Quotation

Rest is a good thing, but boredom is its brother.

——Voltaire (1694-1778), French philosopher

The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you are still a rat.

——Lily Tomlin, US actress

Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of stress. 

Stress is the spice of life.

No one dies from working too hard. But when people don't get any recognition in their work, the stress of that lack of control can kill them.

It’s not stress that kills us, it is our reaction to it.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. 

Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.

Stress is the trash of modern life - we all generate it but if you don't dispose of it properly, it will pile up and overtake your life. 

Add the verbs from the box to the phrases below to create some common stressful situations.

What do you do to relax? Which of these activities are the most effectivefor you, and why? In what other ways do you relax?

• playing a sport • reading • eating/drinking • having a bath • walking

• gardening • massage • shopping • listening to music • watching TV

• meditating • browsing online • blogging • using social networks

Rank these situations from 1 (most stressful) to 10 (least stressful).Then discuss your choices.