Slowness Quotes:

Those who are slow to know suppose that slowness is the essence of knowledge.

- Friedrich Nietzsche

source: Friedrich Nietzsche (2010). “The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs”, p.212, Vintage

topic: Essence, Knows, Slowness

There's a virtue in slowness, which we have lost

- Graham Greene

source: "Monsignor Quixote". Book by Graham Greene, 1982.

topic: Virtue, Lost, Slowness

Haste is of the devil. Slowness is of God.

- H. L. Mencken

topic: Devil, Haste, Slowness

Slowness is frequently the cause of much greater slowness.

- Baron de Montesquieu

source: Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (2015). “The Spirit of Laws”, p.440, Library of Alexandria

topic: Causes, Greater, Slowness

We gain so much by quickness, and lose so much by slowness.

- Seneca the Younger

topic: Gains, Quickness, Slowness

The man hunched over his motorcycle can focus only on the present... he is caught in a fragment of time cut off from both the past and the future... he has no fear, because the source of fear is in the future, and a person freed of the future has nothing to fear.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Cutting, Past, Men, Fear None, Ultimate Freedom

Speed is not part of the true Way of strategy. Speed implies that things seem fast or slow, according to whether or not they are in rhythm. Whatever the Way, the master of strategy does not appear fast.

- Miyamoto Musashi

topic: Way, Doe, Speed, Slowness

The degree of slowness is directionally proportional to the intensity of memory. The degree of speed is directionally proportional to the intensity of forgetting.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Memories, Degrees, Forget, Slowness

I would like to spend the rest of my days in a place so silent–and working at a pace so slow–that I would be able to hear myself living.

- Elizabeth Gilbert

topic: Would Be, Pace, Able, Peace And Quiet, Slowness

I have seen slower people than I am and more deliberate... and even quieter, and more listless, and lazier people than I am. But they were dead.

- Mark Twain

topic: People, Funny Sarcastic, Deliberation, Slowness

The dancer's body is simply the luminous manifestation of the soul.

- Isadora Duncan

topic: Music, Dance, Soul, Luminous, Choreography

I'm a slow walker, but I never walk back.

- Abraham Lincoln

topic: Motivational, Encouragement, Work, Walking Backwards, Patience And Perseverance

We have to slow the rhythm of rush in our lives so that the best of who are can emerge.

- Lysa TerKeurst

topic: Rhythm, Rhythm Of Life, Hurrying, Bustle, Emerging

Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going to fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.

- Eddie Cantor

topic: Life, Missing You, Work, Enjoy Your Life, Strolling

The slowness of one section of the world about adopting the valuable ideas of another section of it is a curious thing and unaccountable.

- Mark Twain

source: Mark Twain (2012). “Mark Twain at Your Fingertips: A Book of Quotations”, p.194, Courier Corporation

topic: Ideas, World, Curious, Slowness

When I look fast, I'm not smooth and I am going slowly. And when I look slow, I am smooth and going fast.

- Alain Prost

source: Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

topic: Motivational, Racing, Looks, Car Racing, Funny Car Racing

What nature does blindly, slowly and ruthlessly, man may do providently, quickly, and kindly. As it lies within his power, so it becomes his duty to work in that direction.

- Francis Galton

topic: Lying, Men, Eugenics, Ruthlessness, Quickness

If you want to please the critics, don't play too loud, too soft, too fast, too slow.

- Arturo Toscanini

topic: Play, Want, Loud, Softness, Conductor

what I love is slowness. Slow people, slow reading, slow traveling, slow eggs, and slow love. Everything good comes slow.

- Lynne Sharon Schwartz

source: Lynne Sharon Schwartz (2011). “Leaving Brooklyn”, p.26, Hawthorne Books

topic: Reading, Love Is, Eggs, Slowness

That is my problem with life, I rush through it, like I'm being chased. Even things whose whole point is slowness, like drinking relaxing tea. When I drink relaxing tea I suck it down as if I'm in a contest for who can drink relaxing tea the quickest.

- Miranda July

source: Miranda July (2008). “No One Belongs Here More Than You: Stories”, p.34, Simon and Schuster

topic: Drinking, Tea, Problem, Slowness

The concept of national sovereignty has been an immutable, indeed sacred, principle of international relations. It is a principle which will yield only slowly and reluctantly to the new imperatives of global environmental cooperation. It is simply not feasible for sovereignty to be exercised unilaterally by individual nation states, however powerful. The global community must be assured of environmental security.

- Maurice Strong

topic: Powerful, Yield, Community, International Relations, Unilateralism

Let us be ashamed of our slowness in thanking God when He gives, and of our quickness in grumbling at Him when He takes away.

- Nikolaj Velimirovic

topic: Love, Giving, Thank God, Grumbling, Slowness

You will already have noticed how often Capablanca repeated moves, often returning to positions which he had had before. This is not lack of deciciveness or slowness, but the employment of a basic endgame principle which is 'Do not hurry'.

- Alexander Kotov

topic: Moving, Principles, Employment, Capablanca, Endgame

The slowness of time, for a man who knows nothing will happen, is brutal.

- Cesare Pavese

topic: Time, Men, Brutal, Slowness

Remember that in every single case in history the process of adaptation has been one of exceeding slowness. Do not look for the impossible, but do not let your path deviate from the quiet and steadfast insistence on full opportunities for your powers.

- Franz Boas

source: Franz Boas (1969). “Race and Democratic Society”, p.69, Biblo & Tannen Publishers

topic: Opportunity, Looks, Path, Steadfast, Steadfastness

Speed is not an indicator of quality in terms of fiction. That's true of one's relative slowness or swiftness - taking 10 years to write a book or taking 10 days to write a book (or a comic or a film or an angry postcard) guarantees nothing in terms of how good or how bad that story is.

- Chuck Wendig

topic: Book, Writing, Years, Swiftness, Slowness

A criminal trial is like a Russian novel: it starts with exasperating slowness as the characters are introduced to a jury, then there are complications in the form of minor witnesses, the protagonist finally appears and contradictions arise to produce drama, and finally as both jury and spectators grow weary and confused the pace quickens, reaching its climax in passionate final argument.

- Clifford Irving

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

topic: Confused, Drama, Character, Complication, Climax

The eye solicited alone makes the ear impatient, the ear solicited alone makes the eye impatient. Use these impatiences. Power of the cinematographer who appeals to the two senses in a governable way. Against the tactics of speed, of noise, set tactics of slowness, of silence.

- Robert Bresson

source: Robert Bresson (2016). “Notes on the Cinematograph”, p.30, New York Review of Books

topic: Eye, Two, Silence, Cinematographers, Slowness

The food you eat can either be the safest and most powerful form of medicine, or the slowest form of poison

- Ann Wigmore

source: Ann Wigmore (1984). “The Hippocrates Diet and Health Program”, p.9, Penguin

topic: Powerful, Health, Weekend, Inspirational Health, Healthy Eating

Spiritual growth is more than procedure, it’s a wild search for God in the midst of the tangled jungle of our souls, a search for which involves a volatile mix of messy reality, wild freedom, frustrating stuckness, increasing slowness and a healthy dose of gratitude

- Mike Yaconelli

topic: Slowness

A slowness to applaud betrays a cold temper or an envious spirit.

- Hannah More

topic: Envy, Spirit, Cold, Slowness

Any architectural project we do takes at least four or five years, so increasingly there is a discrepancy between the acceleration of culture and the continuing slowness of architecture.

- Rem Koolhaas

topic: Years, Culture, Four, Acceleration, Discrepancies

There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting.

- Milan Kundera

topic: Memories, Secret, Forget, Slowness

There is a slowness in affairs which ripens them, and a slowness which rots them.

- Philibert Joseph Roux

topic: Patience, Affair, Slowness

Never assume that the person you are dealing with is weaker or less important than you are. Some people are slow to take offense, which may make you misjudge the thickness of their skin, and fail to worry about insulting them. But should you offend their honor and their pride, they will overwhelm you with a violence that seems sudden and extreme given their slowness to anger. If you want to turn people down, it is best to do so politely and respectfully, even if you feel their request is impudent or their offer ridiculous.

- Robert Greene

topic: Pride, People, Worry, Thickness, Never Assume

Look at these humans! How could such glacial slowness even be called life? An age could pass, virtual empires rise and fall in the time they took to open their mouths to utter some new inanity!

- Iain Banks

topic: Fall, Age, Looks, Slowness

The telephone is a great knee-jerk machine, but if you really want to tell someone how you feel, you need the slowness of the letter.  In a society where everything is fast, it's like going out in the country and looking up at the stars.

- Nick Bantock

topic: Country, Stars, Going Out, Slowness

All novelists must form their personal pacts in some way with the slowness of their craft. There are some who demand of themselves a 'rate of production,' for whom it's a matter of pride to complete, say, a book every year.

- Graham Swift

topic: Book, Pride, Years, Pact, Slowness

Today, luxury resides in everything that is becoming rare: communion with nature, silence, meditation, slowness rediscovered, the pleasure of living out of step with others, studious idleness, the enjoyment of the major works of the mind–these are all privileges that cannot be bought because they are literally priceless.

- Pascal Bruckner

topic: Nature, Luxury, Silence, Studious, Communion With Nature

Sin does not always drive us to drink; more often it drives us to exhaustion. Tiredness is equally as debilitating as drunkenness. Burnout is slang for an inner tiredness, a fatigue of our souls. Jesus came to forgive us all of our sins, including the sin of busyness. The problem with growth in the modern church is not the slowness of growth but the rushing of growth.

- Mike Yaconelli

source: Mike Yaconelli (2009). “Messy Spirituality”, p.64, Harper Collins

topic: Jesus, Rushing, Soul, Tiredness, Slang

There's a kind of slowness and inefficiency about rendering text in paint. We're in a world that's very fast, so things that slow you for a minute-give you pause-are good.

- Glenn Ligon

topic: Giving, World, Kind, Pauses, Slowness

Slowness to change usually means fear of the new.

- Phil Crosby

topic: Change, Fear, Mean, Culture Change, Slowness

Sir, the slowness of genius is hard to bear, but the slowness of mediocrity is insufferable.

- Henry Thomas Buckle

topic: Genius, Mediocrity, Chess, Slowness

The bookstore and the coffeehouse are natural allies; Neither has a time limit, slowness is encouraged.

- Lewis Buzbee

topic: Allies, Bookstores, Limits, Time Limit, Slowness

The quest for slowness, which begins as a simple rebellion against the impoverishment of taste in our lives, makes it possible to rediscover taste.

- Carlo Petrini

source: Carlo Petrini (2007). “Slow Food Nation: Why Our Food Should be Good, Clean, and Fair”, Rizzoli International Publications

topic: Food, Simple, Quests, Slow Food, Slowness

The wide difference between the two characters, the slowness and want of energy of the Spartans as contrasted with the dash and enterprise of their opponents, proved of the greatest service, especially to a maritime empire like Athens. Indeed this was shown by the Syracusans, who were most like the Athenians in character, and also most successful in combating them.

- Thucydides

source: Thucydides (1978). “The history of the Peloponnesian War: illustrated with maps from the 1820 Oxford edition”

topic: Character, Successful, Two, Maritime, Athenians

Like many students, I found the drudgery of real experiments and the slowness of progress a complete shock, and at my low points I contemplated other alternative careers including study of the philosophy or sociology of science.

- Paul Nurse

topic: Real, Philosophy, Careers, Sociological, Drudgery

In the conduct of almost every affair slowness and procrastination are hateful

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

topic: Procrastination, Hateful, Affair, Slowness

Maturity is the slowness in which a man believes.

- Baltasar Gracian

topic: Believe, Maturity, Men, Slowness

A child's slowness in any subject indicates a deficiency in his environment, educational or otherwise.

- Shinichi Suzuki

topic: Children, Educational, Environment, Slowness