Slippery Quotes - Page 3

• He should have known better because, early in his learnings under his brother Mahmoud, he had discovered that long human words (the longer the better) were easy, unmistakable, and rarely changed their meanings, but short words were slippery, unpredictable changing their meanings without any pattern. Or so he seemed to grok. Short human words were never like a short Martian word - such as grok which forever meant exactly the same thing. Short human words were like trying to lift water with a knife. And this had been a very short word.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Brother, Should Have, Knives

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• I like the dry-cleaners. I like the sense of refreshment and renewal. I like the way dirty old torn clothes are dumped, to be returned clean and wholesome in their slippery transparent cases. Better than confesssion any day. Here there is a true sense of rebirth, redemption, salvation.

  Fay Weldon

  Dirty, Clothes, Redemption

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• there is nothing so uncertain and slippery as fact.

  Sara Coleridge

  Facts, Uncertain

  Sara Coleridge Coleridge (1873). “Memoir and Letters of Sara Coleridge”, p.190

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• Truth is like a waterslide-only fun when it's slippery and wet.

  Bob Dylan

  Fun, Truth Is, Wet

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• If you are ignorant enough, you can walk like a cat on the slippery roof-ridge of danger.

  Austin O'Malley

  Cat, Ignorant, Enough

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• It's in our nature. If you are a plumber, there is an objective way to establish whether you put together a great piping system or not. Art is a bit more slippery than that. So, when you fill a gallery with dirt and someone comes along waving wads of bills, it's difficult not to take them because they become a tangible acknowledgement that what you've been doing actually makes sense.

  Maurizio Cattelan

  Art, Together, Tangible

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Once you begin reviewing judgment calls, which in basketball there are many, you put yourself on a very slippery slope in terms of what could be reviewed, and ultimately the number of reviews that could take place that would make it unwieldy.

  Stu Jackson

  Basketball, Numbers, Slippery Slope

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• A Christian home! What a power it is to the child when he is far away in the cold, tempting world, and voices of sin are filling his ears, and his feet stand on slippery places.

  Abbott Eliot Kittredge

  Christian, Children, Home

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers". Book by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, p. 324, 1895.

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• Every politician, every president gets votes by getting people that don't like him to like him. That's why politicians are slippery: because they talk out of both sides of their mouth.

  Henry Rollins

  People, President, Mouths

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• Once a month I wake in the night, slippery with terror. I'm afraid, not because there's someone in the room, in the dark, in the bed, but because there isn't. I'm afraid of the emptiness, which lies beside me like a corpse.

  Margaret Atwood

  Lying, Dark, Night

  Margaret Atwood (2011). “Wilderness Tips”, p.189, Anchor

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• It is clear enough by now to most people that the camera never lies is a foolish saying. Yet it is doubtful whether most people realize how extraordinarily slippery a liar the camera is.

  James Agee

  Liars, Lying, People

  Helen Levitt, James Agee (1989). “A way of seeing”

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• I think we get into all kinds of difficulty by saying photographs should be taken in a certain way which guarantees their veracity. I think that's a slippery slope to hell.

  Errol Morris

  Taken, Thinking, Guarantees

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• He has always been a slippery little git! 
  (on Joe Cole)

  Rio Ferdinand

  Littles, England

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• I think it's a slippery slope to fabricate a different life.

  Luke Evans

  Thinking, Slippery Slope, Different

  Source: www.elle.com

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• The dirt was OK, but once you hit the grass... Wet grass is slippery

  Greg Maddux

  Sports, Dirt, Grass

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• And there you are on the shore, fitful and thoughtful, trying to attach them to an idea — some news of your own life. But the lilies are slippery and wild—they are devoid of meaning, they are simply doing, from the deepest spurs of their being, what they are impelled to do every summer. And so, dear sorrow, are you.

  Mary Oliver

  Summer, Thoughtful, Ideas

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• She couldn’t picture anyone falling madly in love with such a person as Fish. What a name, Fish...Fish: think cold, slippery, detached. Benedict: think dry scholarly monk from the Dark Ages. Denniston: think English preparatory school, stolid country squire. Nothing about his name sounded the least bit romantic.

  Regina Doman

  Country, Fall, School

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• seven wonders of the world and I have to ask for an eighth fill a bottle with some prayers and spend them on hope create an easy route just so I can complicate send my heart down that slippery slope

  David Levithan

  Prayer, Heart, Bottles

  David Levithan (2008). “The Realm of Possibility”, p.36, Knopf Books for Young Readers

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• Clambering up the Cold Mountain path, The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on: The long gorge choked with scree and boulders, The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass. The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain The pine sings, but there's no wind. Who can leap the world's ties And sit with me among the white clouds?

  Gary Snyder

  Rain, Clouds, Wind

  Gary Snyder (2010). “Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems”, p.46, Counterpoint Press

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• Reading is an escape, an education, a delving into the brain of another human being on such an intimate level that every nuance of thought, every snapping of synapse, every slippery desire of the author is laid open before you like, well, a book.

  Cynthia Heimel

  Book, Reading, Brain

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• Memory is slippery. It bends to our understanding of the world, twists to accommodate our prejudices. It is unreliable. Witnesses seldom remember the same things. They identify the wrong people. They give us the details of events that never happened. Memory is slippery, but my memories suddenly feel slipperier.

  Holly Black

  Memories, Giving, People

  Holly Black (2010). “White Cat”, p.73, Simon and Schuster

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• I peeled the skin off a grape in slippery little triangles, and I understood then that I would be undressing every item of food I could because my clothes would be staying on.

  Aimee Bender

  Clothes, Dating, Skins

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• Jump into an open grave? What kind of idiot are you?" Butters replied. "I might as well put on a red shirt and volunteer for the away team. There's snow and ice and slippery mud down there. That's like asking for an ironically broken neck.

  Jim Butcher

  Team, Ice, Snow

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• Easy climb, Kurokuma. You do it easily.' 'Not on your life,' Horace said... 'That's what we have Rangers for. They climb up sheer rock walls and crawl along narrow, slippery ledges. I'm a trained warrior, and I'm far to valuable to risk such shenanigans.' 'We're not valuable?' Will said, feigning insult. Horace looked at him. 'We've got two of you. We can always afford to lose one,' he said firmly.

  John Flanagan

  Wall, Warrior, Rocks

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• but that mimosa grove - the haze of stars, the tingle, the flame, the honey-dew, and the ache remained with me, and that little girl with her seaside limbs and ardent tongue haunted me ever since." "this then is my story. i have reread it. it has bits of marrow sticking to it, and blood, and beautiful bright-green flies. at this or that twist of it i feel my slippery self eluding me, gliding into deeper and darker waters than i care to probe.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Beautiful, Girl, Stars

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