? Sometimes there's as much tense drama in the casting of a Hollywood movie as there is in the finished product.

Richard Corliss

#4. Chronocanine Envy:
Sadness experienced when one realized that, unlike one's dog, one cannot live only in the present tense. As Kierkegaard said, Life must be lived forward.

Douglas Coupland

#5. Someone once said that dancers work just as hard as policeman, always alert, always tense. But i dont agree with that because policeman don't have to look beautiful at the same time *

George Balanchine

#6. Inject laughter into tense situations to save the day; laughter calms tempers and soothes jangled nerves.

Wilferd Peterson

#7. It wasn't until the morning after my uneventful shift, when I wake up, dazed and tense and frustrated as hell, that I realize I'm getting obsessed with that girl, my partner, and this thing is running me ragged.

Charlotte Penn Clark

#8. America has become so tense and nervous it has been years since I have seen anyone sleep in church - and that is a sad situation.

Norman Vincent Peale

#9. Loved. You can't use it in the past tense. Death does not stop that love at all.

Ken Kesey

#10. Musclemen grow on trees. They can tense their muscles and look good in a mirror. So what? I'm interested in practical strength that's going to help me run, jump, twist, punch.

Jason Statham

#11. Worse, you all present tense and have to deal with sudden past tense all around you. It's like realizing somebody rob you a year late.

Marlon James

#12. It's always tense when you move a character from a book to the screen. Always tense.

Lee Child

#13. I love getting ready to do a scene, and thinking about it, and talking about it. But the rest of the time, I'm so nervous and obsessed. I'm just tearing my hair out in the trailer. The whole time I'm really tense.

Casey Affleck

#14. I think it rather fine, this necessity for the tense bracing of the will before anything worth doing can be done. I rather like it myself. I feel it is to be the chief thing that differentiates me from the cat by the fire.

Arnold Bennett

#15. Your like herpes you show up when shit gets tense, and never fully go away! - (Cooper to Violet)

Ann Charles

#16. In the glass she wore an expression of tense melancholy, for she had come to the depressing conclusion, since the arrival of the Dalloways, that her face was not the face she wanted, and in all probability never would be.

Virginia Woolf

#17. Chevy Stevens is in top form. ALWAYS WATCHING is a tense and twisty exploration of dark memories, hidden pasts, and a place that seems like heaven but might be hell. This is a deep and exciting novel, as unsettling as it is gripping.

Lisa Unger

#18. Everything is always happening all at once, in the present tense, forever, the beginning and the end and the denouement and the remaindering.

Catherynne M Valente

#19. A money-lender
he serves you in the present tense; he lends you in the conditional mood; keeps you in the conjunctive; and ruins you in the future.

Joseph Addison

#20. He doesn't scowl, but his mouth is so tense that I know he's angry with me. 'Don't be an idiot,' he says.
'An idiot?' Is he talking about the blanket?
'You were lying.

Veronica Roth

#21. We can't handle violence in women characters but we CAN handle what's done to women in our present tense every second of the day worldwide? Or next door? Or in political or medical discourse? Please. That idea just makes me want to crap on a table at a very fancy restaurant.

Lidia Yuknavitch

#22. I loved her present tense.

John Green

#23. I think it doesn't matter what type of helmet you wear. If you don't know the hit is coming your body is not going to tense up and get ready for impact.

DeMarcus Ware

#24. People tend to vote the present tense - not the subjective.

Diane Sawyer

#25. I couldn't write. I grew tense. I was strangled by my own ego, by my petty desire for what I perceived to be the literary brass ring. I was missing the point, of course. The reward is in the doing.

Dani Shapiro

#26. In mauve sea-orchids as in her striking earlier book Guardians of the Secret, Lila Zemborain brings into relationship the viscera of the body and the spill of the universe in tense compositions that blur distinctions between lyric and prose poetry, between science and eros.

Forrest Gander

#27. The accumulation of small, optimistic acts produces quality in our culture and in your life. Our culture resonates in tense times to individual acts of grace.

Jennifer James

#28. Laurel stared at him, his tense sholders, his dominating posture. He'd been back for about two weeks, and everything in Laurel's life had been thrown into chaos.
Sexy, sexy chaos
At least he had his shirt on this time.

Aprilynne Pike

#29. Like it or not, Google and the Chinese government are stuck in a tense, long-term relationship, and can look forward to more high-stakes shadow-boxing in the netherworld of the world's most elaborate system of censorship.

Rebecca MacKinnon

#30. When the light is right and everything is working for me, I feel as tense as when making a difficult maneuver high on a mountain. A minute - and sometimes mere seconds - can make the difference between a superb image and a mundane one.

Galen Rowell

#31. I'm always pretty tense about everything when it comes to work.

Matthew Goode

#32. The practical reality is that any present-tense version of the world is unstable. What we currently consider to be true--both objectively and subjectively--is habitually provisional.

Chuck Klosterman

#33. And the stains would never wash out. That's what Lukas was saying. She would always have hurt her father. Was that the way to phrase it? Always have had. It was immortal tense. A new rule of grammar.

Hugh Howey

#34. Daemon arched a brow. "You don't wanna play, Barf, because we can do that nifty freeze thing and play, right here and now." Oh, for the love of backwoods babies everywhere, this wasn't necessary. I wrapped my fingers around Daemon's tense arm. "Come on," I whispered.

Jennifer L. Armentrout

#35. His eyes are ravenous but his body is still tense, and so I slip my bra strap off my shoulder and motion my finger at him. He takes a deep breath, slips off his silver cross necklace, and tosses it aside. Whatever is about to happen, it seems that he does not want God around to witness it.

Seth King

#36. Wisely the Hebrews admit no Present tense in their language;
While we are speaking the word, it is is already the Past.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

#37. I love you present tense.

John Green

#38. Turkey wants a policy of engagement exactly like President Obama's new approach. Policy of engagement, less confrontation, less tense attitude, especially in the region.

Ahmet Davutoglu

#39. Jah know, sometimes I don't learn till too late, and to know something too late? Well is better you never know as my mother used to say. Worse, you all present tense and have to deal with sudden past tense all around you. It's like realizing somebody rob you a year late. So

Marlon James

#40. A good affirmation has five basic ingredients: it's personal, it's positive, it's present tense, it's visual, and it's emotional.

Stephen Covey

#41. You are covered in blood," Tybalt said again, stressing the words harder this time. "It makes me tense." There was a thud as the guard hit the floor, and Tybalt returned to my side.
"Wow. You must be tense a lot."
He sighed. "You have no idea.

Seanan McGuire

#42. Turns out, it's pretty simple to win people over, especially in tense situations, if you're able to take their perspective and validate their feelings.

Dan Harris

#43. I wanted all things to seem to make some sense, So we could all be happy, yes, instead of tense. And I made up lies, so they all fit nice, and I made this sad world a paradise

Kurt Vonnegut

#44. You have to relax when you're shooting an arrow. You can't be tense. And that just helps, in your day-to-day life.

Stephen Amell

#45. Twitter has allowed the conversation to broaden and become more inclusive. At times, the conversation is really tense but that's because we're talking about really important issues. It's not going to be easy but at least the conversations are happening.

Roxane Gay

#46. I meditate at airports because those are the places where I'm extremely tense, and I often meditate while I'm walking down the street. I have a thought and become aware of that thought and thereby create another level of awareness.

Pankaj Mishra

#47. Everything is beautiful. We have all this beauty in the world and all we have to do is reach out and touch it, it is all there and all ours for the taking.
Cecilia to Henry Chinaski, liberty taken changing past tense to present tense (173)

Charles Bukowski

#48. Fairy Princessfuckingrella is kicking her slutting up a notch.
He saw Livia tense out of the corner of his eye. Shit. Kyle's going to ruin their night together.

Debra Anastasia

#49. In 2007, I sold my first book, 'Grimspace.' It says it's SF on the spine. I believe it to be SF, though it's certainly written differently. I write in first person, present tense, and the protagonist is a woman with a woman's thoughts, feelings, and sexual desires.

Ann Aguirre

#50. Childhood is a tissue of lies that endure in the past tense

Elena Ferrante

#51. Who's not sat tense before his own heart's curtain.

James Russell Lowell

#52. I peel
hiss tense fingers
on his right hand
away from
the steering wheel,
one
two
three
four
five.
With each finger,
the scowl
diappears
a little more. when i place
his hand on
my leg
and gently
caress it, he smiles.
That's better.

Lisa Schroeder

#53. As the silence returned, I sat back and felt the tension ease away; I hadn't even known I was tense. A few moments passed and once again the cycling fan laced in with the clanging chains and mixed with the rumbling mower and the buzzing insects.

Gerry Abbey

#54. You can't look at a sleeping cat and be tense.

Jane Pauley

#55. In America we have only the present tense. I am in danger. You are in danger.

Adrienne Rich

#56. If I speak of Vienna it must be in the past tense, as a man speaks of a woman he has loved and who is dead.

Erich Von Stroheim

#57. . . . that tense expectation, that proud state of standing alone without
teachings and without teachers, that supple willingness to listen to the
divine voice in his own heart, had slowly become a memory. . .

Hermann Hesse

#58. There's nothing wrong with us," Anya said. "You, on the other hand, are way too tense. You probably need to get laid. Maybe Grant Cassidy can help you with that.

Jaci Burton

#59. My family gets incredibly tense and stressed out around traveling. There's something really beautiful in that vulnerability.

Jill Soloway

#60. He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances. He had an odd autobiographical habit which led him to compose in his mind from time to time a short sentence about himself containing a subject in the third person and a verb in the past tense.

James Joyce

#61. Prayer is asking God to do something, future tense; praise is believing that God has already done it, past tense.

Mark Batterson

#62. I looked down both ends of the alley. To my left, two men had entered the alley. Their tense body language made me think they meant malice. Plus, what the hell were they doing walking like badasses down an alley when it was pouring rain?

Dennis Liggio

#63. Eddie became about one percent less tense.

Richelle Mead

#64. I wonder how many ways there are for a mother to produce that wreckage in her own daughter, and my muscles tense as I think of them.

Jon McGregor

#65. I'll be fine," I reply. "Why shouldn't I be? Everything's going just . . . perfectly." I give her a tense smile.

Anonymous

#66. The hollowness in his chest, the tense yearning, the loneliness he braces against, every morning until he can immerse himself in work and forget. Not love. Something else, something with a power that endures. Not love, but a memory of love.

Aminatta Forna

#67. Holding on to anger, resentment and hurt only gives you tense muscles, a headache and a sore jaw from clenching your teeth. Forgiveness gives you back the laughter and the lightness in your life.

Joan Lunden

#68. I'll tell you, my friends: it's all in the nerves. The nerves that tense and relax as you approach the edges of companionship and love. The razor-sharp edges of companionship and love.

Roberto Bolano

#69. The shortest verse in the Bible is 'Jesus wept.' The only thing wrong with it is the past tense.

R. K. Milholland

#70. The light sprang up again, and there on the brink of the chasm, at the very Crack of Doom, stood Frodo, black against the glare, tense; erect, but still as if he had been turned to stone.

J.R.R. Tolkien

#71. Learning to live in the present tense-one that's free from the failures of the past and the anxieties of the future-is a wonderful gift, and one you always should be striving for.

Rick Pitino

#72. If you're supposed to work with someone, I'd recommend not getting all hot and bothered with them the night before. The word of the day was "tense.

Katherine McIntyre

#73. I'm sorry for being a little tense, Island. I suppose I'm not used to having guests in the front seat. My clients usually ride in the trunk, you know.

Camilla Monk

#74. Two or three notes of music can instantly make you feel sad or tense or afraid or angry. To do that in words is much more difficult.

Anthony Daniels

#75. With every year of playing, you want to relax one more muscle. Why? Because the more tense you are, the less you can hear.

Yo-Yo Ma

#76. It takes between three and six hours to make each snowball, depending on snow quality. Wet snow is quick to work with but also quick to thaw, which can lead to a tense journey to the cold store.

Andy Goldsworthy

#77. Your muscles can tense with hope.

Darin Strauss

#78. I get irritated, nervous, very tense or stressed, but never bored.

Catherine Deneuve

#79. There are tenses that define us now: past tense, back then; future tense, not yet. We live in the small window between them, the space we've only recently come to think as still, and really it's no smaller than anyone else's window.

Margaret Atwood

#80. And you," Jude said, stepping forward and putting his finger in Tony's face. "Don't you ever try to give something of yours to put on her body." The muscles just below Jude's neck were sticking out like shark fins he was so tense. "Or I'm never throwing another ball your way. Got that?

Nicole Williams

#81. It is always a tense moment for an author to see how someone hasillustrated his or her story, because the author has lived for so long with these characters, sometimes for years.

Pat Mora

#82. I used to be very afraid of flying. It would creep me out and make me very tense and very uncomfortable, and I would sweat or even cry. I was very, very scared of dying, but I'm not anymore. Fears need to be indulged, in order to exist. I don't have much time to indulge in any fears.

Franka Potente

#83. When things get unbearable, I wrap myself into a tight ball and shut my eyes. Every muscle in my body is tense. I open my eyes and I'm still where I was when I closed them to escape. Nothing's changed.

Elizabeth Wurtzel

#84. In the quiet of the morning
You only have to rise
To feel something's wrong.
Uncontrollable circumstances
Tense the air and you know
Something's going to happen.

--Susan Bernhardt

Susan Bernhardt

#85. Is life like this? Is it a past that goes by, then crumbles away, and a present that runs in the wake of the past, and a future that can only be grasped if one talks of it in the present or past tense?

Kahlil Gibran

#86. People's - most people's job is talking about the future or like money not even in the present tense. It's not even paper.

Colin Quinn

#87. We live in a very tense society. We are pulled apart ... and we all need to learn how to pull ourselves together ... I think that at least part of the answer lies in solitude.

Helen Hayes

#88. Start from the body, and then go, slowly slowly, deeper. And don't start with anything else unless you have first solved the primary. If your body is tense, don't start with the mind. Wait. Work on the body. And just small things are of immense help.

Rajneesh

#89. The way those old memories kept bubbling to the surface in the present tense was disturbing. It was as if the past had never died; as if on some level of time's great tower, everything was still happening.

Stephen King

#90. She's your mother. I asked, Plus, you do look a bit like her. When you're angry, you both get these tense lines around your mouth ... Look, there they are.

Molly Harper

#91. Raven scowled at her. 'Fine. But if I accidentally shoot you because my aim is shaky, because I'm too tense, because I wasn't given the chance to relax before going into a potentially very dangerous situation, you'll be happy blaming only yourself?

A. Ashley Straker

#92. In the '60s, '70s and '80s, everybody was pretty tense on the set.

Gloria Stuart

#93. It's important to people in the Land-of-Almost-Awake that it should be this way, because they believe that nothing really ever completely dies. It just turns into a story, undergoes a little shift in grammar, changes tense from 'now' to 'then'. A

Fredrik Backman

#94. Suzy Zeus is tense as stemware,
not explosive, just on edge -
needs a ten-foot wall around her,
or at least a ten-foot hedge,
Suzy's straining, teeth to toenails,
easing backward on the ledge.

Maggie Robbins

#95. And that was something Gwen had on Zoey - she saw the shadow surrounding him, the one he so easily hid from everyone else. Perched on his lap, her pupils were big and her pretty mouth tense. She was afraid of him. But rather than scare her off, the fear lured her.

Amber Belldene

#96. I cannot stand the words Get over it. All of us are under such pressure to put our problems in the past tense. Slow down. Don't allow others to hurry your healing. It is a process, one that may take years, occasionally, even a lifetime - and that's OK.

Beau Taplin

#97. I don't think you should always stay calm in a tense situation, because you might not ever confront the problem. Maybe it's better to actually let yourself be tense - and find a solution.

Yoko Ono

#98. Relaxation is the point. And if you can relax with an enlightened person his enlightenment will start penetrating you, because when you are relaxed you become porous. When you are tense you are closed; when you relax he will enter

Rajneesh

#99. Everybody is tense. Tad does his best to

William Swanson

#100. I've had a tense couple of days. And I've got to tell you, burning someone's face off sounds like a great way to relax.

Jim Butcher

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