Gradual Quotes

God works according to the law of gradual growth, so don't be discouraged if your progress seems slow, ~ Joyce Meyer

But the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favour, and reason by degrees submits to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness. ~ Samuel Johnson

The new concept of the child as equal and the new integration of children into adult life has helped bring about a gradual but certain erosion of these boundaries that once separated the world of children from the word of adults, boundaries that allowed adults to treat children differently than they treated other adults because they understood that children are different. ~ Marie Winn

My grandmother died from Alzheimer's, and it was a big shock. For the families left behind, it is not an easy closure. It's not a gradual fading. The person is losing so much of their humanity as they're dying. Losing your memories, you lose so much of who you are as a person. ~ Rosecrans Baldwin

This process of change since my stroke has been very gradual. It is going on all the time ... It is partly a physical transformation. The body itself is undergoing great changes. My problem before was that I was living largely from the head; and then after the stroke I got down into the heart. ~ Bede Griffiths

I don't like the term 'global warming,' because it's misleading. It implies something that's mainly about temperature, that's gradual, and that's uniform across the planet. And in fact, temperature is only one of the things that's changing. ~ John Holdren

Who can explain just how he became the person he is? It does not happen this day or that one. It is a gradual evolution that happens largely unheralded. He simply was who he now was. ~ David Anthony Durham

I'm glad that my journey has been gradual and slow, instead of instant, because that allowed me to grow and discover who I am before I was thrown into the world. I'm happy I didn't start acting professionally as a kid/teen; looking back, I don't think I was ready. ~ Jade Hassoune

The thing is, I fell in love with Luke, not Cary. Fell for the sheen and the sweat, the adrenalin of the hunt. Faltered, reeled, collapsed. There was no falling with Cary. Loving him was gradual and logical, inevitable as the path of a glacier. But Luke was a thunderclap, appearing out of a clear blue sky, soaking me to my skin, then moving on leaving everything looking different. And post-Luke nothing was the same. ~ Kylie Ladd

Lucifer is a master at gradual deception. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

These motions were such as to satisfy me, after frequently repeated observation, that they arose neither from currents in the fluid, nor from its gradual evaporation, but belonged to the particle itself.
[Summary of Brownian motion.] ~ Robert Brown

The sun has burned these rocks, and the great continuous ebb and flow of the tide has crumbled the boulders, battered them, worn them down to the smooth sun-scalded stones on the beach which rattle and shift underfoot as one walks over them. A serene sense of the slow inevitability of the gradual changes in the earth's crust comes over me; a consuming love, not of a god, but of the clean unbroken sense that the rocks, which are nameless, the waves which are nameless, the ragged grass, which is nameless, are all defined momentarily through the consciousness of the being who observes them. With the sun burning into rock and flesh, and the wind ruffling grass and hair, there is an awareness that the blind immense unconscious impersonal and neutral forces will endure, and that the fragile, miraculously knit organism which interprets them, endows them with meaning, will move about for a little, then falter, fail, and decompose at last into the anonomous soil, voiceless, faceless, without identity. ~ Sylvia Plath

Hearing loss very often is such a gradual phenomenon that the person is in denial. You really have to be patient with them in getting them to come forward to get help. ~ Marion Ross

How I changed my mind about women in leadership came through the gradual piling up of anomalies against a powerful but unsustainable paradigm. ~ Alan F. Johnson

Sometimes I think that the long-term work of reading is to discover one by one, the books that hold the scattered elements of our nature, after which the true consummation can begin. We undertake the gradual focused exploration, nuance by nuance, of their meanings, their implications; we follow out the strands that mysteriously connect the words of another with the unformulated stuff of the self. ~ Sven Birkerts

What happened to the world was gradual. I've forgotten what it actually was, but I have faint, fetal memories of what it was like. A smoldering dread that never really caught fire till there wasn't much left to burn. Each sequential step surprised us. Then one day we woke up, and everything was gone. ~ Isaac Marion

The great events of history are often due to secular changes in the growth of population and other fundamental economic causes, which, escaping by their gradual character the notice of contemporary observers, are attributed to the follies of statesmen or the fanaticism of atheists . ~ John Maynard Keynes

We are like sailors who on the open sea must reconstruct their ship but are never able to start afresh from the bottom. Where a beam is taken away a new one must at once be put there, and for this the rest of the ship is used as support. In this way, by using the old beams and driftwood the ship can be shaped entirely anew, but only by gradual reconstruction. ~ Otto Neurath

For the believer, participating in ritual activity is a 're-enactment of profound truth,' that which makes one belong to a belief system drawing the believer and the community of believers near to God. Yet despite its central role, the essence of a religious belief cannot be grasped by simply observing ritual practice. Ritual can mark, identify and separate a community of believers, it can point to what is held most sacred in terms of rites and worship, but it can never quite capture faith, for faith transcends form and imagery. This is particularly true of Islam, where faith is presented a a gradual process from Islam (surrender) to iman (faith) to the final state of ihsan (doing good). Belief in God is a deeper state of awareness, of conviction and of humility, all of which ultimately lie beyond ritual. ~ Mona Siddiqui

Father had notions about manhood suffrage, public schools, the education and the elevation of the masses, and the gradual emancipation of the slaves, that did not suit the uncompromising views of people in places like Richmond. ~ John Sergeant Wise

I write constantly, trying to avoid the dull pain of gradual loss, trying not to think about the fact that I am leaving soon. ~ Marya Hornbacher

Tempered, gradual animation, the methodical restrain of sensations and energies, the equilibrium of sickness and health in each creature
this is nature's essence, its immutable law, this is what it's based on and what it adheres to. ~ Ivan Turgenev

Hence the same instant which killed the animals froze the country where they lived. This event was sudden, instantaneous, without any gradual development. ~ Georges Cuvier

It is the popular misconception of marriage as a mere social convention or quaint tradition invented by the brain of man which has led to the denigrating of this holy relation, the multiplication of unspeakable immorality, the common unrest between husbands and wives, and the gradual disintegration of society and civilization. For if marriage exists merely by human authority then men and women may do with it or conduct themselves in it as they please. They may redefine it, or they may abandon it altogether. But if marriage is a divine institution, then it is governed by a higher authority. It becomes, then, a matter of obedience, and the conduct of husbands and wives within marriage is a conduct for which they must give their account to God. The original institution of marriage is therefore basic to our understanding of marriage, our estimation of marriage, and our right behavior in marriage. ~ Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

It's difficult to know when to set boundaries around your health at work because the decline is so gradual. Allowing stress to build up, losing sleep, and sitting all day without exercising all add up. ~ Travis Bradberry

As we pass one step, and as we recognize it as being behind us, the next one already rises up before us. By the time we learn everything, we slowly come to understand it. And while you come to understand everything gradually, you don't remain idle at any moment: you are already attending to your new business; you live, you act, you move, you fulfill the new requirements of every new step of development. If, on the other hand, there were no schedule, no gradual enlightenment, if all the knowledge descended on you at once right there in one spot, then it's possible neither your brains nor your heart could bear it. ~ Imre Kertesz

We all have to die a bit every now and then and usually it's so gradual that we end up more alive than ever. Infinitely old and infinitely alive. ~ Roberto Bolano

Doth not this Aethereal Medium in passing out of Water, Glass, Crystal, and other compact and dense Bodies into empty Spaces, grow denser and denser by degrees, and by that means refract the Rays of Light not in a point, but by bending them gradually in curve Lines? And doth not the gradual condensation of this Medium extend to some distance from the Bodies, and thereby cause the Inflexions of the Rays of Light, which pass by the edges of dense Bodies, at some distance from the Bodies? ~ Isaac Newton

Often,our immediate reaction to a sudden crisis help us save ourselves. Our response to gradual crises that creep up upon us, on the other hand,may be so adaptive as to ultimately lead to self-destruction. ~ Amish Tripathi

Through systematic meditation one can awaken the third eye and touch the cosmic awareness. Sushumna nadi is the subtle pathway in the spinal cord which passes through the main psychic centers. The awakening of these centers means a gradual expansion of awareness, until it reaches the cosmic awareness. Each center has its own beauty and gracefulness. Through generations of ignorance and unconsciousness, this channel of awareness becomes obscured and hidden. Meditation is to become aware about this internal life energy. Meditation is the procedure to rearrange, harmonize, activate, and integrate the individual life energy with the cosmic life energy. ~ Amit Ray

Although the Irish language is connected with the many recollections that twine around the hearts of Irishmen, yet the superior utility of the English tongue, as the medium of all modern communication, is so great that I can witness without a sigh the gradual decline of the Irish language. ~ Daniel O'Connell

The world, my friend Govinda, is not imperfect or confined at a point somewhere along a gradual pathway toward perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment. ~ Hermann Hesse

In the scale of life there is a gradual decline in physical variability, as the organism has gathered into itself resources for meeting the exigencies of changing external conditions; and that while in the mindless and motionless plant these resources are at a minimum, their maximum is reached in the mind of man, which, at length, rises to a level with the total order and powers of nature, and in its scientific comprehension of nature is a summary, an epitome of the world. ~ Chauncey Wright

My firm conviction is that if wide-spread Eugenic reforms are not adopted during the next hundred years or so, our Western Civilization is inevitably destined to such a slow and gradual decay as that which has been experienced in the past by every great ancient civilization. The size and the importance of the United States throws on you a special responsibility in your endeavours to safeguard the future of our race. Those who are attending your Congress will be aiding in this endeavour, and though you will gain no thanks from your own generation, posterity will, I believe, learn to realize the great dept it owes to all the workers in this field. ~ Leonard Darwin

We find upon all occasions, the early Christian writers speak of the Father as superior to the Son, and in general they give him the title of God , as distinguished from the Son; and sometimes they expressly call him, exclusively of the Son, the only true God ; a phraseology which does not at all accord with the idea of the perfect equality of all the persons in the Trinity. But it might well be expected, that the advances to the present doctrine of the Trinity should be gradual and slow. It was, indeed, some centuries before it was completely formed. ~ Joseph Priestley

The path of Tao is not that of sudden enlightenment. It is not like Zen. Zen is sudden enlightenment, Tao is gradual growth. ~ Osho

Their growing up amounted, therefore, to a gradual dimming of the light at her bedroom door, as if they took some radiance with them as they moved away from her. She should have planned for it better, she sometimes thought. She should have made a few friends or joined a club. But she wasn't the type. It wouldn't have consoled her. ~ Anne Tyler

Some deaths were long, the decay so gradual the rotted end was nothing more than a sigh disappearing in the wind.
Others were quick, the abrupt cut of a life in mid-phrase leaving unanswered questions lingering like an unresolved harmony. ~ Emma Raveling

It was like dawn, and then dusk cascading over the Himalayas. First, the gradual brightening over snow and contour, then the shining, sparkling sun mirrored; and then as the moment of joy passed – the lingering colour-changing light; reluctant to leave. That faint, bittersweet almost-light, and then indigo outlines and inky black. ~ Radhika Mukherjee

The history of mankind before his birth must be viewed as a preparation for his coming, and the history after his birth as a gradual diffusion of his spirit and progress of his kingdom. ~ Philip Schaff

It is thought that the changeover from hunter to farmer was a slow, gradual process. ~ Stephen Gardiner

The doctrine of the sacredness of the soul sounds vaguely uplifting, but in fact is highly malignant. It discounts life on earth as just a temporary phase that people pass through, indeed, an infinitesimal fraction of their existence ... the gradual replacement of lives for souls as the locus of moral value was helped along by the ascendency of skepticism and reason ~ Steven Pinker

Trace sighed, braced the worktable. "I said, get out."

Frozen with fear and anger, I stared at the floor.

"No."

"No?"

I elevated my chin a fraction. "That's right…no."
He twisted around. His expression made a gradual shift from vengeful to predatory. Our eyes battled in silence, then, like a prowling lion, he advanced, and I, his prey, retreated until I'd backed into a wall. When his shadow engulfed me, I had to tilt my head all the way back to stare up at him. The ice had thawed in his eyes, leaving twin pools of lava. ~ Tanya Holmes

The discovery in art is often gradual, a process of minor discoveries riddled with uncertainties and the potential for making that which is discovered vanish before your eyes, like a mirage. ~ Geoff Dyer

A half-century later, Mark Twain would say that the gold rush drastically changed the American character, ending the tradition of patient apprenticeships, the gradual mastery of self, talent, and money. Gold created the get-rich-quick mentality that has been with us ever since, most recently during the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. ~ Pete Hamill

When a liberal professor takes enormous intellectual liberties by openly promoting an ideological agenda to his students, the cry of academic freedom rings across the quads. But when a conservative professor is punished for publishing an article in a politically incorrect journal, there is no defense of intellectual diversity. What is billed as academic neutrality turns out to be a smoke screen for the relativistic liberal agenda.

Today's relativists could not have gotten away with their double standards in a culture that prized truth. But a gradual, sustained assault on truth has been carried out through the soft underbelly of Western culture: the arts. In film, music, and television, the themes of sensual pleasure and individual choice have drowned out the tried-and-true virtues of faith, family, self-sacrifice, duty, honor, patriotism, and fidelity in marriage. Cultural mechanics have wielded their tools to dull the public's sense of reasonable limits. In an Age of Consent, the silly and the profound are becoming indistinguishable. ~ Gary L. Bauer

When we learn to attribute meaning to the events in our lives, we connect with our Higher Purpose, Higher Wisdom, or Source; we become Master of the Self. A gradual process, this is often tied to loss and to love. ~ Susan Barbara Apollon

It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one
the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts. ~ C.S. Lewis

But everything has been so gradual that it's sort of all come from, just hard work and basically being at it. ~ Kim Gordon

As is well known the principle of virtual velocities transforms all statics into a mathematical assignment, and by D'Alembert's principle for dynamics, the latter is again reduced to statics. Although it is is very much in order that in gradual training of science and in the instruction of the individual the easier precedes the more difficult, the simple precedes the more complicated, the special precedes the general, yet the min, once it has arrived at the higher standpoint, demands the reverse process whereby all statics appears only as a very special case of mechanics. ~ Carl Friedrich Gauss

It was a slow fade from belief to disbelief, one that was so gradual she hardly realized it was happening. ~ Christy Barritt

I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations. ~ James Madison

Nature's ultimate goal is to foster the growth of the individual from absolute dependence to independence - or, more exactly, to the interdependence of mature adults living in community. Development is a process of moving from complete external regulation to self-regulation, as far as our genetic programming allows. Well-self-regulated people are the most capable of interacting fruitfully with others in a community and of nurturing children who will also grow into self-regulated adults. Anything that interferes with that natural agenda threatens the organism's chances for long-term survival.

Almost from the beginning of life we see a tension between the complementary needs for security and for autonomy. Development requires a gradual and ageappropriate shift from security needs toward the drive for autonomy, from attachment to individuation. Neither is ever completely lost, and neither is meant to predominate at the expense of the other. With an increased capacity for self-regulation in adulthood comes also a heightened need for autonomy - for the freedom to make genuine choices. Whatever undermines autonomy will be experienced as a source of stress. Stress is magnified whenever the power to respond effectively to the social or physical environment is lacking or when the tested animal or human being feels helpless, without meaningful choices - in other words, when autonomy is undermined.

Autonomy, however, needs to be exercised in a way that does ~ Gabor Mate

I wondered if I was just the sum of my brain scan, little dots clustered in my frontal lobe. Is that where the poems came from? The desire to destroy myself? This last depression had scared me. It had come on so quickly, not like the gradual woolgathering in my brain I had known before. ~ Betsy Lerner

There was no single moment when I thought, Aha! What a great idea! Rather there was a slow and gradual accumulation of numerous small ideas. ~ Diane Setterfield

Evolution is the gradual development and stratification of progressive series of wholes, stretching from the inorganic beginnings to the highest level of spiritual creation. ~ Jan Smuts

I am not afraid of the priests in the long-run. Scientific method is the white ant which will slowly but surely destroy their fortifications. And the importance of scientific method in modern practical life
always growing and increasing
is the guarantee for the gradual emancipation of the ignorant upper and lower classes, the former of whom especially are the strength of the priests. ~ Thomas Huxley

As often is the case with addictions, the fanciful notion of a gradual discontinuance only provided a comforting pretext for more sustained indulgence. ~ Ron Chernow

Savages have often been likened to children, and the comparison is not only correct but also highly instructive. Many naturalists consider that the early condition of the individual indicates that of the race,-that the best test of the affinities of a species are the stages through which it passes. So also it is in the case of man; the life of each individual is an epitome of the history of the race, and the gradual development of the child illustrates that of the species. ~ John Lubbock

Getting calcium from plants might seem a little strange in a society that is so focused on dairy foods as a source of calcium, but some research suggests that even omnivores get as much as 40 percent of their calcium from plant foods. While a strong dairy lobby has convinced many consumers that milk and other dairy foods are essential for a healthy diet, the ability to drink milk into adulthood is not the norm throughout the world. Normal development throughout most of the world involves a gradual loss of the enzyme needed to digest milk sugar after children are weaned from breast milk. We refer to the lack of this enzyme as "lactose intolerance." But that's definitely a western bias since this "intolerance" is not a lack or an abnormality; it's part of normal human development in most people. ~ Jack Norris

When I think of my father, I think of my heart breaking in stages. A dull pain, then piercing. Electric. Still, somehow, gradual. ~ T Kira Madden

There are moments in a creative life when you understand why you do it. Those moments might last a few seconds or maybe, for some people, years. But whatever the actual time that passes, they still feel like a single moment. Fragile in the way a moment is, liable to be shattered by a breath, set apart from all the other passing time, distinct.
But then it changes. And what seemed unimaginably exhilarating gets bogged down, even when a project is going well. It is a gradual, inevitable sobering during which your right to be passive diminishes. What the ether has given you, now in fact belongs to you. And then it is work. Then it is hard. ~ Robin Black

Since the mind, which was meant to be reasonable and intelligent, has, by dark and inveterate vices, become too weak to adhere joyously to His unchangeable light (or even to bear it) until, by gradual renewal and healing, it is made fit for such happiness, its first need was to be instructed by faith and purified. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

A man is the history of his breaths and thoughts, acts, atoms and wounds, love indifference and dislike, also of his race and nation, the soil that fed him and his forbears, the stones and sands of his familiar places, long-silenced battles and struggles of conscience, of the smiles of girls and the slow utterance of old women, of accidents and the gradual action of inexorable law, of all this and something else, too, a single flame which in every way obeys the laws that pertain to Fire itself, and yet is lit and put out from one moment to the next, and can never be relumed in the whole waste of time to come. ~ A.S. Byatt

Insanity is a gradual process - don't rush it. ~ Douglas Adams

The only result of our present system - unless we reverse the drift - must be the gradual extension of the fascist sector and the gradual disappearance of the system of free enterprise under a free representative government. ~ John T. Flynn

Optimal Tower is a skyscraper unlike its predecessors, rising skyward as an artistic endeavor, spirited and soulful, with a steel and glass manifestation reminiscent of Claude Monet's water lilies, and instantly dismissive of the gray, steel and mortar structures of the past. The architects and builders have pilfered Monet's color pallet and painted this vertical stretch of the Cavanaugh skyline with the delicate greens and blues and grays and yellows of Giverny. Somehow, in the structure, the sensibility of an impressionist painting emerges as the muted colors are faded in splotches and sunlit in others, with gradual transitions as subtle as the delicate brush strokes of the master himself. Steel beams crisscross haphazardly throughout the towering facade, which only reinforces its intrinsic impressionistic essence by emulating the natural randomness of the lily pond. Atop the structure, a simple fifty foot spire seems to rein in the freeform work beneath it as it merges the natural splendor into one straight pinnacle skyward. This one hundred and fifteen story building reaches twenty-five stories above its surroundings, creating a gloriously artful and peaked skyline not unlike the Alps in France that will be instantly recognizable the world over and cause onlookers to gasp and utter, "C'est Magnifique. ~ Michael Bowe

My aunt must have been perfectly well aware that she would not see Swann again, that she would never leave her own house any more, but this ultimate seclusion seemed to be accepted by her with all the more readiness for the very reason which, to our minds, ought to have made it more unbearable; namely, that such a seclusion was forced upon her by the gradual and steady diminution in her strength which she was able to measure daily, which, by making every action, every movement 'tiring' to her if not actually painful, gave to inaction, isolation and silence the blessed, strengthening and refreshing charm of repose. ~ Marcel Proust

Climate Change is caused by human emissions; it moves faster or slower partly in response to our rate of emissions, but also because of natural "tipping points" that make the planet take things in its own hands. So, for example, during one of the last great climactic shifts, the planet may have gone from being fairly warm to an ice age in less than ten years; and then the ice age may have ended in a single season! These things are very hard to model, but projections for the future that imagine Climate Change will occur in a gradual and orderly fashion are probably wrong. ~ Sharon Astyk

Gradual and moderate warming brings benefits as well as incurring costs. These benefits and costs will not, of course, be felt uniformly throughout the world; the colder regions of the world will be more affected by the benefits, and the hotter regions by the costs. ~ Nigel Lawson

August was almost over. The first cool touch of autumn moved slowly through the town and there was a softening and the first gradual burning fever of color in every tree, a faint flush and coloring in the hills, and the color of lions in the wheat fields. Now the pattern of days was familiar and repeated like a penman beautifully inscribing again and again, in practice, a series of it's and w's and m's, day after day the line repeated in delicate rills. ~ Ray Bradbury

With the e-reader, the whole book was on
the same virtual page. One could not feel the depth of the pages on the left side increase as those of the right side diminished, the
gradual progression from beginning to middle to end, the sense of where one stood in the journey of the story. ~ Daniel Seltzer

The question is: How do we reduce spending from 25% of GDP, which is where Obama put us? The focus is on total government spending. Can we bring it down, in a reasonable and politically acceptable way? That's what the Paul Ryan plan does. It puts us on a gradual reform path to reducing the size of government. ~ Grover Norquist

I thought my body was going to change so quickly with pregnancy that I'd freak out. But it was really gradual. ~ Jenna Dewan

It has always seemed to me that the only painless death must be that which takes the intelligence by violent surprise and from the rear so to speak since if death be anything at all beyond a brief and peculiar emotional state of the bereaved it must be a brief and likewise peculiar state of the subject as well and if aught can be more painful to any intelligence above that of a child or an idiot than a slow and gradual confronting with that which over a long period of bewilderment and dread it has been taught to regard as an irrevocable and unplumbable finality, I do not know it. ~ William Faulkner

The plausible outcomes range from the gradual and benign to the more precipitous and damaging. ~ Timothy Geithner

Isolation is a gradual form of torture. ~ Pete Kahle

The beneficial effect of state intervention, especially in the form of legislation, is direct, immediate, and so to speak, visible, while its evil effects are gradual and indirect and lay out of sight ... Hence the majority of mankind must almost of necessity look with undue favor upon governmental intervention. ~ A. V. Dicey

Our alleged facts might be true in all kinds of ways without contradicting any truth already known. I will dwell now on only one possible line of explanation, not that I see any way of elucidating all the new phenomena I regard as genuine, but because it seems probable I may shed a light on some of those phenomena. All the phenomena of the universe are presumably in some way continuous; and certain facts, plucked as it were from the very heart of nature , are likely to be of use in our gradual discovery of facts which lie deeper still. ~ William Crookes

When we enter the spiritual realm we are always focused on those big, life altering miracles. Here is a truth that isn't sold to us. Change is a long, gradual process. Yes, you can make things happen immediately, but quite often, amazing things are happening that you can't see. ~ Ruben Papian

Fake tan is really difficult to get right. When I was younger, I'd always do it wrong. I'd leave it on and forget to wash it off. So I embrace being pale. I like getting a tan, but I also think that if you're going to do it, it has to be gradual. I just work the pale thing now. ~ Georgia Jagger

The real key to wealth is the gradual accumulation, it's something Jesus talked about I call the law of use and you couple with the exponential curve. ~ Pat Robertson

As a man has no right to kill one of his children if it is diseased or insane, so a man who has made the gradual and conscious expression of his personality in literature the aim of his life, has no right to suppress himself any carefully considered work which seemed good enough when it was written. Suppression, if it is deserved, will come rapidly enough from the same causes that suppress the unworthy members of a man's family. ~ John Millington Synge

I had eventually come to understand that friendship was a delicate, gradual process that mustn't be rushed or seized upon but allowed and encouraged to take its course over time. I pictured it as a butterfly, simultaneously beautiful and fragile, that once afloat belonged to the air and any attempt to grab at it would only destroy it. ~ Daniel Tammet

Seen from the outside, death was a very gradual process of cell decomposition. It took time. Death didn't happen in an instant. ~ Project Itoh

I am very happy, Jane; and when you hear that I am dead, you must be sure and not grieve: there is nothing to grieve about. We all must die one day, and the illness which is removing me is not painful; it is gentle and gradual: my mind is at rest. I leave no one to regret me much: I have only a father; and he is lately married, and will not miss me. By dying young, I shall escape great sufferings. I had not qualities or talents to make my way very well in the world: I should have been continually at fault. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Every moment of mindfulness means the gradual destruction of latent defilements. It is somewhat like cutting away a piece of wood with a small axe, every stroke helping to get rid of the unwanted fragments of wood. ~ Mahasi Sayadaw

However gradual the course of history, there must always be the day, even an hour and minute, when some significant action is performed for the first or last time. ~ Peter Quennell

Is not the history of real civilization the slow and gradual emancipation of the intellect, of the judgment, from the mastery of passion? Is not that man civilized whose reason sits the crowned monarch of his brain - whose passions are his servants? ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

Progress can be slow and gradual. Continue putting in effort with patience, enthusiasm and faith. ~ Mata Amritanandamayi

Media turned against Israel was a gradual process. And it has gotten worse over the years. I think the main development was the 1982 Lebanon War. ~ Manfred Gerstenfeld

To embrace the belief that man is the accidental product of a random and otherwise genetically and biologically impossible Darwinian gradual evolution allegedly monitored by a quasi-fictitious natural selection, a process that supposedly started with an amoeba nobody knows how it arrived on Earth that somehow became a fish with stumps for legs that turned crocodile, a creature that following successive transmutations "evolved" into an ape that ended up as Leonardo Da Vinci is an attitude that comes in conflict with the scientific method of research and it certainly violates its standard principles. ~ Paul Greene

... the same kind of answers the stars are always trying to give us, she thought, when we look up and up at them. So high above, speaking in gradual whispers about time, about their own flaming hearts and the endless cold that lies between ... ~ Eileen Wilks

We aren't born with a ready-made conscience. As we pass through life, we hurt people and people hurt us, we act compassionately and others show compassion to us. If we pay attention, our moral sensitivity sharpens, and these experiences become a source of valuable ethical knowledge about what is good, what is right and who I really am.
Humanism thus sees life as a gradual process of inner change, leading from ignorance to enlightenment by means of experiences. The highest aim of humanist life is to fully develop your knowledge through a large variety of intellectual, emotional and physical experiences. In the early nineteenth century, Wilhelm von Humboldt – one of the chief architects of the modern education system – said that the aim of existence is 'a distillation of the widest possible experience of life into wisdom'. He also wrote that 'there is only one summit in life – to have taken the measure in feeling of everything human'. This could well be the humanist motto. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

The wooing of those days was prompt and practical. There was no time for the gradual approaches of an idler and more conventional age. It is related of one Stout, one of the legendary Nimrods of Illinois, who was well and frequently married, that he had one unfailing formula of courtship. He always promised the ladies whose hearts he was besieging that "they should live in the timber where they could pick up their own firewood. ~ John Hay

The external view [of agency] forces itself on us at the same time that we resist it. One way this occurs is through the gradual erosion of what we do by the subtraction of what happens. ~ Thomas Nagel

An old Russian folk song is like water held back by a dam. It looks as if it were still and were no longer flowing, but in its depths it is ceaselessly rushing through the sluice gates and the stillness of its surface is deceptive. By every possible means, by repetitions and similes, the song slows down the gradual unfolding of its theme. Then at some point it suddenly reveals itself and astounds us. That is how the song's sorrowing spirit comes to expression. The song is an insane attempt to stop time by means of its words. ~ Boris Pasternak

I've never really talked about this, but I would go days without eating. Or maybe I'd have some fruit and then go to the gym for three hours. I knew I had a problem ... It was a gradual process but I changed myself. ~ Lucy Hale

Learning is the gradual replacement of fantasy with fact. ~ Gifford Pinchot

It's the revelatory aspect, the gradual unfurling of another person, the sense of exploration and discovery that comes from passing a day in the company of a stranger because a stranger cannot judge fully. They're only privy to what another gives them, because the more knowledge one has the less negative space there is - the greater the risk of becoming bland and stale, of being forever trapped inside the box of one's self and never being able to escape it without another wondering what's wrong, wondering why this being they know so well is acting out of character. ~ Adam Gallari