Quotes about Constraint

Mari remembered what she had read in the young girl's eyes the moment she had come into the refectory: fear. Fear. Veronika might feel insecurity, shyness, shame, constraint, but why fear? That was only justifiable when confronted by a real threat: ferocious animals, armed attackers, earthquakes, but not a group of people gathered together in a refectory. But human beings are like that,' she thought. 'We've replaced nearly all our emotions with fear.

What is voluntary comes from the will; what is forced comes to the will from outside and prevents it from doing what it will.

the mere necessity brings with it a dispensation, since necessity knows no law. . . .

the mere necessity brings with it a dispensation, since necessity knows no law. . . .

Whatever limits us we call Fate.

Golden fetters are no less galling to a self-respecting man that iron ones; the sting lies in the fetters, not in the metal.

Wherever a man goes, men will pursue him and paw him with their dirty institutions, and, if they can, constrain him to belong to their desperate odd-fellow society.

Perhaps then one reason why we have no great poet, novelist or critic writing today is that we refuse to allow words their liberty. We pin them down to one meaning, their useful meaning: the meaning which makes us catch the train, the meaning which makes us pass the examination.

Skewered through and through with office pens, and bound hand and foot with red tape.

Men imagine that the choices before them are theirs to make. But we are free to act only upon what is given. Choice is lost in the maze of generations and each act in that maze is itself an enslavement for it voids every alternative and binds one ever more tightly into the constraints that make a life

Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.

A man in debt is so far a slave.