To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.
Quotes about straining (16 Quotes)
I want to be seen here in my simple, natural, ordinary fashion, without straining or artifice for it is myself that I portray.... I am myself the matter of my book.
Great poetry is always written by somebody straining to go beyond what he can do.
Illegal immigration is crisis for our country. It is an open door for drugs, criminals, and potential terrorists to enter our country. It is straining our economy, adding costs to our judicial, healthcare, and education systems.
Now the swift sail of straining life is furled,
And through the stillness of my soul is whirled
The throbbing of the hearts of half the world.
The March Beige Book paints a clear picture of an economy straining at the seams. Significantly, compared to recent Beige Books, there was more detail, and a more worrying tone, to the comments on the labor market.
Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.
If we look at the nation that President Bush leads, it also behaves in many ways like an addict. The United States is a gigantic John Candy of a country, straining its oversized elasticated pants from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The country is addicted to more or less everything, constantly craving greater and greater quantities of petrol, electricity, pointless sports, empty patriotism, fatty hormone-crammed meat, gigantic pedestrian-crushing four-wheel drive trucks, ever more baseball caps with nonsense written on them and unquestioning obedience from every nation on the planet.
We're already straining to fulfill demand. If (construction workers who are here illegally) are removed from the workforce, the housing business will suffer tremendously.
I wasn't straining at the bit to become a movie star any more than I had plotted to get out of vaudeville and into Broadway musicals.
I used to spend most of my time straining to be a nice guy so people would like me.
His friend, novelist Jack Kerouac, was in the audience of about 150 at the performance. Scores of people stood around the darkened gallery straining to hear every word, ... Everyone was yelling, 'Go Go Go'
Who, born for the universe, narrow'd his mind, And to party gave up what was meant for mankind Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote. Who too deep for his hearers still went on refining, And thought of convincing while they thought of dining Though equal to all things, for all things unfit Too nice for a statesman, too proud for a wit.
It is not the straining for great things that is most effective; it is the doing the little things, the common duties, a little better and better.
What is the use of straining after an amiable view of things, when a cynical view is most likely to be the true one.
It is not uncommon in modern times to see governments straining every nerve to keep the peace, and the people whom they represent, with patriotic enthusiasm and resentment over real or fancied wrongs, urging them forward to war.