Quotes & Sayings About Forcing Something

Annabeth recognized something else in her face, too - in the hard set of her mouth and the deliberate way she raised her chin like she was ready to accept any challenge. Reyna was forcing a look of courage, while holding back a mixture of hopefulness and worry and fear that she couldn't show in public.
Annabeth knew that expression. She saw it every time she looked in a mirror. — Rick Riordan

Each force in flight is balanced by an opposing force. The opposite of lift is weight. Weight is always trying to pull an object back to earth, so to get something to stay up, lift has to be greater than weight. You'd think your weight would always be the same, but it isn't. When you do aerobatics or go into a dive - like a kite that's plunging into the sand at the beach - there's an increase in gravity, and that makes you weigh more. If you want your heavy kite to stay in the air, you have to increase the lift, as well. Maybe by waiting for a stronger wind. Maybe by finding a windier place to fly your kite. Maddie brought lift back into my life by forcing me outside. So did Bob, who introduced me to the editors of this magazine. So did Fernande, the chambermaid at the Paris Ritz, who gave me her daughter's clothes and made me get dressed and brought me coffee every morning for three weeks. — Elizabeth Wein

I like the idea of standalone novels. I always found with series of books, it's something that publishers love obviously because they can make a lot of money and they build an audience from book to book, but I don't like that as a writer. I prefer the idea of just telling a story, completing it within your book, and moving on and not forcing a child to read eight of them. — John Boyne

Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment. "The most demanding part of living a lifetimes as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one's own most intimate sensitivity." Anne Truitt, the sculptor, said this. Thoreau said it another way: know your own bone. "Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life ... Know your own bone: gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw at it still. — Annie Dillard

Would you leave me alone, you walking pair of boots! Let go of my easel, you refugee from a luggage factory. If you need some wood for a toothpick, there's a bunch of it on the porch. (Sunshine) Beth. What are you doing? ... She says she was forcing you inside before it got dark and something decided to eat you. (Talon) Tell Swamp Breath I was headed this way. Why was she ... Oh jeez, am I really have a conversation with a gator? (Sunshine) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

You get used to it, you act friendly, and you become a
shell of your former self.
At some point, you would package this situation, labeling
it as "every day", and send it to the depths of your
memories. There was no doubt you would try to justify it
as something like a memory as well.
"Time was the medicine to everything."
But that was wrong. Time was nothing but a slow
inducing poison. It gradually eroded things of the past,
with the only purpose of ending things and forcing you
into resignation. — Wataru Watari

By pushing or forcing something upon people, you tend to push people further away. — Christopher Atkins

When we measure something we are forcing an undetermined, undefined world to assume an experimental value. We are not measuring the world, we are creating it. — Niels Bohr

A warm, ragged breath disturbed the hairs on my forehead, and my blood began pricking as I realized where exactly I had retreated: right into Mr. Braddock, our strange connection humming through the hairsbreadth of distance between our bodies, our faces. I froze, forcing myself to stop shoving against him further. Before I understood anything, a rough, large hand brushed my chin, my face tipped upwards, and his mouth caught mine, and suddenly my entire body was on fire. Whatever odd sensation had thrummed between us before was just the stroke of a violin bow to this clash of an orchestra. I felt the world pass between our lips, tasting champagne, hunger, and something indefinably darker, while his hand ignited sparks down my cheek to the nape of my neck. He wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me closer, forcing that elusive essence to run deeper than my skin, deeper than my veins, until my very bones vibrated. — Tarun Shanker

She came quickly over to me and held out her hand. I looked at her full of distrust. Was she doing this freely, with a light heart? Or was she doing it just to get rid of me? She put her arm around my neck, tears in her eyes. I just stood and looked at her. She offered me her mouth but I couldn't believe her, it was bound to be a sacrifice on her part, a means of getting it over with.
She said something, it sounded to me like "I love you anyway!" She said it very softly and indistinctly, I may not have heard it correctly, perhaps she didn't say exactly those words. But she threw herself passionately on my neck, held both arms around my neck a little while, even raised herself on tiptoe to reach well up, and stood thus.
Afraid that she was forcing herself to show me this tenderness, I merely said "How beautiful you are now!"
That was all I said. I stepped back, bumped against the door and walked out backward. She was left standing inside. — Knut Hamsun

That's why we get annoyed by you Idrians. So high, so certain that what you do is right. If your god asked you to give up your Breath - or even the Breath of your child - wouldn't you do it? You give up your children to become monks, forcing them into a life of servitude, don't you? That's seen as a sign of faith. Yet when we do something to serve our gods, you twist your lips at us and call us blasphemers. — Brandon Sanderson

For wellbeing to take hold, it's got to be something that individual team members are getting excited about in their own lives. It can't be something that a company is forcing top-down through hierarchical structures. — Tom Rath

It was then that I began to write. Writing helps when you can't talk to your friends; it wasn't that my friends were untrustworthy, it's just that I would never discuss something that was hardly real as though it were really real. Often people do this, forcing friends into authenticating an imaginary life. — Hilary Thayer Hamann

I can't stand Mark Gottler," I said.
"Really? I couldn't tell."
"While he was talking, I was overwhelmed by the realization that here is this hypocritical asshole who took advantage of my sister, and I'd like to ... well, I don't know, shoot him or something ... but instead there we were, negotiating."
"I know. But he's stepping up to the plate. Let's give him points for that."
"He's only doing it because we're forcing him to." I frowned. "You're not on his side, are you?"
"Ella, I just spent the last hour and fifteen minutes with my boot up his ass. No, I'm not on his side."
-Ella & Jack — Lisa Kleypas

And, in the case of schools, or anything else, if you have something that is forcing you to do better than you did the day before, it makes you look forward and it makes you think in a way that's going to make the product better, which is the students and the education. — Craig Benson

But being energetic in my playing is something I've always thought was the right thing to do. Like I'm never forcing it, like "My God, I've gotta play so hard tonight!" — Tony Palermo

I don't really wanna think about themes. I wanna just think about the experience of the movie. I feel like, as soon as I reduce it to a theme, once I write that sentence, it won't be that great. I feel like there's more potential for it to mean something interesting if I'm not forcing it to mean something I've already decided. — Wes Anderson

The social business marketplace is effectively forcing brands to engage with consumers on the basis of something that is meaningful to them. More often than not, this takes the form of some core value that finds expression in a non-profit cause. — Simon Mainwaring

The voice was calm and infinitely tender. He didn't understand the words, because unconsciousness still wrapped his mind in layers of blackness, but he heard the voice, felt it, like something warm touching his skin. It made him feel less alone, that tiny, dim contact. Something hard and vital in him focused on the contact, yearning toward it, forcing him upward out of the blackness, even though he sensed the fanged monsters that waited for him, waiting to tear at his flesh with hot knives and brutal teeth. He would have to endure that before he could reach the voice, and he was very weak. He might not make it. Yet the voice reached out to him, pulling at him like a magnet, lifting him out of the deep senselessness that had held him. — Linda Howard

She wandered to one of the lavender stalks and touched the tiny violet-blue blossoms, and brought her scented fingertips to her throat. "They extract the essential oil by forcing steam through the plants and drawing off the liquid. It takes something like five hundred pounds of lavender plants to produce just a few precious ounces of oils. — Lisa Kleypas

Cooper gave me a very serious expression. "I'm going to do something. Do not freak out. Be casual. Can you do that?"
"No," I said in a panic.
Cooper reached behind me and I felt his fingers on my ass. Forcing myself to stay very still, I felt him fiddling around then he pulled his hand away.
"That suit is old and it's riding up," he explained, taking a beer from his brother who walked by. "I didn't want anyone seeing my girl's ass cheeks."
"I didn't notice," I said, reaching behind me awkwardly.
"It's too hot out to notice. You're fine now."
"You could have just told me," I said then rolled my eyes. "But why would you when you could touch my ass instead?"
"My girl is pretty fucking smart," he said, giving me a big bright smile. — Bijou Hunter

Livia kissed his chin. "Blake, I need you to do something for me. Will you do something for me?" Livia felt a little dirty about forcing him to agree before she told him how much she was asking.
"I'll do whatever you wish." Blake inclined his head in a solemn gesture.
"Will you walk in the sunlight if these are covering you?" Livia held out her sunshields.
Blake looked at the items. Then he nodded and took the mask.
Livia knew this was a risk. Hell, she was half sure she was delirious with lack of sleep and desperation. But she had an insatiable need to heal. I may lose him, but goddamn it, I have to try. — Debra Anastasia

Then they're always trying to sell you something. Everything is based on forcing people to buy. If you can't buy what they're selling, you're a zero in the system. — Don DeLillo

Finnick and I sit for a long time in silence, watching the knots bloom and vanish, before I can ask, 'How do you bear it?'
Finnick looks at me in disbelief. 'I don't, Katniss! Obviously, I don't. I drag myself out of nightmares each morning and find there's no relief in waking.'
Something in my expression stops him.
'Better not give in to it. It takes ten times as long to put yourself together as it does to fall apart.'
Well, he must know. I take a deep breath, forcing myself back into one piece. — Suzanne Collins

Yes I usually make my kids eat their veggie chops and watch my concerts in dead silence. If they ask to watch spongebob squarepants I usually do something volatile like make them eat a yellow sponge with googly eyes on it. I hit them quite a bit, but then again I blame the condom manufacturing government for forcing me to birth them. — Thom Yorke

And I think that if something doesn't make sense, forcing yourself to understand it from [Chris Nolan's] perspective makes you better. — Anne Hathaway

The purpose of such propaganda phrases as "war on terrorism" and attacking "those who hate freedom" is to paralyze individual thought as well as to condition people to act as one mass, as when President Bush attempted to end debate on Iraq by claiming that the American people were of one voice. The modern war president removes the individual nature of those who live in it by forcing us into a uniform state where the complexities of those we fight are erased. The enemy-terrorism, Iraq, Bin Laden, Hussein-becomes one threatening category, something to be defeated and destroyed, so that the public response will be one of reaction to fear and threat rather than creatively and independently thinking for oneself. Our best hope for overcoming perpetual thinking about war and perpetual fear about both real and imagined threats is to question our leaders and their use of empty slogans that offer little rationale, explanation or historical context. — Nancy Snow

I think that evening was the beginning of the end of us. Not because we were going to have sex, but because I think we both realized that we were forcing ourselves to be something that neither of us wanted. - Diane — Elizabeth Eulberg

In America, you are not required to offer food to the hungry or shelter the homeless. There is no ordinance forcing you to visit the lonely, or comfort the infirmed. No where in the Constitution does it say you have to provide clothing to the poor. In fact, one of the nicest things about living here in America, is that you really don't have to do anything for anybody. But when you do, you give meaning and provide soul to the concept of community ... and develop a sense of purpose to something greater than one's self ... — Pope Paul VI

Don't pretend, Bianca," he said. "You're smarter than that, and so am I. I finally figured out what you meant when you left. You said you were like Hester. I get it now. The first time you came to my house, when we wrote that paper, you said Hester was trying to escape. But everything caught up with Hester in the end, didn't it? Well, something finally caught up with you, but you're just running away again. Only, he"-Wesley pointed to my bedroom door-"is your escape this time." He took a step toward me, forcing me to crane my neck even more to see his face. "Admit it, Duffy."
"Admit what?"
"That you're running away from me," he said. "You realized you're in love with me and you bailed because it scared the shit out of you. — Kody Keplinger

His look darkens and he heaves me against his chest forcing me to look at him. What I do know is that you are disrespectful and disobedient. And that is something that we have to change, don't we? — Aileen Rose

Creation isn't forcing or commanding something into existence. It's more of a rolling over, a good stretch, blissing out, lying on the grass watching the flowers blowing in the breeze or the clouds floating by. — Esther Hicks

Genetic design is something we can use to fight the lack of sustainability we humans are forcing on the earth's environment. — Craig Venter

When you're someone's property, you're a woman the brothers will die to protect," he continued, his voice softening. "They'll die to protect your kid, too. Don't turn that kind of loyalty into something ugly because you don't like the words we use. Dancer, Marie, Maggs? They're proud to be property, because they know what it means. Nobody forcing them to do anything. — Joanna Wylde

If you were to force people to do something against their free choice, you would be dehumanizing them. The option of forcing everyone to go to heaven is immoral, because it's dehumanizing; it strips them of the dignity of making their own decision; it denies them their freedom of choice; and it treats them as a means to an end. When God allows people to say 'no' to him, he actually respects and dignifies them. — J.P. Moreland

If I want my daughter to try something, I eat it in front of her repeatedly without forcing the issue and, with some trial and error, the world is our oyster! — Alexandra Guarnaschelli

Most injuries happen when you're not motivated, too, and you're forcing yourself to do something. Your mind's not aligned with your body and you're just going through the motions. That's when you're most likely to get injured. — Chris Sharma

He loves me, and I reward his love by forcing on him something he hates. In the evening, after we dance, he rarely returns to the throne; he dances with others or moves from place to place through the room. The court thinks he is trying to be gracious, sharing his attention. Only I see that he moves always to the empty spot and the court always moves after him. He is like a dog trying to escape his own tail. He indulged himself in one brief moment of privacy, and almost died of it. Relius, he hates being king. — Megan Whalen Turner

He found it so easy and so pleasant to cry that he didn't try to stop for a while, until he realized he was forcing his sobs a little, exaggerating their depth with unnecessary shudders.
...
The whole point of crying is to quit before you coined it up. The whole point of grief itself was to cut it out while it was still honest, while it still meant something. Because the thing was so easily corrupted — Richard Yates

One of the few ways I can almost be certain I'll understand something is by sitting down and writing about it. Because by forcing yourself to write about it and putting it down in words, you can't avoid having your say on the subject. You might be wrong, but you have to think about it very intensely to write about it. — Hunter S. Thompson

Pro bono has been abused as a cover and I detest those who do that because pro bono is such a noble thing to do. I have done a lot of pro bono work from the time I started my practice, never boasted about it, never got much publicity out of it. But every time when I see some people being interviewed regarding their pro bono work, I laugh because even the Government is coming into the picture. They had considered forcing all lawyers to do pro bono work. Pro bono is something that comes from your heart. You should have the desire to help. It should not be forced upon you. The authorities don't realise this. The moment you force pro bono on lawyers, you take away the meaning of pro bono. Those who are genuinely concerned and do pro bono also will be classified as people who have to do it because they have been told to do so. — Subhas Anandan

I don't know why America always thinks she has to run all around the world forcing people to take our way of governance at the barrel of a gun. When you've got something really good, you don't have to force it on people. They will steal it! — Dick Gregory

There is a difference between willing and forcing. Willing something simply means you are not being lazy. Forcing something means you are trying to do something inappropriate or in an inappropriate way. — Frederick Lenz

Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear. If the writing is good, then the result seems effortless and inevitable. But when you want to say something life-changing or ineffable in a single sentence, you face both the limitations of the sentence itself and the extent of your own talent. — Pat Conroy

Do you like Moby Dick?" he asks.
"I hate it," she says. "And I don't say that about many things. Teachers assign it, and parents are happy because their kids are reading something of 'quality.' But it's forcing kids to read books like that that make them think they hate reading. — Gabrielle Zevin

Forcing yourself to like something you don't like brings sorrow. - Hikigaya Hachiman — Wataru Watari

There's something easy about the idea that vampirism is some kind of disease- then they can't help it if they attack us, that they commit murders and atrocities, that they can only control themselves sometimes. They're sick; its not their fault. And there's something even easier about the idea of demonic invasion, something forcing our loved ones to do all manner of terrible things. Still not their fault, only now we can destroy them. But the third option, the possibility that there's something monstrous inside of us that can be unleashed, is the most disturbing of all. Maybe its just us, us with a raging hunger, us with a couple of accidental murders under our belt. Humanity, with the training wheels off the bike, careening down a steep hill. Humanity, freed from the constraints of consequence and gifted with power. Humanity, grown away from all things human. — Holly Black

Ignoring simply means not paying attention to it. Something is there; let it be there. You are unconcerned this way or that, whether it should remain or go. You have no judgment. You have simply accepted that it is there, and it is none of your business whether it should be there or not. In suppressing you are taking an active part. You are wrestling with that energy, you are forcing it into the unconscious. You are trying not to be able to see it anywhere. You want to know that it is no longer there. For — Osho

I'm beginning to think cookies is a code word for something else."
"Maybe it is." He tugged on my bag again as he took a confident step back, forcing me down another step. "And just think about it. If cookie was a code word, whatever it symbolizes, it's been in your mouth, sweetheart. — J. Lynn

questions challenge authority and disrupt established structures, processes, and systems, forcing people to have to at least think about doing something differently. — Warren Berger

Mothers are urgently trying to tell something to their daughters, and this urgency is precisely what repels their daughters, forcing them to turn away. Mothers are left stranded, madly holding a lump of London clay, some grass, some white tubers, a dandelion, a fat worm passing the world through itself. — Zadie Smith

I continued down the hallway, past the library, with my eyes downcast, not wanting to talk to anyone. So immersed was I in my misery that I recoiled at the sound of a male voice emanating from just a few paces in front of me.
"I know feet are fascinating, Alera, but it's much more sensible to pay attention to where you're going."
Steldor stood outside the door to our quarters wearing a cocky and irritating grin, and for the thousandth time that day, I felt myself turning crimson. I stared at him, struggling for a witty rejoinder but unable to produce one.
"Did you want something, my lord?" I finally asked, forcing a smile that felt like a grimace.
"I simply wanted to see my beautiful wife," he said, countenance still smug, although his eyes had softened and I suspected the compliment was sincere. — Cayla Kluver

Because I wouldn't want to die alone," I said, and my voice wobbled as I looked at Tamlin again, forcing myself to meet his stare. "Because I'd want someone to hold my hand until the end, and awhile after that.
That's something everyone deserves, human or faerie. — Sarah J. Maas

In Kant's description, ethical duty functions like a foreign traumatic intruder that from the outside disturbs the subject's homeostatic balance, its unbearable pressure forcing the subject to act "beyond the pleasure principle," ignoring the pursuit of pleasures. For Lacan, exactly the same description holds for desire, which is why enjoyment is not something that comes naturally to the subject, as a realization of her inner potential, but is the content of a traumatic superego injunction. — Slavoj Zizek

Feyre," he said
softly enough that I faced him again. "Why?" He tilted his head to the side. "You dislike our kind on a good day. And after Andras ... " Even in the darkened hallway, his usual bright eyes were shadowed. "So why?"
I took a step closer to him, my blood-covered feet sticking to the rug. I glanced down the stairs to where I could still see the prone form of the faerie and the stumps of his wings.
"Because I wouldn't want to die alone," I said, and my voice wobbled as I looked at Tamlin again, forcing myself to meet his stare. "Because I'd want someone to hold my hand until the end, and awhile after that. That's something everyone deserves, human or faerie." I swallowed hard, my throat painfully tight. "I regret what I did to Andras," I said, the words so strangled they were no more than a whisper. "I regret that there was ... such hate in my heart. I wish I could undo it
and ... I'm sorry. So very sorry. — Sarah J. Maas

In every crisis there is a message. Crises are nature's way of forcing change - breaking down old structures, shaking loose negative habits so that something new and better can take their place. — Susan L. Taylor

I was pushing him. I was pushing me. I was forcing something I felt we both needed. Both deserved. A second chance. His. Mine. Ours. ~Imogen Conner — A Meredith Walters

It's not bravery if you don't feel fear, right? If you're not afraid, then you're not really forcing yourself to do something brave. — Liz Braswell

Of course, he showed me this one afternoon when he was skipping class. When trolls cut classes, you think they are losers. When the beautiful and/or reasonably erudite do the same thing to sit on the library steps and read poetry, you think they are on to something deep. You see only deep brown wavy hair and strong legs, well honed by years of Ultimate Frisbee. You see that book of T. S. Eliot poems held by the hand with the long, graceful fingers, and you never stop to think that it shouldn't take half a semester to read one book of poems ... that maybe he is not so much reading as getting really high every morning and sleeping it off on the library steps, forcing the people who actually go to class to step or trip over him. — Maureen Johnson

Can't you do something?" I ask Kauko, forcing myself not to scream. "Help her restore the balance!"
He shakes his head, his fleshy lips pressed together. "It's too late, my Saadella. And too much for a humble priest. Only a Valtia could do such a thing."
What I need to be to save her, she must die for me to become. — Sarah Fine

Strangely, some songs you really don't want to write. I didn't like writing 'Heathen'. There was something so ominous and final about it. It was early in the morning, the sun was rising and through the windows I could see two deer grazing down below in the field. In the distance a car was driving slowly past the reservoir and these words were just streaming out and there were tears running down my face. But I couldn't stop, they just flew out. It's an odd feeling, like something else is guiding you, although forcing your hand is more like it. — David Bowie

However much we obfuscate or ignore it, we know that the factory farm is inhumane in the deepest sense of the word. And we know that there is something that matters in a deep way about the lives we create for the living beings most within our power. Our response to the factory farm is ultimately a test of how we respond to the powerless, to the most distant, to the voiceless
it is a test of how we act when no one is forcing us to act one way or another. — Jonathan Safran Foer