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Desolation Quotes

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Desolation Quotes

“The appearance presented by the streets of London an hour before sunrise, on a summer's morning, is most striking even to the few whose unfortunate pursuits of pleasure, or scarcely less unfortunate pursuits of business, cause them to be well acquainted with the scene. There is an air of cold, solitary desolation about the noiseless streets which we are accustomed to see thronged at other times by a busy, eager crowd, and over the quiet, closely-shut buildings, which throughout the day are swarming with life and bustle, that is very impressive.”

WellsCausesHoursPleasureMorningAirStreetsBuildingColdSceneQuietSummerBusyCrowdsAppearanceLondonPursuitSolitaryUnfortunateSunriseAccustomedImpressiveDesolationBustleVery ImpressiveBefore Sunrise
Book:Sketches by Boz: Pseud. Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People
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“The first thing I remember about the world and I pray that it may be the last is that I was a stranger in it. This feeling, which everyone has in some degree, and which is, at once, the glory and desolation of homo sapiens , provides the only thread of consistency that I can detect in my life.”

WorldFirstsMayI CanFeelingsLastsRememberPrayingDegreesGloryStrangerThreadConsistencyI PrayHomo SapiensDesolation
Book:The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge
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“There are houses in certain provincial towns whose aspect inspires melancholy, akin to that called forth by sombre cloisters, dreary moorlands, or the desolation of ruins. Within these houses there is, perhaps, the silence of the cloister, the barrenness of moors, the skeleton of ruins; life and movement are so stagnant there that a stranger might think them uninhabited, were it not that he encounters suddenly the pale, cold glance of a motionless person, whose half-monastic face peers beyond the window-casing at the sound of an unaccustomed step.”

ThinkingPersonsBookMightFacesCertainHouseSoundHalfSilenceStepsMovementInspireColdAspectWindowTownsStrangerRuinsEncountersMelancholyPalePeersGlancesSkeletonsDrearyDesolationStagnantMoors
Book:Eugenie Grandet
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“Desolate--Life is so dreary and desolate-- Women and men in the crowd meet and mingle, Yet with itself every soul standeth single, Deep out of sympathy moaning its moan-- Holding and having its brief exultation-- Making its lonesome and low lamentation-- Fighting its terrible conflicts alone.”

MenSoulLife IsFightingTerribleConflictLowsMen And WomenCrowdsDrearyDesolationDesolateLonesomeMoaningLamentation
Book:The Poetical Works of Alice and Phoebe Cary
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“I think that if I get into the habit of writing a bit about what happens, or rather doesn't happen, I may lose a little of the sense of isolation and desolation which abides with me. My circumstances allowing of nothing but the ejaculation of one-syllabled reflections, a written monologue by that most interesting being, myself, may have its yet to be discovered consolations.”

IfsThinkingWritingMayLittlesHappensBitsLosesInterestingWrittenHabitCircumstancesReflectionIsolationAllowingConsolationDiariesMost InterestingDesolationMonologuesBeing MyselfEjaculation
Author:Alice James
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“The perpetual mourner -- the grief that can never be healed -- is innocently enough felt to be wearisome by the rest of the world. And my sense of desolation increases. Each day seems a new beginning -- a new acquaintance with grief.”

WorldEnoughSeemsFeltGriefIncreaseEach DayPerpetualNew BeginningsAcquaintanceHealedDesolationNew Acquaintances
Book:George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals
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“The laws of war, that restrain the exercise of national rapine and murder, are founded on two principles of substantial interest: the knowledge of the permanent benefits which may be obtained by a moderate use of conquest, and a just apprehension lest the desolation which we inflict on the enemy's country may be retaliated on our own. But these considerations of hope and fear are almost unknown in the pastoral state of nations.”

MayTwoWarCountryStatesUsePastLawNationsInterestEnemyPrinciplesHistoryExerciseBenefitsMurderPermanentConsiderationConquestModeratesApprehensionRoman EmpireDesolationHopes And Fears
Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
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“But neither Europe nor Africa can show any such desolation as America. The proudest, stubbornest, bitterest peasant of deserted Spain, the most primitive and superstitious Arab of the remotest oases, are a little more than kin and never less than kind at their worst; whereas in the United States one is almost always conscious of an instinctive lack of sympathy and understanding with even the most charming and cultured people.”

PeopleKindLittlesStatesShowsAmericaUnderstandingUnitedUnited StatesWorstConsciousEuropePrimitiveCharmingSpainPeasantsSuperstitiousDesolationDesertedOasis
Author:Aleister Crowley
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“There was a frosty rime upon the trees, which, in the faint light of the clouded moon, hung upon the smaller branches like dead garlands. Withered leaves crackled and snapped beneath his feet, as he crept softly on towards the house. The desolation of a winter night sat brooding on the earth, and in the sky. But, the red light came cheerily towards him from the windows; figures passed and repassed there; and the hum and murmur of voices greeted his ear sweetly.”

LightEarthNightHouseVoiceNatureTreeFeetSkyFiguresMoonRedWindowEarsWinterSatBranchesHungDesolationBroodingWitheredGarlandsCloudedRed LightsWinter NightWithered Leaves
Book:Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].
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“Never let success hide its emptiness from you, achievement its nothingness, toil its desolation. And so...keep alive the incentive to push on further, that pain in the soul which drives us beyond ourselves...Do not look back. And do not dream about the future, either. It will neither give you back the past, nor satisfy your other daydreams. Your duty, your reward - your destiny - are here and now.”

GivingLooksSoulDreamPainPastDestinyAliveDutyAchievementRewardsEmptinessNothingnessToilIncentivesOur DestinyYour DestinyHere And NowDaydreamingDesolation
Author:Dag Hammarskjold
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“Is there any wilderness of sand in the deserts of Arabia, is there any prospect of desolation among the ruins of Palestine, which can rival the repelling effect on the eye, and the depressing influence on the mind, of an English country town in the first stage of its existence, and in the transition state of its prosperity?”

MindFirstsCountryStatesEyeExistenceInfluenceEffectsStageTownsProsperityRuinsDesertSandWildernessTransitionDepressingPalestineRivalsArabiaDesolationRepelling
Book:The Woman in White: Wilkie Collins Top Collections
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“War is a monster with snaky locks, and fiery bloodshot eyes, and harpy claws, passing over fair fields and leaving its footprints in burning villages, dying men, weeping wives and children, and needs to be seen by those who so eagerly clamour for it at every opportunity. The sight of that fearful phantom, girt round with skulls, chains reeking with blood and desolation and ruin in its track, would stop their eagerness for it, unless under real compulsion.”

MenNeedsChildrenWarRealEyeOpportunityWifeBloodDyingFieldsFairsSightLeavingRoundsTrackMonstersPassingPassingsRuinsChainsBurningVillageFearfulLocksCompulsionWeepingSkullsPhantomsFootprintFieryClawsDesolationEagernessClamourHarpiesBloodshot Eyes
Author:Moncure D. Conway
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“...our cities of the present lack the outstanding symbol of national community which, we must therefore not be surprised to find, sees no symbol of itself in the cities. The inevitable result is a desolation whose practical effect is the total indifference of the big-city dweller to the destiny of his city.”

BigsCommunityResultsCitiesDestinyEffectsPracticalsSymbolsInevitableIndifferenceOutstandingDesolationBig CitiesDwellersNational Community
Book:Mein Kampf
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“I truly believe that to stay home, to learn the names of things, to realize who we live among . . . then I believe a politics of place emerges where we are deeply accountable to our communities, to our neighborhoods, to our home . . . If we are not rooted deeply in place, making that commitment to dig in and stay put . . . then I think we are living a life without specificity, and then our lives become abstractions. Then we enter a place of true desolation.”

IfsThinkingBelieveHomeNamesI BelieveRealizingCommunityOur LivesCommitmentNeighborhoodRootedAbstractionOur CommunityDesolationSpecificity
Author:Terry Tempest Williams
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“That the language of the poetry of Jamaican music is rastafarian or biblical language cannot simply be put down to the colonizer and his satanic missionaries. The fact is that the historical experience of the black Jamaican is an experience of the most acute human suffering, desolation and despair in the cruel world that is the colonial world.”

WorldHumansFactsSufferingLanguageBlackDespairMusic IsHistoricalBiblicalDesolationSatanicHuman SufferingCruel WorldJamaicansJamaican Music
Author:Linton Kwesi Johnson
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“In the gay world, some of the most enriching and incredibly life-affirming and shaping relationships, very often between younger boys and older men, can be hugely positive experiences for those young boys. They can save those young boys from desolation, suicide and drug addiction, all sorts of things, providing they're consensual.”

MenWorldYoungBoysGayDrugSuicideAddictionProvidingDrug AddictionDrug AddictDesolationAffirmingEnrichingOlder ManLife AffirmingPositive Experiences
Author:Milo Yiannopoulos
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“Poetry has always mattered, through human history, through all kinds of cultures, all kinds of violence and human desolation, as well as periods of great human affirmation. It's been associated with the power of the word, with the sacred, with magic and transformation, with the oral narratives that help a people cohere.”

PeopleHumansWellsKindHelpingCultureViolenceMagicPeriodsTransformationSacredAll KindsNarrativeAffirmationHuman HistoryDesolation
Author:Adrienne Rich
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“A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of laughter more terrible than any sadness-a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.”

SpiritEffortSilenceLaughingSadnessLandDogMovementColdTerribleLaughterEternitySavagesFrozenHeartedHintsFutilityFrostLoneDesolationLifelessInfallibilitySphinxFutility Of Life
Book:The Call of the Wild and White Fang
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“When a child first catches adults out -- when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just -- his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.”

ThinkingWorldFirstsKindChildrenLittlesWholeJobsFallWalksGoneGrowing UpWiseGrowingDivineJudgmentAdultsSafetyGreenShiningSentencesGravesFallenPanicCrashTediousDesolationSure Thing
Author:John Steinbeck
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“O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved home and the war's desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.' And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”

MayMadeWarHomeNationsStarsCausesLandVictoryPraiseBraveWaveConquerTriumphFlagsMottoBannerDesolationFreemanLand Of The Free
Book:Poems
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“I have outlasted all desire, My dreams and I have grown apart; My grief alone is left entire, The gleamings of an empty heart. The storms of ruthless dispensation Have struck my flowery garland numb, I live in lonely desolation And wonder when my end will come. Thus on a naked tree-limb, blasted By tardy winter's whistling chill, A single leaf which has outlasted Its season will be trembling still.”

HeartStillsEndsDreamDesireLeftGriefWonderTreeLonelyEmptySeasonsWinterStormNakedLeafsLimbsChillRuthlessNumbTremblingDesolationGarlandsWhistlingEmpty HeartTree Limbs
Author:Alexander Pushkin
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