Quotes About Tension

evangelical clergy showed growth in giving, attendance, and even membership, for pastors who had served in a congregation three years or longer. But the most dramatic changes were in congregations served by clergy seeking less tension with the culture. Congregations with "officiant" pastors showed sharp drops for all of the measures (Finke and Stark, 2001).

democracy is a see-saw between complete chaos and tolerable confusion

When you have known someone your whole life you don't need a lot of warm-up time to get into a big argument. All the fore-play has been done years ago, and so the battle sits in your memory like stove gas awaiting the match. A wrong word, a careless allusion, and the old fire is suddenly raging.

Creativity arises out of the tension between spontaneity and limitations, the latter (like the river banks) forcing the spontaneity into the various forms which are essential to the work of art or poem.

Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations.

The significant question is whether the activity pursued permits the release of tension without resolving the underlying conflict. If so, the conflict still remains, and hence the activity must be engaged in repeatedly. We then may have the beginning of compulsion neurosis.

But it is well to remind ourselves that anxiety signifies a conflict, and so long as a conflict is going on, a constructive solution is possible.

the present phase of our century may well be called, as Auden and Camus call it, the "age of overt anxiety.

I think that was a moment of cool panic there.

Easy pulled Poncho to him, slammed him against the wall again. A Maxfield Parrish print of dawn fell off its hook. "You brought her here Saturday.

Conversación crucial es entonces aquella entre dos o más personas donde 1) las opiniones son opuestas, 2) hay importantes factores en juego y 3) las emociones son intensas.

Between a man and his mother-in-law, as between a woman and her father-in-law, unacknowledged sexual desire can easily open a wound which will go on festering with jealousy, resentment and hatred, but no woman has ever waged war against her son-in-law more relentlessly than she {Madame de Montreuil] did.

Before I die I have given myself the modest task of convincing the Christians in America that as Christians we have a problem with war. I am not expecting the vast majority of Christians to be pacifists or even just warriors. I simply want them to see that there is a profound tension between our worship of a crucified messiah and the support of war.

using pressure points to unlock his grip.

War exists notwithstanding all our efforts to avoid it."8

They goaded me on to unusual efforts and caused me, and those around me, considerable suffering. Of course, the surprising thing was that my increasing success did little to lessen the tension.

The jittery focus, the devastated shelves, a couple of fights breaking out over paper towels, a swarm descending on an employee trying to restock toilet paper, madness in people's eyes—it was like the beginning of every show where the streets empty and some grotesque majestic entity emerges from mist or fire.

the days had got to be like hoops, tighter and tighter to get through, and filled with bursts of shrapnel.

A slap or a fat check is what it takes if you want to see all the passions that go beating about behind a face take a sudden tack. It's as beautiful as watching a sailing ship maneuvering in a stormy sea. The whole person keels over in the changed wind.

ils fracassaient autour d'eux un idiome de castagnettes en brandissant au-dessus de leurs têtes des mains crispées dans un vent d'arguments.

All summer it feels as if it will rain soon. All summer the strange feeling, 'something will break.

She wanted a reaction. As usual, I felt nothing but the desire not to have a confrontation.

The best and worst of life all rolled into one incident," Mildrede said sadly. "Life never seems to be able to give you one without the other.

It was a dark and stormy night.