Top 100 Tense Quotes
#1. To be human is to be in the tense condition of a death-foreseeing, consciously libidinous animal. No other earthly creature suffers such a capacity for thought, such a complexity of envisioned but frustrated possibilities, such a troubling ability to question the tribal and biological imperatives.
John Updike
#2. There's no past tense when you lose someone, Jed. You just keep on loving them.
Garrett Leigh
#3. We're in an age when everything's present tense. People don't know how to be still and surrender to the music.
Pete Hamill
#4. That's the past tense, Tom,' returned Mr. James Harthouse, striking the ash from his cigar with his little finger. 'We are in the present tense, now.' 'Verb
Charles Dickens
#5. The surest way to become Tense, Awkward, and Confused is to develop a mind that tries too hard - one that thinks too much.
Benjamin Hoff
#6. Exercise is really important to me - it's therapeutic. So if I'm ever feeling tense or stressed or like I'm about to have a meltdown, I'll put on my iPod and head to the gym or out on a bike ride along Lake Michigan with the girls.
Michelle Obama
#7. My native tense is future conditional, a low simmer of unspecified worry being the usual condition.
Michael Pollan
#8. No one likes doing chores. In happiness surveys, housework is ranked down there with commuting as activities that people enjoy the least. Maybe that's why figuring out who does which chores usually prompts, at best, tense discussion in a household and, at worst, outright fighting.
Emily Oster
#9. Ammu watched over them fiercely. Her watchfulness stretched her, made her taut and tense. She was quick to reprimand her children, but even quicker to take offense on their behalf.
Arundhati Roy
#10. Fucking hell! The lioness won. She got a burst of speed and let the bones crack, muscles tense, and skin turned to fur so flawlessly, she didn't slow. Now she ran on all fours. A loud hiss escaped from her lioness. Pissed wasn't even the word at this point. Andi wanted blood. Someone
Milly Taiden
#11. If you want to learn to trust your vibes, you must maintain a peaceful and relatively calm attitude. When you're tense, nervous, or anxious, your energy gets tangled up and blocked and can't enter your heart center, where your Higher Self and your vibes communicate.
Sonia Choquette
#12. First Lady Michelle Obama appears on 'Sesame Street' to celebrate the show's 40th anniversary. It's going to be a big episode. Yes, sources say the episode gets a little tense when Ernie and Bert ask the first lady why her husband's dragging his feet on gay marriage.
Conan O'Brien
#13. Oh, God, Alaska, I love you. I love you,' and the Colonel whispered, 'I'm so sorry, Pudge. I know you did,' and I said, 'No. Not past tense.
John Green
#14. (by the way ... I realize I switch from present to past tense, and if you don't like it ... ram a nipple up your scrotum. -printer: leave this in.)
Charles Bukowski
#15. A small way to have control in a tense situation, I suppose
Sara Shepard
#16. The DNA of the novel - which, if I begin to write nonfiction, I will write about this - is that: the title of the novel is the whole novel. The first line of the novel is the whole novel. The point of view is the whole novel. Every subplot is the whole novel. The verb tense is the whole novel.
Mary Kay Zuravleff
#17. His fingers caressed the column of my tense throat. I shivered in fear. I hated not being able to see what was happening, it forced me to feel everything.
C.J. Roberts
#18. I saw the animal's body tense expectantly as he saw the treat in my palm. Unfortunately, it seemed in question as to whether the attraction was the biscuit or my hand.
Lisa Kleypas
#19. Winners live in the present tense. People who come up short are consumed with future or past. I want to be living in the now.
Alex Rodriguez
#20. Her body was tense, her small teeth sunk into her upper lip. Her eyes flashed upward at Aloysius, and he started at what he saw in them.
Pain. It was normal to feel some pain at the bestowing of a Mark, but what he saw in Adele's eyes- was agony.
Cassandra Clare
#21. One moment you can say the words 'I am'. And the next, you have no first person, no present tense, and no entitlement, as a subject, to act on verbs of any kind.
Lynne Truss
#22. The imprecision in the way languages express time is related to the imprecision in the way we experience and remember it. Though no one experiences time as coarsely as the handful of distinctions in a tense system would suggest, we don't live by a mental stopwatch either.
Steven Pinker
#23. The wicked lie, that the past is always tense and the future, perfect.
Zadie Smith
#24. When Martina is tense it helps her relax.
Dan Maskell
#26. A man's conscience shouts so much more loudly in the past tense than it ever manages to achieve in the present.
Jasper Kent
#27. I found it a little bit stressful, because I wasn't used to working with Doctor Who. I got the impression I'd walked into the end of seven years and it was all a bit tense.
Sarah Sutton
#28. Those who know Bertram Wooster best are aware that he is a man of sudden, strong enthusiasms and that, when in the grip of one of these, he becomes a remorseless machine - tense, absorbed, single-minded.
P.G. Wodehouse
#29. Anything more than 5/10ths makes me tense
Jarod Kintz
#30. Let us change the tense for convenience.
Mark Twain
#31. Religion is not a result of something that you practice. Religion enters in you any moment you relax. Religion is a flowering of relaxation, not a result of practicing. Remember the difference because when you practice you become more tense.
Rajneesh
#32. William glanced at the captain. The way she sat suggested she was tense - and that she disliked the princess on sight. William wasn't sure why, but he knew that women tended to pick up on subtle points men missed. Or maybe she just felt dowdy when compared to the princess.
Christopher G. Nuttall
#33. The core power of tai chi begins with awareness. Our stance is the posture of infinity: not tense but relaxed and upright, expectant. From this nothingness, all things begin.
Jean Kwok
#34. I don't watch scary movies. Sometimes, even having to read the script and do an episode of 'Grimm,' I get a little tense because I know someone's going to jump out of somewhere.
Bitsie Tulloch
#35. The amazing activity of the cat is delicately balanced by his capacity for relaxation. Every household should contain a cat, not only for decorative and domestic values, but because the cat in quiescence is medicinal to irritable, tense, tortured men and women.
William Lyon Phelps
#36. From August 25 to 28, I'm sharing the Amazon proceeds of all versions of Love Is Never Past Tense with Orphan World Relief
Janna Yeshanova
#37. You know, when I sit in meetings and things are very tense and people take things extremely seriously and they invest a lot of their ego, I sometimes think to myself, 'Come on, you know, there's life and there's death and there is love.' And all of that ego business is nonsense compared to that.
Christine Lagarde
#38. Just looking at him made Andrew feel tense and irritated. It was wonder perfect strangers didn't go up to the guy and punch him in the face.
Jane Davitt
#39. Screenplay is the toughest form of writing for me, because you need to be in present tense. You need to be describing things as they occur.
Guillermo Del Toro
#40. You didn't promise to kill me," Wayne said, pulling on his socks. "You promised to have killed me. That there be the present perfect tense.
Brandon Sanderson
#41. That kind of love comes and goes and is hard to remember afterwards, like pain. You would look at the man one day and you would think, I loved you, and the tense would be past, and you would be filled with a sense of wonder, because it was such an amazing and precarious and dumb thing to have done;
Margaret Atwood
#42. The body is consuming energy when tense, and restoring energy when it is relaxed.
Ronnie Lott
#43. They were best friends and partners who'd finally gotten over all the bullshit and had come to terms with the mutual attraction, deciding that fucking was better than always being so tense about it. That was the end of the story.
Santino Hassell
#44. Without using the word, everyone started forgiving each other again. Just like that, from the no of all nothingness: you have a big tense mess and out of it comes some joy. It must be magic.
Anne Lamott
#45. Human existence basically is--a never to be completed imperfect tense.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#46. When we're with other people and they say nothing, the situation becomes irritating, tense, unbearable.
Paulo Coelho
#47. Just watching her made him too tense, his pants too tight. Dear God, was she even wearing a bra?
Allie K. Adams
#48. He knew that he was caught up in one of those stretches of time when for anything to happen normally would be abnormal. The dawn was too tense and highly charged for any common happening to survive.
Mervyn Peake
#49. No matter how much I may love - scratch that, loved, past tense - Josh, I was no dummy. Everyone knows the Y chromosome carries with it the instinctive urge to lie under pressure.
Which, incidentally, was what Josh was going to be under when I found him. Serious pressure.
On his larynx.
Gemma Halliday
#50. And the first till last alshemist wrote over every square inch of the only foolscap available, his own body, till by its corrosive sublimation one continuous present tense integument slowly unfolded all marryvoising moodmoulded cyclewheeling history ...
James Joyce
#51. Don't tense up no matter what, for you only close off creative power when you do.
Norman Vincent Peale
#52. I don't like being on a horse. That's the only negative of doing a Western. I like the whole get up, and I look great in a hat. But I get tense around horses. So, if they could make a fake horse, then I'd do a Western.
Adam Sandler
#54. The past, the present, and the future walked into a bar. It was tense.
Lex Martin
#55. I had an older brother, an older sister and a younger brother, and though I look back fondly on my childhood, I think that when you've got four siblings sharing the same resources and a single kids' bathroom, it's going to get a little tense at times.
Jeff Kinney
#56. It's way too tense. Someone's either going to get into a fight or cry. Neither option is preferable.
Melina Marchetta
#57. Maybe we can relax here for a few seconds," says Little B. "Oops, time's up," says Howler, slapping his hand on Little B's shoulder. "Back to being tense and hunted.
Susan Ee
#58. Dada, a roaring of tense colors, and interlacing of opposites and of all contradictions, grotesques, inconsistencies: LIFE
Tristan Tzara
#59. The past is something for you to learn from and the future is something that you hope is going to happen, but I'm always speaking to my actual fans in present tense.
Katt Williams
#60. Quietly ... softly, God taps on our tense shoulders with His love.
Shawntel Jefferson
#61. The warmth of his body shouldn't have felt good. He was angry and every muscle was tense. It was like being leaned on by a very heavy, warm brick. A sexy brick.
Patricia Briggs
#62. The mist was so challenging and the winds hit me, definitely more than I expected. It was definitely those winds, you can't re-enact them, you can't recreate them. Then my forearms started to tense up and you feel like running.
Nik Wallenda
#63. I don't view myself from the past present or future tense i like to think of the world from my own personal point of view at whatever time i feel that is relayed to me in conjunction with my well being to progressively grow successfully finacially as well as mentally.
Riff Raff
#64. As a driver I have come to believe that the person just in front of me and the person just behind me are always just about to do something really stupid. Tense is not the right word, but I am very hyper-aware of such things.
Jonathan Meades
#65. Rodgers and Hammerstein didn't mean anything to me. I just wanted to have a hit, I just wanted to be like those people on the radio. It was all of a case of the present tense with no projecting into the future, particularly.
Art Garfunkel
#66. Alex said, his voice subdued, tense. "So it would seem," D.D.
Lisa Gardner
#67. There is no way to understand the public reaction to the sight of a Freak smashing a coconut with a hammer on the hood of a white Cadillac in a Safeway parking lot unless you actually do it, and I tell you it's tense.
Hunter S. Thompson
#68. Cat cleared her throat in the tense silence that followed. Uh, before this goes any further, let's at least introduce ourselves to your friend. I'm Cat, and this is my husband, Bones. We're part of Mencheres' twisted little fang family.
Jeaniene Frost
#69. Being a writer can be a very lonely profession, but having a network of people who can sympathize with everything you're going through - from contract issues to the terror of changing your novel from past- to present-tense - is an invaluable asset.
Lisa Graff
#70. My shoulders tense. I swear Gray gossips more than a flock of old ladies at a cotillion. Where are he and Ivy anyway?
Kristen Callihan
#71. I think they were afraid that some of us would try to kill ourselves or something because they looked very tense and one of them kept touching his beard.
Stephen Chbosky
#72. Everyone longs for love's tense joys and red delights.
Jane Kenyon
#73. The latter 1940s and early '50s were a time of tense, explosive conflict, in the world at large and in the politics of our nation.
M. Stanton Evans
#74. The silence was terrible then, as tense as a bridge about to break, a tower to fall; unedurable in its emotion, its truth bursting to be spoken.
John Fowles
#75. My upbringing did not create a healthy affection for confrontation. I'd love it if everyone always got along, and nothing ever got tense.
Trisha Yearwood
#76. Witness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind.
John Green
#77. Well," he said, "I'm glad to see you're finally taking some precautions, but you weren't this tense when I dropped you off last night." "But you were this annoying. At least one of us is consistent.
Kalayna Price
#78. it was impossible; trying to find a meaning in everything meant he had to remain alert and tense
Paulo Coelho
#79. Ideally, each piece of art's its own unique object, and its evaluation's always present-tense.
David Foster Wallace
#80. Men think God is destroying them because he is tuning them. The violinist screws up the key till the tense cord sounds the concert pitch; but it is not to break it, but to use it tunefully, that he stretches the string upon the musical rack.
Henry Ward Beecher
#81. Nothing is improbable until it moves into past tense.
George Ade
#82. In the sentence "She's no longer suffering," to what, to whom does "she" refer? What does that present tense mean?
Roland Barthes
#83. I escape disaster by writing a poem with a joke in it:
The past, present, and future walk into a bar - it was tense.
Kelli Russell Agodon
#84. Aqualung was a difficult and very tense album to record ... while I was playing the solo, Jimmy Page walked into the control room and started waving, I thought, should I wave back and mess up the solo or should I just grin and carry on ? ... I just grinned
Martin Barre
#85. When happiness is happening it feels as if nothing else happened before it, it is a sensation that happens only in the present tense.
Deborah Levy
#86. When you're dealing with Hollywood people, it creates a tight, tense atmosphere through the whole thing. And I don't like to work in that kind of atmosphere. I like to make my movies in a kind of relaxed atmosphere.
Takashi Miike
#87. To talk to someone who does not listen is enough to tense the devil.
Pearl Bailey
#88. He'd never seen anything so downright beautiful. A sense of peace fell over him, calming him, pacifying the always-tense nerves inside of him, and soothing his very soul. He wanted to take that moment, to capture it, and keep it forever.
J.M. Darhower
#89. That's the worst of sorrow . . . it's always a vicious circle. It makes one tense and hard and disagreeable, and this means that one repels and antagonises people, and then they dislike and avoid one--and that means more isolation and still more sorrow.
Vera Brittain
#90. I would not admire hitting against Ryne Duren, because if he ever hit you in the head you might be in the past tense.
Casey Stengel
#91. Do not be tense, just be ready, not thinking but not dreaming, not being set but being flexible.
Bruce Lee
#92. I heard the silence pouring from them. The audience held themselves quiet, tense, and tight, as if the song had burned them worse than flame.
Each person held their wounded selves closely, clutching their pain as if it were a precious thing.
Patrick Rothfuss
#93. Paintings exist in the present tense, yet somehow, because of how it's structured, it can move backwards through time as well.
Joe Bradley
#94. That was one of your favorite themes: that profusion, replication, popularity wasn't necessarily devaluing, and that time itself made all things rare. You loved to savor the present tense and were more conscious than anyone I have ever met that its every constituent is fleeting.
Lionel Shriver
#95. Pornography is human imagination in tense theatrical action; its violations are a protest against the violations of our freedom by nature.
Camille Paglia
#96. I was born too late to experience Apollo 11, though I do trek to Dad's house every time there's some space event. There's something awesome about crossing your fingers and watching a tense Mission Control room do their thing.
Andy Weir
#97. Maybe as times get worse we get better. Our pain makes us feel other peoples too; our fear lets us practice valor; we are tense, and tender as well. And among the things we can no longer afford are things we never really wanted anyway ...
Nancy Gibbs
#98. The past is always tense, the future perfect.
Zadie Smith
#99. We were the daughters of the post-World War II American dream, the daughters of those idealized fifties sitcom families in which father knew best and mother knew her place and a kind of disappointment, and tense, unspoken sexuality rattled around like ice cubes in their nightly cocktails.
Anne Taylor Fleming
#100. Ingredients 1 drops Grapefruit Essential Oil 1 drop Ylang Ylang Essential Oil 1 drop Wild Orange Essential Oil 2 drops Patchouli Essential Oil 3 drops Bergamot Essential Oil Directions To support harmony in a tense home or mind, combine all ingredients in your diffuser and use as normal.
George Shepherd
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