Top 100 Downward Quotes
#1. Like the curved pipe of a fountain, your arching boughs
drive the sap
downward and up again: and almost without awakening
it bursts out of sleep, into its sweetest achievement.
Like the god stepping into the swan.
Rainer Maria Rilke
#2. With shorter clubs, your ball position should be just back of middle, to really promote hitting the ball first on a downward strike.
Ernie Els
#3. After joining as a youth trainee at 16 from school, in my first two or three years the club was on a financial downward spiral and there was none of the new sparkling kit and the sparkling conditions that the kids get now.
Colin Cooper
#4. She smiled, and her eyes started to drift downward.
"Cather ... "
Back up to his eyes.
"You know that I'm falling in love with you, right?
Rainbow Rowell
#5. Aristotle's scala naturae, which runs from God, the angels, and humans at the top, downward to other mammals, birds, fish, insects, and mollusks at the bottom.
Frans De Waal
#6. The beauteous eyes of the spring's fair night With comfort are downward gazing.
Heinrich Heine
#8. Who knows not Circe, The daughter of the Sun , whose charmed cup Whoever tasted, lost his upright shape, And downward fell into a groveling swine?
John Milton
#9. Your mind simply can't focus forward and downward all at the same time.
Daryn Kagan
#10. Q. Is it possible to build a jetpack using downward-firing machine guns? - Rob B A. I WAS SORT OF surprised to find that the answer was yes! But to really do it right, you'll want to talk to the Russians.
Randall Munroe
#11. Water indeed will flow indifferently to the east or west, but will it flow indifferently up or down? The tendency of our nature to good is like the tendency of water to flow downwards. There are none but have this tendency to good, just as all water flows downward.
Mencius
#12. She fears him, and will always ask
What fated her to choose him;
She meets in his engaging mask
All reasons to refuse him;
But what she meets and what she fears
Are less than are the downward years
Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs
Of age, were she to lose him.
Edwin Arlington Robinson
#13. He was the last thread suspending me in the light. Without him, I can feel myself spiraling downward, falling to a place where I can no longer pull myself back up.
Marie Lu
#14. He whom you see-along the downward arc- was William, and the land that mourns his death, for living Charles and Frederick, now laments; now he has learned how Heaven loves the just ruler, and he would show this outwardly as well, so radiantly visible.
Dante Alighieri
#15. Extraordinary, how single lives just fold into the whole mess, over and over again, all caught up in the greater swirl. Spinning round and round, and ever downward, it seems. Ever downward. Fools, all of us, to think we can swim clear of that current.
Steven Erikson
#16. God longs for men to be saved. God is at work to get men to stop their downward plunge in sin.
Billy Graham
#17. It is so easy to "calibrate" -that is, given the pressures on a smaller company to redefine in less ambitious terms- that which you are in business to accomplish. The moment this happens the downward spiral begins.
Kevin Allen
#18. The way of the Christian leader is not the way of upward mobility in which our world has invested so much, but the way of downward mobility ending on the cross.
Henri J.M. Nouwen
#19. That we are bound to the earth does not mean that we cannot grow; on the contrary it is the sine qua non of growth. No noble, well-grown tree ever disowned its dark roots, for it grows not only upward but downward as well.
C. G. Jung
#20. If there is a less likely sight on this earth than Clint Dempsey, the Texas trailer-park kid, doing downward-facing dog poses, or the stalwart Michael Bradley deep breathing through a tree pose, I have yet to see it.
Tim Howard
#21. It is relatively easy to serve those above us - even the world expects this - but Jesus served downward.
Jerry Bridges
#22. I hated him for not being depressed. He seemed a fool
everyone who didn't feel like me was a fool. I alone knew the truth about life, knew that it was all a miserable downward spiral that you could either admit to or ignore, but sooner or later we were all going to die.
Elizabeth Wurtzel
#23. Failing once in awhile is inevitable. The question is which way are we falling most of the time. Are we falling Backward or Forward, Downward or Forward?
Assegid Habtewold
#24. When people retire, their income drops much more sharply than their consumption. As a result, they stop saving and start drawing down the assets they've acquired during their high-saving years. That could start to put upward pressure on interest rates and downward pressure on stock prices.
Greg Ip
#25. I think the classical music is on a dangerous downward slope, because it's not seeking strong enough resonance with its society.
Laurence Equilbey
#26. Seven deadly sins,
seven ways to win,
seven holy paths to hell,
and your trip begins
Seven downward slopes
seven bloodied hopes
seven are your burning fires,
seven your desires ...
Iron Maiden
#27. Fear stifles our thinking and actions. It creates indecisiveness that results in stagnation. I have known talented people who procrastinate indefinitely rather than risk failure. Lost opportunities cause erosion of confidence, and the downward spiral begins.
Charles F. Stanley
#28. A woman drew her long black hair out tight, And fiddled whisper music on those strings, And bats with baby faces in the violet light Whistled, and beat their wings, And crawled head downward down a blackened wall.
T. S. Eliot
#29. At first we cannot see beyond the path that leads downward to dark and hateful things but no light or beauty will ever come from the man who cannot bear this sight. Light is always born of darkness, and the sun never yet stood still in heaven to satisfy man's longing or to still his fears.
C. G. Jung
#30. The ways by which you get money almost without exception lead downward
Henry David Thoreau
#31. Thus, while the mute creation downward bend Their sight, and to their earthly mother ten, Man looks aloft; and with erected eyes Beholds his own hereditary skies.
John Dryden
#32. I have an addictive personality. Boarding school merely sent me more quickly on the downward spiral that dominated my childhood.
Marcus Brigstocke
#33. Let's stop this American downward spiral.
Rick Perry
#34. It is extremely urgent to try and adapt our thoughts realistically to a world which has no fixed general direction either upward or downward, but is likely to vary largely according to what we do.
Mary Midgley
#35. As we reach the crest of life and look at the path before us, we apprehend that the path no longer ascends but slopes downward toward decline and diminishment. From that point on, concerns about death are never far from mind.
Irvin D. Yalom
#36. The topmost parts of the source file should provide the high-level concepts and algorithms. Detail should increase as we move downward, until at the end we find the lowest level functions and details in the source file.
Robert C. Martin
#37. Being against other people's policies eventually puts you in a downward spiral. It's fine to be principled and oppose views that you don't agree with, but you also have to have an alternative.
Jeb Bush
#38. The defeated gladiator fought reasonably well, and at the end, with a sword to his throat, raised his hand to appeal for mercy. Tavius made the downward gesture with his thumb that indicated the sword was to be lowered. So both fighters survived. The second fight
Phyllis T. Smith
#39. I think my music's more disturbing than Tupac's - or at least I thought some of the themes of 'The Downward Spiral' were more disturbing on a deeper level - you know, issues about suicide and hating yourself and God and people and everything else.
Trent Reznor
#40. Romantic love is the kite that catches the wind and tenaciously heads for the sky;
wisdom is the string that tugs downward, holding it back
Joshua Harris
#41. He wondered if he was simply starting to crumble under the weight of all the responsibility and was now on a downward trajectory to a point where only fear remained. He
Henning Mankell
#42. Success is about more than simple resilience. It's about using that downward momentum to propel ourselves in the opposite direction. It's about capitalizing on setbacks and adversity to become even happier, even more motivated, and even more successful. It's not falling down, it's falling up.
Shawn Achor
#43. In the second and third debates the jacket has a generally padded shape across a large part of the entire back which tapers inward toward the spine in a downward direction.
Robert Nelson
#44. The sun was about to set, he told us in a gravelly voice. He swept his hands in a downward motion, apparently to demonstrate how a sunset worked
Richelle Mead
#45. They sat in companionable silence for a few moments after that, while the sun settled into its downward arc in the west and long shadows began to creep across the face of the city.
Scott Lynch
#46. Mankind had a chance to reach the stars - but all they did was use that abilty to cast down fire upon one another. Eyes always downward, never toward the lights above
Brandon Sanderson
#47. In a world of upward mobility, choose downward servility.
Max Lucado
#48. HARV, can you help at all here?" I asked, spinning downward.
"I am writing your obituary. Well, not so much writing it as updating it," HARV told me.
If I lived, I was going to kill HARV.
John Zakour
#49. After Hurricane Katrina, over New Orleans, my helicopter crashed and the pilot and I were only saved because we fell on the roof of a flooded house that absorbed the shock. When the helicopter was spiraling downward out of control, I didn't expect to survive at all.
Yann Arthus-Bertrand
#50. The way by which you may get money almost without exception leads downward.
Henry David Thoreau
#51. 'Downward Spiral' felt like I had an unending bottomless pit of rage and self-loathing inside me and I had to somehow challenge something or I'd explode. I thought I could get through by putting everything into my music, standing in front of an audience and screaming emotions at them from my guts.
Trent Reznor
#52. Love, it has been said, flows downward. The love of parents for their children has always been far more powerful than that of children for their parents; and who among the sons of men ever loved God with a thousandth part of the love which God has manifested to us?
Augustus Hare
#53. Was there ever a nation on God's fair earth civilized from the bottom upward? Never; it is, ever was, and ever will be from the top downward that culture filters. The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving up to their vantage ground.
W.E.B. Du Bois
#54. In his late quartets, Beethoven introduces an element that shouldn't be there, that should be left for meditation, though I love them. I can see that through them came Wagner and Mahler and Schoenberg and Berg. And then came Tracey Emin. And I can see it all as one downward path.
John Tavener
#56. It is best as one grows older to strip oneself of possessions, to shed oneself downward like a tree, to be almost wholly earth before one dies.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
#57. It screamed downward, splitting air and sky without effort. A target expanded in size, brought into focus by time and velocity. There was a moment before impact that was the last instant of things as they were. Then the visible world exploded.
Steven Galloway
#58. I find now, swallowing one teaspoon of pain, that it drops downward to the past where it mixes with last year's cupful and downward into a decade's quart and downward into a lifetime's ocean. I alternate treading water and deadman's float.
Anne Sexton
#60. There are other books in a man's library besides Ovid, and after dawdling ever so long at a woman's knee, one day he gets up and is free. We have all been there; we have all had the fever
the strongest and the smallest, from Samson, Hercules, Rinaldo, downward: but it burns out, and you get well.
William Makepeace Thackeray
#61. We must all wage an intense, lifelong battle against the constant downward pull. If we relax, the bugs and weeds of negativity will move into the garden and take away everything of value.
Jim Rohn
#62. From forty to fifty a man must move upward, or the natural falling off in the vigor of life will carry him rapidly downward.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
#63. A digital wall of masks stared back at him. His finger rolled the mouse in a slow downward scroll.
Okay, you bastard. Where are you?
Lisa Kessler
#64. It's very important for men to look downward, to the next generation.
James Hillman
#65. What about stakes in the heart?" I asked now.
He frowned, the center of his mouth pursed while its corners curled downward. "Anyone will die from a stake in the heart," he said. "And anyone will die if they're severely burned, including vampires.
Susan Hubbard
#66. While he was conscious of improving at every stroke, he did not feel that the other was asserting any superiority over him; and so, though more humble than at the most disastrous period of his downward voyage, he was getting into a better temper every minute.
Thomas Hughes
#67. In an extreme credit crunch, leveraged purchases of gold cause forced sales, because any price correction triggers margin calls. As a result, gold can be very volatile - upward and downward - at the peak of a crisis.
Nouriel Roubini
#68. The subjectivization of the universal in art brings the universal downward on one hand, while on the other it helps raise the individual toward the universal.
Piet Mondrian
#69. Achilles too staggered a moment. He felt his soul change colour. Blood pooled at his feet, and though he continued to stand upright and triumphant in the sun, his spirit set off on its own downward path and approached the boarders of an unknown region.
David Malouf
#70. When I entered politics, I took the only downward turn you could take from journalism.
Jim Hightower
#71. The Fall was ongoing, but its trajectory led ever downward. Sucked
Margaret Atwood
#72. To follow Christ requires a downward career track that does not depend on dollars or status. Instead, what matters is Christ.
Dillon Burroughs
#73. Most Americans are on a downward escalator. Median wage in the United States, adjusted for inflation, keeps on dropping.
Robert Reich
#74. Short term, the most important thing is to put people back to work ... If they're working, that means they're paying taxes, that means that they're buying goods and services - and the economy, instead of being on a downward spiral, starts back up on an upward spiral.
Barack Obama
#75. Barbara rearranged herself on the blanket, and the crowd howled a mass downward arpeggio when Enfield took the ball back. It's all right, it's okay, you're gonna work for us someday, rose the cheer from the Sheffield side.
Stephanie Clifford
#76. There is no 'slippery slope' toward loss of liberties, only a long staircase where each step downward must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders.
Alan K. Simpson
#77. It was pouring earlier, great sheets of rain, and now the clouds outside the window are crystal tipped like mountain peaks in the sky, rays emanating downward like an illustration in a children's bible.
Christina Baker Kline
#78. I was never class clown in school,' said Lint in 1971. 'But I did have one of those "downward mouths".
Steve Aylett
#79. After a long period in which the desired direction for inflation was always downward, the industrialized world's central banks must today try to avoid major changes in the inflation rate in either direction.
Ben Bernanke
#80. My sentiments for the American cause, from the Stamp Act downward, have never changed ... I am still of opinion that it is the cause of liberty and of human nature.
Christopher Gadsden
#81. Human nature is good, just as water seeks low ground. There is no man who is not good, just as there is no water that does not flow downward.
Mencius
#82. Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell >From heaven; for ev'n in heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy else enjoy'd In vision beatific.
John Milton
#83. O let me lead her gently o'er the brook,
Watch her half-smiling lips and downward look;
O let me for one moment touch her wrist;
Let me one moment to her breathing list;
And as she leaves me, may she often turn
Her fair eyes looking through her locks auburne.
John Keats
#84. The day is done, and the darkness Falls from the wings of Night, As a feather is wafted downward From an eagle in his flight.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#85. The humble soul is like the violet, which grows low, hangs the head downward, and hides itself with its own leaves.
Fredrika Bremer
#86. Aspiration lifts the life; groveling lowers it. When we are striving for excellence in everything we do the entire life grows and expands, but if we allow our standards to drop, there is a natural progression that follows, a tendency for a downward effort in all that we do thereafter.
Orison Swett Marden
#87. Most variables can show either an upward or downward trend, depending on the base year chosen.
Thomas Sowell
#88. Every one knows how the snow lies in the valleys of the Alps, forming a plain which slopes gradually downward towards the outlet Imagine such a valley ten miles across, with just such a sloping plain, not of snow but of earth.
Edward Burnett Tylor
#89. She was supposed to be my salvation, and though she wouldn't be my ruin, the loss was going to thrust my life right back to what started my downward spiral in the first place.
Kelly Moran
#90. I had a terrible manager once who described my career as 'spiraling downward.'
Rickie Lee Jones
#91. At the very top state institutions, like UCLA, Berkeley and the University of Texas, however, the trend of downward minority enrollment remains persistent and discouraging.
Adam Schiff
#92. Let me be one of the upward and outward lookers, not one of the downward and inward lookers.
Alfred Edersheim
#93. The point of conservatism is not that it prevents movement forward and upward, but that it prevents movement backward and downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state.
Vladimir Putin
#94. Fortunately, human forgetting follows a pattern. We forget exponentially. A graph of our likelihood of getting the correct answer on a quiz sweeps quickly downward over time and then levels off.
Gary Wolf
#95. He felt like a baked bean in a can, soaring through the air on a downward turn of a parabolic arc...
A. Ashley Straker
#96. The downward spiral of Dumbness in America is about to hit a new low.
Hunter S. Thompson
#97. I venture that those of us who are most serene when faced with the possibility of nothingness are the ones who've reached furthest to the downward and upward of their beings.
Francine Du Plessix Gray
#98. Corporate America cannot afford to remain silent or passive about the downward spiral we are undergoing. It cannot turn a blind eye to how difficult the experience of life is for so many of their customers.
Simon Mainwaring
#99. So whether you do your first downward dog at 14 or 44, it's not your history but your presence on your mat that counts.
K. Pattabhi Jois
#100. When Fortuna spins you downward, go out to a movie and get more out of life.
John Kennedy Toole
