Grace Under Pressure Quotes

No subject is terrible if the story is true, if the prose is clean and honest, and if it affirms courage and grace under pressure. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Survival is as much a matter of grace as fight. The expression, 'grace under pressure' implies the attainment of equanimity and equilibrium. The fundamental durability of the human body surprises us because the pain can be so intense - yet pain is often transient and hides the tremendous effforts the body is engaged in to heal itself. ~ Gretel Ehrlich

Recall that epic heroes were judged by their actions, not by the results. No matter how sophisticated our choices, how good we are at dominating the odds, randomness will have the last word. We are left only with dignity as a solution - dignity defined as the execution of a protocol of behavior that does not depend on the immediate circumstance. It may not be the optimal one, but it certainly is the one that makes us feel best. Grace under pressure, for example. Or in deciding not to toady up to someone, whatever ~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb

By "guts" I mean, grace under pressure ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Courage is grace under pressure. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Big mistakes are an outstanding opportunity to showcase your ability to recover and have grace under pressure. ~ Bryant McGill

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

It's a level of strength and character that few of us can imagine; a grace under pressure that few of us will ever attain. It's why an Olympic gold medal would not have made us love or admire her more. ~ Peggy Fleming

Grace under pressure isn't just about bullfighters and men at war. It's about getting up every day to face a job or a white boss you don't like but have to face to feed your children so they'll grow up to be a better generation. ~ Ernest Gaines

When I was volunteering with Hurricane Katrina refugees in Houston in 2005, I first started thinking about the whole phenomenon of grace under pressure. ~ Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

What is the definition of guts? Grace under pressure. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

In getting from Windsor to Detroit there is a choice between a free tunnel and a toll bridge, which turned out to be a short ride for a dollar, which I mentioned to the toll-collector who said, 'One of those things,' impelling me to remark to my cousin, 'Almost everything said by people one sees for only an instant is something like poetry. Precise, incisive, and just right, and the reason seems to be that there isn't time to talk prose. This suggests several things, the most important of which is probably that a writer ought not to permit himself to feel that he has all the time in the world in which to write his story or play or novel. He ought to set himself a time-limit, and the shorter the better. And he ought to do a lot of other things while he is working within this time-limit, so that he will always be under pressure, in a hurry, and therefore have neither the inclination nor the time to be fussy, which is the worst thing that happens to a book while it's being written. ~ William, Saroyan

I mean, I can get things done if I need to, but I can really be completely irresponsible and procrastinate until the very, very, very bitter end. In fact, sometimes I work better under pressure. ~ Cameron Diaz

You don't really know who you are until you have gone through suffering. We can measure our spiritual growth by the way we behave under pressure. ~ Edward T. Welch

To the man who is truly ethical all life is sacred, including that which from the human point of view seems lower in the scale. He makes distinctions only as each case comes before him, and under the pressure of necessity, as, for example, when it falls to him to decide which of two lives he must sacrifice in order to preserve the other. But all through this series of decisions he is conscious of acting on subjective grounds and arbitrarily, and knows that he bears the responsibility for the life which is sacrificed. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Whoever rises to deliver the inaugural Address of 2013 will speak to a nation in which the American Dream is under profound economic and cultural pressure. This is perhaps best measured by the state of the middle class. ~ Jon Meacham

I think most people are decent people. I don't know if they could stand the pressure he's under, but most people aspire to be decent people. ~ Brendan Gleeson

If Shakespeare were alive now, no doubt he'd be interviewed every week and his opinions canvassed on every subject from national foreign policy to the social effects of punk rock. But in his day nobody cared what Shakespeare's views were about anything, and he wouldn't have been allowed to discuss public affairs publicly. He wasn't, therefore, under a constant pressure to become opinionated. ~ Northrop Frye

Part of the beauty and much of the moral seriousness of sport derives from the severe justice of strenuous play in a circumscribed universe of rules that protect the integrity of competition. Records are worth recording, and worth striving to surpass, because they serve as benchmarks of excellence achieved under the pressure of competition. ~ George Will

Always behave like a duck- keep calm and unruffled on the surface, but paddle like the devil underneath. ~ Jacob M. Braude

Space Rockets as Power Symbols

The moon rocket is the climactic expression of the power system: the maximum utilization of the resources of science and technics for the achievement of a relatively miniscule result: the hasty exploration of a barren satellite. Space exploration by manned rockets enlarges and intensifies all the main components of the power system: increased energy, accelerated motion, automation, cyber-nation, instant communication, remote control. Though it has been promoted mainly under military pressure, the most vital result of moon visitation so far turns out to be an unsought and unplanned one-a full view of the beautiful planet we live on, an inviting home for man and for all forms of life. This distant view on television evoked for the first time an active, loving response from many people who had hitherto supposed that modern technics would soon replace Mother Earth with a more perfect, scientifically organized, electronically controlled habitat, and who took for granted that this would be an improvement. Note that the moon rocket is itself necessarily a megastructure: so it naturally calls forth such vulgar imitations as the accompanying bureaucratic obelisk (office building) of similar dimensions, shown here (left). Both forms exhibit the essentially archaic and regressive nature of the science-fiction mind. ~ Lewis Mumford

Full of beautiful grace so we steal their space, and death comes quickly. ~ Sara Quin

I understand that you are under a lot of pressure and that it's hard being a bride. That is all well and good. But it does not, ever, entitle you to be rude, selfish, uncaring, and generally obnoxious to me or Haven or anyone else. We've been very patient with you because we're your family and we love you, but it stops here. I don't care if the wedding is two weeks or two hours away, you were never raised to behave this way. ~ Sarah Dessen

This highest kind of truth is never something the artist takes as given. It's not his point of departure but his goal. Though the artist has beliefs, like other people, he realizes that a salient characteristic of art is its radical openness to persuasion. Even those beliefs he's surest of, the artist puts under pressure to see if they will stand. ~ John Gardner

Sodas use "caramel coloring" to give them that dark, delicious look. Not to be confused with real caramel, caramel color is the single most used food coloring in the world. It is created by heating ammonia and sulfites under high pressure-a process that produces a cancerous substance called 4-methylimidazole (4-MEI). ~ Vani Hari

I always respected Neil Armstrong highly. He was probably the coolest under pressure of anyone I ever had the privilege of flying with. I never saw him flustered. ~ Charles Duke

It was Orwellian. I completely disappeared, and disappeared the same day. It was by early that evening when the Times story ran. That was an overreaction. All human beings under pressure behave poorly. ~ Gregg Easterbrook

making judgments under the pressure of a crisis, about weighing the relative merits of various choices with potentially catastrophic outcomes. ~ Timothy F. Geithner

Everybody is under pressure to shut up and sing. ~ Phil Donahue

A man never suffers in defeat. But a weak man folds under pressure, while a real man takes it on the chin. ~ Rob G.

As I saw myself moving ever farther toward the social margin, nothing healed me of a sore and angry heart like a walk through the city. To see in the street the fifty different ways people struggle to remain human - the variety and inventiveness of survival techniques - was to feel the pressure relieved, the overflow draining off. I felt in my nerve endings the common refusal to go under. ~ Vivian Gornick

I knew I was putting you under immense pressure when I rejected your work the other day. I set an impossible deadline - yet you have met it with work that I can only call outstanding. As your teacher, I had to push you to your limits so that you could recognize your own true potential. ~ A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Each of the Arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a Muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them. ~ Eliza Farnham

Diamonds are made under pressure - Lilly Parker ~ L.P. Lovell

Grace of God in bestowing this gift is most free. It was what God was under no obligation to bestow: he might have rejected fallen man, as he did the fallen angels. It ~ Jonathan Edwards

The presumption took hold and grew ever firmer that it was the business of government to find solutions to all such problems. Any minister who sought to say that there was nothing that he could or should try to do about them was at once forced on to his defensive back foot by media and parliamentary pressure. At the same time, more citizens were ready to complain about the shortcomings of existing services, and more numerous and competent pressure groups, like the claimants' unions I had come across in supplementary benefits, arose to pursue their complaints. To cap it all, the courts began, and went on to widen, the practice of subjecting the administrative decisions of ministers to judicial review. No wonder that the ministers themselves, also wilting (as their American and French counterparts were not) under the pressures of increasing parliamentary business, found themselves in difficulties. ~ Richard Wilding

But Pastor Prince, doesn't such preaching just make believers feel that it is all right to go on sinning?"
Let me ask you a question: when a truly born-again believer knows that he is forgiven of all his sins, does he go, "Yippee! Now I can go sin all I want"?
I submit to you that no true believer of Jesus is looking for an excuse to sin. Many may be struggling with sin, but they are looking for a way out. They know that what they are doing is self-destructive and not glorifying to their Lord and Savior.
"Oh, Pastor Prince, I know of so-and-so, who says he is under grace, and now he has left his wife to be with his mistress."
Friend, let me be the first to tell you that this person isn't living under grace. The Word of God tells us in no uncertain terms that "sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace" (Rom. 6:14).
This Scripture shows us that when a person is truly under grace, he is not ruled by sin, nor does he happily continue to live a sinful lifestyle. Notice that it also tells us that the way to be liberated from sin's dominion is to come under grace. ~ Joseph Prince

Remaining calm in the midst of chaos is a superpower. ~ Clyde Lee Dennis

Poetic Terrorism
WEIRD DANCING IN ALL-NIGHT computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy. Pick someone at random & convince them they're the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune--say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collection of alchemical mss. ...
Bolt up brass commemorative plaques in places (public or private) where you have experienced a revelation or had a particularly fulfilling sexual experience, etc.
Go naked for a sign.
Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty.
Graffiti-art loaned some grace to ugly subways & rigid public monuments--PT-art can also be created for public places: poems scrawled in courthouse lavatories, small fetishes abandoned in parks & restaurants, Xerox-art under windshield-wipers of parked cars, Big Character Slogans pasted on playground walls, anonymous letters mailed to random or chosen recipients (mail fraud), pirate radio transmissions, wet cement...
The audience reaction or aesthetic-shock produced by PT ought to be at least as strong as the emotion of terror-- powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive break ~ Hakim Bey

Playing in the playoffs is the best basketball in the world, and if you can learn under that pressure, succeed under that pressure, it gives you more confidence the next year. ~ Tony Parker

Mental Management is the process of maximising the probability of having a consistent mental performance, under pressure, on demand ~ Lanny Bassham

If you and I are to appropriate God's grace in our times of need, we must see His sovereignty ultimately ruling in all the circumstances of our lives. And when those circumstances are difficult, disappointing, or humiliating, we must humble ourselves under His mighty hand. ~ Jerry Bridges

When I'm writing my album, it's totally my world. Even though it's myself and another producer creating the project, Conceptually it's more under my power and on my own terms. At the same time, it's a different type of pressure because I'm ultimately speaking, I'm solely responsible for the end result. ~ Ashanti

Online advertising is increasingly only a fraction of what is being lost from print advertising, and it is under constant pressure. ~ Rupert Murdoch

And later, of course, she got too busy. She asks Royce if he heard anything from Grace, ever. "No. No. Why should I?" "I just thought." "No." "I thought you might have looked her up later on." "Not a good idea." She has disappointed him. Prying. Trying to get at some spot of live regret right under the ribs. A woman. ~ Tom Perrotta

Librarians are serious people, seldomgiven to idle jocularity. The reason for this, I believe, is because we are overwhelmed by the enormous number of good books waiting to be read, leaving little time for frivolity. My personal list of must-read books presents a daunting challenge; I can't even imagine the pressure our head librarian must be under. ~ Lynn Austin

He had always known he would go out this way: on fire. He had always known that rage was flammable, dangerous to store under pressure, where he had kept it his whole life. ~ Joe Hill

At headquarters, where everyone lived under the tremendous pressure of responsibility, probably nothing was more welcome than a dictate from above. That meant being freed of a decision and simultaneously being provided with an excuse for failure. ~ Albert Speer

As man under pressure tends to give in to physical and intellectual weakness, only great strength of will can lead to the objective. ~ Carl Von Clausewitz

People in France have a phrase: "Spirit of the Stairway." In French: esprit d'Escalier. It means that moment when you find the answer but it's too late. So you're at a party and someone insults you. You have to say something. So, under pressure, with everybody watching, you say something lame. But the moment you leave the party ...
As you start down the stairway, then - magic. You come up with the perfect thing you should've said. The perfect crippling put down. That's the Spirit of the Stairway. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

The teaching of the sexual tantras all come down to one point. Although desire, of whatever shape or form, seeks completion, there is another kind of union than the one we imagine. In this union, achieved when the egocentric model of dualistic thinking is no longer dominant, we are not united with it, nor am I united with you, but we all just are. The movement from object to subject, as described in both Eastern meditation and modern psychotherapy, is training for this union, but its perception usually comes as a surprise, even when this shift is well under way. It is a kind of grace. The emphasis on sexual relations in the tantric teachings make it clear that the ecstatic surprise of orgasm is the best approximation of this grace. ~ Mark Epstein

I hear all the time that peace activists are naive, that it is impossible to talk to extremists--people who have no regard for the lives of innocents... But in my experience in conflict zones the world over, there are always people to talk to. From members of Hamas in Gaza to Baathists under Saddam's Iraq to the Taliban in Afganistan to government officials in Iran, it is a major blunder to label all our perceived enemies as extremists incapable of rational conversation. People join militant groups for many reasons--religious, family, social pressure, revenge for some wrong they experienced, political ideology, poverty. With such diversity of motives, the are always some people who can be enticed to talk about peace. Our goal should be to seek them out, to strengthen the moderates. Unfortunately, our actions have only served to embolden the extremists. ~ Medea Benjamin

The retaining membrane that held Dutch culture together for more than a century was a marvel of elasticity. Responding to appropriate external stimuli, it could expand or contract as the conditions of its survival altered. Under pressure, it could tighten to compress the Dutch into a sense of their indissoluble unity. In more expansive times it could relax and swell, allowing for internal differentiation and the absorption of a whole gamut of beliefs, faiths and even tongues. An omniscient kind of social filter swallowed up those foreign bodies and spat them out again as burghers: civically salubrious and residentially reliable. ~ Simon Schama

Top-up fees mean that universities are increasingly under pressure to confer degrees upon students, who perceive the degree as a commodity they've purchased. Failure doesn't enter into anyone's calculations. ~ Sarah Churchwell