Slough Quotes

• There is no moment like the present. The man who will not execute his resolutions when they are fresh upon him can have no hope from them afterwards: they will be dissipated, lost, and perish in the hurry and scurry of the world, or sunk in the slough of indolence.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Hope, Men, Have A Great Day

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• For my part, I feel that with regard to Nature I live a sort of border life, on the confines of a world, into which I make occasional and transient forays only, and my patriotism and allegiance to the state into whose territories I seem to retreat are those of a moss-trooper. Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o'-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moon nor fire-fly has shown me the cause-way to it. Nature is a personality so vast and universal that we have never seen one of her features.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Nature, Moon, Fire

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• It is my art. I am better at it than I ever was. And I will do it as long as I can. When you reach a certain age you can slough off what is unnecessary and concentrate on what is. And why not?

  Arthur Miller

  Art, Writing, Long

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• Inaction will cause a man to sink into the slough of despond and vanish without a trace.

  Farley Mowat

  Men, Causes, Without A Trace

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• Any area you slough off in your life will reflect in your meditation. Be happy when you could be depressed. Push jealous, fear, and anger out of your mind. Don't feel sorry for yourself.

  Frederick Lenz

  Sorry, Jealous, Buddhism

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• The chief burden of the frustrated is the consciousness of a blemished, ineffectual self, and their chief desire is to slough off the unwanted self and begin a new life. They try to realize this desire either by finding a new identity or by blurring and camouflaging their individual distinctness; and both these ends are reached by imitation.

  Eric Hoffer

  Self, Frustrated, Desire

  ERIC HOFFER (1963). “THE TRUE BELIEVER”

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• Our lives show the accumulation of all of our varied wishes. Wanting something with all your heart will begin to slough away all of your untrue and idle wishes. Success comes from an undivided heart.

  Chuck Spezzano

  Heart, Wish, Accumulation

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• If we had reverence for our life, our life would take at once religious form. But as it is, in our filthy irreverence, it remains a disgusting slough, where each one of us goes so thoroughly disguised in dirt that we are all alike and indistinguishab

  D. H. Lawrence

  Religious, Dirt, Irreverence

  D. H. Lawrence, Bruce Steele (1985). “Study of Thomas Hardy and Other Essays”, p.122, Cambridge University Press

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• In the woods, too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years. In the woods we return to reason and faith.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Children, Men, Years

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.10, Library of America

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• In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Nature, Children

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.10, Library of America

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• Unto a life which I call natural I would gladly follow even a will-o'-the-wisp through bogs and sloughs unimaginable, but no moonnor firefly has shown me the causeway to it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Firefly, Bogs, Natural

  Henry David Thoreau (2011). “The Natural History Essays”, p.130, Gibbs Smith

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• The name of the Slough was Despond.

  John Bunyan

  Names, Pilgrims Progress

  The Pilgrim's Progress pt. 1 (1678)

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• It is the women of Europe who pay the price while war rages, and it will be the women who will pay again when war has run its bloody course and Europe sinks down into the slough of poverty like a harried beast too spent to wage the fight. It will be the sonless mothers who will bend their shoulders to the plough and wield in age-palsied hands the reaphook.

  Kate Richards O'Hare

  Mother, Running, War

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• I have seen so much obstructed potential among people who lack personal discipline, who just slough it off, whatever it is, and who think that nothing matters very much. I want my daughter to have what I think of as a capacity for self-discipline. Not the sort of self-discipline that diminishes her own wild passions, but that makes it safer for her to own those wild passions.

  Marianne Williamson

  Daughter, Passion, Thinking

  Source: scottlondon.com

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• The revulsion from an unwanted self, and the impulse to forget it, mask it, slough it off and lose it, produce both a readiness to sacrifice the self and a willingness to dissolve it by losing one's individual distinctness in a compact collective whole.

  Eric Hoffer

  Sacrifice, Self, Society

  Eric Hoffer (1980). “The True Believer”

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• You can drive 1,000 miles across America and find yourself, whereas if you drive a few miles from Slough you're in London anyway, or you hit Wales and you're in another country! Also, wherever you are in England it's still raining.

  Ricky Gervais

  Country, Rain, America

  "Cemetery Junction - Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• How can a man know himself? He is a thing dark and veiled; and if the hare has seven skins, man can slough off seventy times seven and still not be able to say: "this is really you, this is no longer outer shell.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Dark, Men, Skins

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1997). “Nietzsche: Untimely Meditations”, p.179, Cambridge University Press

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• Religion and science are the two wings upon which man's intelligence can soar into the heights, with which the human soul can progress. It is not possible to fly with one wing alone! Should a man try to fly with the wing of religion alone he would quickly fall into the quagmire of superstition, whilst on the other hand, with the wing of science alone he would also make no progress, but fall into the despairing slough of materialism.

  Abdu'l-Bahá

  Fall, Men, Hands

  "Paris Talks". Book by `Abdu'l-Bahá, www.huffingtonpost.com. 1912.

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• The wealth of any ecosystem is its perennials. The primal herbivore-predator-disturbance-rest dance is literally the breath and pulse of the earth. Grasses recycle oxygen far more efficiently than trees. The turnover is faster. Grass reaches out and turns solar energy into carbon. Tillage hyper-aerates the soil, burning out carbon. But because a plant creates bilateral symmetry at the soil horizon, it sloughs off root mass when the top gets chopped off.

  Joel Salatin

  Roots, Oxygen, Ecosystems

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• The majority of American writers today have chosen passive non-resistance to things as they are, producing sloughs of poetry about their personal angst and anomie, cascades of short stories and rivers of novels obsessed with the nuances of domestic relationships - suburban hanky-panky - chic boutique shopping mall literary soap opera. When they do speak out on matters of controversy they attack not the evils of our time but fellow writers who may insist on complaining.

  Edward Abbey

  Speaks Out, Shopping, Rivers

  Edward Abbey (1988). “One Life at a Time, Please”, p.172, Macmillan

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• I'm constantly having doubts and moments of depression and then excitement and then back into the slough of despond.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Doubt, Excitement, Moments

  Interview with Juliette Lewis, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 24, 2011.

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• The customs of some savage nations might, perchance, be profitably imitated by us, for they at least go through the semblance of casting their slough annually; they have the idea of the thing, whether they have the reality or not.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Reality, Ideas, Savages

  Henry David Thoreau (2012). “The Portable Thoreau”, p.189, Penguin

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• The first thing I think about when I wake up most mornings is the fact that I'm tired. I have been tired for decades. I am tired in the morning and I am tired while becalmed in the slough of the afternoon, and I am tired in the evening, except right when I try to go to sleep.

  Susan Orlean

  Morning, Sleep, Tired

  "Perchance to Dream" by Susan Orlean, www.newyorker.com. September 23, 2010.

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• It's often difficult to slough off all that we've acquired, all the comforts and safety nets modern life provides for us, and realize that in those days, people were living very much on the edge - life was incredibly hard!

  Derek Jacobi

  People, Safety, Comfort

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• I do so many things. Like when I was younger, if I drove past a house that I didn't want to live in, I'd hold my breath. Driving around somewhere like Slough I'd go blue in the face.

  Jessica Brown Findlay

  Past, Blue, House

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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