Quotes & Sayings About Stiffness

Pedantry, in the common acceptation of the word, means an absurd ostentation of learning, and stiffness of phraseology, proceeding from a misguided knowledge of books and a total ignorance of men. — Henry MacKenzie

So how do you begin? That's easy. Let the horse guide you. Recognize that a problem is not something bad. Your horse is not trying to embarrass you in front of all your friends. He doesn't hate you. He's not trying to get even. Horses don't think like that. Stiffness and resistance are his way of telling you that he can't handle whatever it is you're asking him to do. It doesn't matter if he's done it successfully five hundred times before. Today he can't, and he needs you to chunk it down for him. — Alexandra Kurland

Rectitude carried to excess hardens into stiffness; benevolence indulged beyond measure sinks into weakness. — Date Masamune

The weed crushed and pressed by the heavy rock may slowly and gently grow up anew helped by the fresh air, sunshine, and sympathetic rain. On the other hand, the rock is often broken through exposure to nature and weathering. Life is a strong power to grow in tenderness; this fact may be considered as having a close relation with human life. At the same time tenderness has sometimes stronger power against stiffness or hardening due to extreme strain. — Kyuzo Mifune

Vipassana arises as you pay awareness to the inner and outer experience unfolding at the present moment. Vipassana is not associated with any rigid formula or methods. Whenever you are aware of your mental or physical feelings like tension in the muscles, movement of limbs, stiffness, heat or cold, you have begun to develop special understanding of realities. — Amit Ray

When inhibition has become the de facto setting in a person's manner, stiffness and lack of spontaneity produces an unnatural self-repression. Life looks gray, dull, and rigid, without space for relaxation or play to burst forth in natural ways. — Alexandra Katehakis

Whenever we find stiffness in the body, our mind should be especially supple. It is never the stiffness in our bodies that limits our practice, it is always the stiffness of our mind. — Geeta Iyengar

Firmness or stiffness of the mind is not from adherence to truth, but submission to prejudice. — John Locke

Fibromyalgia (henceforth, "Fibro"). If you are not familiar with this disease, you may not know that it plagues six million people in the United States today. You may not know that people who have Fibro have a myriad of different symptoms including, but not limited to: muscle pain and fatigue, trouble sleeping, morning stiffness, headaches, painful menstrual periods, tingling or numbness in hands and feet, and problems with thinking/memory (sometimes called "fibro fog").* — Michael Holien

The city became for me the ideal of what I wanted to be as a grown-up. Friendly, but never gushing, cool but not frigid or distant, distinguished without the awful stiffness. — Maya Angelou

The physician said, 'I was told you would be difficult. Very well. The better it heals, the less your back will trouble you with stiffness, both now and later in life, so that you will be better able to swing a sword around, killing a great many people. I was told you would be responsive to that argument. — C.S. Pacat

His elbows cracked loudly when he straightened his arms, and something hitched and snapped in his right shoulder when he moved it the wrong way; a general stiffness of his frame worked itself out by halves through most mornings, and he labored like an engine through the afternoons, but he was well past thirty-five years, closer now to forty, and he really wasn't much good in the woods anymore. — Denis Johnson

The public must suffer untold pangs from the stiffness, the deliberate stifling of emotion, on the part of many British actors. — Ivor Novello

You, Christopher, with your centuries of Anglo-Saxon freedom behind you, with your Magna Carta engraved upon your heart, cannot understand that we poor barbarians need the stiffness of a uniform to keep us standing upright. — Christopher Isherwood

The passive stiffness of a joint reflects properties of the muscle tissue, joint capsule, tendons, skin and geometry of the joint. — Leon Chaitow

Section) undergo opposite senses of deformation. An alloy with a higher modulus of elasticity has greater stiffness or rigidity for elastic deformation. For — Anonymous

Just let me get moving, I thought, and the pumping blood will shake the stiffness and pain from my back and feet. — Bear Grylls

Sebastian looked alarmed at her stiffness, but Eric took it in and chuckled. "Riding astride would have been easier," he said. "You put twice the strain on yourself with that unnatural position."
"Oh, I know," she replied with a grimace. "Every muscle told me about it this morning, and I actually DID have a hot soak before I went to bed."
Sebastian looked blankly at the two of them for a moment, then blinked and looked relieved. "Oh, you're saddle sore! I'm sorry
— Mercedes Lackey

Tastee-Freeze was a sort of frozen custard. It gave all the pleasure that ice cream could give, without the stiffness and bitter coldness of ice cream. — Kurt Vonnegut

You are your own worst enemy, young lady. And you are a coward. It is senseless to mistake fear for bravery." Her warm breath is yeasty on my face. "I feel sorry for you. But that's it. We are done trying to help you. It's your life, as your poor father said." AFTER THIS, WHEN I wake in the morning, I spread my fingers, working out the stiffness that creeps in overnight. I point my toes, feeling the crimp in my ankles, my calves, the dull sore ache behind my knees. The pain in my joints is like a needy pet that won't leave me alone. But I can't complain. I've forfeited that right. — Christina Baker Kline

A style of this sort will seem to modern readers marred by classical stiffness
"Truth," "Knowers," "the Good," "Man"
but we can by no means deny that behind our objection to such language is a guilty consciousness of the flimsiness, and not infrequently the trashiness, of our modern talk about "values. — Saul Bellow

Dear Halford, When we were together last, you gave me a very particular and interesting account of the most remarkable occurrences of your early life, previous to our acquaintance; and then you requested a return of confidence from me. Not being in a story-telling humour at the time, I declined, under the plea of having nothing to tell, and the like shuffling excuses, which were regarded as wholly inadmissible by you; for though you instantly turned the conversation, it was with the air of an uncomplaining, but deeply injured man, and your face was overshadowed with a cloud which darkened it to the end of our interview, and, for what I known, darkens it still; for your letters have, ever since, been distinguished by a certain dignified, semi-melancholy stiffness and reserve, that would have been very affecting, if my conscience had accused me of deserving it. — Anne Bronte

I think people are very stiff. Money makes people stiff, and we want it, and we have to pay the penalty. I never agreed with stiffness. I think people have an understanding of what their life is. I define success by being a realist and not humiliating people. I'm a revolutionary - but not in the political sense. — John Cassavetes

It's fascinating, really, when you think about it. How a person can slip into a new life as one would a new pair of shoes. At first there's a keen awareness of the fit: a stiffness at the heel, the binding of the width, the curve pressed to the arch. But with time and enough steps, the feel becomes so natural you almost forget you're wearing them at all. — Kristina McMorris

No one knew better than Stepan Arkadyevitch how to hit on the exact line between freedom, simplicity, and official stiffness necessary for the agreeable conduct of business. — Leo Tolstoy

Your body's ability to function as a clean and efficient channel is limited by stiffness, lack of strength, and lack of endurance. Your mind's ability is limited by the way it thinks about itself, by the way you think about you. The process of yoga is one of undoing the obstructions and limitations in your body and mind that inhibit the free flow of creative life force. — Erich Schiffmann

Gods, it felt good. Hot water was civilization. Vimes could feel the stiffness in his muscles melting away in the warmth. — Terry Pratchett

Yes, we're all on a journey here. We're not perfect. We all struggle. We can tell from the fatigue we feel and the stiffness in our spiritual joints that we haven't always taken good care of ourselves. But prayer wakes us up with mercies from God that are "new every morning" (Lam. 3:23). Prayer is how we start to stretch and feel limber again, feel loose, ready to take on the world. And when we start applying prayer to particular muscle groups - like our confidence in Christ and His victory over our past - our whole body and our whole being start to percolate with fresh energy, with the blood-pumping results of applied faith. — Priscilla Shirer

When I was that age, I was uncertain of how to move, whether I was walking too fast, whether others could see the discomfort and stiffness in me. As if everyone were constantly gauging my performance and finding it lacking. — Emma Cline

Bread may not always nourish us; but it always does us good, it even takes stiffness out of our joints, and makes us supple and buoyant, when we knew not what ailed us, to recognize any generosity in man or Nature, to share any unmixed and heroic joy. — Henry David Thoreau

Good sense avoids all extremes, and requires us to be soberly rational. This unbending and virtuous stiffness of ancient times shocks too much the ordinary customs of our own; it requires too great perfection from us mortals; we must yield to the times without being too stubborn; it is the height of folly to busy ourselves in correcting the world. — Moliere

When you can accept discomfort, doing so allows a balance of mind. That surrender, that letting go of wanting anything to be other than it is right in the moment, is what frees us from hell. When we see resistance in the mind, stiffness in the mind, boredom, restlessness ... that is the meditation. Often, we think, "I can't meditate, I'm restless," "I can't meditate, I'm bored," "I can't meditate, there's a fly on my nose." That is the meditation. Meditation isn't to disappear into the light. Meditation is to see all of what we are. — Stephen Levine

Runners who attend a yoga class the day after a marathon are often amazed at the speed of their recovery; they are able to go up and down the stairs without pain and stiffness in short order. — Christine Felstead

The sky-like limpid eyes,
The circular infant's face,
The stiffness from spats to collar
Never relaxing into grace;
The heavy memories of Horeb, Sinai and the forty years,
Showed only when the daylight fell
Level across the face
Of Brennbaum "The Impeccable". — Ezra Pound

There is something strikingly different about the quality of photographs of that time. It has nothing to do with age or colour, or the feel of paper ... In modern family photographs the camera pretends to circulate like a friend, clicking its shutters at those moments when its subjects have disarranged themselves to present to it those postures which they would like to think of as informal. But in pictures of that time, the camera is still a public and alien eye, faced with which people feel bound either to challenge the intrusion by striking postures of defiant hilarity, or else to compose their faces, and straighten their shoulders, not always formally, but usually with just that hint of stiffness which suggests a public face. — Amitav Ghosh

Ildiko clutched his arm, unwilling to have him leave her side. "I enjoy your touch, Brishen."

The stiffness eased from his shoulders. He gave her a wry look and pressed his palm to the pale expanse of skin just below her collarbones. His hand rose and fell in quick time to her breathing. "I believe you, but this tells me you fear it as well."

She winced. "Your teeth are so...sharp."

"They are, but I'm not careless, wife. And if, for some unfathomable reason, I accidently bite you, you're welcome to bite me back."

His attempt at humor worked, and Ildiko chuckled. "Brishen - " She offered him a toothy grin. "These wouldn't do much damage."

He traced the line of her collarbones with the rough pads of his fingers, their dark claws a whisper of movement across her flesh. "You have obviously never been badly bitten by a horse. — Grace Draven

When I don't have a good time, it's usually because there's a stiffness that stifles creativity. — Garry Shandling

He was standing so close to her that he detected the faint fragrance of lemons in her hair. He sensed rather than felt the stiffness of her body. Was she remembering the blistering heat of their lovemaking? He had suffered for hours afterward, his loins aching viciously, his hands itching for the feel of her soft, silken flesh. It had not been easy to leave her that night. Yet he hadn't been able to take her innocence under false pretenses.
Someday he would be back in her arms, with no deception between them. And the next time, no power in Heaven or hell would be enough to stop him. — Lisa Kleypas

Unlike the stiffness of rheumatoid arthritis, the pain from fibromyalgia typically doesn't diminish with activity, and the pain is made worse by cold, damp weather, overexertion, anxiety, or stress. — Deirdre Rawlings

They sat like this for a long, long time. Until the air grew cold and the stone tiles icy, and until Dan's body protested with stiffness and increasing aches. Sitting, in silence, just holding, and unable to make sence, when the only thing that made sense was the touch. — Aleksandr Voinov

So he stopped at the first of them, a frigid hothouse whose front tipped forward over the street in defiance of gravity, taste, and ordinance; inside, the tender daytime flowers could be seen huddling in family groups beneath a constant, unseen sun, and behind them was the hermetic door to the dark Cactus Room where the shy nocturnal plants, genus cereus, could bloom in privacy at any hour. Vivien, once out of the car, appeared less constrained. She did not have that stiffness so many have on first entering bars, that air of waiting stubbornly for alcohol to loosen them, which so often presages their manner when it comes' time for bed. She was already excited when the martinis came. — Douglas Woolf

It would have been difficult to say what was the nature of this look, and whence proceeded the flame that flashed from it. It was a fixed gaze, which was, nevertheless, full of trouble and tumult. And, from the profound immobility of his whole body, barely agitated at intervals by an involuntary shiver, as a tree is moved by the wind; from the stiffness of his elbows, more marble than the balustrade on which they leaned; or the sight of the petrified smile which contracted his face, - one would have said that nothing living was left about Claude Frollo except his eyes. — Victor Hugo

I rebuke societies that impart to their flowers their cold and rigid demeanour. Flowers should not stand with the stiffness of a soldier on parade but must carry themselves with the relaxedness of a dancer, their arms outstretched above a shaggy mane. Life reveals few sights as distressing as the look of flowers standing mournfully at attention unstirred by the kisses of a million bees. This infection of uncomely reserve is the handiwork of sombre gardeners bred in sombre societies who will not consider their work done till their flowers exude in aspect that stiffness they esteem. They forget that God intended that we mingle with flowers and not merely admire them from afar. But there is a look in a fastidiously manicured garden that makes me keep my distance, a look that draws my eyes but scorns my touch, and that is why I condemn them. — Agona Apell

Eutrapelia . "A happy and gracious flexibility," Pericles calls this quality of the Athenians ... lucidity of thought, clearness and propriety of language, freedom from prejudice and freedom from stiffness, openness of mind, amiability of manners. — Matthew Arnold

Mostly getting old is boring. I hate the stiffness in the bones. I was physically arrogant for years. I don't like it now that I have difficulty getting around. But a certain equanimity sets in, a certain detachment. Things seem less desperately important than they once did, and that's a pleasure. — Doris Lessing

After lunch Poirot begged me to accompany him home. I consented rather stiffly.
"You are annoyed, is it not so?" he asked anxiously, as we walked through the park.
"Not at all," I said coldly.
"That is well. That lifts a great load from my mind."
This was not quite what I had intended. I had hoped that he would have observed the stiffness of my manner. Still, the fervour of his words went towards the appeasing of my just displeasure. I thawed. — Agatha Christie

I won't tell," he said, his arms holding my waist with amateur stiffness. I smiled, thinking about the lover he'd become and all the things he'd try with me for the very first time. I'd be the sexual yardstick for his whole life: Jack would spend the rest of his days trying but failing to relive the experience of being given everything at a time when he knew nothing. Like a tollbooth in his memory, every partner he'd have afterwards would have to pass through the gate of my comparison, and it would be a losing equation. The numbers could never be as favorable as they were right now, when his naivety would be subtracted from my experience to produce the largest sum of astonishment possible. — Alissa Nutting

When they finally allowed the horses to slow to a walk, Vree dropped out of the saddle to stretch her legs.
*We're going to forget how to get anywhere on our own two feet. Gonna end up looking like fat-assed officers.*
Vree arched her back, rocked forward, then arched it again, working the stiffness out of her shoulders. *Giving the pounding it's taking, if my ass is getting fat, it's in self-defense.* — Tanya Huff

Very often, I confess, the teller of dreams bores me. His dream could perhaps interest me if it were frankly worked on. But to hear a glorious tale of his insanity! I have not yet clarified, psychoanalytically, this boredom during the recital of other people's dreams. Perhaps I have retained the stiffness of a rationalist. I do not follow the tale of justified incoherence docilely. I always suspect that part of the stupidities being recounted are invented. — Gaston Bachelard

Sometimes I think that vengeance is habit forming too. A stiffness of the attitude. — Gregory Maguire

No, women like you don't write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness, the rebelliousness. — Edwidge Danticat

Are you coming with us?"
Black Hawk laughed. "Are you insane, or do you think I am? One immortal and three Elders,heading onto an island of monsters. I know who's not coming back from that trip."
Mars worked his head from side to side, easing the stiffness. "He's probably right-he'd slow us down."
"I'll be right here," Black Hawk said, "so that when you all come screaming back here,I'll be able to get you off the island."
Even Hel laughed. "We'll not come screaming to you."
"Have it your way.I'll be here,though. For a while,anyway," he added with a grin.
"I thought you would want to rescue your friend Billy," Mars said.
Black Hawk laughed again. "Trust me, Billy never needs rescuing. Usually people need to be rescued from him. — Michael Scott

Denna moved through the crowd with slow grace. Not the stiffness that passes for grace in courtly settings, but a natural leisure of movement. A cat does not think of stretching, it stretches. But a tree does not even do this. A tree simply sways without the effort of moving itself. That is how she moved. — Patrick Rothfuss

In a fire, the metal can plasticize - lose its stiffness and bend like spaghetti. This was why the World Trade Center buildings collapsed, — Atul Gawande

I believe that there is a direct parallel between the condition of your body and the condition of your brain. When you release the stiffness in your body, you are also creating flexibility in your brain. You become the instinctive, spontaneous healer of your own body and mind. — Ilchi Lee

The winter oak ... is very useful in buildings but when in a moist place it takes in water to its centre ... and so it rots. The Turkey oak and the beech both ... take in moisture to their centre and soon decay. White and black poplar , as well as willow , linden , and the agnus castus ... are of great service from their stiffness ... they are a convenient material to use in carving. — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

Each day after class lets out,each morning before it begins, i sit at the school piano and make my hands work. in spite of the pain, in spite of the stiffness and scars. i make my hands play piano.i have practiced my best piece over and over till my arms throb. — Karen Hesse