Constrains Quotes & Sayings

We enter upon a stage which we did not design and we find ourselves part of an action that was not of our making. Each of us being a main character in his own drama plays subordinate parts in the dramas of others, and each drama constrains the others. In my drama, perhaps, I am Hamlet or Iago or at least the swineherd who may yet become a prince, but to you I am only A Gentleman or at best Second Murderer, while you are my Polonius or my Gravedigger, but your own hero. Each of our dramas exerts constraints on each other's, making the whole different from the parts, but still dramatic. — Alasdair MacIntyre

If your souls were not immortal, and you in danger of losing them, I would not thus speak unto you; but the love of your souls constrains me to speak: methinks this would constrain me to speak unto you forever. — George Whitefield

When dams were erected on the Columbia, salmon battered themselves against the concrete, trying to return home. I expect no less from us. We too must hurl ourselves against and through the literal and metaphorical concrete that contains and constrains us, that keeps us from talking about what is most important to us, that keeps us from living the way our bones know we can, that bars us from our home. It only takes one person to bring down a dam. — Derrick Jensen

He had known that power requires to be used; that the world compels the exercise of power if one possesses it. And that necessity constrains what one may do with power. — Rachel Neumeier

Neither fear nor self-interest can convert the soul. They may change the appearance, perhaps even the conduct, but never the object of supreme desire ... Fear is the motive which constrains the slave; greed binds the selfish man, by which he is tempted when he is drawn away by his own lust and enticed (James 1:14). But neither fear nor self-interest is undefiled, nor can they convert the soul. Only charity can convert the soul, freeing it from unworthy motives. — Bernard Of Clairvaux

We are apt to imagine that if Jesus Christ constrains us and we obey Him, He will lead us to great success; but He does not. If our Lord has ever constrained you, and you obeyed Him, what was your dream of His purpose? Never put your dream of success as God's purpose for you; His purpose may be exactly the opposite. — Oswald Chambers

Wine and women make wise men dote and forsake God's law and do wrong.
However, the fault is not in the wine, and often not in the woman. The fault is in the one who misuses the wine or the woman or other of God's crations. Even if you get drunk on the wine and through this greed you lapse into lechery, the wine is not to blame but you are, in being unable or unwilling to discipline yourself. And even if you look at a woman and become caught up in her beauty and assent to sin [= adultery; extramarital sex], the woman is not to blame nor is the beauty given her by God to be disparaged: rather, you are to blame for not keeping your heart more clear of wicked thoughts ... If you feel yourself tempted by the sight of a woman, control your gaze better ... You are free to leave her. Nothing constrains you to commit lechery but your own lecherous heart. — Anonymous

There are two kinds of geniuses. The characteristic of the one is roaring, but the lightning is meagre and rarely strikes; the other kind is characterized by reflection by which it constrains itself or restrains the roaring. But the lightning is all the more intense; with the speed and sureness of lightning it hits the selected particular points - and is fatal. — Soren Kierkegaard

Soloing is the most beautiful way of climbing; no material constrains, just you and the rock, the sun, nature; a kind of school for courage, willpower and self-confidence. — Alain Robert

The delightful study of the Psalms has yielded me boundless profit and ever-growing pleasure; common gratitude constrains me to communicate to others a portion of the benefit, with the prayer that it may induce them to search further for themselves. — Charles Spurgeon

In China, Vietnam, Russia and several former Soviet states, the dominant social networks are run by local companies whose relationship with the government actually constrains the empowering potential of social networks. — Rebecca MacKinnon

Attachment constrains our vision so that we are not able to see things from a wider perspective. — Dalai Lama

Planning. Short-term memory. Attention. At first glance, these three frontal lobe functions can seem like diverse activities that just happen to be packed into the same brain region. But on closer inspection it turns out that they are facets of the same basic phenomenon of 'restraint'. Planning restrains our brains from wandering from a chosen path of activity. Short-term memory retrains sensory cortex from moving on to different imagery. Attention constrains the kind of sensory data admitted to sensory cortex. — Robert Jourdain

Necessities can be many, but the one that is stronger is that which constrains you to win or to die. — Niccolo Machiavelli

There's nothing within science per se that says medical researchers must not experiment on human subjects; it is the imposition of ethical dogma that constrains the scientist. — Jonah Goldberg

Walking and overcoming by faith is not easy. For one thing, the dimension of time constantly constrains our perspective. Likewise, the world steadily tempts us. No wonder we are given instructive words from Jesus about the narrowness and the straightness of the only path available to return home: "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (John 14:6). And then he said, "No man cometh unto the Father, but by me." Jesus laid down strict conditions. — Neal A. Maxwell

An obligation is something which constrains or induces us to act. — Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey

This is some fellow,
Who having been prais'd for bluntness, doth affect
A saucy roughness and constrains the garb
Quite from his nature: he can't flatter, he!
An honest mind and plain,
he must speak truth!
And they will take it so; if not he's plain.
These kind of knaves I know, which in this plainness
Harbor more craft, and far corrupter ends,
Than twenty silly, ducking observants,
That stretch their duty nicely. — William Shakespeare

Kindly politeness is the slow fruit of advanced reflection; it is a sort of humanity and kindliness applied to small acts and every day discourse: it bids man soften towards others, and forget himself for the sake of others: it constrains genuine nature, which is selfish and gross. — Hippolyte Taine

The look that one directs at things, both outward and inward, as an artist, is not the same as that with which one would regard the same as a man, but at once colder and more passionate. As a man, you might be well-disposed, patient, loving, positive, and have a wholly uncritical inclination to look upon everything as all right, but as an artist your daemon constrains you to "observe", to take note, lightning fast and with hurtful malice, of every detail that in the literary sense would be characteristic, distinctive, significant, opening insights, typifying the race, the social or the psychological mode, recording all as mercilessly as though you had no human relationship to the observed object whatever. — Joseph Campbell

Organisms are not billiard balls, propelled by simple and measurable external forces to predictable new positions on life's pool table. Sufficiently complex systems have greater richness. Organisms have a history that constrains their future in myriad, subtle ways. — Stephen Jay Gould

Amnesia constrains ambition and inoculates against patience. Still, — Noam Chomsky

Fortitude ... It means fixity of purpose. It means endurance. It means having the strength to live with what constrains you. — Hilary Mantel

But when you are embodied in a location, in a physical plant, in a set of people, and in a common history, that constrains your evolution and your ability to evolve in certain directions. — Kevin Kelly

A sublime soul can rise to all kinds of greatness, but by an effort; it can tear itself from all bondage, to all that limits and constrains it, but only by strength of will. Consequently the sublime soul is only free by broken efforts. — Friedrich Schiller

The photograph contains and constrains within its own boundaries, excluding all else, a microcosmic analogue of the framing of space which is knowledge. As such it becomes a metaphor of power, having the ability to appropriate and decontextualize time and space and those who exist within it. — Elizabeth Edwards

What constrains or enables the capacity of human beings to work in groups is not so much the technology, but rather the capacity of the human brain to have and monitor social interactions. — Nicholas A. Christakis

True generosity consists precisely in fighting to destroy the causes which nourish false charity. False charity constrains the fearful and subdued, the "rejects of life," to extend their trembling hands. True generosity lies in striving so that these hands
whether of individuals or entire peoples
need be extended less and less in supplication, so that more and more they become human hands which work and, working, transform the world. — Paulo Freire

That end is an intuitive realization of a single great insight - that we and the world around are one, both part of a larger encompassing absolute. Our rational intellect merely obscures this truth, and consequently we must shut it off, if only for a moment. Rationality constrains our mind; intuition releases it. — Thomas Hoover

Our faith comes in moments ... yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

As companies grow they acquire a dogma that constrains them. — Sahar Hashemi

People define gay cinema solely by content: if there are gay characters in it, it's a gay film ... I think that's really simplistic. Heterosexuality to me is a structure as much as it is a content. It is an imposed structure that goes along with the patriarchal, dominant structure that constrains and defines society. If homosexuality is the opposite or counter-sexual activity to that, then what kind of a structure would it be? — Todd Haynes

Large institutions such as the Pentagon, the Internal Revenue Service, and multinational corporations tell us that their decisions are made on the basis of solutions generated by computers, and this is usually good enough to put our minds at ease or, rather, to sleep. In any case, it constrains us from making complaints or accusations. In part for this reason, the computer has strengthened bureaucratic institutions and suppressed the impulse toward significant social change. — Neil Postman

In asking philosophical questions, we use a reason shaped by the body, a cognitive unconscious to which we have no direct access, and metaphorical thought of which we are largely unaware. The fact that abstract thought is mostly metaphorical means that answers to philosophical questions have always been, and always will be, mostly metaphorical. In itself, that is neither good nor bad. It is simply a fact about the capacities of the human mind. But it has major consequences for every aspect of philosophy. Metaphorical thought is the principal tool that makes philosophical insight possible and that constrains the forms that philosophy can take. — George Lakoff