What is straining?

Famous quotes containing the word straining:

    it is best then that the buried word remain buried for we were intended to appreciate only its fruits and not the secret principle activating them to know this would be to know too much. Meanwhile it is possible to know just enough, and this is all we were supposed to know, toward which we have been straining all our lives.
    John Ashbery (b. 1927)

    No construction stiff working overtime takes more stress and straining than we did just to stay high.
    Gus Van Sant, U.S. screenwriter and director, and Dan Yost. Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon)

    Nothing hinders a thing from being natural so much as the straining ourselves to make it seem so.
    François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)