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Futility Quotes

Browse 278 quotes about Futility.

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Futility Quotes

“A love without reservation ought to be a life force compelling the world into order and beauty. But that love can be so strong and yet so entirely powerless is what breaks the heart. Love did not move toward life, it moved toward death, toward the roaring sea-caves of annihilation. Or it led to the futility of a little broken bird's egg whose remains were now being washed away by water from the tap. Even so one day God might crack the universe and wash away its fruitless powerless loves with a deluge of indifferent power.”

SadHeartbreakIris MurdochUnrequited LovePowerlessFutilityThe Nice And The Good
Book:The Nice and the Good
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“Sometimes there's nothing to be done. Sometimes they're not listening, can't hear, don't want to, don't believe you. Sometimes you cannot stop the storm, stem the tide, change the path of the ocean liner even though it hasn't quite yet hit the iceberg. There will be times despite all efforts you will feel completely misunderstood completely unappreciated completely wronged. Sometimes love just isn't enough.”

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Author:Shellen Lubin
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“But even if I know what governs their trajectory, if I know the rules of the movement of things and how things are organized and how certain mutations, transformations, gestations take place, even if I know all that, I shall only have learnt how to get along after a fashion in the enormous gaol, the oppressive prison in which I am held. What a farce, what a snare, what a booby-trap. We were born cheated. For if we are not to know, if there is nothing to know, why do we have this longing to know?”

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Book:Fragments of a Journal
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“Was there nothing left in this world that was worth opening your eyes and fighting for? Would the bad guys always win? Are our efforts to live in peace simply doomed to failure? Will the bad guys always be bad guys? Will the good guys spend their whole lives taking punches and throwing rocks into the water with all of their might and getting nothing more in return than a ridiculous sploosh and the shame of failure?”

JusticeMoralityDespairPerseveranceResilienceExistentialismIdealismHopelessnessFutilityDisillusionment
Book:The Laws of the Skies
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“There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp.”

HopeGriefDespairDepressionExpectationsDisappointmentNostalgiaVanityHeartacheRegretsFutilitySinsUnrestPointlessnessFalling ShortBittersweet MemoriesHaunted PastWhy The World Needs JesusAshes In The MouthDark HistorySmoke In The Eyes
Book:Lord Jim
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“But other hordes would come, and other false prophets. Our feeble efforts to ameliorate man’s lot would be but vaguely continued by our successors; the seeds of error and of ruin contained even in what is good would, on the contrary, increase to monstrous proportions in the course of centuries. A world wearied of us would seek other masters; what had seemed to us wise would be pointless for them, what we had found beautiful they would abominate. Like the initiate to Mithraism the human race has need, perhaps, of a periodical bloodbath and descent into the grave. I could see the return of barbaric codes, of implacable gods, of unquestioned despotism of savage chieftains, a world broken up into enemy states and eternally prey to insecurity. Other sentinels menaced by arrows would patrol the walls of future cities; the stupid, cruel, and obscene game would go on, and the human species in growing older would doubtless add new refinements of horror. Our epoch, the faults and limitations of which I knew better than anyone else would perhaps be considered one day, by contrast, as one of the golden ages of man.”

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Book:Memoirs of Hadrian
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“Each of us is aware he's a material being, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and that the strength of all our emotions combined cannot counteract those laws. It can only hate them. The eternal belief of lovers and poets in the power of love which is more enduring that death, the finis vitae sed non amoris that has pursued us through the centuries is a lie. But this lie is not ridiculous, it's simply futile. To be a clock on the other hand, measuring the passage of time, one that is smashed and rebuilt over and again, one in whose mechanism despair and love are set in motion by the watchmaker along with the first movements of the cogs. To know one is a repeater of suffering felt ever more deeply as it becomes increasingly comical through a multiple repetitions. To replay human existence - fine. But to replay it in the way a drunk replays a corny tune pushing coins over and over into the jukebox?”

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Book:Solaris
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“It is a human characteristic, which has been richly exploited in every era, that while hope of survival is still alive in a man, while he still believes his troubles will have a favorable outcome, and while he still has the chance to unmask treason or to save someone else by sacrificing himself, he continues to cling to the pitiful remnants of comfort and remains silent and submissive. When he has been taken and destroyed, when he has nothing more to lose, and is, in consequence, ready and eager for heroic action, his belated rage can only spend itself against the stone walls of solitary confinement. Or the breath of the death sentence makes him indifferent to earthly affairs.”

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Book:The First Circle
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“Everything's in ruins, everything's been degraded, but I could say that they've ruined and degraded everything, because this is not some kind of cataclysm coming about with so-called "innocent" human aid, on the contrary, it's about man's own judgment over his own self, which of course god has a big hand in, or, dare I say, takes part in, and whatever he takes part in is the most ghastly creation that you can imagine, because, you see, the world has been debased, so it doesn't matter what I say because everything has been debased that they've acquired and since they've acquired everything in a sneaky, underhanded fight, they've debased everything, because whatever they touch, and they touch everything, they've debased; this is the way it was until the final victory, until the triumphant end; acquire, debase, debase, acquire; or I can put it differently if you'd like, to touch, debase and thereby acquire, or touch, acquire and thereby debase; it's been going on like this for centuries, on, on and on; this and only this, sometimes on the sly, sometimes rudely, sometimes gently, sometimes brutally, but it has been going on and on; yet only in one way; like a rat attacks from ambush; because for this perfect victory it was also essential that the other side, that is, everything's that's excellent, great in some way and noble, should not engage in any kind of fight, there shouldn't be any kind of struggle, just the sudden disappearance of one side meaning the disappearing of the excellent, the great, the noble, so that by now the winners who have won by attacking from ambush rule the earth and there isn't a single tiny nook where one can hide something from them because everything they can lay their hands on is theirs, even things that they can't reach but they do reach are also theirs; the heavens are already theirs and theirs are all our dreams; theirs is the moment, nature, infinite silence; even immortality is theirs, you understand?; everything, everything is lost forever, and those many nobles, great and excellent just stood there, if I can put it that way; they stopped at this point and had to understand and had to accept that there is neither god nor gods, and the excellent, the great and the noble had to understand and accept this right from the beginning, but, of course, they were quite incapable of understanding it, they believed it and accepted it but they didn't understand it; they just stood there, bewildered but not resigned until something, that flash on the mind, finally enlightened them, and all at once they realized that there is neither god nor gods; all at once they saw that there is neither good nor bad; then they saw and understood that if this was so then they themselves did not exist either; you see, I reckon this may have been the moment when we can say that they were extinguished, they burnt out; extinguished and burnt out like the fire left to smolder in the meadow; one was the constant loser, the other was the constant victor; defeat, victory, defeat, victory; and one day, here in the neighborhood I had to realize and I did realize that I was mistaken, I was truly mistaken when I thought that there had never been and could never be any kind of change here on earth; because, believe me, I know now that this change has indeed taken place.”

PhilosophyHumorExistenceHuman NatureHuman ConditionNothingnessNihilismFutilityThe VoidEnd Of Times
Author:László Krasznahorkai
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“[Imprisoned Poem] Somewhere deep inside me There lies an imprisoned poem A poem that is Buried Chained And holding its breath Ages ago… A poem about futility The fragility of words About alarms, if sounded, They’d be either destined to silence Or get written on the walls of indifference… There is an ancient poem Imprisoned in my soul Waiting to be released impatiently, In due time… Like a house cat this imprisoned poem keeps eagerly watching Every move outside the window, Without any participation… And like a house cat, Whenever this imprisoned poem Gets exhausted by the triviality of reality, It sleeps for long hours Only to wake up and find The status quo unchanged And the strings moving the puppets uncut… It then looks out the window in sorrow And goes back to sleep once again To dream of a less ugly world… My imprisoned poem has vowed not to release itself From the deepest points in my soul Until everyone else is awake For its release to be meaningful… (November 17, 2014)”

HumanityPrisonUnityFutilityArabic PoetryCollective ConsciousnessArabic LiteratureCollective ActionThe Power Of Words
Book:أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]
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“It's futile to point the finger of condemnation and say, "Men... this" or "Women... that". Truth is, we are all guilty and innocent of many of life's trials.”

MenLifeRealityTruthWomenLife And LivingArgumentInnocentGuiltyManWomanJudgementQuotes To Live ByNonsenseFutilityCondemnationJudgementalBickeringFutileCondemnSenselessSillynessOpposite SexBickering WomenBicker
Book:From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence
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“The schizoid repression of feeling, and retreat from emotional relationships, may, however, go much further and produce a serious breakdown of constructive effort. Then the unhappy sufferer from incapacitating conflicts will succumb to real futility: nothing seems worth doing, interest dies, the world seems unreal, the ego feels depersonalized. Suicide may be attempted in a cold, calculated way to the accompaniment of such thoughts as 'I am useless, bad for everybody, I'll be best out of the way.' One patient who had never reached that point, said: 'I feel I love people in an impersonal way; it seems a false position, hypocritical. Perhaps I don't do any loving. I'm terrified when I see young people go off and being successful and I'm at a dead bottom, absolute dereliction, excommunicate.”

SufferingSuicideBreakdownFutilityDepersonalizationSchizoid
Book:Schizoid Phenomena, Object Relations and the Self
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“My existence came to a halt one afternoon long ago, a day like any other, when I realized that nothing was true. Yet, my life continued when it should have ended, in a space that no longer exists, in a decade that slipped away so quickly, with a revelation that altered everything but changed nothing. I have no desire to converse; I have no words left. You want me to stay in touch, so I will wait for you at the end of every blind alley, under the solitary streetlamps of a city that will never be ours. After all, you will not come...those lives whose truths vanished into an eternal vault beyond our reach will never see the sun.”

TruthWaitingExistenceLonelinessIsolationCityFutilityRevelationContinuationLost Decade
Author:Rolf van der Wind
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“Waiting She caught herself waiting by her bedroom window. A window facing a quiet street, where a car or two passed occasionally. Otherwise, it was a motionless place. The tree branches outside danced Whenever the winds flirted with them. Although she habitually sat by that window every day, for years and years, She never noticed her habit until today! When she realized that, she felt heart sick and upset. She didn’t know whether she was angry at herself Or at the time she had wasted waiting. What upset her even more Was that she wasn’t waiting for any person to arrive, Not even for the postman Who no longer brought her any personal letters. She was not waiting for a lover A friend Or for parents. All those she once loved are long gone. What was she waiting for all these years? She asked herself this question a thousand times that day, And she waited for her inner voice to answer. She must know today! It suddenly occurred to her that Since she was a child, She was waiting for the arrival of a person Who she could never name or describe. She could never put a body or a face On their ambiguous figure. It was a person who only visited her imagination In the form of a shadow. She realized that all her life, She was yearning for something that she couldn’t name, And thus, she remained waiting, Wishing to find out one day What or who she was waiting for. February 9, 2013”

PoetryLiteratureWaitingFutilityArabic Poetry
Book:أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]
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“A whole planet of worlds, and not one of them—not one—has a soul. They wander through their lives separate and alone, unable even to communicate except through grunts and tokens: as if the essence of a sunset or a supernova could ever be contained in some string of phonemes, a few linear scratches of black on white. They've never known communion, can aspire to nothing but dissolution. The paradox of their biology is astonishing, yes; but the scale of their loneliness, the futility of these lives, overwhelms me.”

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Book:Beyond the Rift
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“I was almost a wife but lost the man. I was almost recognisable as a friend. And then I wasn't. The nights when I flicked off the bedside lamp and found myself in the heedless, lonely dark. The times I thought, with a horrified twist, that none of this was a gift. Suzanne got the redemption that followed a conviction ... I got the snuffed-out story of the bystander, a fugitive without a crime, half hoping and half terrified that no one was ever coming for me.”

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Book:The Girls
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“Embracing pain strengthens the will; embracing crying heals the soul; embracing melancholy deepens insight and perception; embracing boredom fosters creativity and imagination; embracing misery instills bravery; embracing ridiculousness preserves sanity; embracing chaos creates peace; embracing invisibility sets one free; embracing despair teaches acceptance of the inevitable; embracing pessimism prevents suicide by tempering hope; embracing meaninglessness cultivates patience and resilience; embracing purposelessness allows one to be out of the box; embracing rage generates an inexhaustible source of fuel; embracing loneliness unites with the self; embracing uncertainty gives a sense of excitement; embracing temporariness nurtures a great sense of humour; embracing lack of belonging liberates from illusions; embracing alienation unveils the very nature of things; embracing resignation soothes restlessness; embracing inability to embrace gives peace; embracing unhappiness brings true happiness...”

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Author:Sov8840
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“Everything we ever did as a species was always nothing more than a foolish, subconscious attempt to either reach for the Heavens or to stave off the inevitability of death, treating such a natural occurrence like a cancer: something we could defeat, if only we could discover the cure. But we failed to realize the futility of it all. Even stars and galaxies die. And if something as cosmic and transcendent as the very fabric of our universe is susceptible to the concept of death, then why did we believe we ever stood a chance of accomplishing such a feat ourselves?”

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Book:As Ithaca Lay Forgotten
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“এইখানে এইখানে সমুদ্র ঢুকে যায় নদীতে নক্ষত্র মেশে রৌদ্রে এইখানে ট্রামের ঘন্টীতে বাজে চলা ও থামার নির্দেশ এইখানে দাঁড়িয়ে চার্মিনার ঠোঁটে আমি রক্তের হিম ও ঊষ্ণতা ছুঁয়ে উঠে আসা কবিতার রহস্যময় পদধ্বনি শুনি-শুনি কবিতার পাশে আত্মার খিস্তি ও চীৎকার এইখানে অস্পষ্ট কু-আশার চাঁদ এইখানে ঝরে পড়ে গনিকার ঋতুস্রাবে এইখানে ৩২৩ খ্রীষ্টপূর্বাব্দের কোন গ্রীকবীর রমন বা ধর্ষণের সাধ ভুলে ইতিহাসে গেঁথে দ্যায় শৌর্য ও বীর্য এইখানে বিষ্ণুপ্রিয়ার শরীরের নরম স্বাদ ভুলে একটি মানবী থেকে মানবজাতির দিকে চলে যায় চৈতন্যের উর্ধ্ববাহু প্রেম-সর্বোপরি ইতিহাস ধর্মচেতনার ওপর জেগে থাকে মানুষের উত্থিত পুরুষাঙ্গ এইখানে এইখানে কবর থেকে উঠে আসা অতৃপ্ত প্রেমিকের কামদগ্ধ কয়েকলক্ষ উপহাসের মুখোমুখি বেড়ে ওঠে আমার উচ্চাশা এইখানে প্রকৃত প্রশ্নিল চোখে চোখ পড়লে কুঁকড়ে যায় আমার হৃদপিণ্ড এইখানে এইখানে সশ্রদ্ধ দৃষ্টির আড়ালে যাবার জন্য পা বাড়াতে হয় আমি নারী মুখ দ্যাখার ইচ্ছায় মাইলের পর মাইল হেঁটে দেখি শুধু মাগীদের ভিড় সাতাশ বছর-একা একা সাতাশ বছর বেক্তিগত বিছানায় শুয়ে দেখি মেধাহীন ভবিষ্যৎ জরাগ্রস্ত স্নায়ুমণ্ডলীর পাশে কবিদের কবির কবিতা চারিধারে ঢিবি দেওয়ালের নীরেট নিঃশক্ত অন্ধকার।”

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Book:নষ্ট আত্মার টেলিভিসন
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