Days Go Slow Quotes & Sayings

Because Washington state now votes by mail, elections here tend to play out, at an agonizingly slow speed, over many days and, sometimes, weeks. — Jonathan Raban

Technology, while providing us many advantages, encourages us to race through our days so that we no longer know what we'd do if we were to slow down. Labor-saving devices seem not only to have failed to enhance the quality of our lives and free up more time, but get between us and the immediate, sensory pleasures of life and increase the pressures on us to do more. Many of us feel cut off from life's blessings, from our neighbors, from the wonders of nature, and from our sense of our own significance in the scheme of things. Modern life leaves us spiritually starved — Kathleen A. Kendall-Tackett

What still blew them all away was time itself, the days and months and the years, oh yes, the years. They went faster than anything man had the capacity to invent, so fast that for a while they fooled you into thinking they were slow, and was there any crueler trick than that? — Michael Koryta

Maybe universal nostalgia doesn't exist. Maybe each of us carries our own personal version of the better times. It's at about twnety-two years that we all begin to think of our childhood as the good ol' days and everything afterwards exists as a slow-motion face plant. The fall continues, through marriage, through career building, through parenthood, through old age, until we finally touch nose to ground. At twenty-two years old, I've just started, but I think I can already smell my own grave. — Caleb J. Ross

Instead, he would make death his final project, the center point of his days. Since everyone was going to die, he could be of great value, right? He could be research. A human textbook. Study me in my slow and patient demise. Watch what happens to me. Learn with me. — Mitch Albom

War and famine would not do. Instead, disease offered the most efficient and fastest way to kill the billions that must soon die if the population crisis is to be solved. AIDS is not an efficient killer because it is too slow. My favorite candidate for eliminating 90 percent of the world's population is airborne Ebola (Ebola Reston), because it is both highly lethal and it kills in days, instead of years. "We've got airborne diseases with 90 percent mortality in humans. Killing humans. Think about that. "You know, the bird flu's good, too. For everyone who survives, he will have to bury nine — Eric Pianka

Marianne's illness, though weakening in its kind, had not been long enough to make her recovery slow; and with youth, natural strength, and her mother's presence in aid, it proceeded so smoothly as to enable her to remove, within four days after the arrival of the latter, into Mrs. Palmer's dressing-room. — Jane Austen

I'm very slow, and I do everything myself. I remember I spent three days to change the size of something I had sketched because I felt it was too small. — Jean-Pierre Jeunet

The river was behind him. The wind was full of acid. In the slow float of light I looked away, down at the river. On the brink of freezing, it gleamed in large, bulging blisters. The water, where it still moved, was black and braided. And it occurred to me then how it took hours, sometimes days, for the surface of a river to freeze over - to hold in its skin the perfect and crystalline world - and how that world could be shattered by a small stone dropped like a single syllable. — Nam Le

The good days are when you perform; the slow days are when you learn to perform better. The only bad days as a writer are the ones when you are too cowardly or too lazy to sit down at the keyboard and give it everything you have. — Chris Cleave

It was now twenty minutes past four in the morning, allowing for the fact that the clock in the library of his town house was four minutes slow, as it had been for as far back as he could remember.
He eyed it with a frown of concentration. Now that he came to think about it, he must have it set right one of these days.Why should a clock be forced to go throught its entire existence four minutes behind the rest of the world? It was not logical.The trouble was though, that if the clock were suddenly right, he would be forever confused and arriving four minutes early
or did he mena late?
for meals and various other appointments. That would agitate his servants and cause consternation in the kitchen.
It was probably better to leave the clock as it was. — Mary Balogh

I wanted to kill the me underneath. That fact haunted my days and nights. When you realize you hate yourself so much, when you realize that you cannot stand who you are, and this deep spite has been the motivation behind your behavior for many years, your brain can't quite deal with it. It will try very hard to avoid that realization; it will try, in a last-ditch effort to keep your remaining parts alive, to remake the rest of you. This is, I believe, different from the suicidal wish of those who are in so much pain that death feels like relief, different from the suicide I would later attempt, trying to escape that pain. This is a wish to murder yourself; the connotation of kill is too mild. This is a belief that you deserve slow torture, violent death. — Marya Hornbacher

The days aren't discarded or collected, they are bees
that burned with sweetness or maddened
the sting: the struggle continues,
the journeys go and come between honey and pain.
No, the net of years doesn't unweave: there is no net.
They don't fall drop by drop from a river: there is no river.
Sleep doesn't divide life into halves,
or action, or silence, or honor:
life is like a stone, a single motion,
a lonesome bonfire reflected on the leaves,
an arrow, only one, slow or swift, a metal
that climbs or descends burning in your bones. — Pablo Neruda

The study found widespread dissatisfaction with our town's public library, and, when considering the facts, it's easy to see why. The public computers for Internet use are outdated and slow. The lending period of fourteen days is not nearly long enough to read lengthier books, given the busy schedule of all our lives. The fatality rate is also well above the national average for public libraries. — Joseph Fink

Trousers rolled to the knee but still they got wet. They tied the rope to a cleat at the rear of the boat and rowed back across the lake, jerking the stump slowly behind them. By then it was already evening. Just the slow periodic rack and shuffle of the oarlocks. The lake dark glass and windowlights coming on along the shore. A radio somewhere. Neither of them had spoken a word. This was the perfect day of childhood. This is the day to shape the days upon. — Cormac McCarthy

She told us about the goddess called Persephone, who was forced to spend half a year in the darkness deep underground. Winter happened when she was trapped inside the earth. The days shrank, they became cold and short and dark. Living things hid themselves away. Spring came when she was released and made her slow way up to the world again. The world became brighter and bolder in order to welcome her back. It began to be filled with warmth and light. The animals dared to wake, they dared to have their young. Plants dared to send out buds and shoots. Life dared to come back. — David Almond

In the case of acupuncture, the time period must also be considered. On a fine day, the sun shining, blood in the human body flows smoothly, saliva is free, breathing is easy. On days of chill and cloud, blood flows thick and slow, breathing is heavy, saliva is viscous. When the moon is waxing, blood and breath are full. When the moon wanes, blood and breath wane. Therefore acupuncture should be used only on fair warm days, when the moon is waxing or, best of all, when the moon is full.'
'Interesting,' Grace said in a comment, 'in bioclimatic research in the West, coronary attacks increase in frequency on cold chilly days when the sun is under clouds.'
Dr Tseng turned the page of his blue cloth-covered book. 'Ah, doubtless the barbarians across the four seas have heard of our learning,' he observed without interest. — Pearl S. Buck

Grief is like sinking, like being buried. I am in water the tawny color of kicked-up dirt. Every breath is full of choking. There is nothing to hold on to, no sides, no way to claw myself up. There is nothing to do but let go.
Let go. Feel the weight all around you, feel the squeezing of your lungs, the slow, low pressure. Let yourself go deeper. There is nothing but bottom. There is nothing but the taste of metal, and the echoes of old things, and days that look like darkness. — Lauren Oliver

The poet dreams of the mountain
Sometimes I grow weary of the days, with all their fits and starts.
I want to climb some old gray mountains, slowly, taking
The rest of my lifetime to do it, resting often, sleeping
Under the pines or, above them, on the unclothed rocks.
I want to see how many stars are still in the sky
That we have smothered for years now, a century at least.
I want to look back at everything, forgiving it all,
And peaceful, knowing the last thing there is to know.
All that urgency! Not what the earth is about!
How silent the trees, their poetry being of themselves only.
I want to take slow steps, and think appropriate thoughts.
In ten thousand years, maybe, a piece of the mountain will fall. — Mary Oliver

BORN TO RUN In his book Racing the Antelope: What Animals Can Teach Us about Running and Life, biologist Bernd Heinrich describes the human species as an endurance predator. The genes that govern our bodies today evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago, when we were in constant motion, either foraging for food or chasing antelope for hours and days across the plains. Heinrich describes how, even though antelope are among the fastest mammals, our ancestors were able to hunt them down by driving them to exhaustion - keeping on their tails until they had no energy left to escape. Antelope are sprinters, but their metabolism doesn't allow them to go and go and go. Ours does. And we have a fairly balanced distribution of fast-twitch and slow-twitch muscle fibers, so even after ranging miles over the landscape we retain the metabolic capacity to sprint in short bursts to make the kill. — John J. Ratey

Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace; four happy days bring in
Another moon: but, O, methinks, how slow
This old moon wanes! she lingers my desires,
Like to a step-dame or a dowager
Long withering out a young man revenue. — William Shakespeare

I go into my workroom seven mornings a week. There will only be one or two mornings a week where it seems to be going well, but to earn those days you have to go through slow, slodgy days where your mind feels like porridge. — Kevin Barry

Science is difficult and slow no matter who you are. The hours are long, and the glorious 'aha' days come only very infrequently. You have to keep believing that if you put in the hours, those days will indeed come! — Bonnie Bassler

We ride the blades again
beside the crooked bay. You smile.
I hold you like a hole holds light.

We wear our hats and ride the knives.
They cannot fix you. They try and try.
Tunnel! Into the dark open we go.
Days you are sick, we get dressed slow. — Maria Hummel

Once I retire and slow down, I don't want to be in New York. I want to be somewhere near a lake or a pond, so that on my days when I have nothing to do, I can go fishing. — Sharon Jones

He had chosen to spend his days in the world of men. Life was what mattered, its slow, priceless pulse, its burning fragility; his debt lay with those importunate Flanders echoes that had never really left him. The private could aspire to be a general because both general and private, at their best, recognized the dire importance of strategy, fortitude, the value of their imperiled existence; but when the machinist became the executive he left the world of tangibles and human conjugacy and entered a shadow world of credits and consols - a world that seemed to reward nothing so much as irresponsibility and boundless greed. And when the thunder rolled down upon them - as he knew it would - how would he feel, playing with paper, striving to outwit his fellows, drinking imported Scotch evenings and listening to the brittle parade of comedians on radio ...? — Anton Myrer

Between the Mile

I have always counted the miles.
Sometimes they came quick,
Other times slow.
The distance between things,
The way I could know.
Close could feel far,
And far could feel near.
The miles that passed too quickly,
The ones I ran out of fear.
They weren't all the same,
So I had been told,
The unmarked trails,
And the days I was bold.

Some miles went down,
Spiraling so low,
When I was afraid to look forward,
There was nowhere to go.
The sunset came fast,
And the day turned to night,
But the trails could be endless,
If I looked at them right.

Everything I knew,
All I was told,
The conversations left behind,
The people who grew old.

When the miles stretched out before me,
I wanted to sew them at the seam,
Looking forward and then back,
Holding everything in between. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

For the young the days go fast and the years go slow; for the old the days go slow and the years go fast. — Anna Quindlen

Time passes and I am still not through it. Grief isn't something you get over. You live with it. You go on on with it lodged in you. Sometimes I feel like I have swallowed a pile of stones. Grief makes me heavy. It makes me slow. Even on days when I laugh a lot, or dance, or finish a project, or meet a deadline, or celebrate, or make love, it is there. Lodged deep inside of me. — Ann Hood

In these days the invention of printing, and the diffusion of knowledge, render historical calumnies a little less dangerous: truth will always prevail in the long run, but how slow its progress! — Napoleon Bonaparte

The Buddhist concept is that it takes 48 days to get near this state [of death]. So it's a slow process, moving into, not a permanent death, but the world of the dead. — Hiroshi Sugimoto

How the fuck do I know that my better is anything more than the great big fat lie we tell ourselves to justify the slow fat nothing of our days. — Claire North

In two days going they rowed right up the Long Lake and passed out into the River Running, and now they could all see the Lonely Mountain towering grim and tall before them. The stream was strong and their going slow. — J.R.R. Tolkien

For John was running, and this was terrible. Because if you ran, time ran. You yelled and screamed and raced and rolled and tumbled and all of a sudden the sun was gone and the whistle was blowing and you were on your long way home to supper. When you weren't looking, the sun got around behind you! The only way to keep things slow was to watch everything and do nothing! You could stretch a day to three days, sure, just by watching! — Ray Bradbury

As I stand among the barren gulches in these days and look away at the slow-awakening hills of Montana, I hear the high, swelling, half tired, half-hopeful song of the world. As I listen I know that there are things, other than the Virtue and the Truth and the Love, that are not for me. There is beyond me, like these, the unbreaking, undying bond of human fellowship - a thing that is earth-old. — Mary MacLane

It seems obvious now: the child who spends school days in a fog of semi-comprehension has no way to know her problem is not that she is slow-witted. — Sonia Sotomayor

the company - that at the eleventh hour an old ship with a lower standard of speed had been put on in place of the vessel in which I had taken my passage. America was roasting, England might very well be stuffy, and a slow passage (which at that season of the year would probably also be a fine one) was a guarantee of ten or twelve days of fresh air. I strolled down — Henry James

Love doesn't save, it raises you up and makes you bigger, it lights you up from inside and carves out that light like wood in the forest. It nestles in the hollows of empty days, of thankless tasks, of useless hours, it doesn't drift along on golden rafts or sparkling rivers, it doesn't sing or shine and it never proclaims a thing. But at night, once the room's been swept and the embers covered over and the children are asleep
at night between the sheets, with slow gazes, not moving or speaking
at night, at last, when we're weary of our meager lives and the trivialities of our insignificant existance, each of us becomes the well where the other one can draw water ... — Muriel Barbery

Slow food, free-range, no steroids, eat local, and natural winemaking are all part of a general yearning for simpler times. But the fact is that most winemakers these days, big and small, have drastically lessened the use of chemicals in the vineyard, embracing such concepts as organically grown, biodynamic, and sustainable. — Roger Morris

You turn me inside out. I want to fuck you seven shades of Sunday, and I want to make long, slow, sweet love to you for days. I'm craving you, goddamn it, and you can't just say shit like that to me when I know what you taste like, and what you look like and I need desperately to know what the fuck you feel like. — Kristen Proby

Well, I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days.
Crash Davis Bull Durham — Ron Shelton

It surprised him that his grief was sharper than in the past few days. He had forgotten that grief does not decline in a straight line or along a slow curve like a graph in a child's math book. Instead, it was almost as if his body contained a big pile of garden rubbish full both of heavy lumps of dirt and of sharp thorny brush that would stab him when he least expected it. — Helen Simonson

Meditation has become a big part of my life these days. It's more about taking some moments for yourself to deep-breathe and focus your attention inward. This has really helped me because, as a perfectionist, I used to think that if I couldn't meditate in my idea of the perfect way, then it wouldn't work. I now meditate even if it is for three minutes while I'm sitting in the car. Every little bit helps to slow the system. — Renee Marino

Whereas during those months of separation time had never gone quickly enough for their liking and they were wanting to speed its flight, now that they were in sight of the town they would have liked to slow it down and hold each moment in suspense, once the breaks went on and the train was entering the station. For the sensation, confused perhaps, but none the less poingant for that, of all those days and weeks and months of life lost to their love made them vaguely feel they were entitled to some compensation; this present hour of joy should run at half the speed of those long hours of waiting. — Albert Camus

It might be high summer all about but inside me everything is fall. The lonesomeness of a sad, slow closing of days, knowing frost is nigh and wind needling through the cabin chinks is just around the bend. That's me, right now. — Guy Vanderhaeghe

What a name! Was it love or praise?
Speech half-asleep or song half-awake?
I must learn Spanish, one of these days,
Only for that slow sweet name's sake. — Robert Browning

The slow stone metamorphoses filled him with longing - longing for what? Simplicity? Was simplicity the true nature of homegoing? The simple harmonies, earth order and abundance. In this churchyard in a woodland meadow at the end of a white road, he missed what he had never known, the peace of living one day then another in communion with others of one's blood and at the end, at the close of one's works and days, to draw that last breath and come to rest in earth where one's bones belonged. — Peter Matthiessen

I believe in the soul ... the small of a woman's back, the hanging curveball, high fiber, good scotch, that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in the sweet spot, soft-core pornography, opening your presents Christmas morning rather than Christmas Eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last three days. — Kevin Costner

We look back to times past, and we mass them together, and say in such a year such and such events took place, such wars occupied that year, and during the next there was peace. Yet each year was then divided into weeks, days, minute, and slow-moving seconds, during which there were human minds to note and distinguish them, as now. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

I want you alone," he whispered, gliding a hand around her hip, "on a slow boat to China. Days together, nights ... rocking on the waves. — Ophelia London