Plod Along Quotes & Sayings

Now, 75 years [after To Kill a Mockingbird], in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books.
[Open Letter, O Magazine, July 2006] — Harper Lee

This is a common experience in my traveling. I plod along, thinking what a miserable world this is and what miserable fellows we that inhabit it, wondering what it is tempts men to live in it; but anon I leave the towns behind and am lost in some boundless heath, and life becomes gradually more tolerable, if not even glorious. — Henry David Thoreau

I just had to plod along without having any teaching, which was a pity. — Ida Rentoul Outhwaite

Moonlight does things to a street scene that no other natural or man-made phenomenon can effect. People walk slower, their smiles lingering on contended faces. Horses that usually move along fast enough to stir up the dust off the street plod lazily in the clear, cool night. And in dark corners where people forget to look, the goons come out. — Bailey Bristol

Within the first twenty years of our lives, before we are really adult, we make choices motivated by insecurity, fear, and other people's expectations; certinly not guided by clarity and wisdom. We plod along for years living with the wrong career or spousal choice, in a location we did not choose and perhaps do not like, and much more. One day we wake up restless and confused, and acknowledge that we have no agenda of our own, and that we have been living someone else's passion, their dream. — Joan Medlicott

It's different," Sorgan's younger cousin Torl declared, gesturing at the glorious sunset late that afternoon. "It's pretty enough, I suppose, but it's not too much like the sunsets out at sea. Mountains seem to do peculiar things to the sky."

"It's the clouds, Captain Torl," Keselo explained. "Most of the time, I'd imagine, the clouds out over the sea sort of plod along from here to there. When they come to mountains, though, they have to climb up one side and then slide down the other. That sort of scrambles them, so they're thicker in some places and thinner in others. That's why we see so many different shades of red in a mountain sunset. — David Eddings

For the most part, in the course of our daily lives we abide the abundant evidence that no such universal justice exists. Like a cart horse, we plod along the cobblestones dragging our masters' wares with our heads down and our blinders in place, waiting patiently for the next cube of sugar. But there are certain times when chance suddenly provides the justice that Agatha Christies promise. We look around at the characters cast in our own lives - our heiresses and gardeners, our vicars and nannies, our late-arriving guests who are not exactly what they seem - and discover that before the end of the weekend all assembled will get there just desserts. But when we do so, we rarely remember to count ourselves among their company. — Amor Towles

We played some gigs in Switzerland a couple of weeks ago and it was the first time I really felt the group was really a band in the sense of something I could write for. — Fred Frith

Meteorology ... is quite as "scientific" as geology and far more so than archaeology - it actually makes more use of scientific instruments, computers, and higher mathematics ... Yet we laugh at the weatherman every other day; we are not overawed by his impressive paraphernalia, because we can check up on him any time we feel like it: he makes his learned pronouncements - and then it rains or it doesn't rain.
No scientific conclusion is to be trusted without testing - to the extent to which exact sciences are exact they are also experimental sciences; it is in the laboratory that the oracle must be consulted. But the archaeologist is denied access to the oracle. For him there is no neat and definitive demonstration; he is doomed to plod along, everlastingly protesting and fumbling through a laborious, often rancorous running debate that never ends. — Hugh Nibley

I am more sensitive than other people. Things that other people would not notice awaken a distinct echo in me, and in such moments of lucidity, when I look at myself, I see that I am alone, all alone, all alone. — Henri Barbusse

I think our natural disposition as humans is to plod along until we get old and stop. But with social media, we've created a stage for constant artificial high drama. — Jon Ronson

Highly resilient people are flexible, adapt to new circumstances quickly, and thrive in constant change. Most important, they expect to bounce back and feel confident that they will. They have a knack for creating good luck out of circumstances that many others see as bad luck. — Al Siebert

One would love nonetheless to know how to be a man, how to be a woman before God, in the mirror of one's own conscience, in the looks of those who surround us. One would wish to find the strength to beautify one's thoughts and to purify one's heart. It is everyone's hope and expectation to live in serenity and to plod along in transparency: the palms of the hands patiently directed towards heaven, at the heart of all this modernity. — Tariq Ramadan

Want to increase innovation? Lower the cost of failure. — Joichi Ito

At some point, even the greatest misery begins to fade. Life, or what passes for life, plods on in it's own unending weary footsteps, and somehow we plod along with it, if we stay lucky. — Jeff Lindsay

Have you ever been going somewhere with a crowd and you're certain it's the wrong road and you tell them, but they won't listen, so you just have to plod along in what you know is the wrong direction till somebody more important gets the same idea? — James Hilton

Your Joan of Arcs and Supermans don't come around too often. Mostly, the world is made up of people like me, plodding along. It's what most people do - plod, plod, plod. While it kills me to come to grips with the fact that I'm like everyone else, that pain is outweighed by the comfort I get from being a member of the human race. — Douglas Coupland

Cupcakes The first time you bake cupcakes, you will certainly follow the recipe with rigor. The third time, you might improvise and screw up. Learning your lesson, you will follow the recipe again and again as closely as you can. At this point, by the fifth time, some people actually learn to bake. They improvise successfully. They understand the science and the outcomes. They develop a kind of gracefulness in the kitchen. Others merely plod along. They're cooks, not chefs. A cook follows a recipe. A chef invents one. We have too many cooks. The world is begging for chefs. — Seth Godin

Men and women who humbly plod along, doing their duty... who help look after the poor; and who honor the holy Priesthood, who do not run into excesses, who are prayerful in their families, and who acknowledge the Lord in their hearts, they will build up a foundation that the gates of hell cannot prevail against. — Joseph F. Smith

Now ... in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, ipods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. — Harper Lee

...the only guarantee in this fleeting market day we call life is that no matter how carefully you plod along, you'll grow old and get sick, or a force will sneak up on you in the dark and snuff you like piss on a campfire. Nobody is going to remember your hardest bouldering problem or that you sent your project. After a few years nobody cares who got the gold medal or the gold for that matter. Nobody care who sent what, when, where, why, and how. The memories fade, then just disappear...all that remains is the impact you had on other people — Jeff Jackson

We are no more content to plod along the beaten paths - and so marriage must go the way of God. — Amy Levy

There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances. — Leon Trotsky

Often you shall think your road impassable, sombre and companionless. Have will and plod along; and round each curve you shall find a new companion. — Mikhail Naimy

It seldom happens that a man changes his life through his habitual reasoning. No matter how fully he may sense the new plans and aims revealed to him by reason, he continues to plod along in old paths until his life becomes frustrating and unbearable-he finally makes the change only when his usual life can no longer be tolerated. — Leo Tolstoy

Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptops, cell phones, iPods, and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books. Instant information is not for me. I prefer to search library stacks because when I work to learn something, I remember it. And, Oprah, can you imagine curling up in bed to read a computer? Weeping for Anna Karenina and being terrified by Hannibal Lecter, entering the heart of darkness with Mistah Kurtz, having Holden Caulfield ring you up - some things should happen on soft pages, not cold metal. — Harper Lee

It may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: 'Sit down and shut up,' but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out. — Sarah Palin

A life had been ruined. What was it for: just some social media drama? I think our natural disposition as humans is to plod along until we get old and stop. But with social media, we've created a stage for constant artificial high drama. Every day a new person emerges as a magnificent hero or a sickening villain. It's all very sweeping, and not the way we actually are as people. — Jon Ronson

The only time "early bloomer" has ever been applied to me is vis-a-vis my premature apprehension of the deep dread-of-existence thing. In all other cases, I plod and tromp along. My knuckles? Well dragged. — Colson Whitehead