A rat called Possible New Strain was sitting under a spaghetti strainer held down with a pile of journalism textbooks, saying rude things in rat-speak.
You never have a comedian who hasn't got a very deep strain of sadness within him or her. Every great clown has been very near to tragedy.
Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.
More people living in less space can put greater strain on already limited sanitation resources, and this can create a fertile breeding ground for waterborne infectious disease and the insects spreading them.
No higher proof exists of the strength of popular government than, though the chosen of the people be struck down, his constitutional successor is peacefully installed without shock or strain.
Our rural ancestors, with little blest, Patient of labor when the end was rest, Indulged the day that housed their annual grain, With feasts, and off'rings, and a thankful strain.
We strain to listen to the ghosts and echoes of our inexpressibly wise past, and we have an obligation to maintain these places, to provide these sanctuaries, so that people may be in the presence of forces larger than those of the moment.
It was necessary, temporarily, to limit certain requirements, accumulate necessary means, strain forces. We acted precisely in this way and built a socialist society.
She was wearing the same clothes, but now she looked haggard and dirty. The delicate illusions that get us through life can only stand so much strain.
It's about mass immigration at a time when 21% of young people can't find work. It's about giving £50 million a day to the EU when the public finances are under great strain.
The music of a marathon is a powerful strain, one of those tunes of glory. It asks us to forsake pleasures, to discipline the body, to find courage, to renew faith and to become one's own person, utterly and completely.
You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself
I'm bred for farm work, and for such folk, the only A's you get come from effort. Strife and strain are all the world can offer, and they temper you into something unbreakable because Lord knows they'll try -- without let up -- to break you.
A few years ago we colonised this place with some of our finest felons, thieves, muggers, alcoholics and prostitutes, a strain of depravity which I believe has contributed greatly to this country's amazing vigour and enterprise.
Life and death: they are one, at core entwined. Who understands himself from his own strain presses himself into a drop of wine and throws himself into the purest flame.
It is the nature of the business that you work unsociable, unpredictable hours and can get called away at a moment's notice to somewhere on the other side of the world. This can put a strain on home and personal life.
There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.
I had to depend on Braille for my reading and guide for my walking...I am now wearing no glasses, reading and all without strain...by taking lessons in seeing...optometrists hate the method.
To assert, as some have, that illegal immigrants do not depress wages because they do the jobs Americans refuse is the kind of nonsense economists speak when they strain to be counterintuitive. It is similar to saying that cheap imports do not hold down prices.
Marriages are under strain today in terms of economics. There are social cross-currents. We see failed marriages. But it is not under attack by our gay and lesbian citizens.
The human organism inherits so delicate an adjustment to climate that, in spite of man's boasted ability to live anywhere, the strain of the frozen North eliminates the more nervous and active types of mind.
All the billions of people who now inhabit our planet are putting a terrific strain on its aura, making it difficult, even for evolved people to become aware of their past-life knowledge and talents.
Through singing, I met my second husband, Jonathan, who is a professional musician. He transformed our lives and relieved me of much of the strain that I had been carrying for so long.
The world of learning is so broad, and the human soul is so limited in power! We reach forth and strain every nerve, but we seize only a bit of the curtain that hides the infinite from us.
For decades I'd flit from drawing table to typewriter to guitar with no sense of strain or contradiction. They all exercised the same psychic muscle (the Imagination), and working in one medium refreshed my appetite for the others.
There is a rowdy strain in American life, living close to the surface but running very deep. Like an ape behind a mask, it can display itself suddenly with terrifying effect.
O soul, be patient: thou shalt find A little matter mend all this; Some strain of music to thy mind, Some praise for skill not spent amiss.
I am still feeling my calf strain, so I have been unable to train this week. I will again have to sit out the weekend action, but the lads are climbing ever higher to safety.
When you're younger, the mental strain of being a successful actor, jumping from role to role, and trying to have some kind of personal life, can really be terrible.
It is always a strain when people are being killed. I don't think anybody has held this job who hasn't felt personally responsible for those being killed.
It wasn't like a Maths test where I have to strain to get it right. I feel very close to Luna so acting her was just natural. And if I had got too nervous I'd have done terribly.
The Founding Fathers in their wisdom decided that children were an unnatural strain on parents. So they provided jails called schools, equipped with tortures called an education.
A software system is transparent when you can look at it and immediately see what is going on. It is simple when what is going on is uncomplicated enough for a human brain to reason about all the potential cases without strain
A new oath holds pretty well; but... when it is become old, and frayed out, and damaged by a dozen annual retryings of its remains, it ceases to be serviceable; any little strain will snap it.
We ring the bells and we raise the strain
We hang up garlands everywhere
And bid the tapers twinkle fair,
And feast and frolic - and then we go
Back to the same old lives again.
The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
The glossary of politics is so full of euphemistic words and phrases - as in the nature of things it must be - that one would suppose politicians must sometimes strain their wits to coin them.
At a time when public finances are under huge strain, we surely do not need to pay celebrities to wax lyrical to mandarins. Unless American comedians can make the Home Office fit for purpose, the taxpayer won't be laughing.
There's a pretty significant list of couples who have split up after doing couples reality shows. And not necessarily the show being to blame, but it might have created strain in a relationship that wasn't solid.
But would you sing, and rival Orpheus' strain. The wond'ring forests soon should dance again; The moving mountains hear the powerful call. And headlong streams hand listening in their fall!
In the love of a brave and faithful man there is always a strain of maternal tenderness; he gives out again those beams of protecting fondness which were shed on him as he lay on his mother's knee.
Every advance in knowledge and technique is matched by a new kind of death, a new strain. Death adapts, like a viral agent.
Look, I would say that anyone who does this work and doesn't have a strain of idealism is an adrenaline junkie or completely narcissistic. There is no other justification. You're risking your life, and if anything happens, it's our families who suffer tremendously.
The secret of popular writing is never to put more on a given page than the common reader can lap off it with no strain whatsoever on his habitually slack attention.
Her heart of compressed ash, which had resisted the most telling blows of daily reality without strain, fell apart with the first waves of nostalgia.
When a house is tottering to its fall,
The strain lies heaviest on the weakest part,
One tiny crack throughout the structure spreads,
And its own weight soon brings it toppling down.
When I pick up one of my children and cuddle them, all the strain and stress of life temporarily disappears. There is nothing more wonderful than motherhood and no-one will ever love you as much as a small child.
Today is mine. Tomorrow is none of my business. If I peer anxiously into the fog of the future I will strain my spiritual eyes so that I will not see clearly what is required of me now!
With Brexit, and I think the extraordinary strain it's put on our constitution and our representative democracy, I do sometimes feel like I'm in the middle of the 17th Century, when you are standing up for the rights of Parliament.
Fashion shoots put an enormous strain on my skin and hair. So when I'm away from the cameras, I don't wear make-up, and I moisturise my skin with Aquasource by Biotherm.
Do all men kill the things they do not love ............ The quality of mercy is not strain'd It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest It blesseth him that gives and him that takes
When the morning's freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles give under the strain, the climb seems endless, and suddenly nothing will go quite as you wish it is then that you must not hesitate.
I've always known that sporting people frequently suffer from joint problems because of the repeated strain they put on their bodies to get to the top. But somehow I never thought it would happen to me.
There is a strain in Marx of the cleric, of the vulgar moralist. He paints the capitalist and the bourgeois as incarnations of evil; it is they who are responsible for the woes of mankind. The dismissal of the individual's responsibility for his own misery is the quintessence of clericalism.
Changing ideas is a strain not to be lightly incurred, particularly when these ideas are intimately related to one's self-esteem ... men have elaborated an explanation for their situation in life... Their rationales are endowed with moral qualities.
This is what holidays, travels, vacations are about. It is not really rest or even leisure we chase. We strain to renew our capacity for wonder to shock ourselves into astonishment once again.
We see considerable strain in Russia, and that's obviously a matter of concern to us. It's in the very strong self-interest of Russia to continue on the reform path.
But in the expression of the countenance, which was beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible anomalyl) that fitful strain of melancholy which will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful.
What I was interested in was conveying an emotional message, which means using everything you've got inside you sometimes to barely make a note, or if you have to strain to sing, you sing.
APHORISM, n. Predigested wisdom. The flabby wine-skin of his brain Yields to some pathologic strain, And voids from its unstored abysm The driblet of an aphorism. "The Mad Philosopher," 1697
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