Selected stress quotes

1. Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it....

2. It's been a rough day. I got up this morning, put on a shirt and a button fell off. I picked up my briefcase, and the handle came off. I'm afraid to go to the bathroom...

3. Directors and writers have a lot of stress as well, because they have people they answer to.

4. Try to relax and enjoy the crisis.

5. Sometimes the most urgent and vital thing you can possibly do is take a complete rest.

6. It's not easy taking my problems one at a time when they refuse to get in line.

7. The best thing about being too late is that there's no more need to hurry.

8. Things are gradually falling into place on top of me.

9. My first line of defense against reality is called sleep.

10. Humanity I love you because when you're hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

11. For, when you are approaching poverty, you make one discovery which outweighs some of the others. You discover boredom and mean complications and the beginnings of hunger, but you also discover the great redeeming feature of poverty: the fact that it annihilates the future. Within certain limits, it is actually true that the less money you have, the less you worry.

12. This foreign policy stuff is a little frustrating.

13. I bit down three nails rooting for the Heat.

14. Under pressure, the mouth speaks when the brain is disengaged, and, sometimes unwittingly, the gearshift is in reverse when it should be in neutral.

15. Many years ago, I concluded that a few hair shirts were part of the mental wardrobe of every man. The president differs from other men in that he has a more extensive wardrobe.

16. I could not tread these perilous paths in safety, if I did not keep a saving sense of humor.

17. So long and take it easy, because if you start taking things seriously, it is the end of you.

18. Owe money at Easter and Lent will seem short to thee.

19. If you aren't in the moment, you are either looking forward to uncertainty, or back to pain and regret.

20. Let the world slide, let the world go; A fig for care, and a fig for woe! If I can't pay, why I can owe, And death makes equal the high and low.

21. Success is having to worry about every damn thing in the world, except money.

22. Generally speaking, espionage offers each spy an opportunity to go crazy in a way he finds irresistible.

23. My hair is grey, but not with years, Nor grew it white In a single night, As men's have grown from sudden fears.

24. O born in days when wits were fresh and clear, And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames; Before this strange disease of modern life, With its sick hurry, its divided aims, Its heads o'ertax'd, its palsied hearts, was rife.

25. I lurch from chaos to chaos. I can't find my driving licence and my clothes are everywhere - cooking is the neatest thing I do.

26. One of the nice things about problems is that a good many of them do not exist except in our imaginations.

27. You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

28. I have an intense desire to return to the womb. Anybody's.

29. Whether a person is spiritual or not, we all seek to get away from the stress, anger, and anxiety of everyday life. Some people drink, do drugs, or do worse to escape, and they hurt themselves in the process. Some people listen to music, mine included, and feel better.

30. Those who do not know how to fight worry die young.

31. Please don't tell me to relax - it's only my tension that's holding me together.

32. No matter how much pressure you feel at work, if you could find ways to relax for at least five minutes every hour, you'd be more productive.

33. Whenever I was upset by something in the papers, [Jack] always told me to be more tolerant, like a horse flicking away flies in the summer.

34. 'I think I think too much. That's why I drink!'

35. Reality is the leading cause of stress amongst those in touch with it....

36. We boil at different degrees.

37. Don't worry about anything... Go out and have a good time.

38. The English language may hold a more disagreeable combination of words than 'The doctor will see you now.' I am willing to concede something to the phrase 'Have you anything to say before the current is turned on?' That may be worse for the moment, but it doesn't last so long. For continued, unmitigating depression, I know nothing to equal 'The doctor will see you now.' But I'm not narrow-minded about it. I'm willing to consider other possibilities.

39. One of life's best coping mechanisms is to know the difference between an inconvenience and a problem. If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you've got a problem. Everything else is an inconvenience. Life is inconvenient. Life is lumpy. A lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat and a lump in the breast are not the same kind of lump. One needs to learn the difference.

40. It's been a rough day. I got up this morning, put on a shirt and a button fell off. I picked up my briefcase, and the handle came off. I'm afraid to go to the bathroom...

41. I am very glad to hear this, since I come from the Ukraine. From now on I can sleep peacefully. I will immediately telegraph my daughter in Kiev.

42. Sitting there in paranoid fantasy You can't read minds You always get morose and speculate about the destruction of the universe whenever you come out of starflight. It's your peculiar manifestation of motion sickness.

43. Whenever I hear you saying, rise and shine, rise and shine, it makes me think how lucky dead people are!

44. Sometimes I feel really guilty complaining about it because there are some amazing things happening around me but the darkness has prevailed, to be honest, in extremis. Yesterday, man, I went to buy a pint of milk and I got stopped in the street and searched. They found a crumb of rock in the lining of my coat that I didn't even know was there and I spent all day in fucking Charing Cross [police] station. They're taking the piss, mate.

45. I [Boswell] happened to say, it would be terrible if he should not find a speedy opportunity of returning to London, and be confined in so dull a place. JOHNSON: 'Don't, Sir, accustom yourself to use big words for little matters. It would not be terrible, though I were to be detained some time here.'

46. Come on, people, it's fucking Christmas!

47. Bella Swan: I glared at him. No danger? Sure. I only had a sadistic vampire trying to avenge her mate's death with my own, preferably through some slow and torturous method. Who was worried about Victoria? And, oh, yeah the Volturi-the vampire royal family with their small army of vampire warriors-who insisted that my heart stop beating one way or another in the near future, because humans weren't supposed to know they existed. Right. No reason at all to panic.

48. I'm totally insane. I'm so wired. I'm sweating internally.

49. No, I happen to be one of those people whose memory shuts down under pressure. The answers would come to me in the middle of the night in my sleep! Besides, I am a millionaire.

50. Aggressive Fancy working spells Upon a mind o'erwrought.

51. Be not disturbed at trifles, nor at accidents, common or unavoidable.

52. they got me stressed out on Death Row/i've seen money but baby I got to gets mo'

53. Halp! My powerful brain is blowed itself up!

54. A mind that has confronted ruin for years Is half or more a ruined mind.

55. But that disease when soberly defined Is the false fire of an o'erheated mind.

56. Many of the government's actions aggravate rather than alleviate the stresses on ordinary families.

57. I have also reviewed my own financial obligations, which have puffed up recently like a hammered thumb.

58. Give a soldier an anvil, just a hunk of metal, and drive him out into the desert and leave him. In two weeks - when you go to get him, the anvil will be broken.

59. I was thinking about it so much, I was freaked out all day!

60. While everyone is influenced and persuaded daily in various ways, vulnerability to influence fluctuates. The ability to fend off persuaders is reduced when one is exhausted, rushed, stressed, uncertain, lonely, indifferent, uninformed, aged, very young, unsophisticated, ill, brain- damaged, drugged, drunk, distracted, fatigued, frightened, or very dependent.

61. In 1936, when my circulation and stomach rebelled...I called at Morell's private office. After a superficial examination...Morell prescribed for me his intestinal bacteria, dextrose, vitamins, and hormone tablets. For safety's sake I afterward had a thorough examination by Professor von Bergmann, the specialist in internal medicine at Berlin University. I was not suffering from any organic trouble, he concluded, but only from nervous symptoms caused by overwork. I slowed down my pace as best I could and the symptoms abated. To avoid offending Hitler I pretended that I was carefully following Morell's instructions, and since my health improved, I became for a time Morell's showpiece.

62. I don't mind the negative press. Well, actually, I do, but I try to ignore it. But it is really wearing out the family.

63. Can I quit now? Can I come home?

64. Blown away by fame We could all feel the shotgun hit the floor.

65. I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack at once

66. My having direct access to Himmler was the worst thorn in Kaltenbrunner's flesh. My limited interest in nicotine and alcohol was another thing which infuriated him. On several occasions, he tried to force me to exceed my quota of one or two glasses of wine. The more desperate the situation became toward the end of the war, the more Kaltenbrunner drank. I would find him in his office at eleven o'clock in the morning, having risen hardly more than half an hour earlier, his small eyes dull and empty. With the joviality of a drunkard he would reach under his desk, or bellow, 'Orderly!' and pour out a glass of champagne or brandy for me. Then, when he became too obstreperous, I would take a nip or two to pacify him and pour the rest onto the carpet. Usually he did not know this, but once when he did, the veins in his face became so swollen with rage that I thought he was about to have a stroke.

67. It was like he attacked sleep, a frontal assault, took it by the throat and forced it to yield him the rest he needed. Rest, but no peace

68. [In a Scottish Accent] Here's my idea for a fucking sport...I knock a ball into a gopher hole. 'Oh you mean like pool?' Fuck off pool! Not with a straight stick. With a little fucked up stick. I whack the ball, it goes in a gopher hole. 'Oh like croquet?' Fuck croquet! I put the hole hundreds of yards away. Oh yeah, whack the ball and it goes in the little fucking hole! 'Oh, so it's like a bowling thing?' Fuck no! Not straight, I put shit in the way! Like trees and bushes and high grass! So you can lose your fucking ball and go whackin' away with a tire iron. Whackin' away, and each time you miss you feel like you're gonna have a stroke. Fuck! That's what we'll call it! A stroke, cause every time you miss you feel like you're gonna fucking die! Oh great and here's the best part-oh fuck this is brilliant! Right near the end I'll put a little flat piece with a little tiny flag to give you fucking hope! But then I'll put a pool and a sandbox to fuck with your ball again! You'll be trashin' yer arse, jerkin' away in the sand, ah-hah! 'And you do this one time?'... FUCK NO! EIGHTEEN FUCKIN' TIMES!

69. Picture us inside a ghetto heaven, a place to rest/Findin peace through this land of stress

70. Tired of being trapped in this vicious cycle/If one more cop harrasses me I just might go psycho

71. I try to keep my head up, and still keep from gettin wet up/You know it's funny when it rains it pours

72. This all night money making got me outta touch, shit/Ain't flashed a smile in a long while/An unexpected birth worst of the ghetto childs

73. Not me, so this is how it ends, no friends/I'll be stressed and they just, reposessed my Benz

74. Humor is the great thing, the saving thing. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations and resentments flit away and a sunny spirit takes their place.

75. I was a-trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself, 'All right, then, I'll GO to hell.'

76. I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

77. He burst into tears. His nerves cracked...He was weeping for our army.

78. They're dusting the hot-seat off for me!

79. Don't tell me about impulse control, sir. How much impulse control should I have when a million Chinese are coming over a hill after me.

80. When it gets tough, I go to the rifle!

81. They're dusting off the hot-seat for me!

82. Go to work on an egg.

83. Permitte divis cetera.

84. 'My brain is hung like a horse!'

85. O Lord! thou knowest how busy I must be this day: if I forget thee, do not thou forget me.

86. Life with a Jolly Parent is a bit like life in a holiday camp. The beds are too small and there's an outbreak of Salmonella every five minutes.

87. After four years at the United Nations I sometimes yearn for the peace and tranquillity of a political convention.

88. A diplomat's life is made up of three ingredients: protocol, Geritol and alcohol.

89. A garden, you know, is a very usual refuge of a disappointed politician. Accordingly, I have purchased a few acres about nine miles from town, have built a house, and am cultivating a garden.

90. 'Stop the voices! Stop them!'

91. Cat, n. A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.

92. 'What is care?' asked the Princess, with a smile. 'It is a god', replied the Physician, 'invisible, but omnipotent. It steals the bloom from the cheek and lightness from the pulse - it takes away the appetite, and turns the hair grey'.

93. If a warrior is to succeed at anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.

94. Screaming is bad for the voice, but it's good for the soul.

95. There is no such hour on the present clock as 6:30, New York time. Yet, as only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night.

96. We live small lives on the periphery; we are marginalized and there's a great deal in which we choose not to participate. We wanted silence and we have that silence now. We arrived here speckled in sores and zits, our colons so tied in knots that we never thogught we'd have a bowel movement again. Our systems had stopped working, jammed with the odor of copy machines, Wite-Out, the smell of bond paper, and the endless stress of pointless jobs done grudgingly to little applause. We had compulsions that made us confuse shopping with creativity, to take downers and assume that merely renting a video on a Saturday night was enough. But now that we live here in the desert, things are much, much better.

97. I'm beginning to feel like a microwaved egg that will explode if anybody so much as breathes onto the surface.

98. The idea of any social obligation [...] just the idea of it embarasses my thoughts for a day, and sometimes it's since the day before that I worry, and don't sleep well, and the real affair, when it happens, is absolutely insignificant and justifies nothing; and the case repeats itself and I never learn to learn.

99. The world used us as an excuse to go mad.

100. It is not the cares of today, but the cares of tomorrow, that weigh a man down.