Deferred Quotes & Sayings

It is easy to become the dupe of a deferred purpose, of the promise the future can never keep ... — Jane Addams

The criterion of action is that todays work should not be deferred till the following day. — Umar

There was no circumcision. Lee said circumcision was dreamed up by moralists and lotion salesmen to make hand jobs chafe, and Peggy deferred to his better judgement. — Nell Zink

I stumbled into acting and just loved it. I deferred law school-and I'm still deferred. — Portia De Rossi

Clutter is nothing more than a series of deferred decisions stacked on top of each other. — Andrew Mellen

The highest-income Americans don't need tax-free health insurance, mortgage interest deductions or deferred taxation on retirement funds. — Steven Rattner

Good morning, daddy!
Ain't you heard
The boogie-woogie rumble
Of a dream deferred?

Listen closely:
You'll hear their feet
Beating out and beating out a -

You think
It's a happy beat?

Listen to it closely:
Ain't you heard
something underneath
like a -

What did I say?

Sure,
I'm happy!
Take it away!
Dream Boogie

Hey, pop!
Re-bop!
Mop!

Y-e-a-h! — Langston Hughes

We talk about feelings. And about sex. And about bodies, and their gratification, violation, repair, decoration, deferred, maybe permanently deferred, mortality. Feelings are a bodily thing, and respecting them is called, is, kindness. — A.S. Byatt

What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet? Maybe it just sags like a heavy load. Or does it explode? — Preeti Shenoy

To wait so long/And want a man refined and strong/Is not at all uncommon. And yet to wait one hundred years/Without a tear, without a care/Makes for a very rare woman. So here our tale appears to show/How marriage deferred/Brings joy unheard/Nothing lost after a century or so. But others love with more ardor/And wed quickly out of passion/Whatever they do/I won't deplore/Nor shall I preach a lesson. — Charles Perrault

If only the court had acted more slowly,' RBG said, and cut down one state law at a time the way she had gotten them to do with the jury and benefit cases. The justices could have been persuaded to build an architecture of women's equality that could house reproductive freedom. She said the very boldness of Roe, striking down all abortion bans until viability, had 'halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, I believe, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue. (85). — Irin Carmon

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. — Thomas Hardy

If reading isn't about communication, it is, in the end, about sharing. But a deferred and fiercely selective kind of sharing. — Daniel Pennac

There are recovery programs for people grieving the loss of a parent, sibling, or spouse. You can buy books on how to cope with the death of a beloved pet or work through the anguish of a miscarriage. We speak openly with one another about the bereavement that can accompany a layoff, a move, a diagnosis, or a dream deferred. But no one really teaches you how to grieve the loss of your faith. You're on your own for that. — Rachel Held Evans

He speaks of himself as of another. Himself he devises too for company. Leave it at that. Confusion too is company up to a point. Better hope deferred than none. Up to a point. Till the heart starts to sicken. Company too up to a point. Better a sick heart than none. Till it starts to break. So speaking of himself he concludes for the time being, For the time being leave it at that. — Samuel Beckett

Good evening, daddy! Ain't you heard The boogie-woogie rumble Of a dream deferred? Trilling the treble And twining the bass Into midnight ruffles Of cat-gut lace. — Langston Hughes

And this speaks to the importance of taking advantage of every tax-advantaged investment opportunity that you can. You should maximize your contributions if you've got a 401(k), or a 403(b) if you work for a nonprofit. You should take every opportunity to invest in a tax-deferred way. — Anthony Robbins

The phenomenon I'm describing, rooted so firmly in that primal human drive for self-preservation, probably doesn't sound surprising: We all know that people bring their best selves to interactions with their bosses and save their lesser moments for their peers, spouses, or therapists. And yet, so many managers aren't aware of it when it's happening (perhaps because they enjoy being deferred to). It simply doesn't occur to them that after they get promoted to a leadership position, no one is going to come out and say, "Now that you are a manager, I can no longer be as candid with you." Instead, many new leaders assume, wrongly, that their access to information is unchanged. But that is just one example of how hidden-ness affects a manager's ability to lead. — Ed Catmull

It follows that acceleration in the rate of change will result in an increasing need for reorganization. Reorganization is usually feared, because it means disturbance of the status quo, a potential threat to peoples vested interests in their jobs, and an upset to established ways of doing things. For these reasons, needed reorganization is often deferred. With a resulting loss in effectiveness and increase in costs. — Niccolo Machiavelli

The desire of representation exists only insofar as the original is always deferred. It is only in the absence of the original that representation can take place. — Douglas Crimp

Meaning is deferred until some indefinite future. — Christopher Bigsby

Never have the young taken themselves so seriously, and the calamity is that they are listened to and deferred to by so many adults. — Eric Hoffer

One should never permit a disorder to persist in order to avoid a war, for wars cannot be avoided and can only be deferred to the advantage of others. — Niccolo Machiavelli

You've been holding a machete waiting to cut your way through and into the place called Future. You have waited and waited and now this knife has grown dull. But now I am sending angelic hosts to sharpen your weapon and assist in cutting you through. Your tongue has even grown powerless in this last season because your faith and hope have been deferred. But this is NOW! I will put MY Word in your mouth. You will speak with a new vigor. I AM sharpening your tongue. Get ready, for all things are being sharpened. Get ready, for you will now cut and your way will open up. — Chuck Pierce

Three times Jan had been called to the colours (the army), but each time had been deferred because of his deplorable physical condition..when every male who could stand halfway erect was being shipped to Verdun to undergo a radical change in posture from the vertical to the eternal horizontal — Gunter Grass

A dream deferred is a dream denied. — Rachel Cohn

Rewards for good service should not be deferred a single day. — Sun Tzu

If the invention of derivatives was the financial world's modernist dawn, the current crisis is unsettlingly like the birth of postmodernism. For anyone who studied literature in college in the past few decades, there is a weird familiarity about the current crisis: value, in the realm of finance capital, parallels the elusive nature of meaning in deconstrucitonism. According to Jacques Derrida, the doyen of the school, meaning can never be precisely located; instead, it is always 'deferred,' moved elsewhere, located in other meanings, which refer and defer to other meanings - a snake permanently and necessarily eating its own tail. This process is fluid and constant, but at moments the perpetual process of deferral stalls and collapses in on itself. Derrida called this moment an 'aporia,' from a Greek term meaning 'impasse.' There is something both amusing and appalling about seeing his theories acted out in the world markets to such cataclysmic effect. — John Lanchester

With a monolithic project, late in the game, we can't even do much to cut costs. We have already written requirements for things we'll never get. We've designed, and even written code for things that we'll never complete. All that work is wasted. If only we had known the truth. We could have deferred some of that work. We laid out this project with an all-or-nothing mentality. We analyzed it all. We designed it all. We tried to code it all. We discovered, too late, that we can't have it all. — Anonymous

I know now that everything after the accident was merely a tactic to indulge in escapism and self-delusion. When you are hit by a streetcar that almost smashes you to a pulp, when you experience your own end...there is no recovery, only temporary respite, she thought.

Pain made me aware of my body. My body made me aware of deterioration and death. That awareness made me old. My death sentence may have been deferred, but I now had to live with a twofold realization. Not only was I going to die - there was nothing unusual about that except that I was made to realize it at a tender age - but I knew exactly what that meant. Because I had already been through it. Unlike other condemned people for whom death is an abstraction because they have no idea what really awaits them, my stay of death came with a constant reminder, the presence of pain. — Slavenka Drakulic

Lie down beside these waters
That bubble from the spring;
Hear in the desert silence
The desert sparrow sing;

Draw from the shapeless moment
Such pattern as you can;
And cleave henceforth to Beauty;
Expect no more from man.

Man, with his ready answer,
His sad and hearty word,
For every cause in limbo,
For every debt deferred,

For every pledge forgotten,
His eloquent and grim
Deep empty gaze upon you, -
Expect no more from him. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I don't say Valancy deliberately murdered these lovers as she outgrew them. One simply faded away as another came. Things are very convenient in this respect in Blue Castles. — L.M. Montgomery

Parents choosing a school for their children - an innocent, important, humdrum, private affair which a lethal blend of bitter division and too much money had transmuted into a monstrous clerical task, into box files of legal documents so numerous and heavy they were hauled to court on trolleys, into hours of educated wrangling, procedural hearings, deferred decisions, the whole circus rising, but so slowly, through the judicial hierarchy like a lopsided, ill-tethered hot-air balloon. If the parents could not agree, the law, reluctantly, must take the decisions. — Ian McEwan

I don't know anyone who ever got deferred pay. I'm the first of my friends to ever actually get a deferred paycheck. — Heather Donahue

Vain favour! coming, like most other favours long deferred and often wished for, too late! — Charlotte Bronte

My father firmly embraced the Ralph Kramden philosophy: he was king of his Levittown castle. He worked hard, and his family deferred to his wishes. Except me. I did not defer and was disciplined accordingly. — Bill O'Reilly

Slowly, after dozens of rejection slips and failures and false starts and postponed dreams
what Langston Hughes called dreams deferred
I stepped onto the hallowed ground of being a published novelist, and then, fifteen years later, I started to make real money. — Anne Lamott

When a president promises something beyond his years in office, he is fundamentally unaccountable. It is not his budget that must finish the job. Another president inherits the problem, and it becomes a ball too easily dropped, a plan too easily abandoned, a dream too readily deferred. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I am old enough to know that victory is often a thing deferred, and rarely at the summit of courage ... What is at the summit of courage, I think, is freedom ... the freedom that comes with the knowledge that no earthly thing can break you. — Paula Giddings

George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and John Marshall, all big men, and strong in every sense, deferred to him. — Mark David Ledbetter

If your body is a temple, you can pile up too much deferred maintenance. — Chuck Palahniuk

Enforcement priorities developed by my administration are not affected by this ruling. This means that the people who might have benefited from the expanded deferred action policies, long-term residents raising children who are Americans or legal residents, they will remain low priorities for enforcement, as long as you have not committed a crime, our limited immigration enforcement resources are not focused on you. — Barack Obama

a site is a creation, not a discovery, and it eludes the visible, cumbersome materiality of objects that embody space. it denatures the landscape of visual perception and implicated another pun: site as citation, the quotation of a constantly deferred real (substantive) place. cyberspace images are themselves citations, visual quotations of particulars, representatives of codes that cannot be visualized. — Alice Rayner

In earlier periods of history, adolescence was virtually unknown ... Today, the span between childhood and adulthood may extend over ten years. Deferred adulthood is synonymous with deferred responsibility. — Billy Graham

What is greatly desired, but long deferred, gives little pleasure, when at length it is ours, for we have lived with it in imagination until we have grown weary of it, having ourselves, in the meanwhile, become other. — John Lancaster Spalding

My general sensibility is most certainly comedic. But when I signed with my manager, he said, 'I think you could do dramatic stuff as well.' So, rather than making the choice to do it, I sort of agreed and deferred. By no means does it feel close to home, but I was willing to explore it. — Benjamin Koldyke

A Pause of Thought

I looked for that which is not, nor can be,
And hope deferred made my heart sick in truth
But years must pass before a hope of youth
Is resigned utterly.

I watched and waited with a steadfast will:
And though the object seemed to flee away
That I so longed for, ever day by day
I watched and waited still.

Sometimes I said: This thing shall be no more;
My expectation wearies and shall cease;
I will resign it now and be at peace:
Yet never gave it o'er.

Sometimes I said: It is an empty name
I long for; to a name why should I give
The peace of all the days I have to live?--
Yet gave it all the same.

Alas, thou foolish one! alike unfit
For healthy joy and salutary pain:
Thou knowest the chase useless, and again
Turnest to follow it. — Christina Rossetti

I used to sit in the studio with a copy of the (Saturday Evening) Post laid across my knees ... And then I'd conjure up a picture of myself as a famous illustrator and gloat over it, putting myself in various happy situations, surrounded by admiring females, deferred to by office flunkies at the magazines, wined and dined by the editor ... — Norman Rockwell

Better hope deferred than none. — Samuel Beckett

Just ask any subjugated thing-
a wife, population, race,
deferred dream and
resource misappropriated,
or continental plate;
and it will tell you stories
of inevitable fault lines
of not-quite-stray bullets
and strike slip boundaries,
places where intensity builds
and lets off small or great sparks, — Marie Anzalone

The principal value of a garden is not understood. It is not to give the possessors vegetables and fruit (that can be better and cheaper done by the market-gardeners), but to teach him patience and philosophy, and the higher virtues - hope deferred, and expectations blighted, leading directly to resignation, and sometimes to alienation. — Charles Dudley Warner

As Indiana's governor, I balanced eight budgets, never raised taxes, and left the largest surplus in state history. It wasn't always easy. Cuts had to be made and some initiatives deferred. Occasionally I had to say 'no.' — Evan Bayh

The desire to know a thing is heightened by its gratification being deferred. — Pliny The Elder

As immigrant artists for whom so much has been sacrificed, so many dreams have been deferred, we already doubt so much. Who do we think we are? We think we are people who risked not existing at all. People who might have had a mother and father killed, either by a government or nature, even before we were born. Some of us think we are accidents of literacy. I do. — Edwidge Danticat

You might think someone like Hallsy would only be inclined to torture someone like me, but if she did that, it would be an admission of her own aesthetic shortcomings. As long as I deferred to her, it was in her best interest to embrace me. It sent the message that there was no need to be jealous or intimidated - she was every bit as desirable as an overaerobicized twenty-something. — Jessica Knoll

I wish Lucilius you had been so happy as to have taken this resolution long ago I wish we had not deferred to think of an happy life till now we are come within light of death But let us delay no longer — Seneca.

A truly great work of art breaks beyond the bounds of the period and culture in which it is created, so final judgement on a current book has to be deferred until it can be seen outside this present moment. — Madeleine L'Engle

What happens to a dream deferred? — Langston Hughes

What happens to rage deferred? It explodes. It explodes in spectacular fashion. — J.A. Konrath

Pain now is better than pain deferred. — David Brooks

This is what rhyme does. In a couplet, the first rhyme is like a question to which the second rhyme is an answer. The first rhyme leaves something in the air, some unanswered business. In most quatrains, space is created between the rhyme that poses the question and the rhyme that gives the answer - it is like a pleasure deferred. — James Fenton

The government - the ultimate short-term-oriented player - cannot withstand much pain in the economy or the financial markets. Bailouts and rescues are likely to occur, though not with sufficient predictability for investors to comfortably take advantage. The government will take enormous risks in such interventions, especially if the expenses can be conveniently deferred to the future. Some of the price-tag is in the form of back- stops and guarantees, whose cost is almost impossible to determine. — Seth Klarman

We are all wise. The difference between persons is not in wisdom but in art. I knew, in an academical club, a person who always deferred to me; who, seeing my whim for writing, fancied that my experiences had somewhat superior; whilst I saw that his experiences were as good as mine. Give them to me and I would make the same use of them. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Spend less than you make; always be saving something. Put it into a tax-deferred account. Over time, it will begin to amount to something. This is such a no-brainer. — Charlie Munger

I have found that one of the commonest causes of unhappiness among my patients is that they are attempting to live their lives on the deferred payment plan. They do not live, or enjoy life now, but wait for some future event or occurrence. They will be happy when they get married, when they get a better job, when they get the house paid for, when they get the children through college, when they have completed some task or won some victory. Invariably, they are disappointed. — Maxwell Maltz

In football, side netting can sometimes look like a real goal and it can make spectators jubilate for a moment, and then ponder! So is life! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Competing pressures tempt one to believe that an issue deferred is a problem avoided; more often it is a crisis invited. — Henry A. Kissinger

Julius brooded. He could see Julius despising the medical school of Pavia. Tobie said, Nicholas managed the journey from Flanders all right. Deferred to you, joked discreetly with me, got on like a dyeworks on fire with the muleteers. — Dorothy Dunnett

There's a certain amount of traveling in a dream deferred. — Langston Hughes

A pension is nothing more than deferred compensation. — Elizabeth Warren

Instead, the Nationals will pay Scherzer $15 million per season, but do so for 14 years; essentially, they've deferred half of each season's salary seven years into the future. — Max Scherzer

Since few people arrive at retirement with an understanding that this transition will involve a rethinking of who they are, an interim pattern has emerged, in which travel offers a way of fulfilling deferred daydreams of adventure while the next stage takes shape. [p. 31] — Mary Catherine Bateson

Mama read it an began pulling her hair an weepin an praisin the Lord, 'cause it say I am 'Temporarily Deferred' on account of I am a numbnuts. — Winston Groom

The concept of deferred gratification, or sacrificing now to save for the future, can be helpful in setting aside money in a retirement account for old age. It can also serve as an effective rationalization for life avoidance. — Chris Guillebeau

It is almost always a bad idea to use a reverse mortgage to pay for a vacation or to buy a risky investment, like stocks or deferred annuities. — Charles Duhigg

The Elders were closer to the Maker of All Things and should be deferred to whenever they made their will known. — Patricia Briggs

After years in the Chinese workforce, I had developed an emotional attachment to money. My earnings were my hard work and long hours; my savings were comforts deferred. — Hyeonseo Lee

Comedy is nothing more than tragedy deferred. — Pico Iyer

I'm interested in stories which insist on a dog fails-to-eat-dog kind of world. I hate misanthropy, want to believe that there's a possibility that we might all be redeemed, that hope deferred makes the soul sick, that our humanity is fragile, funny, common, crazy, full of the longing for love, the failure of love. — Anthony Minghella

Their dream deferred became my dream referred. — Sandra Biber Didner

And yet shall Love himself be heard,Though long deferred, though long deferred:O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred:Music is Love in search of a word. — Sidney Lanier

The advances of agricultural and contraceptive technology in the nineteenth century apparently refuted Malthus: in England, the United States, Germany, and France the food supply kept pace with births, and the rising standard of living deferred the age of marriage and lowered the size of the family. — Will Durant

You ought never to suffer your designs to be crossed in order to avoid war, since war is not so to be avoided, but is only deferred to your disadvantage. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Both David and Marcus, I came to realize, though they seemed happy enough, and looked forward to being doctors, had a certain sadness, a sense of loss and renunciation, about other interests they had given up.... Both became medical students, in part, to defer their call-up. But with this, I think, they deferred their other aspirations, a deferment that seemed permanent and irreversible by the time they returned to London. — Oliver Sacks

Hope isn't destiny. Left passive its nothing more than disappointment deferred — Bill Willingham

Among the things that should make your antennae twitch are technical terms like "capitalized," "deferred," and "restructuring" - and plain-English words signaling that the company has altered its accounting practices, like "began," "change," and — Benjamin Graham

Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious, and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy. — Niccolo Machiavelli

The question of maintaining a serious moral order while allowing economic freedom has, I think, troubled people right from the beginning of history, and has always been a tension within conservative thinkers, going right back to [Edmund] Burke. The traditional way of reconciling these two things was through religion, which would remove certain things from the market. Sex is removed from the market and made into a religious ceremony, and parent-child relations, education, etc. I think that's the great benefit that religion has deferred on people down the centuries. Take it away now and we don't know quite what's going to happen. — Roger Scruton

Thady begins his memoirs of the Rackrent Family by dating MONDAY MORNING, because no great undertaking can be auspiciously commenced in Ireland on any morning but MONDAY MORNING. 'Oh, please God we live till Monday morning, we'll set the slater to mend the roof of the house. On Monday morning we'll fall to, and cut the turf. On Monday morning we'll see and begin mowing. On Monday morning, please your honour, we'll begin and dig the potatoes,' etc.
All the intermediate days, between the making of such speeches and the ensuing Monday, are wasted: and when Monday morning comes, it is ten to one that the business is deferred to THE NEXT Monday morning. The Editor knew a gentleman, who, to counteract this prejudice, made his workmen and labourers begin all new pieces of work upon a Saturday. — Maria Edgeworth

If there was ever a time that Silicon Valley believed it could revive the long-deferred dream of reinventing money, this was it. A virtual currency that rose above national borders fitted right in with an industry that saw itself destined to change the face of everyday life. — Nathaniel Popper

A healthy economy is largely a result of a reasonable balance between consumption today and consumption deferred, and it's pretty clear that balance has been ridiculously out of whack for a while. — Adam Davidson

My financial adviser Ric Edelman ... thinks the time to start educating people about money is when they are children. He's set up a retirement plan called the RIC-E-Trust that can provide retirement security. A $5,000 one-time tax-deferred investment at birth, with an average interest rate of ten percent compounded, means that a child would have $2.4 million when he or she is 65 years old. Who needs Social Security with that kind of nest egg? — Cal Thomas

A defeat to a brave man is only a victory deferred. — James Ellis

12 Hope deferred maketh the heart sick: but when the desire cometh, it is a tree of life. — Anonymous

Throughout my life, I happily deferred to family, companions, children. — Patti Smith

Justice deferred is justice denied. — Diane Watson

By the middle to the end of the 1970s, Black Power as we envisioned was a dream deferred. And I was no longer in a position to awaken the minds of the people about what was happening. — Junius Williams

A duty dodged is like a debt unpaid; it is only deferred, and we must come back and settle the account at last. — Joseph Fort Newton

Women have traditionally deferred to the judgment of men although often while intimating a sensibility of their own which is at variance with that judgment. — Carol Gilligan

She deferred to her partner, to the virtuoso hands of Gwen Shanks, freaky-big, fluid as a couple of tide-pool dwellers, cabled like the Golden Gate Bridge. — Michael Chabon