Quotes & Sayings About Duress

I had no use for a husband under duress — Jean Sasson

Songs sung under duress are often very powerful. — Henry Rollins

Stick to the script like paper clips and coffee stains
Never let a seed of doubt deter you from your lofty aims
The will is much stronger than the flesh
And it only gets stronger when you going through duress
Imagination is the factory that makes legends
Close your eyes and dream B.I.G. like Faith Evans — Jay Electronica

I have found through trial and error that I work best under duress. In fact
I work only under duress. — Edward Abbey

I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world - no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men. — Woodrow Wilson

I think women dwell quite a bit on the duress under which they work, on how hard it is just to do it at all. We are traditionally rather proud of ourselves for having slipped creative work in there between the domestic chores and obligations. I'm not sure we deserve such big A-pluses for all that. — Toni Morrison

It is only when one is under extreme duress that one's true character is revealed. — Christopher Earle

Suffering isn't a moral endowment. People don't always do well under duress, and it seemed to me to be truer to a fellow in that situation to make him angry. — E.L. Doctorow

I have found that traditional school settings are hostile to children who live under constant stress and duress. I resent the idea that, just because it is "free," public education is the first choice. Public education is one choice among many, but it is not the norm against which other schooling options are to be graded. — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

Were you in the military?"
"Are you kidding me? I was in high school."
"High school," he said quietly. "You're American. And a civilian?"
"Uh, yes. An American civilian."
"Lovely. A straight answer. Keep it up. Did somebody train you?"
"No, nobody trained me. Unless you count the Rhode Island child welfare and juvenile justice systems. Why?"
Malachi held up his hand and ticked off the reasons with his fingers. "You stole a Guard's weapon. If I'm not mistaken, it belonged to a Gate Guard. Which means you managed to do it on your way into the city. You escaped Amid even after he had you in hand. You slashed his leg in just the right place, preventing him from chasing you. Under extreme duress, injured and cornered, you threw a knife and hit a target-"
"It's not like I hit something vital. — Sarah Fine

Over and over we lose this sense of feeling we are wholly in our skins by means already named as well as through extended duress. Those who toil too long without respite are also at risk. The soulskin vanishes when we are not paying attention to what we are really doing and particularly the cost to us."
"We lose the soulskin by becoming too involved with ego, by being too exacting, perfectionistic, or unnecessarily martyred, or driven by a blind ambition, or by being dissatisfied - about self, family, community, culture, world - and not saying or doing anything about it, or by pretending we are an ending source for others, or by not doing all we can to help ourselves. Oh, there are as many ways to lose the soul skin as there are women in the world."
"The only way to hold on to this sensual soulskin is to retain an exquisitely pristine consciousness about its value and uses. — Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I think I'm drawn to characters with complexity or who are under duress in some way and have some conflict going on. — Emily Blunt

You might imagine that a person would resort to self-mutilation only under extremes of duress, but once I'd crossed that line the first time, taken that fateful step off the precipice, then almost any reason was a good enough reason, almost any provocation was provocation enough. Cutting was my all-purpose solution. — Caroline Kettlewell

If there is something that you have to do, resist the temptation to do it under duress. Ask yourself, "What's the worst thing that would happen if I didn't do this?" And if you can get away with not doing it at all, don't do it. And then imagine what would it feel like to have this done. Spend a day or two, if you can, just 15 minutes here, 5 minutes here, 2 minutes here, here and here, imagining it completed in a way that pleases you! And then, the next time you decide that you're going to take action about it, the action is going to be a whole lot easier. — Esther Hicks

I'll gladly identify myself if you'll first simply explain what it is I'm identifying myself as. This is my position. You're requiring me to attest to facts I do not possess. The term for this is "duress." — David Foster Wallace

[We are] no longer a government by free opinion, no longer a government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a government by the opinion and the duress of small groups of dominant men. — Woodrow Wilson

We would rather work under duress than live under freedom. yet this is precisely why we need to hear, each and every week the basic good news that because of Jesus' finished work, we already have all of the justification, approval, significance, security, freedom, validation, love, righteousness, and rescue for which we desperately long
and look for in a thousand things that are infinitely smaller than Jesus. (205) — Tullian Tchividjian

She's under duress," Peaseblossom said.
"I don't care if she's under duress, over it, or alongside it," Moth said. "Nothing in this world supersedes cake. — Lisa Mantchev

It often happens that when a soul under duress is required to attend to a separate difficulty, one that does not concern him in the least, then this second problem works upon the first as a kind of salve. — Eleanor Catton

Defence lawyers use the term "duress" to describe the use of force, coercion or psychological pressure exerted on a client in the commission of a crime. When duress is applied to the emotionally unstable the result can be as violent as it is unpredictable. — Emily Thorne

To experience commitment as the loss of options, a type of death, the death of childhood's limitless possibility, of the flattery of choice without duress-this will happen, mark me. Childhood's end. — David Foster Wallace

The coolest most amazing people I have met in my life, I said, are the ones who are not very interested in power or money, but who are very interested in laughter and courage and grace under duress and holding hands against the darkness, and finding new ways to solve old problems, and being attentive and tender and kind to every sort of being, especially dogs and birds, and of course children. — Brian Doyle

Duress impacts relationships in one of two ways. It either tears people apart... binding them tightly in a common objective. — Emily Thorne

People never change because they are under threat or under duress. Never. They change because they see something that makes their life seem valuable enough to start moving toward a life worth living. — Robert Downey Jr.

She was alive, and she was stuck in this fucking tunnel, and she had just broken a fuck of a hex ward, and now she was going to have to walk through the toad-door into who-the-fuck-knew-what with someone who touched her only under duress. Some days it just didn't pay to get out of bed. — Stacia Kane

It must be a peace without victory ... Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor's terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last. — Woodrow Wilson

Sometimes customizing is necessary because of an injury or the inability to do, for a short or long period, the kind of exercise you formerly did. When you're used to customizing for fun, doing it under duress won't seem like such an imposition. Either way, experiment until you find activities that make you happy as well as healthy. Choose your exercise using the same criteria you'd apply to choosing a date
that is, attractive to you and able to hold your interest for an hour. — Victoria Moran

Although the mass of the people accepted the white man's God, either under physical duress or because he seemed more powerful than their own Gods, they never assimilated the ideas of Christianity. — Penny Lernoux

People say what distinguishes us from the animals is that we think. Well, then why the hell don't we extend some compassion to those under tremendous duress? There's this whole idea that you work really hard so you can deaden your soul to the universe and enjoy yourself only in ways the Sierra Club will let you. But what about enjoying yourself by getting into the whole melee of poverty and racism and violence and murder and drug addiction? Get in there, roll up your sleeves, and do something! Nobody does it. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

Mr. Vice President, I know you're under a lot of duress to make up for lost ground but I think people would be better served if we don't keep interrupting each other. — Paul Ryan

That is what capitalism is - a version of feudalism in which capital replaces land, and business leaders replace kings. But the hierarchy remains. And so we still hand over our lives' labor, under duress, to feed rulers who do no real work. — Kim Stanley Robinson

In mid-September Soufan talked to an al-Qaeda prisoner named Ramzi Binalshibh, who was chained naked to the floor in a CIA black prison at the Bagram air base outside Kabul. He said he was starting to obtain "valuable actionable intelligence" before CIA officers ordered him to stop talking forty-five minutes later. On September 17, they flew their prisoner to a second black site in Morocco, then on to Poland; under extreme duress he described plots to crash airplanes into Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf in London. He was also diagnosed as a schizophrenic. — Tim Weiner

Only love effects true inner transformation, not duress, guilt, shunning, or social pressure. — Richard Rohr

I don't give a damn if you were the featured date du jour of the sultan of Brunei. Get it through your head: You're here under duress,my duress, and the second I can get you across the river, the better I'll like it."
"Even if Winkie wants me?"
"Who the hell is Winkie?"
In answer, her gaze traveled to his crotch.
"Woman," Jake roared, beyond insane, "do you have a death wish? Get in that bed, pull the covers over your head, and go to sleep before I do something we'll both regret. — Cherry Adair

He'd given her his word - when he was soused and under duress from needing to tup her - but still his — Kresley Cole

What I found was when I started my first study, and then in subsequent studies, is here you have people under some kind of duress, or I chose to study them because they represented some kind of historical event, as it impacted on them or as they helped to create it. — Robert Jay Lifton

We love the plays, the great characters, the fabulous speeches, the witty repartee even in times of duress. I hope never to be mortally stabbed, but if I am, I'd sure like to have the self-possession, when asked if it's bad, to answer, "No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church door; but 'tis enough, 'twill serve," as Mercutio does in Romeo and Juliet. I mean, to be dying and clever at the same time, how can you not love that? — Thomas C. Foster

I'm a sensitive guy. If you are a woman and you're in any kind of emotional duress and you write a song about it, I'll buy you album. — Matthew Perry

Crap happens in everybody's life all of the time, and the quality of that person is more based on how they behave under duress than when there's nothing bad going down. — Laura Schlessinger

That's the whole point of writing to me - I put my characters under incredible duress, and from that comes their truth. In a way, I'm using them to try to find my own answers in life. — R.A. Salvatore

Some subjects are timeless, and I would say that food is one of them. Yet only by comparing notes this way can We of the World Who Have Known Real Hunger actually get together and form our own sort of imaginary club. Our members today would be from everywhere, from Africa, from Europe, from Asia, everywhere. But regardless of our assorted languages, regardless of our assorted politics, the members would have something far more in common than the members of most clubs do. Would would at least know that the universal implement we all have, the stomach, usually behaves the same way under duress and causes us all to have much the same kinds of dreams. — Gregory Boyington

[John Jarndyce] rubbed his head so constantly that not a single hair upon it ever rested in its right place — Charles Dickens

I have insanely dorky taste. Basically, if you're a woman, and you're under any kind of emotional duress, and you sing a song, I will listen to it forever. It's odd being a 37-year-old heterosexual male who owns nothing but Sarah McLachlan and Tori Amos. But I'll go against that at first and play something boring like James Taylor. — Matthew Perry

The morale and the camaraderie that we had for one another earlier in the year is starting to come under duress because of all the losses. Some of the guys are feeling the pressure now from the last year when they were not successful. — Bill Russell

Hovind said he was entering a not guilty plea 'under duress'. — Kent Hovind

I've learned that reputation is a truth others concoct to serve their own needs. Genuine truth is revealed in one's actions, actions performed under duress without the time to calculate how they'll make one appear in the world's eyes. — Lindsay Buroker

Rise from those dumps of depression!
Bury those personal regrets deep inside!
Focus on self-healing, self-love
Only trust can keep you alive.
Miniscule moments of hope awning around
Floating like bubbles but burst without a sound
Duress of living with mixed thoughts
Flying on the wings of optimism I thrive! — Balroop Singh

A party is a slightly artificial event where one learns the rudiments of human behavior at its most admirable: speaking when spoken to, looking somebody in the eye, shaking hands and being friendly under duress. — Phyllis Grissim-Theroux

If religion is true, one must believe. And if one chooses not to believe, one's choice is marked under the category of a refusal, and is thus never really free: it has the duress of a recoil." With literary belief, however, "one is always free to choose not to believe." This, Wood argues, is the freedom of literature; it is what constitutes its "reality. — James Wood

But I am, personally, not a gambler. I wouldn't spend £1 on the lottery, let alone take a punt on a pregnancy. The stakes are far, far too high. I can't agree with a society that would force me to bet on how much I could love under duress. — Caitlin Moran

It is intolerable for a human being to go on doing any task as a penance, under duress. — Christopher Morley

At a time when going to college has never been more important, it's never been more expensive, and our nation's families haven't been in this kind of financial duress since the great depression. And so what we have is just sort of a miraculous opportunity simply by stopping the subsidy to banks when we already have the risk of loans. We can plow those savings into our students. And we can make college dramatically more affordable, tens of billions of dollars over the next decade. — Arne Duncan

Maybe Leland would appear there by chance in the morning his chin freshly shaved against his stiff new collar and upon seeing his love in such duress would spring into action. Maybe he would even carry her out like a princess in a bedtime story. — Anna Godbersen

ObamaCare is not a 'trainwreck,' it is a suicide attack. He wants to hurt us, to bring us to our knees, to capitulate, so we agree under duress to accept big government. — Wayne Allyn Root

Reading is the first to go, my mother used to say, meaning that it was a luxury the brain dispensed with under duress. She claimed that after my father died she never again picked up anything more demanding than the morning paper. At the time I had thought that was sort of melodramatic of her, but now I found myself reading the same paragraph six times over, and I still couldn't have told you what it was about. — Anne Tyler

Once over there [Balkans], I felt extremely patriotic. Here are these people, from 18-year-olds to military veterans, enduring real duress for the cause of peace. I don't ever want to play for a regular audience again, only military folks who are starving for music. — Sheryl Crow

The fact is that I write under duress, often in my bed, often at the last minute. I'm kind of a binge writer I would say, which I don't support. I was always kind of that way. Probably the time I was the most regular as a writer was college. It was like, what else is there to do when you're living in the Midwest studying creative writing? — Lena Dunham

I think it is a wise course for laborers to unite to defend their interests ... I think the employer who declines to deal with organized labor and to recognize it as a proper element in the settlement of wage controversies is behind the times ... Of course, when organized labor permits itself to sympathize with violent methods or undue duress, it is not entitled to our sympathy. — William Howard Taft

Beware of the problem of testing too many hypotheses; the more you torture the data, the more likely they are to confess, but confessions obtained under duress may not be admissible in the court of scientific opinion. — Stephen Stigler

In religion our only hope is to live a life good enough to require God to bless us, so every instance of sin and repentance is therefore traumatic, unnatural and threatening. Only under great duress do religious people admit they have sinned, because their only hope is their moral goodness.
In the gospel the knowledge of our acceptance in Christ makes it easier to admit that we are flawed, because we know we won't be cast off if we confess the true depths of our sinfulness. Our hope is in Christ's righteousness, not our own, so it is not as traumatic to admit our weaknesses and lapses. — Timothy Keller

If I should ever be captured, I want no negotiation - and if I should request a negotiation from captivity they should consider that a sign of duress. — Henry A. Kissinger

The place where [adults] pass the most time and submit to the closest control is at work. Thus, without even entering into the question of the world economy's ultimate dictation within narrow limits of everybody's productive activity, it's apparent that the source of the greatest direct duress experienced by the ordinary adult is _not_ the state but rather the business that employs him. Your foreman or supervisor gives you more or-else orders in a week than the police do in a decade. — Bob Black

People are capable of incredible gallantry and terrible cruelty in situations of extreme duress. I tried to showcase that range in 'Enclave.' — Ann Aguirre

Wit must be without effort. Wit is play, not work; a nimbleness of the fancy, not a laborious effort of the will; a license, a holiday, a carnival of thought and feeling, not a trifling with speech, a constraint upon language, a duress upon words. — Christian Nestell Bovee

Perhaps the greatest discovery of my life, without question the greatest commitment, came when finally I had the confidence in God that I would loan or yield my agency to him-without compulsion or pressure, without any duress, as a single individual alone, by myself, no counterfeiting, nothing expected other than the privilege. In a sense, speaking figuratively, to take one's agency, that precious gift which the scriptures make plain is essential to life itself, and say, "I will do as you direct," is afterward to learn that in so doing you possess it all the more. — Boyd K. Packer

It's a duress I'll never regret succumbing to," he murmured as his hands caressed the soft skin of her shoulders. "It gave me you. I never thought I could love someone so much that I'd be willing to let them go to keep them safe. — Monica Burns

The players are under so much duress, it's like duressic park out there! — Sid Waddell

When I was a vocalist, a lead singer in a rock band, I was a law student at the time. It wasn't a professional rock band, it was for fun. I was already way out of that by the time Phantom came along. Having to learn to sing, it was such duress, having to really try and get to such a quality. — Gerard Butler

You should be forgiving when others make mistakes, but not when the mistakes are in you. You should be patient under duress yourself, but not when it affects others. — Zicheng Hong