Worry is like sand in an oyster: a little produces a pearl, too much kills the animal.
Marcelene Cox (1900-1998) American writer, columnist, aphorist
“Ask Any Woman” column, Ladies’ Home Journal (1955-10)
(Source)
Quotations about:
stress
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
We used to think that revolution is the cause of change. Actually, it is the other way around: revolution is a by-product of change. Change comes first, and it is the difficulties and irritations inherent in change that set the stage for revolution. To say that revolution is the cause of change is like saying juvenile delinquency is the cause of the change from boyhood to manhood.
He who without necessity embarks
In many matters, is a fool for slighting
The obvious blessings of a tranquil life.[ὅστις δὲ πράσσει πολλὰ µὴ πράσσειν παρόν,
µῶρος, παρὸν ζῆν ἡδέως ἀπράγµονα.]Euripides (485?-406? BC) Greek tragic dramatist
Antiope [Αντιοπη], frag. 193 (TGF, Kannicht) [Amphion] (c. 410 BC) [tr. Wodhall (1809)]
(Source)
Barnes fragment 104, Musgrave 25. (Source (Greek)). Alternate translation:
Whoever is very active when he may be inactive, is a moron,
when he may live pleasantly keeping clear from politics.
[tr. Will (2015)]
Whoever is overactive when he could relax
is foolish, for he misses out on a pleasant life.
[Source]
Things get bad for all of us, almost continually, and what we do under the constant stress reveals who/what we are.
Charles Bukowski (1920-1994) German-American author, poet
What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire (1999)
What some call health, if purchased by perpetual anxiety about diet, isn’t much better than tedious disease.
… “[F]uture shock” [is] the shattering stress and disorientation that we induce in individuals by subjecting them to too much change in too short a time.
The pretext for indecisiveness is commonly mature deliberation; but in reality indecisive men occupy themselves less in deliberation than others; for to him who fears to decide, deliberation (which has a foretaste of that fear) soon becomes intolerably irksome, and the mind escapes from the anxiety of it into alien themes.
Henry Taylor (1800-1886) English dramatist, poet, bureaucrat, man of letters
The Statesman: An Ironical Treatise on the Art of Succeeding, ch. 21 (1836)
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You’re trying to drown your sorrows in alcohol and it won’t work. Sorrows know how to swim.
Ann Landers (1918-2002) American advice columnist [pseud. for Eppie Lederer]
“Ask Ann Landers,” syndicated column (1958)
Landers used the phrase multiple times, e.g.,However, the phrase predates her in a variety of anonymous sources; see here for more discussion.
- "And now an added P.S. In these days of political unrest, financial crisis and emotional upheaval, a word to those of you who are trying to drown your sorrow. Please be aware that sorrow knows how to swim." [The Ann Landers Encyclopedia: A to Z (1978)]
- "People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim."
Entrails don’t care for travel,
Entrails don’t care for stress,
Entrails are better kept folded inside you
For outside, they make a mess.
Never in History has the average American citizen found more need for a saving sense of humor. Beset by threats of destruction by atomic bombs, inflation, mounting taxes, overcrowded cities, witch hunters, propagandists, caterwauling commentators, and the incessant clamor of radio and television commercials, he must laugh occasionally to keep from blowing his top altogether. It’s far too easy to see only the shadows, and ignore the patches of sunlight that remain.
Bennett Cerf (1898-1971) American publisher, humorist
Laughter Incorporated, Foreword (1950)
(Source)
True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) American clergyman, civil rights leader, social activist, preacher
Stride Toward Freedom, ch. 2 “Montgomery Before the Protest” (1958)
(Source)
Response to a Montgomery resident who complained that race relations had been so "peaceful and harmonious" before King and other protesters arrived.
Look, Dave … I can see you’re really upset about this …. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly …. Take a stress pill, and think things over.
Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008) British writer
2001: A Space Odyssey [HAL 9000] (1968) [with Stanley Kubrick]
