#strain

Space, like time, engenders forgetfulness; but it does so by setting us bodily free from our surroundings and giving us back our primitive, unattached state ... Time, we say, is Lethe; but change of air is a similar draught, and, if it works less thoroughly, does so more quickly. ↗

— Thomas Mann

#body #constraints #forgetfulness #freedom #lethe

She understood the genre constraints, the decencies we were supposed to be observing. The morally cosy vision allows the embrace of monstrosity only as a reaction to suffering or as an act of rage against the Almighty. Vampire interviewee Louis is in despair at his brother’s death when he accepts Lestat’s offer. Frankenstein’s creature is driven to violence by the violence done to him. Even Lucifer’s rebellion emerges from the agony of injured pride. The message is clear: By all means become an abomination—but only while unhinged by grief or wrath. By rights, Talulla knew, she should have been orphaned or raped or paedophilically abused or terminally ill or suicidally depressed or furious at God for her mother’s death or at any rate in some way deranged if she was to be excused for not having killed herself, once it became apparent that she’d have to murder and devour people in order to stay alive. The mere desire to stay alive, in whatever form you’re lumbered with—werewolf, vampire, Father of Lies—really couldn’t be considered a morally sufficient rationale. And yet here she was, staying alive. You love life because life’s all there is. ↗

— Glen Duncan

#death

And let the Fed sell bonds to bring bank reserves back down to required reserve levels, so we have restraint on bank lending and bank issuances of liability. ↗

— Arthur Laffer

#bank #bonds #bring #down #fed

The boredom occasioned by too much restraint is always preferable to that produced by an uncontrolled enthusiasm for a pointless variety. ↗

— Osbert Lancaster

#boredom #enthusiasm #much #occasioned #pointless

Leadership consists not in degrees of technique but in traits of character; it requires moral rather than athletic or intellectual effort, and it imposes on both leader and follower alike the burdens of self-restraint. ↗

— Lewis H. Lapham

#athletic #both #burdens #character #consists

To the totality of purposes of the perfect Law there belong the abandonment, depreciation, and restraint of desires in so far as possible. ↗

— Maimonides

#belong #depreciation #desires #far #law

In nonfiction, you have that limitation, that constraint, of telling the truth. ↗

— Peter Matthiessen

#limitation #nonfiction #telling #telling the truth #truth

Donald had reached its further edge, and could hear the rush of the stream from the deep obscurity of the abyss below, when there rose from the opposite side a strain of the most delightful music he had ever heard. ↗

— Hugh Miller

#below #could #deep #delightful #donald

The decline of manners, the cynical pursuit without shame or restraint of personal advantage and of money characterizes our times, not without exceptions, of course, but more than we ought to be comfortable with. ↗

— J. Irwin Miller

#characterizes #comfortable #course #cynical #decline

There are several reasons to oppose tax increases. First, every dollar of tax increase is a dollar you didn't get in spending restraint. Two, if you walk into the Democrats' Andrews-Air-Force-Base, Lucy-with-the-Football trick for the third time in a row - they don't have have a saying for being fooled three times! ↗

— Grover Norquist

#democrats #dollar #every #first #fooled