tension quotes

   Words strain, Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still.

-T(homas) S(tearns) Eliot
  Four Quartets,'Burnt Norton', pt.5.

There is a growing division in our comparatively prosperous society between the South and the North and Midlands, which are ailing, that cannot be allowed to continue. There is a general sense of tension. The old English way might be to quarrel and have battles, but they were friendly. I can only describe as wicked the hatred that has been introduced, and which is to be found among different types of people today. Not merelyan intellectual but a moral effort isrequired toget rid of it.

-Stockton
  Maiden speech as the Earl of Stockton (60 years after first entering the House of Commons), House of Lords,13 Nov.

War alone can carry to the maximum tension all human energies and imprint with the seal of nobility those people who have the courage to confront it; every other test is a mere substitute.

- Benito also called Il Duce [the Leader] Mussolini
c.1930  Quoted in Denis Mack-Smith Mussolini's Roman Empire (1976), p.47.