Slough Quotes - Page 2

• The only way to write well, so that people believe what we say and are interested or touched by it, is to slough off all pretentiousness and attitudinizing.

  Brenda Ueland

  Believe, Writing, People

  Brenda Ueland (1987). “If You Want to Write”

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• And we passed through the cavern of rats. And we passed through the path of boiling steam. And we passed through the country of the blind. And we passed through the slough of despond. And we passed through the vale of tears. And we came, finally, to the ice caverns.

  Harlan Ellison

  Country, Ice, Tears

  Drew Ford, Harlan Ellison (2016). “Grave Predictions: Tales of Mankind’s Post-Apocalyptic, Dystopian and Disastrous Destiny”, p.83, Courier Dover Publications

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• Loss is essential, loss is part and parcel of that necessary calamity called life. Mind you, I'm not complaining. Thanks to some inexplicable universal guiding force, it is always the worthless things we lose - slough off, like a moulting snake. Losing and losing again, is the very basis of the process, til all we are left with is the bare essence of human existence.

  Rohinton Mistry

  Loss, Essence, Snakes

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• I was born to love - but none of you wanted to believe it, and that misunderstanding was crucial in forming my character. It's true that nature was strangely inconsistent in giving me a warm heart, but also a face that was like a stone mask and a tongue that was heavy and slow. She refused me what she bestowed freely on even the most loutish of my fellow men. . . . People judged my inner character by my outer covering, and like a sterile fruit, I withered under the rough husk I couldn't slough off.

  George Sand

  Believe, Heart, Character

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• Is it that they think it a duty to be continually talking,' pursued she: 'and so never pause to think, but fill up with aimless trifles and vain repetitions when subjects of real interest fail to present themselves? - or do they really take a pleasure in such discourse?' 'Very likely they do,' said I; 'their shallow minds can hold no great ideas, and their light heads are carried away by trivialities that would not move a better-furnished skull; - and their only alternative to such discourse is to plunge over head and ears into the slough of scandal - which is their chief delight.

  Anne Bronte

  Real, Moving, Thinking

  Anne Bronte (2016). “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Diversion Illustrated Classics)”, p.98, Diversion Books

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• He pulled the Carstairs family ring from his finger and held it out to Will. "Take it." Will let his eyes drift down toward it, and then up to Jem's face. A dozen awful things he could say, or do, went through his mind. One did not slough off a persona so quickly, he had found. He had pretended to be cruel for so many years that the pretense was still what he reached for first, as a man might absently turn his carriage toward the home he had lived in for all his life, despite the fact that he had recently moved. "You wish to marry me now?" he said, at last.

  Cassandra Clare

  Home, Eye, Men

  Cassandra Clare (2015). “Clockwork Princess”, p.79, Simon and Schuster

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• Science can never be a closed book. It is like a tree, ever growing, ever reaching new heights. Occasionally the lower branches, no longer giving nourishment to the tree, slough off. We should not be ashamed to change our methods; rather we should be ashamed never to do so.

  Charles V. Chapin

  Book, Science, Giving

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• I have always longed to be part of the outward life, to be out there at the edge of things, to let the human taint wash away in emptiness and silence as the fox sloughs his smell into the cold unworldliness of water; to return to town a stranger. Wandering flushes a glory that fades with arrival.

  J. A. Baker

  Smell, Water, Silence

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• Sometimes snakes can’t slough. They can’t burst their old skin. Then they go sick and die inside the old skin, and nobody ever sees the new pattern. It needs a real desperate recklessness to burst your old skin at last. You simply don’t care what happens to you, if you rip yourself in two, so long as you do get out.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Rip, Real, Snakes

  D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey (2003). “Studies in Classic American Literature”, p.57, Cambridge University Press

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• As the snake is separate from its slough, even so is the Spirit separate from the body.

  Ramakrishna

  Snakes, Body, Spirit

  Ramakrishna (1960). “Sayings: The Most Exhaustive Collection of Them, Their Number Being 1120”

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• It is hard to rescue a man from the slough of luxury and idleness combined. If anything can do it, it is a cradle filled annually.

  Anthony Trollope

  Men, Luxury, Cradle

  Anthony Trollope (2016). “Ayala's Angel”, p.523, Jester House Publishing

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• Because you know how you say I've got to really get down and really do some training and then of course, you never do or you do it for a couple of weeks and slough it back off again but I'm being forced to do something that I really want to do and I loved it.

  David Carradine

  Couple, Training, Want

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• We human beings have not secured happiness; on the contrary, science gives us catastrophes. We are like travelers losing their way in a desert. They see a big black shadow ahead and desperately run to it, thinking it may lead them somewhere. But after running a long way, they no longer see the shadow and fall into the slough of despond. What is that shadow? It is this ""Mr. Science.

  Liang Qichao

  Running, Fall, Technology

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• It always seems to me better to slough off the answer to a question that I consider to be a terrible invasion of privacy - the kind of privacy that a writer must keep for himself.

  Edward Albee

  Answers, Invasion, Privacy

  Edward Albee, Philip C. Kolin (1988). “Conversations with Edward Albee”, p.61, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• Standing alone, photographs promise an understanding they cannot deliver. In the company of words, they take on meaning, but they slough off one meaning and take on another with alarming ease.

  Susan Sontag

  Understanding, Promise, Ease

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