There is always an inertia to be overcome in striking out a new line of conduct – not more in ourselves, it seems, than in circumscribing events, which appear as if leagued together to allow...

Sadness is the ambrosia of all art.

There are two kinds of discontented in this world, the discontented that works and the discontented that wrings its hands. The first gets what it wants and the second loses what it has. There is...

Call it not patience, Gaunt; it is despair:

In bed our yesterdays are too oppressive: if a man can only get up, though it be but to whistle or to smoke, he has a present which offers some resistance to the past—sensations which...

The inertia of the mind urges it to slide down the easy slope of imagination, rather than to climb the steep slope of introspection.

You know, the whole thing about perfectionism. The perfectionism is very dangerous. Because of course if your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything. Because doing anything results in…it’s actually kind of...

Doing nothing requires effort. Over time, that effort is greater than the effort necessary to improve, or move somewhere better. The trick is to redirect energy.

The principle of vis inertiae (…) seems to be identical in physics and metaphysics. It is not more true in the former, that a large body is with more difficulty set in motion than a...

If non-linear leaps in intelligence and ability are possible, why haven’t these effects been observed in our schools? I believe the answer lies in the profound inertia of human thought: when an entire society believes...

We know how ninety-nine percent of the universe works,” he told Carter shortly after they met, “and that’s the clockworks, that’s what we build with. But the other one percent makes the clockworks wind down....

The heights charm us, but the steps do not; with the mountain in our view we love to walk the plains.

This fall I think you’re riding for—it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole...

The more important question, of course, was what the new Lucy would do, and even though I was pretty sure the old Lucy wouldn’t be around much anymore, I was a little bit afraid the...

He saw something more in those eyes. The emotion wasn’t nakedly apparent, but Mr. Cawley was a professional at reading the subtleties of people. The elderly and wildly successful credit card magnate believed that certain...

Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.

Triviality is evil – triviality, that is, in the form of consciousness and mind that adapts itself to the world as it is, that obeys the principle of inertia. And this principle of inertia truly...

The Law of Inertia states that a body in motion will remain in motion, and a body at rest will remain at rest. In life, nothing will happen when no one will make a move

Most of us probably fall several times a day into a fit somewhat like this: The eyes are fixed on vacancy, the sounds of the world melt into a confused unity, the attention is dispersed...

The stillness and stasis of bed are the perfect opposite of travel: inertia is what I’ve come to consider the default mode, existentially and electronically speaking. Bed, its utter inactivity, offers a glimpse of eternity,...

The inertia of a jungle village is a dangerous thing. Before you know it your whole life has slipped by and you are still waiting there.

Nothing happens until something moves.

I will act now. I will act now. I will act now. Henceforth, I will repeat these words each hour, each day, everyday, until the words become as much a habit as my breathing, and...