Top 100 Tension Not Quotes
#1. Great work is the result of seeking out tension, not avoiding it.
Seth Godin
#2. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry - all forms of fear - are caused by too much future, and not enough presence.
Eckhart Tolle
#3. There's a famous tension between Green Lantern and Green Arrow in the comic books. Those guys have always been friends. They started off as not on the same page, and then they quickly became best friends.
Geoff Johns
#4. There's no such thing as a superhuman. But the only thing I got to tell you, if you take a dog and kick him around he's got to be alert, he's got to be more sharper than you. Well, we've been kicked around for two thousand years. We're not more smarter, we're more alert.
Mordecai Richler
#5. There's more tension in golf than in boxing because golfers bring it on themselves. It's silly really because it's not as if the golf ball is going to jump up and belt you on the whiskers, is it?
Henry Cooper
#6. People confuse friendship and relaxation. It's incredibly important to be relaxed - you don't have a chance if you're not relaxed. So I try very hard to relax any kind of tension. But friendship is different.
Bill Murray
#7. Pressure on nerves causes irriatation and tension with deranged functions as a result. Why not release the pressure? Why not adjust the cause instead of treating the effects? Why not?
Daniel D. Palmer
#8. Zen is not effort. Effort is tension, effort is work, effort is to achieve something. Zen is not something to achieve. You are already that. Just relax, relax so deeply that you become a revelation to yourself.
Rajneesh
#9. Going home means getting comfortable being who you are and who your soul really wants to be. There is no strain with that. The strain and tension come when we're not being who our soul wants to be and we're someplace where our soul doesn't feel at home.
Melody Beattie
#10. There certainly is a tension between the relativity of simultaneity and non-locality in quantum theory, but it's not strong enough to add up to a falsification of either side by itself.
Lee Smolin
#11. With the tension churning within us, knowing all the ways the earth is not yet as God intended it to be, we are driven to pray daily: "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven." We are not looking for an escape from the world; we are looking for the restoration of the world.
Jonathan Martin
#12. Without fear I can acknowledge that the authentic Christian tension is not between life and death, but between life and life.
Brennan Manning
#13. Musicians are there in front of you, and the spectators sense their tension, which is not the case when you're listening to a record. Your attention is more relaxed. The emotional aspect is more important in live music.
Brian Eno
#14. It was like certain dinners I remember from the war. There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening. Under the wine I lost the disgusted feeling and was happy. It seemed they were all such nice people.
Ernest Hemingway,
#15. How we shape our understanding of others' lives is determined by what we find memorable in them, and that in turn is determined not by any potentially accurate overview of another's personality but rather by the tension and balance that exist in our daily relationships.
Tom Robbins
#17. You can feel creative tension when you sense the freedom to be creative, the harmony not via compliance only, but through brainstorming.
Pearl Zhu
#18. Temperament and tightness often go together. But if you're tight, you can't sing. So I have to have that tension in my body but not in my voice.
Sondra Radvanovsky
#19. The difference with Cleveland is that the racial tension was not a casual taste of it. It was outlandish.
Terrence Howard
#20. It seems a universal rule in this world that people will always look for victims and scapegoats, does it not? Especially at times of difficulty and tension.
C.J. Sansom
#21. Life is not a struggle, not a tension. Life has not to be suffering. Life is bliss
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
#22. I am sure it would not be in the long-term interest of China, which would continue to depend on these African resources for a very long time, to see the emergence of any sense of hostility, animosity, tension between itself and the African continent.
Thabo Mbeki
#23. As long as I do not give in to tension,
I hold on to tension.
P.C.M. Hermans
Worldpoet 546
August 18, 2016
Petra Hermans
#24. A level of anxiety and tension and outright fear that so many people have felt, not only during the recession but during this slow economic recovery since. This made me very much want to up the conversation about how miracle-minded thinking applies to that area of life.
Marianne Williamson
#25. That is what deconstruction is made of: not the mixture but the tension between memory, fidelity, the preservation of something that has been given to us, and, at the same time, heterogeneity, something absolutely new, and a break.
Jacques Derrida
#26. I like people a lot, but I am not comfortable in literary New York situations. There is deep anxiety and tension around success here. I don't share problems I'm having about my work, and I think conversations around publishing are boring.
Elizabeth Strout
#27. I'm happy to have a physical part in 'High Tension,' in 'Hereafter,' and in a lot of French movies and Belgian movies. But its not by chance directors choose me for physical parts. I like to do that. I like to tell a story also with the body. It's important, because you can tell a lot of things.
Cecile De France
#28. I feel empty, not because of sadness, but because of relief, all the tension flowing out of me.
Veronica Roth
#29. Intimacy is not a happy medium. It is a way of being in which the tension between distance and closeness is dissolved and a new horizon appears. Intimacy is beyond fear.
Henri Nouwen
#30. Grounding is not dull and lifeless, but dynamic and vibrant. Generally it is our tension that makes us lethargic, and tension results from alienation between various parts of ourselves. As these parts are simplified and integrated, we experience increased vitality.
Anodea Judith
#31. The European girls, like the Russians, tend to stick together, but there's never any rivalry. Sometimes there's a little bit of tension with the older girls because they might feel a little threatened by the younger models, but it's not between personalities.
Abbey Lee Kershaw
#32. Not knowing what's happening, from script to script, as an actor and as a character, lends itself to the same tension and anxiety of not knowing what's happening.
Matthew Davis
#33. Never embarrass a student in front of others. Embarrass yourself often to relieve the tension, but do not paint them into a corner.
Harry Gilbert
#34. In the end, it's acting, it's not real. But every director will tell you that you have to create conditions that create tension, because tension is what makes drama feel real.
Paul Greengrass
#35. A man is like a rope: both break at a definite strain ... The solution is not splicing the rope; it's lessening the tension.
Jack Vance
#36. I think there's a real tension between capitalism and morality. That's not to say these systems aren't powerful and useful, but to assume that capitalism can somehow assure moral behavior or character, that's just a pipe dream.
Michael Pollan
#37. We both just stood there. I let the breeze brush against my skin, the sun release the tension in my muscles. It was as close as I had felt to God in a long time. "It's like we're praying," Celeste whispered. "Only we're not saying anything.
Nancy Rue
#38. We who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface hidden tension that is already alive
Martin Luther King Jr.
#39. As I like to say to the people in Montgomery: The tension in this city is not between white people and Negro people. The tension is, at bottom, between justice and injustice, between the forces of light and the forces of darkness.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#40. In all my novels, a sense of place - not just geographic but social - is a critical element. I have always been drawn to the novels of Edith Wharton, among others, where social dynamics are crucial. Wharton's class consciousness fascinates me, and some of the tension in my books stems from that.
Susan Wiggs
#41. The show is not a history lesson or intellectual exploration. It is entertainment based on tension, irony and storytelling that is closely related to today's life.
Matthew Weiner
#42. My film is in French. It's not something folkloric. It's who we are. There's this tension about immigrants coming in. Will they learn French? Will they adapt? In this film, I'm on the reverse side because Monsieur Lazhar comes from a society where French is also the second language.
Philippe Falardeau
#43. She was held in the tension just before movement, about to walk back toward the house. Later she would think, If I had turned away, I'd have missed the moment he fell in love.
He would not remember it that way. What he experienced was not so much the beginning of love as a cessation of pain.
Mary Doria Russell
#44. The tension between the call to the desert and to the market place arises not from the greater presence of God in one or the other but from our varying psychological needs to apprehend him in different ways.
Sheila Cassidy
#45. It's very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.
Thich Nhat Hanh
#46. Children's reading and children's thinking are the rock-bottom base upon which this country will rise. Or not rise. In these days of tension and confusion, writers are beginning to realize that books for children have a greater potential for good or evil than any other form of literature on earth.
Dr. Seuss
#47. I'm not happy about any of this," said Thor. "I'm going to kill somebody soon, just to relieve the tension. You'll see.
Neil Gaiman
#48. The tension between what is, and what we dream of, is important. Not to discount what we have, but to hold onto that middle ground, because it's in there that the magic happens.
Susan Branch
#49. It was not so much a modification of the darkness, as a sigh of relief, a slight relaxing of tension, so that one felt, rather than saw, that the night had suddenly lost a shade of its density ... ah! yes; there! between these two shoulders of the hills she is bleeding to death.
Hope Mirrlees
#50. I want to taste that sweet little mouth of yours," he says, but he's not done. He's just using a dramatic pause to build the tension for the next bit. And it's good that he does, because the next part is this: "Before I make you come so hard you forget who you are.
Charlotte Stein
#51. To follow Jesus doesn't remove us from the stuff of life. It is not resolution. It is tension and journey.
Crowder
#52. Meditation is unfocussed mind, you simply listen silently, not with a tension in the mind, not with an urge to know and learn, no, with total relaxedness, in a let go, in an opening of your being. You listen, not to know, you simply listen to understand.
Rajneesh
#53. My father never ran for office or supported anybody for office, and was not engaged in that at all. But I think people throughout the area were just in a constant state of tension - I mean, adults.
Jeff Sessions
#54. A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.
Leonard Bernstein
#55. Racing through the ocher light, Bigwig was impelled by a frenzy of tension and energy. He did not feel the wound in his shoulder. The storm was his own. The storm would defeat Efrafa.
Richard Adams
#56. Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still.
T. S. Eliot
#57. I'm not flailing now, as my muscles are rigid with the tension of holding myself together.
Suzanne Collins
#58. The tension in the world is the tension between the ego and the feminine, not between the masculine and the feminine.
Terence McKenna
#59. What gives journalism its authenticity and vitality is the tension between the subject's blind self absorption and the journalist's skepticism. Journalists who swallow the subject's account whole and publish it are not journalists but publicists.
Janet Malcolm
#60. Marriage probably originated as a straightforward food-for-sex deal among foraging primates. Compatibility was not a big issue, nor, of course, was there any tension over who would control the remote.
Barbara Ehrenreich
#61. If I stage things too much and nothing changes in the act of photographing, then I might as well have not taken the picture: If the whole thing already exists in my head, then I haven't learned anything. The tension lies between the staging and the unpredictability.
Justine Kurland
#62. Botox not only helps with wrinkles, it actually makes you feel more relaxed as frowning causes tension.
Patricia Cornwell
#63. There are almost no limits to the discoveries of how the human brain operates in illness and health, in sleep and waking and dreaming, in calm and under tension. The question is how far man can put these discoveries to use without using them not for cure but for power.
Max Lerner
#64. It is the difference between men and women, not the sameness, that creates the tension and the delight.
Edward Abbey
#65. The proper condition of the human is not bovine placidity ... the highest degree of tension that can be creatively borne.
Brian Swimme
#66. It was "not so much the [lack of] leisure, but also the nervous tension. One comes back to one's native land and sees that one has been abandoned." - Antheil
Richard Rhodes
#67. 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
#68. Every day, there's that tension and the pressure. Each scene that you shoot is like getting to that next step, but there's still that mountain to climb. So it's not like one day is harder or one scene is harder. They are all equally challenging.
Abdellatif Kechiche
#69. I loved men and was going mad with suppressed desire. It pushed me into a series of affairs with dubious jazz musicians. Sex was not what I imagined. It was tension, scent and prosaic misalliance. It was sweet and sad revelation, and all expectation dashed.
James Ellroy
#70. I'm not the voice of reason; I'm more the guy using these offensive topics as fodder to raise tension in a joke.
Anthony Jeselnik
#71. Prayer, true prayer, does not allow us to deceive ourselves. It relaxes the tension of our self-inflation. It produces a clearness of spiritual vision. . . . It saps our self-deception and its Pharisaism. . . . So by prayer we acquire our true selves."242
Timothy J. Keller
#72. No painting can exist without the tension of what it figures and what it concretely consists of. The pleasure of what it could mean and the pain of what it's not.
Marlene Dumas
#73. Between men and women, all the time there is tension. I feel it. A woman walks down the street, and I'm going back, and suddenly there is this tension. I just walk down the street, we were just on the way. And she thinks I'm a rapist. And now I feel guilty, even though I'm a damn poor did not.
Quentin Tarantino
#74. To truly live by faith, one must be willing to live in the tension of not knowing. Not understanding certain things. Not having all the answers. A person must walk humbly, bearing the mystery of a God who far surpasses any human capacity to fully define Him.
Jamie George
#75. Attention is the vital thing and there is no tension in attention. It just happens to be a similar word. It's not concentration or straining. Attention has the openness of a young child not yet dominated by the conceptual mind.
Eckhart Tolle
#76. When ill luck besets us, to ease the tension we have only to remember that happiness is relative. The next time you are tempted to grumble about what has happened to you, why not pause and be glad that it is no worse than it is.
Dale Carnegie
#77. Pakistan has assured that it would not allow its territory to be used against India for any acts of terror. India must also reciprocate and address our concerns which are very genuine. Dialogue is the only way forward. Absence of dialogue leads to tension.
Asif Ali Zardari
#78. You might not feel like playing pretty all the time. Instead, you might want to play something nasty ... you might want to play something out of context with the tune. It might be a note that creates so much tension it becomes unpleasant, but you want it to sound that way.
George Benson
#79. On the field, you have to be aggressive; you're thinking how to get the better of a situation. It's not that I don't laugh on the field. In fact, I think it's very important to laugh, especially when you are angry and aggressive, to just take the tension away, make the moment go away.
Yuvraj Singh
#80. I did not like 'The Hurt Locker.' It's a lazy way to make a movie, frankly. I could put you on the edge of your seat quite easily, and have you feel the tension for 2 hours, if every other scene practically is, 'Should we cut the red wire or the green wire?'
Michael Moore
#81. You must not only learn to live with tension, you must seek it out. You must learn to thrive on stress.
J. Paul Getty
#82. Being late was a special kind of modern suffering, with blended elements of rising tension, self-blame, self-pity, misanthropy, and a yearning for what could not be had outside theoretical physics: time reversal.
Ian McEwan
#83. The pleasure that I take in writing gets me interested in writing a poem. It's not a statement about what I think anybody else should be doing. For me, it's an interesting tension between interior and exterior.
Marilyn Hacker
#84. The tension between the governed and the governing is what makes the world go 'round. It's not love, it's that tension, because that tension exists in love affairs. The whole idea of control is at the heart of human relationships. Control and resistance to control.
William Safire
#85. Becoming conscious of racism does not mean you are a racist.
Auliq Ice
#86. God allows us to face the tension whether we like it or not.
Donald Miller
#87. I had witnessed the moment when this girl found out that nobody (not even Papa) knows what's going to happen to her or him or anyone and that's called Dramatic Tension and that's called the Suspense of Life and that's called Being Alive.
Catherine Lacey
#88. When I'm looking for Zen and I'm not saying this facetiously at all - I would really rather surf, scuba dive, or fly my plane. And, when I feel tension about the grind of work, it's not getting the money to make films versus making films that constitutes the grind, it's all this stuff.
Edward Norton
#89. A great artist ... must be shaken by the naked truths that will not be comforted. This divine discontent, this disequilibrium, this state of inner tension is the source of artistic energy.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#90. Tension means you want to be something else which you are not.
Osho
#91. Has my watch stopped? No. But its hands do not seem to be going around. Don't look at them. Think of something else - anything else: think of yesterday, a calm, ordinary, easy-flowing day, in spite of the nervous tension of waiting.
Simone De Beauvoir
#92. The great teachers are always those who can live the tension. They are not criticizing everybody, they're not complaining. They give young people a vision.
Henri Nouwen
#93. I have always consistently opposed high-tension and alternating systems of electric lighting ... not only on account of danger, but because of their general unreliability and unsuitability for any general system of distribution.
Thomas A. Edison
#94. It's not white versus black any more, it's haves versus have-nots. Unless the black middle-classes unite to promote the interests of the black underclass, tension between them is inevitable. What we, the black middle class have to do, is think of a strategy to avert that.
Henry Louis Gates
#95. Our instinct as human beings is to provide answers, to ease tension. As writers our job is the opposite, to create tension and not dispel it immediately.
Sol Stein
#96. The glow of delicioous tension coudn't be faked, not at any price. So when you leave, that's when you realise you've been living in a lie.
Lesley Lokko
#97. We live in constant danger of coming apart. The mystery of why we do not always come apart is the animating tension of all art.
Virginia Woolf
#98. I am not afraid to appear in Israel, although when I come to a place like Israel, I know it's not a picnic by the Thames. I am aware of the tension and it saddens me.
Ian Anderson
#99. Tension seemed natural to her, not a sign of anxiety, but a sign of enjoyment ...
Ayn Rand
#100. If the main character's not in jeopardy - physical, psychological, emotional, whatever - then you don't have any tension, and you don't have a story.
Stephen Graham Jones
