Slowness Quotes

1. "He waved irritably at a waiter. There was a small bar in a dark corner of the room, where an old, wizened bartender stood for long stretches of time without moving. When called upon, he moved with contemptuous slowness. His job was that of servant to men's relaxation and pleasure, but his manner was that of an embittered quack ministering to some guilty disease."
Author: Ayn Rand

2. "No," I said finally."Slowness in Answering," she said into the handheld. "When's the last time you slept?""1940" I said promptly, which is the problem with Quickness in Answering."
Author: Connie Willis

3. "Gates got up, but not fast or jerkily, with the same slowness that had always characterized him. He wiped the sweat off his palms by running them lightly down his sides. As though he were going to shake hands with somebody.He was. He was going to shake hands with death.He wasn't particularly frightened. Not that he was particularly brave. It was just that he didn't have very much imagination. Rationalizing, he knew that he wasn't going to be alive anymore ten minutes from now. Yet he wasn't used to casting his imagination ten minutes ahead of him, he'd always kept it by him in the present. He couldn't visualize it. So he wasn't as unnerved by it as the average man would have been.("3 Kills For 1")"
Author: Cornell Woolrich

4. "Begin with the soft smelted upturned heart-shaped mouth made for smiling a smile kept for kindness, tenderness, incapable of malice. Am I going too fast for you?The almond eyes see out through their sleepy epicanthic fold. Trusting and calm, if a flicker from slowness, a further flicker from stupidity.Settled in slow-motion beauty, heart-breaking beauty."
Author: Craig Raine

5. "I have studiously tried to avoid ever using the word 'madness' to describe my condition. Now and again, the word slips out, but I hate it. 'Madness' is too glamorous a term to convey what happens to most people who are losing their minds. That word is too exciting, too literary, too interesting in its connotations, to convey the boredom, the slowness, the dreariness, the dampness of depression."
Author: Elizabeth Wurtzel

6. "Remember that in every single case in history the process of adaptation has been one of exceeding slowness. Do not look for the impossible, but do not let your path deviate from the quiet and steadfast insistence on full opportunities for your powers."
Author: Franz Boas

7. "All novelists must form their personal pacts in some way with the slowness of their craft. There are some who demand of themselves a 'rate of production,' for whom it's a matter of pride to complete, say, a book every year."
Author: Graham Swift

8. "At the touch of mankind, things wear away with heartbreaking slowness."
Author: Henri Barbusse

9. "Consider the blundering anarchic system of the United States the stupidity of some of its lawmakers, the violent reaction, the slowness of its ability to change. Twenty-five key men destroyed could make the Soviet Union stagger, but we could lose our congress, our president, and our general staff and nothing much would have happened. We would go right on. In fact we might be better for it."
Author: John Steinbeck

10. "Never yet has such furious movement brought in its train such slowness in the passage of time. Everything is spinning, only time stands still. The rotation goes on forever. And when the wheel finally stops spinning, the riders in their relief forget that they have paid money to enjoy themselves, and only had the fright of their lives. They feel glad to have gotten out alive."
Author: Joseph Roth

11. "Her unintended striptease was all the more sensual because Belle was lowering her stocking with agonizing slowness not because she had an audience but because she seemed to love the feel of the silk sliding along her soft skin."
Author: Julia Quinn

12. "A balanced life has a rhythym. But we live in a time, and in a culture, that encourages everyone to just move faster. I'm learning that if I don't take the time to tune in to my own more deliberate pace, I end up moving to someone else's, the speed of events around me setting a tempo that leaves me feeling scattered and out of touch with myself. I know now that I can't write fast; that words, my own thoughts and ideas, come to the surface slowly and in silence. A close relationship with myself requires slowness. Intimacy with my husband and guarded teenage sons requires slowness. A good conversation can't be hurried, it needs time in which to meander its way to revelation and insight. Even cooking dinner with care and attention is slow work. A thoughtful life is not rushed."
Author: Katrina Kenison

13. "Slowness seems to be a key element in living a rich life. I don't mean rich in the sense of money. I mean rich in the ability to feel things as they're happening, to not constantly be thinking of the next thing."
Author: Melanie Gideon

14. "It's still the same job, the same anxieties, but it did feel a lot different, that kind of budget, that schedule, and frankly, the slowness of it all, and also having a lot of other units working."
Author: Michael Apted

15. "Sin does not always drive us to drink; more often it drives us to exhaustion. Tiredness is equally as debilitating as drunkenness. Burnout is slang for an inner tiredness, a fatigue of our souls. Jesus came to forgive us all of our sins, including the sin of busyness. The problem with growth in the modern church is not the slowness of growth but the rushing of growth."
Author: Mike Yaconelli

16. "The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting."
Author: Milan Kundera

17. "(existential mathematics...) the degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgetting." –p. 39"
Author: Milan Kundera

18. "There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting.A man is walking down the street. At a certain moment, he tries to recall something, but the recollection escapes him. Automatically, he slows down.Meanwhile, a person who wants to forget a disagreeable incident he has just lived through starts unconsciously to speed up his pace, as if he were trying to distance himeself from a thing still too close to him in time.The degree of slowness is directly proportional to the intensity of memory; the degree of speed is directly proportional to the intensity of forgettin"
Author: Milan Kundera

19. "Whenever I think about ancient cultures nostalgia seizes me. Perhaps this is nothing but envy of the sweet slowness of the history of that time. The era of ancient Egyptian culture lasted for several thousand years; the era of Greek antiquity for almost a thousand. In this respect, a single human life imitates the history of mankind; at first it is plunged into immobile slowness, and then only gradually does it accelerate more and more."
Author: Milan Kundera

20. "That is my problem with life, I rush through it, like I'm being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea. When I drink relaxing tea I suck it down as if I'm in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest."
Author: Miranda July

21. "Whatever the Way, the master of strategy does not appear fast….Of course, slowness is bad. Really skillful people never get out of time, and are always deliberate, and never appear busy."
Author: Miyamoto Musashi

22. "Imagine your body becoming that of a stranger. Imagine the sensation of it being not yours, as you discover what it feels like to do this, or to have this happen to you, for the very first time. Imagine it happening with sickening slowness, or with shocking speed, that discovery. And then imagine knowing it has come too late."
Author: Neil Bartlett

23. "I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers; thanks to your love a certain solid fragrence risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body. and: No one can stop the river of your hands, your eyes and their sleepiness, my dearest. You are the trembling of time, which passes between the vertical light and the darkening sky. and: From the stormy archipelagoes I brought my windy accordian, waves of crazy rain, the habitual slowness of natural things: they made up my wild heart."
Author: Pablo Neruda

24. "Like many students, I found the drudgery of real experiments and the slowness of progress a complete shock, and at my low points I contemplated other alternative careers including study of the philosophy or sociology of science."
Author: Paul Nurse

25. "Slowness to change usually means fear of the new."
Author: Phil Crosby

26. "If thou wilt be well with GOD, and have grace to rule thy life, and come to the joy of love: this name JESUS, fasten it so fast in thy heart that it come never out of thy thought. And when thou speakest to Him, and through custom sayst, JESUS, it shall be in thine ear, joy; in thy mouth, honey; and in thine heart, melody: for men shall think joy to hear that name be named, sweetness to speak it, mirth and song to think it. If thou thinkest (on) JESUS continually, and holdest it firmly, it purges thy sin, and kindles thine heart; it clarifies thy soul, it removes anger and does away slowness. It wounds in love and fulfils charity. It chases the devil, and puts out dread. It opens heaven, and makes a contemplative man. Have JESUS in mind, for that puts all vices and phantoms out from the lover."
Author: Richard Rolle

27. "The eye solicited alone makes the ear impatient, the ear solicited alone makes the eye impatient. Use these impatiences. Power of the cinematographer who appeals to the two senses in a governable way.Against the tactics of speed, of noise, set tactics of slowness, of silence."
Author: Robert Bresson

28. "Never assume that the person you are dealing with is weaker or less important than you are. Some people are slow to take offense, which may make you misjudge the thickness of their skin, and fail to worry about insulting them. But should you offend their honor and their pride, they will overwhelm you with a violence that seems sudden and extreme given their slowness to anger. If you want to turn people down, it is best to do so politely and respectfully, even if you feel their request is impudent or their offer ridiculous."
Author: Robert Greene

29. "Time seemed to drag with dreamlike slowness, like a knife through cold honey, and the room took on a surreal golden sheen as if I was looking through that same jar of honey. Maybe at that moment, the sun shone just right though the grimy windows, but the woman, the shelves, the jars, everything in the room appeared in tones of gold and sepia, except for the painting behind the counter. From behind the shopkeeper's head, a fluorescent Mary and Jesus glared at me, their cartoon-like faces reproaching me for being there."
Author: Sara Stark

30. "A child's slowness in any subject indicates a deficiency in his environment, educational or otherwise."
Author: Shinichi Suzuki

31. "She was close in her husband's arms; she clung to him; whatever of strangeness and slowness and insularity she might find in him, none of that mattered so long as she could slip her hands beneath his coat, run her fingers over the warm smoothness of the satin back of his waistcoat, seem almost to creep into his body, find in him strength, find in the courage and kindness of her man a shelter from the perplexing world."
Author: Sinclair Lewis

32. "He brought the hammer down on the stake once more, and the blood that pulsed from Barlow's chest turned black. Then, dissolution. It came in the space of two seconds, too fast to ever be believed in the daylight of later years, yet slow enough to recur again and again in nightmares, with awful stopmotion slowness."
Author: Stephen King

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