Contraction Quotes & Sayings

One of the first big bubbles, of course, was the huge and horrible South Sea Bubble in England. And the aftermath was interesting. Many of you probably don't remember what happened after the South Sea Bubble, which caused an enormous financial contraction, and a lot of pain. They banned publicly traded stock in England for decades. — Charlie Munger

It was hard to imagine the icy water thawed and re-sealing, or the sky returning to a lively blue. She had a sense of contraction, of huddling against the weather. Later, it figured in her mind as Stalinist classicism, the wind tunnel of the vast and inhuman Karl-Marx-Allee, and the shapes of people in padded jackets bending against the cruel air. A scene from Eisenstein, perhaps, with a gelid lens and the special effects of monumental vision, swollen by an aerial view and historical misery. Black outlines on white snow, impersonality, extinguishment. Exaggeration of this kind was irresistible. In that early, fierce cold, Berliners coped better. — Gail Jones

The Indian business has largely grown on the back of exports. The domestic markets, as far as our Indian business is concerned, actually have contracted because of the contraction in the medium and heavy commercial vehicle space. — Baba Kalyani

The law of the heart is thus the same as the law of muscular tissue generally, that the energy of contraction, however measured, is a function of the length of the muscle fibre. — Ernest Starling

TV - a clever contraction derived from the words Terrible Vaudeville. However, it is our latest medium - we call it a medium because nothing's well done. — Goodman Ace

All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore love for love's sake, because it is the only law of life, just as you breathe to live. — Swami Vivekananda

You can enhance the practice of generosity by observing those moments when the thought of giving does arise and you resist it. Feel the nature of the resistance - paint a word picture of it. Do you experience it as contraction, rigidity fearfulness? Explore it.
Then examine the impulse to give. What is that sense yielding, letting go, sharing? How would you describe the nature of the generous intention? Do you notice the release from grasping, the recognition that happiness will not come from holding on and clinging? — Sharon Salzberg

I also learned that you didn't come onto this earth as a perfectionist or control freak. You weren't born a person of cringe and contraction. You were born as energy, as life, made of the same stuff as stars, blossoms, breezes. You learned contraction to survive, but that was then. You have paid through the nose-paid but good. It is now your turn to reap. — Anne Lamott

In the evenings in bed, with the light out, I tried to picture death, the "most nothing of all." In imagination I suppressed all the circumstances of my life and I felt gripped in ever tighter circles of panic. There was no longer any "I." What is it after all, "I"? ...Then one night, a marvelous idea came to me: Instead of just submitting to this panic, I would try to observe it, to see where it is, what it is. I perceived then that it was
connected to a contraction in my stomach, a little under my ribs, and also in my throat...I forced myself to unclench, to relax my stomach. The panic disappeared ... when I tried again to think about death, instead of being gripped by the claws of panic I was filled by an entirely new feeling, whose name I did not know, something between mystery and hope."
-Mount Analogue, Rene Daumal — Rene Daumal

THE CORRECTION, when it finally came, was not an overnight bursting of a bubble but a much more gentle letdown, a year-long leakage of value from key financial markets, a contraction too gradual to generate headlines and too predictable to seriously hurt anybody but fools and the working poor. — Jonathan Franzen

I observed certain animalcules, within whole bodies I saw so quick a motion as to exceed belief; they were about the size of a large grain of sand, and their bodies being transparent, that the internal motion could plainly be seen. Among other things, I saw in the body of one of these animalcules a bright and round corpuscle, placed near the head, and in which a very wonderful swift motion was to be seen, consisting of an alternate extension and contraction. This particle I concluded to be the heart ... — Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek

Virtually throughout its history, and certainly in the 20th century, California has been known as the place to go for dynamism and growth. It did not become the richest, most populous, and most productive state solely because of its weather and natural resources. So it takes a lot to turn California around from growth to contraction, from people moving into the state to a net exodus from the state, from business moving into California to businesses leaving California. It takes some doing. And the Left has done it. — Dennis Prager

In some units it may suppress the motor discharge altogether, in some it may merely slow the motor discharge thus lessening the wave frequency of the contraction and so the tension. — Charles Scott Sherrington

Suffering begins when you mentally label a situation as bad. That causes an emotional contraction. When you let it be, without naming it, enormous power is available to you. The contraction cuts you off from that power, the power of life itself. — Eckhart Tolle

Aging people should know that their lives are not mounting and unfolding but that an inexorable inner process forces the contraction of life. For a young person it is almost a sin and certainly a danger to be too much occupied with himself; but for the aging person it is a duty and a necessity to give serious attention to himself. — Carl Jung

Compounds of gaseous substances with each other are always formed in very simple ratios, so that representing one of the terms by unity, the other is 1, 2, or at most 3 ... The apparent contraction of volume suffered by gas on combination is also very simply related to the volume of one of them. — Joseph Louis Gay-Lussac

Suffer no anxiety, for he who is a sufferer of anxiety becomes regardless of enjoyment of the world and the spirit, and contraction happens to his body and soul. — Zoroaster

He folded back the hem of her housedress. Peeled the wet underpants from her skin and moved them down over her pale knees and her small feet and then dropped them on the floor. He could hear the voices of the children playing in the tree outside. He gently pushed her thighs apart and saw immediately that the baby had already begun to crown. Her skin was paler than his wife's was, even in midwinter. He gave her his hand to get her through the next contraction, keeping his arm steady as she squeezed. He spread the fingers of the other over her taut belly. Mr. Persichetti wore a silver Saint Christopher's medal around his neck and kept a Sacred Heart scapular in his pocket, but when Mary Keane asked him, catching her breath, "Who's the patron saint of women in labor?" he shrugged. He told her he only knew Saint Dymphna was the patron of the insane. He'd had the — Alice McDermott

In fact, ambitious tension actually limits our ability to succeed because it keeps us in a state of contraction emotionally and physically. It seems to give us energy but doesn't really. Like the white sugar of mental health, there's a short high followed by a crash. The cultivation of mental rest or surrender is like eating healthy food. It doesn't give us an immediate rush, but over time it provides a lot more energy. — Marianne Williamson

It's important that you do full movements for your triceps, because
locking out is when your triceps work their hardest. Flex and squeeze at
the contraction of each rep to hit all three triceps heads. — Kevin Levrone

I glimpse again that biblical rhythm of expansion-and-contraction, assertion-and-subversion. As that rhythm becomes ever clearer as the very heartbeat of the biblical tradition, we will see the basic solution for How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian. Read it all carefully and thoughtfully, recognize radicality's assertion, expect normalcy's subversion, and respect the honesty of a story that tells the truth. — John Dominic Crossan

Ego contraction, however, prevents precisely the free expansion that enables us to find our connection to spirit. This is often described as the difference between the self and the Self. The self is the isolated ego clinging to its small reality; the Self is the unbounded spirit that can afford not to cling at all. Detachment means that you live from the Self instead of the self. — Deepak Chopra

What most women live in, is fear of the next contraction, or they're reliving the pain of the one they just had. And nature really builds in these breaks, if you can be in the present and not feel the pain and not sort of anticipate the pain to come. — Lauren Bowles

The cycle of optimism and euphoria leading to greed, fear and capitulation, giving way to hope and building back to optimism, drives the expansion and contraction of our financial world in a market cycle of collective human emotion. — Coreen T. Sol

Hardly had they rested when the waves carried them out again, like a nightmare that repeats itself over and over through the night, and over and over again through the years. Back and forth they went and he feared that her strength could not hold. He had no confidence, not in himself, nor in her. He felt like a helpless child, and Diane seemed helpless too, their long struggle getting them nowhere, only repeating itself--contraction, release, contraction again. — William Kotzwinkle

Fractional reserve banks are sitting ducks and are always subject to contraction. When the banks' state of inherent bankruptcy is discovered, for example, people will tend to cash in their deposits, and the contractionary, deflationary pressure could be severe. — Murray Rothbard

There is a gravity which is not austere nor captious, which belongs not to melancholy nor dwells in contraction of heart: but arises from tenderness and hangs upon reflection. — Walter Savage Landor

It has been demonstrated that freemason - in an operative context - is a contraction of 'freestone mason' ... The earliest printed use so far traced comes in The Pilgrimage of Perfection - usually attributed to William Bonde - printed in 1536 by Wynkyn de Worde. — John Hamill

The borders of my bodyhood coincide with those of my openness to the world. They are in fact at any given time identical, though they are always changing with the fluid expansion and contraction of my relationships to the world. — Medard Boss

Our economic system and our planetary system are now at war. Or, more accurately, our economy is at war with many forms of life on earth, including human life. What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity's use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. Only one of these sets of rules can be changed, and it's not the laws of nature. — Naomi Klein

It is of course the nature of historical contraction that the shortest distance to a historical destination is never a straight line. — Ibrahim Babangida

I launched into a discourse on the gradual contraction of medieval oaths invoking the Virgin Mother Mary's menstrual blood and the seepage of Christ's wounds, astounded to find any use for my college study of medieval literature. — Hope Jahren

You, you only, exist.
We pass away, till at last,
our passing is so immense
that you arise: beautiful moment,
in all your suddenness,
arising in love, or enchanted
in the contraction of work.
To you I belong, however time may
wear me away. From you to you
I go commanded. In between
the garland is hanging in chance; but if you
take it up and up and up: look:
all becomes festival! — Rainer Maria Rilke

Mild depression is a gradual and sometimes permanent thing that undermines people the way rust weakens iron. It is too much grief at too slight a cause, pain that takes over from the other emotions and crowds them out. Such depression takes up bodily occupancy in the eyelids and in the muscles that keep the spine erect. It hurts your heart and lungs, making the contraction of involuntary muscles harder than it needs to be. Like physical pain that becomes chronic, it is miserable not so much because it is intolerable in the moment as because it is intolerable to have known it in the moments gone and to look forward only to knowing it in the moments to come. The present tense of mild depression envisages no alleviation because it feels like knowledge. — Andrew Solomon

Strength is Life, Weakness is Death. Expansion is Life, Contraction is Death. Love is Life, Hatred is Death. — Swami Vivekananda

When all thermonuclear sources of energy are exhausted a sufficiently heavy star will collapse. Unless fission due to rotation, the radiation of mass, or the blowing off of mass by radiation, reduce the star's mass to the order of that of the sun, this contraction will continue indefinitely. — J. Robert Oppenheimer

In addition to her Curtsey-No-Contraction mantra, she needed to add a No-Ogling-the-Period-Hunks policy. — Angela Quarles

The daily clinical experience of thousands of massage therapists, physical therapists, and physicians strongly indicates that most of our common aches and pains - and many other puzzling physical complaints - are actually caused by trigger points, or small contraction knots, in the muscles of the body. — Clair Davies

Developing Inner Strength Through the Quan (Kata) Eliminate external distractions and concentrate only upon intention. Coordinate breathing and synchronize it with the muscular activity. When you extend your arm, exhale and strike but conserve 50% of your air. Be sure never to expel all of your air at one time. When you inhale, your body becomes light. When you exhale, your body becomes rooted. Listen to your breathing and become aware of every part of your body. There must be a constant but pliable muscular contraction in the deltoid, trapezius, latissimus dorsi, serratus, and pectoral muscle groups. To encourage perfect diaphragm breathing, the spine must be parallel to the stomach. Techniques are executed forward and back from where the elbows meet the waist. — Patrick McCarthy

Don't most astrophysicists now predict some "end of the line" - an end to it all? Not just the death of things, but the annihilation of everything. Some great contraction, or collapse. Or, perhaps, some vast dissipation into eternal emptiness. Maybe it's all swallowed up by an immense black hole, which then swallows itself. But, whatever the case, their extinction is inevitable and absolute. So complete as to erase any and all evidence that this reality - this existence - ever took place. So complete that, perhaps, for all intents and purposes, it never really did.
(attrib: F.L. Vanderson) — Mort W. Lumsden

Anything that really frightens you may contain a clue to enlightenment. It may indicate to you how deeply you are attached to structure, whether mental, physical, or social. Attachment and resistance are appearances with the same root: when you resist by pulling away your awareness, the emotion is one of fear, and the contraction is experienced as a pull like magnetism or gravity; that is, attachment. That is why we often fear to open our minds to more exalted spiritual beings. We think fear is a signal to withdraw, when in fact it is a sign we are already withdrawing too much. — Thaddeus Golas

He whispers a benediction and breathes it into the air, spreading his hope for you with a contraction of the lungs. — Mohsin Hamid

At the very center of our being is rhythmic movement, a cyclic expansion and contraction that is both in our body and outside it, that is both in our mind and in our body, that is both in our consciousness and not in it. — Andrew Weil

Every couple of years or so, when Daniel Clowes releases a new book, one can almost sense the rectal contraction across the collective seat of our humble profession. — Chris Ware

You cannot go into labor," Caleb ordered, anxiety clenching his innards.
"The baby is coming!" She enunciated every word.
"The doctor is a long day's ride away in Sweetwater Springs, and there's no woman for miles. You'll just have to wait."
As the contraction eased, the tightness in her body relaxed, and she gave him a wan smile. "Does everyone always do what you say?"
'Is that levity in her voice? At a time like this?' "They comply if I know what best, and I usually do. — Debra Holland

The organism is thus being preconditioned for the spontaneous acceptance of what is offered. Inasmuch as the greater liberty involves a contraction rather than extension and development of instinctual needs, it works for rather than against the status quo of general repression - one might speak of "institutionalized desublimation". The latter appears to be a vital factor in the making of the authoritarian personality of our time. — Herbert Marcuse

I have a "Do Not Disturb" sign on my hotel door. It's time to go to "Don't Disturb". It's been "Do Not" for too long. We should embrace the contraction. — Mitch Hedberg

She'd been in labor for nineteen hours; I completely understood why she wanted to pass the buck. 'You are so beautiful,' her husband crooned, holding up her shoulders.
'You are so full of shit,' Lila snarled, but as a contraction settled over her like a net, she bore down and pushed. — Jodi Picoult

Pasquale considered his friend's face. It had such an open quality, was such a clearly American face, like Dee's face, like Michael Deane's face. He believed he could spot an American anywhere by that quality - that openness, that stubborn belief in possibility, a quality that, in his estimation, even the youngest Italians lacked. Perhaps it was the difference in age between the countries - America with its expansive youth, building all those drive-in movie theaters and cowboy restaurants; Italians living in endless contraction, in the artifacts of generations, in the bones of empires. This reminded him of Alvis Bender's contention that stories were like nations - Italy a great epic poem, Britain a thick novel, America a brash motion picture in Technicolor - and he remembered, too, Dee Moray saying she'd spent years "waiting for her movie to start," and that she'd almost missed out on her life waiting for it. — Jess Walter

In film, there are two ways of including human beings. One is depicting human beings. Another is to create a film form which, in itself, has all the qualities of being human: tenderness, observation, fear, relaxation, the sense of stepping into the world and pulling back, expansion, contraction, changing, softening, tenderness of heart. The first is a form of theater and the latter is a form of poetry. — Nathaniel Dorsky

This creator god was called Allah, which is not a proper name but a contraction of the word al-ilah, meaning simply the god. — Reza Aslan

I am thoroughly convinced that no individual or nation can live by holding itself apart from the community of others. Give and take is the law; and if India wants to raise herself once more, it is absolutely necessary that she brings out her treasures and throws them broadcast among the nations of the earth, and in return be ready to receive what others have to give her. Expansion is life, contraction is death. Love is life, and hatred is death. We commenced to die the day we began to hate other races; and nothing can prevent our death unless we come back to expansion, which is life. — Swami Vivekananda

THE LAW OF THE CONTRACTION: A brand becomes stronger when you narrow its focus. — Al Ries

Economists of a classical bent lay a large part of the decline of employment, and thus lagging output, to a contraction of labour supply. — Edmund Phelps

As you you deeply into your own awareness, and relax the self-contraction, and dissolve into the empty ground of your own primordial experience, the simply feeling of Being-right now, right here-is it not obvious at once? — Ken Wilber

The oil market is especially sensitive even to a hint of expansion or contraction in supply. — James Surowiecki

Progression is part regression. Moving forward sometimes involves taking a few steps back during the process. Nothing has gone wrong. This is how we all move forward. Every project has setbacks. Every plan runs into a wall every once in a while. Every relationship has miscommunications and conflicts. Some days you will wake up feeling good; other days you will feel off. You will lose some money; you will gain some money. You will lose some weight; you will gain some weight. All of life is a process of expansion and contraction. This is how life breathes. — Emily Maroutian

Central bankers always try to avoid their last big mistake. So every time there's the threat of a contraction in the economy, they'll over stimulate the economy, by printing too much money. The result will be a rising roller coaster of inflation, with each high and low being higher than the preceding one. — Milton Friedman

I don't think I've been too optimistic. The government believes the contraction will be around 1.5 per cent, as the central bank said. However, we're waiting to see the Commission estimate. — Luis De Guindos

What the climate needs to avoid collapse is a contraction in humanity's use of resources; what our economic model demands to avoid collapse is unfettered expansion. — Naomi Klein

There are two ways of life, one leading to righteousness, which brings happiness, and the other to unrighteousness, which produces misery. One leads to kindness, mercy and sympathy, the other to hatred and cruelty; one to tolerance and the other to intolerance; one to justice and the other to injustice; one to truth and the other to error; one to peace and concord and the other to quarrelling and war; one to mental development and the other to mental contraction. One is the Secular way and the other is the Theological; one is the Democratic and the other the Despotic; one is the sane and the other the insane. — Arthur Findlay

I've always felt that complement of opposites: body and soul, solitude and companionship, and in the dance studio, contraction and release, rise and fall. — Judith Jamison

Success works as a cycle - growth and contraction, balancing and unbalancing - all while you're encountering hurdles that get higher and higher over time. — Julien Smith

Financial institutions are not being bailed out as a favor to them or their stockholders. In fact, stockholders have come out worse off after some bailouts. The real point is to avoid a major contraction of credit that could cause major downturns in output and employment, ruining millions of people, far beyond the financial institutions involved. If it was just a question of the financial institutions themselves, they could be left to sink or swim. But it is not. — Thomas Sowell

Every one and every single time is different, and I didn't have C-sections, which I don't know if that's lucky or unlucky, but I was able to feel every contraction. You forget what it feels like. God's got a great way of making women forget what it's like because we would never go through it again. — Monica Potter

I wasn't very good about the pain. I started screaming for painkillers after the third contraction and didn't stop until my daughter was eating solid food. — Linda Sunshine

The notion is that human beings are born, (as my Guru has explained many times,) with equivalent potential for both contraction and expansion. The ingredients of both darkness and light are equally present in all of us, and then it's up to the individual (or the family, or the society) to decide what will be brought forth - the virtues or the malevolence. The madness of this planet is largely a result of human being's difficulty in coming into virtuous balance with himself. Lunacy (both collective and individual) results. — Elizabeth Gilbert

The facts of physics do not oblige us to accept one philosophy rather than the other...the laws of physics in any one reference frame account for all physical phenomena, including the observations of moving observers. And it is often simplest to work in a single frame, rather than to hurry after each moving object in turn...You can pretend that whatever inertial frame you have chosen is the ether of the 19th century physicists, and in that frame you can confidently apply the ideas of the FitzGerald contraction....It is a great pity that students don't understand this. Very often they are led to believe that Einstein somehow swept away all that went before. This is not true. Much of what went before survived the theory of relativity, with the added freedom that you can choose any inertial frame of reference in which to apply all those ideas. — John S. Bell

Africa and indeed Nigeria has always been a paradox, an inexplicable contraction of a blessed land with a poor masses — Fela Durotoye

Mrs. Ferrars was a little, thin woman, upright, even to formality, in her figure, and serious, even to sourness, in her aspect. Her complexion was sallow; and her features small, without beauty, and naturally without expression; but a lucky contraction of the brow had rescued her countenance from the disgrace of insipidity, by giving it the strong characters of pride and ill nature. She was not a woman of many words; for, unlike people in general, she proportioned them to the number of her ideas; and of the few syllables that did escape her, not one fell to the share of Miss Dashwood, whom she eyed with the spirited determination of disliking her at all events. — Jane Austen

I found no muse on Hyperion during those first years. For many, the expansion of distance because of limited transportation - EMVs were unreliable, skimmers scarce - and the contraction of artificial consciousness due to absence of datasphere, no access to the All Thing, and only one fatline transmitter - all led to a renewal of creative energies, a new realization of what it meant to be human and an artist. Or so I heard. No muse appeared. My verse continued to be technically proficient and dead as Huck Finn's cat. I decided to kill myself. — Dan Simmons

Effortlessness is the ability to slow down and listen for the spaces between the joints ... Deep within all things there is a natural rhythm, a music of opening and closing, expansion and contraction. — Wayne Muller

When anesthesia was developed, it was for many decades routinely withheld from women giving birth, since women were "supposed" to suffer. One of the few societies to take a contrary view was the Huichol tribe in Mexico. The Huichol believed that the pain of childbirth should be shared, so the mother would hold on to a string tied to her husband's testicles. With each painful contraction, she would give the string a yank so that the man could share the burden. Surely if such a mechanism were more widespread, injuries in childbirth would garner more attention. — Nicholas D. Kristof

Every trauma provides an opportunity for authentic transformation. Trauma amplifies and evokes the expansion and contraction of psyche, body, and soul. It is how we respond to a traumatic event that determines whether trauma will be a cruel and punishing Medusa turning us into stone, or whether it will be a spiritual teacher taking us along vast and uncharted pathways. In the Greek myth, blood from Medusa's slain body was taken in two vials; one vial had the power to kill, while the other had the power to resurrect. If we let it, trauma has the power to rob our lives of vitality and destroy it. However, we can also use it for powerful self-renewal and transformation. Trauma, resolved, is a blessing from a greater power. — Ann Frederick

Erhaps it was the difference in age between the countries - America with its expansive youth, building all those drive-in movie theaters and cowboy restaurants; Italians living in endless contraction, in the artifacts of generations, in the bones of empires. — Jess Walter

In spite of her vapourish airs (as the housewives of Yonville called them), Emma, all the same, never seemed gay, and usually she had at the corners of her mouth that immobile contraction that puckers the faces of old maids, and those of men whose ambition has failed. — Gustave Flaubert

I am a black bird, a Raven, I am Raven. I know and I am knowing - I know and see life and death, expansion and contraction and I do not shiver and cry - I am unafraid.

I am Raven. I am black as liquid night with wings and my eyes are stars to see by.

The light within me leads the way and it is revealed through my eyes and I am what lies between the dark and light.

I am the balance between. — Sophia Rose

I never focus on contraction. I'm focusing on my muscle. I'm not focusing on a certain style of lifting or contracting. I'm just trying to get the weight up. I'm trying to build muscle. — Ronnie Coleman

When Mrs. Keane whispered, between contractions, that the baby was coming at least six weeks too soon, he shook his head and clucked his tongue, lifting the wet dish towel from her forehead and refolding it and then touching it gently to her cheeks. The dampness, and the perspiration, had darkened her hair and the pain had brought some color to her face. There was all about her a not unpleasant odor of oatmeal or wheat. He knelt beside the couch. When he leaned away, his T-shirt was wet with the amniotic fluid that had soaked her dress and the cushion beneath her. Her knees were already raised, her pale legs bare, and he asked, gently, if she would like him to check what was going on. She nodded and when the contraction had passed, added, "Modesty is always the first thing to go. — Alice McDermott

Form the possessive singular of nouns by adding 's. Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write: Charles's friend, Burns's poems, the witch's malice. ... The pronomial possessives hers, its, theirs, yours, and ours have no apostrophe. Indefinite pronouns, however, use the apostrophe to show possession: one's rights, somebody else's umbrella. A common error is to write it's for its, or vice versa. The first is a contraction, meaning "it is". The second is a possessive. It's a wise dog that scratches its own fleas. — Strunk Jr., William

Obesity is a double victory for consumerism. Instead of eating little, which will lead to economic contraction, people eat too much and then buy diet products - contributing to economic growth twice over. — Yuval Noah Harari

Business, investor, and consumer confidence is shaken and the contraction phase begins. — Philip Kotler

WHORES.
Necessary in the nineteenth century for the contraction of syphilis, without which no one could claim genius. — Julian Barnes

[1.] And first I suppose that there is diffused through all places an aethereal substance capable of contraction & dilatation, strongly elastick, & in a word, much like air in all respects, but far more subtile. 2. I suppose this aether pervades all gross bodies, but yet so as to stand rarer in their pores then in free spaces, & so much ye rarer as their pores are less ... 3. I suppose ye rarer aether within bodies & ye denser without them, not to be terminated in a mathematical superficies, but to grow gradually into one another. — Isaac Newton

Now, smile-if you still can.
This is your zygomatic major muscle. Each contraction pulls your flesh apart the way tiebacks hold open the drapes in your living room window. The way cables pull aside a theater curtain, your every smile is an opening night. A premiere. You unveiling yourself. — Chuck Palahniuk

Walking through the hospital's main entrance, with Hope's grip squeezing tight her hand, Lauren sees Saint Felicity cradling the bones of her seven murdered sons, Saint Margaret of Antioch being swallowed by a dragon, Saint Mary of Oignies cutting off chunks of her own flesh. Then a gasp as a contraction hits and the world shrinks to the size of Hope's body. The inside, even smaller than the outside. This is all there is. — Kirsty Logan

People who need regulation often leave therapy sessions feeling calmer, stronger, safer, more able to handle the world. Often they don't know why. Nothing obviously helpful happened - telling a stranger about your pain sounds nothing like a certain recipe for relief. And the feeling inevitably dwindles, sometimes within minutes, taking the warmth and security with it. But the longer a patient depends, the more his stability swells, expanding infinitesimally with ever session as length is added to a woven cloth with each pass of the shuttle, each contraction of the loom. And after he weaves enough of it, the day comes when the patient will unfurl his independence like a pair of spread wings. Free at last, he catches a wind and rides into other lands. (172) — Thomas Lewis

The Huffington Post Investigative Fund's goal is to produce a broad range of investigative journalism created by both staff reporters and freelance writers, with a focus on working with the many experienced reporters and writers impacted by the economic contraction. The pieces will range from long-form investigations to short breaking news stories and will be presented in a variety of media - including text, audio, and video. — Arianna Huffington

That's crazy, because I had no idea what the word 'contraction' meant before I saw it on the Internet, — LeBron James

Both the Winter and the Summer Solstices are expressions of love. They show us the opposition of light and dark, expansion and contraction, that characterize our experiences in the Earth school so that we can recognize our options as we move through our lives. — Gary Zukav

the existing market economy has no "stable" or "neutral" setting: there is only growth or contraction. — Richard Heinberg

Was it possible that he she'd entered his dream now?
If so, she couldn't help but wonder what they were doing in there.
His fingers flexed, squeezing her backside backside "Clio," he groaned.
Something good it would seem.
With a low moan, he snaked his arm around her waist, and a small contraction of his muscles drew her close. "Clio."
"Yes, Rafe?"
Green eyes snapped open. "Clio?"
In a heartbeat, he was on the far side of the bed
as close as he could get to the edge of the mattress without falling off. — Tessa Dare

I want you to know it was no big deal ... those movies showing women screaming in labor are plain bullshit ... there's nothing to it ... you just push and push and finally the baby pops out ... to tell you the truth I don't even rember that much about it except there was a very nice guy standing over me and every time a strong contraction started he gave me a whiff of gas ... — Judy Blume

All living organisms are but leaves on the same tree of life. The various functions of plants and animals and their specialized organs are manifestations of the same living matter. This adapts itself to different jobs and circumstances, but operates on the same basic principles. Muscle contraction is only one of these adaptations. In principle it would not matter whether we studied nerve, kidney or muscle to understand the basic principles of life. In practice, however, it matters a great deal. — Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

What emerges from these separate strands of (modern) history is an image of man himself that bears a new, stark, more nearly naked, and more questionable aspect. The contraction of man's horizons amounts to a denudation, a stripping down, of this being who has now to confront himself at the center of all his horizons. The labor of modern culture, whenever it has been authentic, has been a labor of denudation. A return to the sources; "to the things themselves," as Husserl puts it; toward a new truthfulness, the casting away of ready-made presuppositions and empty forms - these are some of the slogans under which this phase in history has presented itself. Naturally enough, much of this stripping down must appear as the work of destruction, as revolutionary or even "negative": a being who has become thoroughly questionable to himself must also find questionable his relation to the total past which in a sense he represents. — William Barrett

What's needed then is an immersion experience - allowing whatever that experience is and becoming involved in it as completely as possible, in order to understand it. Notice in your experience of understanding yourself, part of the process is this immersion, is an involvement with the experience, whether it is a belief, an emotion, a contraction in the body, a sense of frustration, a sense of attachment to something - whatever is there is experienced completely, without trying to get rid of it. When there is a complete involvement with what is there in you, then after a while an understanding arises. Without involvement, the understanding will not arise. — Sandra Maitri

The EPA's greenhouse gas regulations, along with a host of other onerous regulations, are unnecessarily driving out conventional fuels as part of America's energy mix. The consequences are higher energy prices for families and a contraction of our nation's economic growth. — Gina McCarthy

Initially, I feel expansive when I try something new, and then contract as soon as I encounter difficulty or the unknown. I am learning to experiment with my tolerance of difficulty and the not knowing, in order to go further with my creative dreams.
Whenever I experience contraction, I explore it by asking, "Where did I stop and why?"
Building a creative dream life is not just about achieving, succeeding, or "meeting goals." It is also about floundering, stumbling, tripping and failing. — SARK

The effect of corruption I find most underacknowledged is a contraction not of economic possibility but of our moral universe. — Katherine Boo

Great art grabs you, against your will, and then suspends your will. You are ushered into a quiet clearing, free of desire, free of grasping, free of ego, free of the self-contraction. And through that opening or clearing in your own awareness may come flashing higher truths, subtler revelations, profound connections. For a moment you might even touch eternity; who can say otherwise, when time itself is supendend in the clearing that great art creates in your awareness? — Ken Wilber