Slippery Quotes - Page 4

• ...pleasure, of course, is a slippery word.... Our pleasures ultimately belong to us, not to the pleasure's source.

  Billy Collins

  Pleasure, Source, Courses

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• Each night, Liesel would step outside, wipe the door, and watch the sky. Usually it was like spillage - cold and heavy, slippery and gray - but once in a while some stars had the nerve to rise and float, if only for a few minutes. On those nights, she would stay a little longer and wait. Hello, stars.

  Markus Zusak

  Stars, Night, Doors

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• The cemetery has ... an inscription: 'Though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death I will Fear No Evil, For Thou Art With Me.' Yes, it does feel deceptively safer with two; but Thou is a slippery character. Every Thou I've known has had a way of going missing.

  Margaret Atwood

  Art, Character, Two

  Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Blind Assassin: A Novel”, p.44, Anchor

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• Above all else stands the burning question of bipartisanship. Whatever else the politicians might say they're about, our news analysts know that this is the true object of the nation's desire, the topic to which those slippery presidential spokesmen need always to be dragged back.

  Thomas Frank

  Presidential, Desire, Needs

  "Bipartisanship Is a Silly Beltway Obsession" by Thomas Frank, www.huffingtonpost.com. March 22, 2009.

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• Reason is a supple nymph, and slippery as a fish by nature. She had as leave give her kiss to an absurdity any day, as to syllogistic truth. The absurdity may turn out truer.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Nature, Kissing, Nymphs

  D. H. Lawrence (1966). “Selected Poems of D.h. Lawrence”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• I kept the fingers of my left hand crossed all the time, while on my right-hand fingers I counted anything at all—steps to the refrigerator, seconds on the clock, words in a sentence—to keep my head occupied. The counting felt like something to hang on to, as if finding the right numbers might somehow crack the code on whatever system ran the slippery universe we were moving through.

  Mary Karr

  Moving, Hands, Numbers

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• There were no men in this painting, but it was about men, the kind who caused women to fall. I did not ascribe any intentions to these men. They were like the weather, they didn't have a mind. They merely drenched you or struck you like lightning and moved on, mindless as blizzards. Or they were like rocks, a line of sharp slippery rocks with jagged edges. You could walk with care along between the rocks, picking your steps, and if you slipped you'd fall and cut yourself, but it was no use blaming the rocks.

  Margaret Atwood

  Fall, Cutting, Men

  Margaret Atwood, Victor-Lévy Beaulieu, Phyllis Aronoff, Howard Scott (1998). “Two Solicitudes: Conversations”, McClelland & Stewart

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• We only came close to dying six or seven times, which I thought was pretty good. Once, I lost my grip and found myself dangling by one hand from a ledge fifty feet above the rocky surf. But I found another handhold and kept climbing. A minute later Annabeth hit a slippery patch of moss and her foot slipped. Fortunately, she found something else to put it against. Unfortunately, that something was my face. "Sorry," she murrmured. "S'okay," I grunted, though I'd never really wanted to know what Annabeth's sneaker tasted like.

  Rick Riordan

  Sorry, Sneakers, Feet

  Rick Riordan (2007). “The Sea of Monsters”, Disney-Hyperion

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• In the past, I often found that when I reached out for a fast cure it led me down a slippery slope of more medications, hopeful dependence on the next prescription and ultimately a much longer drawn-out illness.

  Carre Otis

  Past, Hopeful, Next

  "A Healing Balance" by Carre Otis, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 16, 2012.

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• The trouble with talking about irony is, it's such a slippery thing that the second you start talking about it, you're a better example of it than you are an analyst.

  Daniel Handler

  Talking, Example, Irony

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. November 16, 2005.

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• I rarely think about my childhood. It's a slippery thing I can't keep hold of for long - it slithers out of my grasp. And a lot of the time I remember what was missing instead of what was there. I am a chronicler of absence.

  Carrie Fisher

  Thinking, Long, Childhood

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• The higher the trail the steeper it grows Ten thousand tiers of dangerous cliffs The stone bridge is slippery with green moss Cloud after cloud keeps flying by Waterfalls hang like ribbons of silk The moon shines down on the bright pool I climb the highest peak once more To wait where the lone crane flies

  Hanshan

  Moon, Clouds, Bridges

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• For me, the single word "God" suggests everything that is slippery, shady, squalid, foul, and grotesque.

  Andre Breton

  God, Religious, Shady

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• Legalizing homosexuality is not the first step on a slippery slope to legalizing everything.

  Jonathan Haidt

  Slippery Slope, Firsts, Steps

  Interview with Tamler Sommers, www.believermag.com. August 2005.

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• Of all the arguments against voluntary euthanasia, the most influential is the slippery slope: once we allow doctors to kill patients, we will not be able to limit the killing to those who want to die.

  Peter Singer

  Doctors, Want, Able

  Peter Singer (2016). “Ethics in the Real World: 82 Brief Essays on Things That Matter”, p.89, Princeton University Press

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• If we can redefine marriage as between two men or two women or any other way based on social pressures as opposed to between a man and a woman, we will continue to redefine it in any way that we wish, which is a slippery slope with a disastrous ending, as witnessed in the dramatic fall of the Roman Empire.

  Benjamin Carson

  Fall, Men, Two

  "America the Beautiful: Rediscovering What Made This Nation Great". Book by Benjamin Carson and Candy Carson, December 16, 2011.

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• Nothing is so deceptive as human reasoning, - nothing so slippery and reversible as what we have decided to call 'logic.' The truest compass of life is spiritual instinct.

  Marie Corelli

  Spiritual, Intuition, Logic

  Marie Corelli (2015). “The Master Christian”, p.154, The Floating Press

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• For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected, so that, before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity.

  Anthony Powell

  Taken, Lasts, Events

  Anthony Powell (1995). “A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement”, p.274, University of Chicago Press

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• Until kids decide, 'I am a miracle. I am unique. There is no one else exactly like me,' they can never draw the conclusion, 'Because I'm a miracle, I will never harm another person who's a miracle like me.' In this slippery world, they all need something to hang on to.

  Marva Collins

  Kids, Unique, Miracle

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• Most of us hide behind egocentric biases that generate the illusion that we are special. These self-serving protective shields allow us to believe that each of us is above average on any test of self-integrity. Too often we look to the stars through the thick lens of personal invulnerability when we should also look down to the slippery slope beneath our feet.

  Philip Zimbardo

  Stars, Integrity, Believe

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• To the best of my knowledge and belief, the average American newspaper, even of the so-called better sort, is not only quite as bad as Upton Sinclair says it is, but 10 times worse, 10 times as ignorant, 10 times as unfair and tyrannical, 10 times as complaisant and pusillanimous, and 10 times as devious, hypocritical, disingenuous, deceitful, pharisaical, Pecksniffian, fraudulent, slippery, unscrupulous, perfidious, lewd and dishonest.

  H. L. Mencken

  Average, Ignorant, Belief

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• A term like capitalism is incredibly slippery, because there's such a range of different kinds of market economies.

  Naomi Klein

  Different, Kind, Economy

  Interview with Gregg LaGambina, www.avclub.com. August 12, 2008.

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• Finally you begin to make your mistakes on the highest level-let's say the upper slopes of slippery Parnassus-and it's at that point you need coaching.

  John Barth

  Mistake, Coaching, Needs

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• The separation of church and state can sometimes be frustrating for women and men of deep religious faith. They may be tempted to misuse government in order to impose a value which they cannot persuade others to accept. But once we succumb to that temptation, we step onto a slippery slope where everyone's freedom is at risk.

  Edward Kennedy

  Religious, Men, Order

  "Kennedy Tells Falwell Group Of Tolerance" by Phil Gailey, www.nytimes.com. October 4, 1983.

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• The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall, or at least an eclipse.

  Francis Bacon

  Pain, Men, Rising

  'Essays' (1625) 'Of Great Place'

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