Stimulant Quotes & Sayings

There are ... otherwise quite decent people who are so dull of nature that they believe that they must attribute the swift flight of fancy to some illness of the psyche, and thus it happens that this or that writer is said to create not other than while imbibing intoxicating drink or that his fantasies are the result of overexcited nerves and resulting fever. But who can fail to know that, while a state of psychical excitement caused by the one or other stimulant may indeed generate some lucky and brilliant ideas, it can never produce a well-founded, substantial work of art that requires the utmost presence of mind. — E.T.A. Hoffmann

The chief danger about Paris is that it is such a strong stimulant. — T. S. Eliot

By appealing to his imagination, a pornographic novel brings the reader's body into play; libertine fiction appeals only to his mind. The goal of the former is erotic pleasure, or rather the desire to experience erotic pleasure, which the pornographic novel, obviously, cannot satisfy by itself. It is in this regard merely an intermediary, a stimulant, a kind of literary pimp.

With libertine fiction, the goal is that of overcoming the prejudices of some of the characters, which are assumed to be the same as those of the reader. The reader is somewhat the equivalent of the fictional object of seduction. — Jean-Marie Goulemot

Certainly the caffeine in coffee, whether it's Starbucks or generic coffee, is somewhat of a stimulant. But if you drink it in moderation, which I think four or five cups a day is, you're fine. — Howard Schultz

Few things are more beautiful to me than a bunch of thuggish, heavily tattooed line cooks moving around each other like ballerinas on a busy Saturday night. Seeing two guys who'd just as soon cut each other's throats in their off hours moving in unison with grace and ease can be as uplifting as any chemical stimulant or organized religion. — Anthony Bourdain

Some writers have even argued that it may be possible to wean sex offenders away from their criminal activities through the use of pornography - with pornography acting as a substitute for sexual acts rather than a stimulant. This ties in with the argument that the pro-censorship lobby fails to distinguish between fantasy and reality, and to recognise that many people - including feminists! - can behave in perfectly decent, moral and non-abusive ways whilst enjoying 'politically incorrect' sexual fantasies. The assumption that fantasy leads to crimes of abuse is both highly contentious and inevitably seems to 'criminalise' sexual fantasy. Moreover, the argument that exposure to pornography causes men to act in a violent or abusive way towards women is surely undermined by even a casual look at human history and at the contemporary world. — Richard Dunphy

...story is a powerful stimulant with tremendous influence over how we think and act. Like meth, only safer. — Kathleen Smith

The shock of public hostility served as a stimulant. It made them acutely conscious of how society functioned. — David Brooks

I discovered what a mental stimulant physical labor could be; not mere physical labor, I should add, but absolutely spine-bending, lung-racking, gut-ripping, ligament-tearing, and ball-breaking physical labor. But as long as the task is both onerous and repetitive, I discovered, the mind is not only free to wander to more imaginative climes, it actually flees to higher planes. — Dan Simmons

Music in the church ought to be much more than an emotional stimulant. In fact, this means music and preaching should have the same aim. Both properly pertain to the proclamation of God's Word. Preaching is properly seen as an aspect of or worship. And conversely, music is properly seen as an aspect of the ministry of the Word, just like preaching. Therefore the songwriter ought to be skilled in Scripture and as concerned for theological precision as the preacher. Even more so, because the songs he writes are likely to be sung again and again (unlike a sermon that is preached only once). — John F. MacArthur Jr.

Strong hope is a much greater stimulant to life than any single realized joy could be. — Friedrich Nietzsche

[Dagley] had also taken too much in the shape of muddy political talk, a stimulant dangerously disturbing to his farming conservatism, which consisted in holding that whatever is, is bad, and any change is likely to be worse. — George Eliot

Everything teeters between pathos and bathos: here you are, violating society's most fundamental taboos and yet formaldehyde is a powerful appetite stimulant, so you also crave a burrito. — Paul Kalanithi

Optimism is a kind of heart stimulant - the digitalis of failure. — Elbert Hubbard

I have never seen a place like Paris for varieties of sexual provender. as soon as a woman loses a front tooth or an eye or a leg she goes on the lose. In America she'd starve to death if she had nothing to recommend her but a mutilation. Here it is different. A missing tooth or a nose eaten away or a fallen womb, any misfortune that aggravates the natural homeliness of the female, seems to be regarded as an added spice, a stimulant for the jaded appetites of the male. — Henry Miller

You hate him worse than me, you viper,' he whispered as the stimulant cleared his brain.
'Aye, lord, but here's the oddity of it - I love him too.' Morgan replied, her eyes void of all emotion. — M.K. Hume

If men had to do their vile work without the assistance of woman and the stimulant of strong drink they would be obliged to be more divine and less brutal. — Caroline M. Nichols Churchill

Tea is still believed, by English people of all classes, to have miraculous properties. A cup of tea can cure, or at least significantly alleviate, almost all minor physical ailments and indispositions, from a headache to a scraped knee. Tea is also an essential remedy for all social and psychological ills, from a bruised ego to the trauma of a divorce or bereavement. This magical drink can be used equally effectively as a sedative or stimulant, to calm and soothe or to revive and invigorate. Whatever your mental or physical state, what you need is 'a nice cup of tea'. — Kate Fox

People do not get tired out from working where work is intelligently handled. Work, if it is interesting, is a stimulant. It's worry and a lack of interest in what one does that tire and discourage. Every one of us should have our pet interests-as many as we can handle efficiently and happily. Our interests should never be allowed to lag or get cold so that all enthusiasm is spent. Each day can be one of triumph if you keep up to your interests-feeding them as they feed you! — George Matthew Adams

Every potion has eight parts. One part is a base liquid to hold the others and provide a medium for mixing. Five parts are symbolically linked to each of the five senses. One is similarly linked to the mind, and another to the spirit. The basic ingredient to the stimulant potion was coffee, while the base for the scent-masking potion was water. I got them both to boiling. — Jim Butcher

Hate cannot live alone. It must have love as a trigger, a goad, or a stimulant. — John Steinbeck

What made him most attractive was that he was attracted to her. Another's interest can be a powerful stimulant. She could feel his eyes on her as an almost physical pressure. — Tracy Chevalier

In his early text, somewhat cumbersomely titled 'Towards a Critique of Hegel's PHILOSOPHY OF RIGHT,' the young Karl Marx famously noted that religion - the Christian faith, he meant primarily - is 'the opiate of the people.' It's a drug, and it's a 'downer' or 'depressant' insulating people from the pain of oppressive social realities and consoling them with a dream world of heavenly bliss. Alternatively, religion can function as an 'upper,' a 'stimulant' energizing people for the tasks at hand - a function of religion Marx failed to grasp. — Miroslav Volf

For all the unkind things said about envy, it would only be fair to acknowledge that not all envy is destructive. If envy leads us to work hard and to improve our skills, it becomes a stimulant to self-improvement. God has given us no quality that cannot be used for good. — Sidney Greenberg

There are plenty of people, in need of our attention, who have very little with which to repay us. But I feel that we are well within our rights if we cultivate the acquaintance of persons whom we have discovered to be in possession of specialized talents in the field of character-building. One such acquaintance may serve as a stimulant to us; another a sedative. One man laughs his fears and frets away and another growls at them. It is fortunate for us if we can recognize the exact effect that other people have on us. Then we know when to seek or avoid them. — Lloyd C. Douglas

Hate cannot live alone. It It must have love as a trigger, a goad, or a stimulant. Joe early developed a gentle protective love for Joe. He comforted and flattered and cherished Joe. He set up walls to save Joe from a hostile world. And Joe gradually became proof against wrong. If Joe got into trouble, it was because the world was in angry conspiracy against him. And if Joe attacked the world, it was revenge and they damn well deserved it - the sons of bitches. Joe lavished every care on his love, and he perfected a lonely set of rules which might have gone like this:
1. Don't believe nobody. The bastards are after you.
2. Keep your mouth shut. Don't keep your neck out.
3. Keep your ears open. When they make a slip, grab on to it and wait.
4. Everybody's a son of a bitch and whatever you do they got it coming. — John Steinbeck

There was a time when he used alcohol as a stimulant, something to lift his spirits and give him energy, but now he drinks like all parents drink, as a kind of early evening sedative. — David Nicholls

Writing more and more to the sound of music, writing more and more like music. Sitting in my studio tonight, playing record after record, writing, music a stimulant of the highest order, far more potent than wine. — Anais Nin

The will to live cannot be overestimated as a stimulant to longevity. — Tom Robbins

I am convinced that unconditional love is the most powerful known stimulant of the immune system. If I told patients to raise their blood levels of immune globulins or killer T cells, no one would know how. But if I can teach them to love themselves and others fully, the same changes happen automatically. The truth is: love heals. — Bernie Siegel

She was working at her computer in her office, doing admin, which is short for administration, which is short for migraine-stimulant. — Ali Smith

Hollywood is a narcotic, not a stimulant. It wants to sell you something. Literature wants to tell you something. — Rex Murphy

The tonic of success is a marvelous producer as well as stimulant. By the law of mental magnetism one success attracts another, and after we begin to win it is comparatively easy to keep on winning. — Orison Swett Marden

In the absence of any therapy, the mentally ill of the 20th century were chained, shackled, straitjacketed, kept nude, electrocuted, half-frozen, parboiled, violently hosed, wrapped in wet canvas, confined to "mummy bags", subjected to insulin-induced hypoglycemic comas, forced into seizures with massive doses of the stimulant Metrazol, injected with camphor, drugged into three-week comas with barbiturates and tranquilizers, involuntarily sterilized, and surgically mutilated. Rape by hospital staff was common, as was humiliation and verbal abuse. One reporter noted that a state hospital patient had been restrained for so long that his skin was beginning to grow around the leather straps. — Antonella Gambotto-Burke

Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice: reading for the pure pleasure of it, for the beautiful stillness that surrounds you when you hear an author's words reverberating in your head. — Paul Auster

Unconditional love is the most powerful stimulant to the immune system. — Bernie Siegel

Fear, Katherine had once heard, acted as a stimulant sharpening the mind's ability to think. — Dan Brown

Spying a heavy growth of watercress on the bank of a wet meadow, Amelia went to examine it. Grasping a bunch, she pulled until the delicate stems snapped. "Watercress is plentiful here, isn't it? I've heard it can be made into a fine salad or sauce."
"It's also a medicinal herb. The Rom call it panishok. My grandmother used to put it in poultices for sprains or injuries. And it's a powerful love tonic. For women, especially."
"A what?" The delicate greenery fell from her nerveless fingers.
"If a man wishes to reawaken his lover's interest, he feeds her watercress. It's a stimulant of the - "
"Don't tell me! Don't!"
Rohan laughed, a mocking gleam in his eyes. — Lisa Kleypas

To his family, Pasteur remarks in frustration, "How difficult it is to obtain the triumph of truth! Opposition is a useful stimulant, but bad faith is such a pitiable thing. How is it that they are not struck with the results shown by statistics? — Bill Wasik

Success: a marvelous stimulant, bubbling with inspiration and incitement. But for all except the few who are strong and steadfast, there lurks beneath the effervescence a subtle poison. — Samuel Hopkins Adams

Yes, I get dry spells. Sometimes I can't turn out a thing for three months. When one of those spells comes on I quit trying to work and go out and see something of life. You can't write a story that's got any life in it by sitting at a writing table and thinking. You've got to get out into the streets, into the crowds, talk with people, and feel the rush and throb of real life-that's the stimulant for a story writer. — O. Henry

Fear is a powerful stimulant. — Margaret Atwood

In addition, Dr. Dannyboy has suggested a fifth element: positive thinking. Pointing out that their breathing, bathing, dining and screwing brought Alobar and Kudra much physical pleasure, and that an organism steeped in pleasure is an organism disposed to continue, he has said that the will to live cannot be overestimated as a stimulant to longevity. Indeed Dr. Dannyboy goes so far as to claim that ninety percent of all deaths are suicides. Persons, says Wiggs, who lack curiosity about life, who find minimal joy in existence, are all too willing, subconsciously, to cooperate with- and attract- disease, accident and violence. — Tom Robbins

Appreciation is a better stimulant than money. Money boosts the ego while appreciation touches the soul. — Debasish Mridha

If you eliminate wheat from your diet, you're no longer hungry between meals because you've cut out the appetite stimulant, and consequently you lose weight very quickly. I've seen this with thousands of patients. — William Davis

Adderall or Ritalin TYPE 3. Impulsive-Compulsive Addicts SYMPTOMS Combination of types 1 and 2 BRAIN FINDINGS/NEURO-TRANSMITTER ISSUE High ACG plus low PFC/low S and DA SUPPLEMENTS 5-HTP plus green tea and rhodiola MEDICATIONS SSRI plus stimulant TYPE 4. Sad or Emotional Addicts SYMPTOMS Sad or depressed mood, winter blues, carbohydrate cravings, loss of — Daniel G. Amen

All people talk of money sometimes, everywhere. But not for all people, everywhere, is money the addiction, the obsession, the stimulant, that it seems to be in New York. It is a large part of the clamor, and it is the voice - quite literally - of the man in the street. — Marya Mannes

A Short Alternative Medical Dictionary
Definitions courtesy of Dr Lemuel Pillmeister (also known as Lemmy)
Addiction - When you can give up something any time, as long as it's next Tuesday.
Cocaine - Peruvian Marching Powder. A stimulant that has the extraordinary effect that the more you do, the more you laugh out of context.
Depression - When everything you laugh at is miserable and you can't seem to stop.
Heroin - A drug that helps you to escape reality, while making it much harder to cope when you are recaptured.
Psychosis - When everybody turns into tiny dolls and they have needles in their mouths and they hate you and you don't care because you have THE KNIFE! AHAHAHAHAHAHA! — Nikki Sixx

Advertising as the printed form of selling would seem ... ultimately to be justified in so far as it serves as a means of increasing legitimate human wants, as an agency of fair and economic competition in the distribution of goods, and as a stimulant to social progress. — Daniel Starch

Oh, was that liquor of yours a stimulant?" asked Elena. "I wondered why he didn't fall asleep."
"Couldn't you tell?" chuckled Mayhew.
"Not really."
Miles twisted his head to take in Elena's upside-down worried face, and smile in weak reassurance. Sparkly black and purple whirlpools clouded his vision. Mayhew's laughter faded. "My God," he said hollowly, "you mean he's like that all the time? — Lois McMaster Bujold

Moral obligation is to me so very strong a Stimulant, that in 9 cases out of ten it acts as a Narcotic. The Blow that should rouse, stuns me. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Next to happiness, perhaps enmity is the most healthful stimulant of the human mind. — Margaret Oliphant

A sense of power is the most intoxicating stimulant a mortal can enjoy ... — Ellen Swallow Richards

Scenery can be a violent stimulant. — Margaret Drabble

A major stimulant to creative thinking is focused questions. — Brian Tracy

The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. Where the Lottery was concerned, even people who could barely read and write seemed capable of intricate calculations and staggering feats of memory. There was a whole tribe of men who made their living simply by selling systems, forecasts, and lucky amulets. Winston had nothing to do with the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being nonexistent persons. — George Orwell

Badly drawn, badly written and badly printed - a strain on young eyes and young nervous systems - the effect of these pulp-paper nightmares is that of a violent stimulant. Their crude blacks and reds spoil the child's natural sense of color; their hypodermic injection of sex and murder makes the child impatient with better, though quieter, stories. Unless we want a coming generation even more ferocious than the present one, parents and teachers throughout America must band together to break the 'comic' magazines.

But the antidote to the 'comic' magazine poison can be found in any library or good bookstore. The parent who does not acquire that antidote for his child is guilty of criminal negligence. — Sterling North

Reciprocation was a pretty powerful stimulant to the imagination. — Nick Hornby

Nicotine is both a stimulant and a depressant, so that can make one feel quite imbalanced. — Christy Turlington

Love is not the mere opening of two souls' doors. Nor is it a palliative to the troubled heart; it is a stimulant. Under its influence, that heart grows until each tiny imperfection is not tiny. — Richard Harvell

The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic - in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea - known to medical science is work. — Thomas Szasz

Have not many of us, in the weary way of life, felt, in some hours, how far easier it were to die than to live?
The martyr, when faced even by a death of bodily anguish and horror, finds in the very terror of his doom a strong stimulant and tonic. There is a vivid excitement, a thrill and fervor, which may carry through any crisis of suffering that is the birth-hour of eternal glory and rest.
But to live, to wear on, day after day, of mean, bitter, low, harassing servitude, every nerve dampened and depressed, every power of feeling gradually smothered, this long and wasting heart-martyrdom, this slow, daily bleeding away of the inward life, drop by drop, hour after hour, this is the true searching test of what there may be in man or woman. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

For tea, though ridiculed by those who are naturally of coarse nerves, or are become so from wine-drinking, and are not susceptible of influence from so refined a stimulant, will always be the favourite beverage of the intellectual; — Thomas De Quincey

Poetry is no more a narcotic than a stimulant; it is a universal bittersweet mixture for all possible household emergencies and its action varies accordingly as it is taken in a wineglass or a tablespoon, inhaled, gargled or rubbed on the chest by hard fingers covered with rings. — Robert Graves

My brief survey of stimulant aphrodisiacs would be incomplete were I to fail to include that most famous love drug of all time, chocolate or cacao, from the seeds of Theobroma cacao. — Rick Doblin

Physical pleasure is a sensual experience no different from pure seeing or the pure sensation with which a fine fruit fills the tongue; it is a great unending experience, which is given us, a knowing of the world, the fullness and the glory of all knowing. And not our acceptance of it is bad; the bad thing is that most people misuse and squander this experience and apply it as a stimulant at the tired spots of their lives and as distraction instead of a rallying toward exalted moments. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Worship the spirit of criticism. If reduced to itself it is not an awakener of ideas or a stimulant to great things, but, without it, everything is fallible; it always has the last word. — Louis Pasteur

Where suspicion fills the air and holds scholars in line for fear of their jobs, there can be no exercise of the free intellect. Supineness and dogmatism take the place of inquiry. A problem can no longer be pursued to its edges. Fear stalks the classroom. The teacher is no longer a stimulant to adventurous thinking; she becomes instead a pipe line for safe and sound information. A deadening dogma takes the place of free inquiry. Instruction tends to become sterile; pursuit of knowledge is discouraged; discussion often leaves off where it should begin. — William O. Douglas

For me, honestly, one of the first movies I did I was always pounding coffee, and I crashed so horribly. So I've kind of weaned myself off. You keep getting second and third winds. But for me, I've stopped doing energy drinks or any kind of stimulant. I just kind of go natural. — Nick Swardson

We need to stop thinking about infrastructure as an economic stimulant and start thinking about it as a strategy. Economic stimulants produce Bridges to Nowhere. Strategic investment in infrastructure produces a foundation for long-term growth. — Roger McNamee

Your lips are the only stimulant I need. — Faith Sullivan

Lewis sought no disciples, nor does he offer a program or solution, rather his contribution is a critical discipline. Lewis is a stimulant, a mode of perception, rather than a position or practice. — Wyndham Lewis

Ever since 1945 the federal government has held and indeed increased its importance as the first customer of the American economy. Government spending had been the primary economic stimulant and to increase it had been the goal of hundreds of interest groups; hopes of balanced budgets and cheap, business-like administration always ran aground upon this fact. What was more, the United States was a democracy; whatever the doctrinaire objections to it, and however much rhetoric might be devoted to attacking it, a welfare state slowly advanced because voters wanted it that way. These facts gradually made the old ideal of totally free enterprise, unchecked and uninvaded by the influence of government, unreal. — J.M. Roberts