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I am overcome by my own amazing sloth...Can you please forgive me and believe that it is really because I want to do something well that I don't do it at all?
Elizabeth Bishop
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote reflects the struggle of wanting to achieve perfection, which can lead to inaction.

Elizabeth Bishop expresses a profound truth about human nature: the desire for excellence can sometimes paralyze us, preventing action altogether. This sentiment of being 'overcome by sloth' describes how the fear of not meeting one's own high standards can lead to procrastination and self-blame, ultimately serving as a plea for understanding from others.

Themes

ProcrastinationPerfectionismActionFearSelf-Doubt

In practice

Example use cases

Using this quote in a speech about overcoming challenges in professional settings.

More from Elizabeth Bishop

Close, close all night the lovers keep. They turn together in their sleep, Close as two pages in a book that read each other in the dark. Each knows all the other knows, learned by heart from head to toes.
Elizabeth BishopRead
It was cold and windy, scarcely the day to take a walk on that long beach Everything was withdrawn as far as possible, indrawn: the tide far out, the ocean shrunken, seabirds in ones or twos. The rackety, icy, offshore wind numbed our faces on one side; disrupted the formation of a lone flight of Canada geese; and blew back the low, inaudible rollers in upright, steely mist.
Elizabeth BishopRead
Dreams were the worst. Of course I dreamed of food and love, but they were pleasant rather than otherwise. But then I'd dream of things like slitting a baby's throat, mistaking it for a baby goat. I'd have nightmares of other islands stretching away from mine, infinities of islands, islands spawning islands, like frogs' eggs turning into polliwogs of islands, knowing that I had to live on each and every one, eventually, for ages, registering their flora, their fauna, their geography.
Elizabeth BishopRead
Open the book. (The gilt rubs off the edges of the pages and pollinates the fingertips.)
Elizabeth BishopRead
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be: dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free.
Elizabeth BishopRead
What one seems to want in art, in experiencing it, is the same thing that is necessary for its creation, a self-forgetful, perfectly useless concentration.
Elizabeth BishopRead

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