Quotes about massage

A collection of quotes on the topic of massage, people, thinking, likeness.

Quotes about massage

“The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody's ego, that's it, game over.”

Gordon Ramsay (1966) British chef, writer and TV presenter

Game

“How are you feeling?"
"Like someone massaged me with a cheese grater."
-Clary & Simon, pg.297-”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Feeling

“A massage is just like a movie, really relaxing and a total escape, except in a massage you're the star. And you don't miss anything by falling asleep!”

Elizabeth Jane Howard (1923–2014) writer

Source: Mr. Wrong

Star

“Never let stress shape your strategy. Most women think better after a brisk walk, a light meal, a massage and a nap.”

Barbara Taylor Bradford (1933) British author

Source: Her Own Rules

Women, Thinking, Light

“You know, I've lived a long time," he told me, massaging my calf more firmly now. "And I met a lot of people. But I ain't never met a woman made me want to beat her to death as often as you.”

Karen Chance American writer

Source: Hunt the Moon

Death, People, Time

“Percy tried to remember. He really did. For some reason, Annabeth and he had visited a spa and decided to destroy it. He couldn't imagine why. Maybe they hadn't like the deep-tissue massage? Maybe they'd gotten bad manicures?”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Imagination

““You know, my dear, you’re wrong that suffering ennobles people.” She’d stopped to massage her hip, wincing. “It simply makes one cross.””

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Nooncoming, p. 100 (Originally published in Universe 8, edited by Terry Carr), 1978
In Alien Flesh (1986)

People, Suffering

“There are two dominant mindsets in the world of business or any kind of organization.One is a productive mindset, and it says it's a good idea to seek valid knowledge, it's a good idea to craft your conversations so you make explicit what you are thinking and trying to examine. You craft them in such a way that you can test, as clearly as you can, the validity of your claims. Truth is a good idea. All the managerial functions—accounting, all of them—have a fundamental notion that the productive mindset is what ought to be used to manage human beings.Then there's another mindset I call the defensive mindset. The idea is that even if you are seeking valid knowledge, you are seeking only that kind of valid knowledge that protects yourself or your organization or your department—it is defensive. From a defensive mindset point of view, truth is a good idea when it isn't threatening or upsetting. If it is, massage it, spin it. But if you massage it and spin it, you're violating the espoused theory of good management. When you spin, you have to cover up the fact that you're spinning. And in order for a cover up to work, it too has to be covered up.”

Chris Argyris (1923–2013) American business theorist/Professor Emeritus/Harvard Business School/Thought Leader at Monitor Group

Chris Argyris (2004) in: " Surfacing Your Underground Organization http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/4456.html" on hbswk.hbs.edu by Mallory Stark, 11/1/2004

Truth, World, Way, Idea

“I was a Yorkshire miner's son, the youngest of seven, and my mother was no longer so very young. She suffered from bad rheumatism in the back and would often say to me in winter, when I came home from school: 'Henry, boy, come and rub my back.' Then I would massage her back with liniment. When I came to model this figure [for his sculpture 'Seated Woman', 1957] which represents a fully mature woman, I found that I was unconsciously giving to its back the long-forgotten shape of the one that I had so often rubbed as a boy. Not just her shoulder but her whole back down from the shoulder blades with the skin close to the bone, to the fleshy lower parts. I had a strong sense of contrast between bone and flesh. I was seven or eight at the time [c. 1906].”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

Quote of Moore, 1978; as cited in Henry Moore writings and Conversations, ed. Alan Wilkinson, University of California Press, California 2002, pp. 32-33
1970 and later

School, Home, Boy, Sense

“I like the notion of working the program, like an artist works a lump of clay. An artist wants to make a sculpture, but before she makes the sculpture, she just massages the clay. She starts towards making the sculpture, and sees what the clay wants to do. And the more she handles the clay, the more the clay tends to do what she wants. It becomes compliant to her will.
A development team works on a piece of code over several months. Initially, they make a piece of code, and it's a little stiff. It's small, but it's still stiff. Then they move the code, and it gets a little easier to move.”

Ward Cunningham (1949) American computer programmer who developed the first wiki

A Conversation with Ward Cunningham (2003), Working the Program

“It was during the massage that it started to become sensual, and that led to him masturbating me… That was and is our only sexual contact.”

Ted Haggard (1956) American minister

KRDO http://www.krdo.com/Global/story.asp?S=8556903, retrieved June 26, 2008

“And so they've killed our Ferdinand,' said the charwoman to Mr Švejk, who had left military service years before, after having been finally certified by an army medical board as an imbecile, and now lived by selling dogs — ugly, mongrel monstrosities whose pedigrees he forged.
Apart from this occupation he suffered from rheumatism and was at this very moment rubbing his knees with Elliman's embrocation.
'Which Ferdinand, Mrs Müller?' he asked, going on with the massaging. 'I know two Ferdinands. One is a messenger at Průša's, the chemist's, and once by mistake he drank a bottle of hair oil there. And the other is Ferdinand Kokoška who collects dog manure. Neither of them is any loss.”

Jaroslav Hašek book The Good Soldier Švejk

'Oh no, sir, it's his Imperial highness, the Archduke Ferdinand, from Konopiště, the fat churchy one.'
First lines
The Good Soldier Švejk (1921)

Dogs, Suffering, Loss

“In a public figure, if he tries to put himself out as a man of great virtue then it is justified in exposing him. If he has a little mistress tucked away or frequents massage parlours, then it's his business. But if he in addition preaches morality then I think he should be exposed.”

Khushwant Singh (1915–2014) Indian novelist and journalist

I Don't Know One Editor In India Who Is Well-Read

Business, Thinking

“To supply a thought is mental massage; but to evolve a thought of your own is an achievement. Thinking is a brain exercise — and no faculty grows save as it is exercised.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Source: The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927), p. 64.

Exercises, Thinking

“After two years of traveling almost exclusively to Western Europe and the Middle East, Poland feels like a geopolitical spa. I visited here for just three days and got two years of anti-American bruises massaged out of me. Get this: people here actually tell you they like America -- without whispering. What has gotten into these people? Have all their subscriptions to Le Monde Diplomatique expired? Haven't they gotten the word from Berlin and Paris? No, they haven't. In fact, Poland is the antidote to European anti-Americanism. Poland is to France what Advil is to a pain in the neck. Or as Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins foreign affairs specialist, remarked after visiting Poland: "Poland is the most pro-American country in the world -- including the United States."”

Thomas Friedman (1953) American journalist and author

"Where U.S. Translates As Freedom" http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/28/opinion/where-us-translates-as-freedom.html (28 December 2003), The New York Times

Pain, People, World, Travel

“Did you ever wake up with an erection…and then you realize you're just in a massage chair at Brookstone? And you yell to the sales clerk "I'll take it!"”

Zach Galifianakis (1969) American actor and comedian

Live at the Purple Onion (2007)

“An itinerant masseur, massaging the politically erogenous zones.”

David Lange (1942–2005) New Zealand politician and 32nd Prime Minister of New Zealand

Of Jim Bolger, Leader of the Opposition during the 1987 election campaign.
Source: Heinemann Dictionary of New Zealand Quotations (1988), p. 399.

“By any precise definition, Washington is a city of advanced depravity. There one meets and dines with the truly great killers of the age, but only the quirkily fastidious are offended, for the killers are urbane and learned gentlemen who discuss their work with wit and charm and know which tool to use on the escargots.
On New York's East Side one occasionally meets a person so palpably evil as to be fascinatingly irresistible. There is a smell of power and danger on these people, and one may be horrified, exhilarated, disgusted or mesmerized by the awful possibilities they suggest, but never simply depressed.
Depression comes in the presence of depravity that makes no pretense about itself, a kind of depravity that says, "You and I, we are base, ugly, tasteless, cruel and beastly; let's admit it and have a good wallow."
That is how Times Square speaks. And not only Times Square. Few cities in the country lack the same amenities. Pornography, prostitution, massage parlors, hard-core movies, narcotics dealers — all seem to be inescapable and permanent results of an enlightened view of liberty which has expanded the American's right to choose his own method of shaping a life.
Granted such freedom, it was probably inevitable that many of us would yield to the worst instincts, and many do, and not only in New York. Most cities, however, are able to keep the evidence out of the center of town. Under a rock, as it were. In New York, a concatenation of economics, shifting real estate values and subway lines has worked to turn the rock over and put the show on display in the middle of town.
What used to be called "The Crossroads of the World" is now a sprawling testament to the dreariness which liberty can produce when it permits people with no taste whatever to enjoy the same right to depravity as the elegant classes.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"Cheesy" (p.231)
So This Is Depravity (1980)

Life, People, Age, World

“The unhappiness of our life; patch up our false way of life as we will, propping it up by the aid of the sciences and arts - that life becomes feebler, sicklier, and more tormenting every year; every year the number of suicides and the avoidance of motherhood increases; every year the people of that class become feebler; every year we feel the increasing gloom of our lives. Evidently salvation is not to be found by increasing the comforts and pleasures of life, medical treatments, artificial teeth and hair, breathing exercises, massage, and so forth;…It is impossible to remedy this by any amusements, comforts, or powders - it can only be remedied by a change of life.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

What then must we do? (1886)

Life, People, Pleasure, Art

“I've also grown as an actor as I've got older in life. I've learnt how to go to work, immerse myself 100 per cent in the character and, at the end of the day, take it all off and go back, get a nice bubble bath, have a nice massage and realise that is not my life. And that feels good.”

Halle Berry (1966) American actress

Steve Pratt (March 27, 2004) "Blazing a trail with Halle's comet", The Northern Echo, p. 10.

Life, Feeling

“In touch! There’s a slimy phrase. Touch, hell. Gripped! Pawed, rather. Mauled and massaged and pounded by FM voices.”

Ray Bradbury book The Golden Apples of the Sun

The Murderer (1953)
The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)

Hell

“This was no time for thinking. Thought in combat was a luxury about as appropriate as a hot bath and massage.”

Richard K. Morgan book Altered Carbon

Source: Altered Carbon (2002), Chapter 41 (p. 493)

Thinking, Time

“I went there for a massage.”

Ted Haggard (1956) American minister

KKTV http://www.kktv.com/unclassified/769277.html?video&displayHelp=true, accessed 3 November 2006.

“I have a better understanding of my body now. … Everyone wants to feel fresh in the game – there’s no better feeling – so I just make sure I’m doing the right things and trying to tick every box: cryotherapy, massage, eating the right things. … I think I’ve managed [to adopt veganism] successfully. … I don’t find anything hard to give up, as such, because I know the feeling scoring goals gives me. … I just want to try to play as long as I can. So I do the stuff that will give me the best opportunity to perform and score goals.”

Jermain Defoe (1982) English association football player

"England goalscorer Jermain Defoe says vegan diet and discipline paying off", interview with The Guardian (27 March 2017) https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/mar/27/jermain-defoe-england-striker-lithuania.

Feeling, Game, Understanding, Thinking

“Steaks every day for me. Steaks for breakfast. Steaks for lunch. Steaks for brunch. Grass-fed, massaged beef. All day long.”

Conor McGregor (1988) Irish mixed martial artist and boxer

"UFC 197 press conference" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75xAdA3uVeY (January 2016), Ultimate Fighting Championship, Zuffa, LLC <br class="br">2010s, 2016

Grass

“This time of year, the whole crazy city could go in one big fire storm. There were times that he almost wished that it would. He hated this smoggy, tawdry Babylon of a city, its endless tangle of freeways, the strange-looking houses, the filthy air, the thick, choking, glossy foliage everywhere, the drugs, the booze, the divorces, the laziness, the sleaziness, the porno shops and the naked encounter parlors and the massage joints, the weird people wearing their weird clothes and driving their weird cars and cutting their hair in weird ways. There was a cheapness, a trashiness, about everything here, he thought. Even the mansions and the fancy restaurants were that way: hollow, like slick movie sets. He sometimes felt that the trashiness bothered him more than the out-and-out evil. If you kept sight of your own values you could do battle with evil, but trashiness slipped up around you and infiltrated your soul without your even knowing it. He hoped that his sojourn in Los Angeles was not doing that to him.”

Robert Silverberg (1935) American speculative fiction writer and editor

Source: Short fiction, Against Babylon (1986), p. 264

Hate, People, Hope, Angels

“No one can ever heap enough insults upon me to suit my taste. I think we all really thrive on hostility, because it's the most intense kind of massage the ego can undergo. Other people's indifference is the only horror.”

Paul Bowles (1910–1999) American composer, writer, translator

Letter to Charles Henri Ford (25 January 1948), as published in In Touch : The Letters of Paul Bowles (1995) edited by Jeffrey Miller, p. 192

Hostility, People, Thinking, Indifference

“That comes from most people having an American film model in their heads which is nothing but a total illusionary masturbatory massage.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

In an interview in Die Zeit, 24 Nov 1989
Interviews

People

“A car can massage organs which no masseur can reach. It is the one remedy for the disorders of the great sympathetic nervous system. … The craving for opium can be endured in a car.”

Jean Cocteau (1889–1963) French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, boxing manager and filmmaker

Opium (1929)

Cars

“I'm not sure, but music now should be like sonic massage. You want to really feel it, internally. The police [sic] use sound cannons at public protests that explode people’s insides with a single note – human beings have to come up with the opposite of that.”

M.I.A. (1975) British recording artist, songwriter, painter and director

Quote http://www.nme.com/photos/in-her-own-words-mias-20-sharpest-quotes/172930/16/4#10 from interview with NME (2010) <br class="br">Sourced quotes

People, Music, Feeling

“Poetry is not a healing lotion, an emotional massage, a kind of linguistic aromatherapy. Neither is it a blueprint, nor an instruction manual, nor a billboard. There is no universal Poetry, anyway, only poetries and poetics, and the streaming, intertwining histories to which they belong.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

"Legislators of the world" in The Guardian (18 November 2006) http://books.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1950812,00.html <br class="br">Context: I'm both a poet and one of the "everybodies" of my country. I live with manipulated fear, ignorance, cultural confusion and social antagonism huddling together on the faultline of an empire. I hope never to idealise poetry — it has suffered enough from that. Poetry is not a healing lotion, an emotional massage, a kind of linguistic aromatherapy. Neither is it a blueprint, nor an instruction manual, nor a billboard. There is no universal Poetry, anyway, only poetries and poetics, and the streaming, intertwining histories to which they belong. There is room, indeed necessity, for both Neruda and César Valléjo, for Pier Paolo Pasolini and Alfonsina Storni, for both Ezra Pound and Nelly Sachs. Poetries are no more pure and simple than human histories are pure and simple. And there are colonised poetics and resilient poetics, transmissions across frontiers not easily traced.

History, Universe

“If you get massages, you'll never need another sleeping pill.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Source: As quoted in Marilyn Monroe Confidential (1980) by Lena Pepitone and William Stedien p. 172

Sleep

“Correct breathing also performs a constant massage of the internal organs by raising them up and down, thus curing constipation when it is caused by faulty insufficient breathing (as is often the case) which holds the muscles of the abdomen in a static position. Therefore the first thing to do is to make sure that you know how to breathe from the physical standpoint, and how to control the muscle of the diaphragm. This muscle forms the dividing line between the chest and the stomach just below the ribs. Place the fingers upon the diaphragm muscle just below the ribs and under the centre breast bone. In this arched hollow lies the muscle upon which correct breathing depends. Take a slow breath, drawing the muscle upwards and inwards, following its movement with the fingers, fill the lungs with air right up to the collarbones. Then breathe out slowly whilst tucking the diaphragm still further inwards and upwards!”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

Source: Humanity Comes of Age, A study of Individual and World Fulfillment (1950), Chapter XV The Essential Science of Breathing

Drawing, Dependency