“There was enough tension in the room to send a fleet of the nervous running for their tranquilizers.”

“Room service? Send up a larger room."[A Night at the Opera]”

“When I get nervous, I go to the library and hang around. The libraries are filled with people who are nervous. You can blend in with them there. You're bound to see someone more nervous than you are in a library. Sometimes the librarians themselves are more nervous than you are. I'll probably be a librarian for that reason. Then if I'm nervous on the job, it won't show. I'll just stamp books and look things up for people and run back and forth to the staff room sneaking smokes until I get hold of myself. A library is a great place to hid.”

“Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your own nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom.”

“Tension, in the long run, is a more dangerous force than any feud known to man.”

“Our life runs down in sending up the clock.The brook runs down in sending up our life.The sun runs down in sending up the brook.And there is something sending up the sun.It is this backward motion toward the source,Against the stream, that most we see ourselves in,The tribute of the current to the source.It is from this in nature we are from.It is most us.”