Bleak Quotes - Page 4

• I avoid that bleak first hour of the working day during which my still sluggish senses and body make every chore a penance. I find that in arriving later, the work which I do perform is of a much higher quality.

  John Kennedy Toole

  Good Morning, Quality, Arriving

  John Kennedy Toole (2004). “A Confederacy of Dunces”, p.149, LSU Press

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• Needy knife-grinder! whither are ye going? Rough is the road, your wheel is out of order; Bleak blows the blast-your hat has got a hole in it. So have your breeches.

  George Canning

  Blow, Order, Knives

  George Canning (1842). “Select Speeches of the Right Honourable George Canning: With a Preliminary Biographical Sketch, and an Appendix, of Extracts from His Writings and Speeches”, p.557

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• If there is a true measure of a person's soul, if there is a single gauge of real divinity, of how beautifully a fellow human honors this life, has genuine spiritual fire and is full of honest love and compassion, it has to be right there, in the eyes. The Dalai Lama's eyes sparkle and dance with laughter and unbridled love. The Pope's eyes are dark and glazed, bleak as obsidian marbles. Pat Robertson's eyes are rheumy and hollow, like tiny potholes of old wax. Goldman Sachs cretins, well, they don't use their own eyes at all; they just steal someone else's.

  Mark Morford

  Spiritual, Laughter, Real

  "The end of the wicked old Mormons". www.sfgate.com. May 7, 2010.

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• I've remembered that most of life is about small, essential connections, so unobtrusive, so elastic, that you scarcely realize they're actually holding you together. The big ones-the great, grand emotional bonds-those are the ones that break, the ones that fail you, the ones that give way and send you careening toward the foot of the bleak and jagged canyon. It's the tough, gnarled, unadorned ties that really do bind, that never let you fall all the way down into darkness.

  Sharon Shinn

  Fall, Emotional, Feet

  Sharon Shinn (2012). “The Shape of Desire”, p.54, Penguin

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• Draw your chair up, and hand me my violin, for the only problem which we have still to solve is how to while away these bleak autumnal evenings.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Hands, Violin, Evening

  Arthur Conan Doyle (2016). “Sherlock Holmes. The best stories”, p.433, "Издательство ""Проспект"""

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• You're right, Halt,' she said, and he nodded acklowledgement of her backing down. 'Nice to hear someone else saying that for a change,' Will said cheerfully. 'Seems like I've said those words an awful lot in my time.' Halt turned a bleak gaze on him. 'And you've always been right.

  John Flanagan

  Nice, Awful, Halt

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• That's evolution. Evolution's always hard. Hard and bleak. No such thing as happy evolution

  Haruki Murakami

  Evolution, Hard

  Haruki Murakami (1993). “Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: A Novel”, Vintage

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• If you can get by with quotes from The Godfather and nothing you say matters, that's pretty bleak, don't you think? Don't we want what we say to matter?

  Joshua Ferris

  Thinking, Want, Matter

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• Isn't it sad how some people's grip on their lives is so precarious that they'll embrace any preposterous delusion rather than face an occasional bleak truth?

  Bill Watterson

  People, Faces, Life Is

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• Half-baked effort is almost as good as no effort put in at all. Always seek to do your best. Good things always have a way of finding those who put forth their best even when their situation seems bleak.

  Chris Erickson

  Positive, Effort, Half

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• ...bleak territory of the heart.

  Kim Edwards

  Heart, Territory

  Kim Edwards (2006). “The Memory Keeper's Daughter: A Novel”, p.348, Penguin

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• Places: a cold, bleak, lonely day on the rim at Muley Point, Utah. And the heart-cracking loveliness of the blood-smeared, bitter, incomprehensible slaughterhouse of a world.

  Edward Abbey

  Lonely, Heart, Blood

  "A Voice Crying in the Wilderness".

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• I feel like when we talk about post-apocalyptic themes that's what we're really talking about. We're always returning to this sense of being alone in a strange new place where all is bleak and all is lost. And it is this sense of isolation that permeates the whole album. I wanted to go into the balance between fear and transcendence.

  Colin Stetson

  Talking, Balance, Albums

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• I was shocked by the reaction I got for Bleak House. It was very intensive but one of the best jobs of my life. It was a chance to play a character that grows and develops and I was very enmeshed in it. But I didn't realise how stylish it was and how much people would love it.

  Anna Maxwell Martin

  Jobs, Character, Play

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• What is hope but a feeling of optimism, a thought that says things will improve, it won't always be bleak, there's a way to rise above the present circumstances. Hope is an internal awareness that you do not have to suffer forever, and that somehow, somewhere there is a remedy for despair that you will come upon if you can only maintain this expectancy in your heart.

  Wayne Dyer

  Heart, Optimism, Forever

  "There's a Spiritual Solution to Every Problem". Book by Wayne Dyer, 1975.

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• A religion is a source of happiness and I would not deprive anyone of happiness. But it is a comfort appropriate for the weak, not for the strong--and you are strong. The great trouble with religion--any religion--is that the religionist, having accepted certain propositions by faith, cannot thereafter judge these propositions by evidence. One may bask at the warm fire of faith or choose to live in the bleak uncertainty of reason--but one cannot have both.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Strong, Fire, Judging

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• I love him for his sake;
  And yet I know him a notorious liar,
  Think him a great way fool, solely a coward;
  Yet these fix'd evils sit so fit in him
  That they take place when virtue's steely bones
  Looks bleak i' th' cold wind; withal, full oft we see
  Cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.

  William Shakespeare

  Liars, I Love Him, Thinking

  William Shakespeare, Thomas Bowdler (1850). “The Family Shakspeare, in One Volume: In which Nothing is Added to the Original Text, But Those Words and Expressions are Omitted which Cannot with Propriety be Read in a Family”, p.217

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• A dead hydrangea is as intricate and lovely as one in bloom. Bleak sky is as seductive as sunshine, miniature orange trees without blossom or fruit are not defective; they are that.

  Toni Morrison

  Sunshine, Orange Trees, Sky

  Toni Morrison (1987). “Tar Baby”, New Amer Library

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• The bleak truth is that, under normal conditions, most of North America and Europe are buried under about 1.5km of ice. This bitterly frigid climate is interrupted occasionally by brief warm interglacials, typically lasting less than 10,000 years. The interglacial we have enjoyed throughout recorded human history, called the Holocene, began 11,000 years ago, so the ice is overdue, Chapman wrote. All those urging action to curb global warming need to take off the blinkers and give some thought to what we should do if we are facing global cooling instead.

  Philip K. Chapman

  America, Years, Europe

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• I honestly don't know, but if America continues to refuse to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, I see a bleak future not only for American society, but for the world as a whole. This is a global problem that is not going away, and the United States is an obstacle to solving it.

  Peter Singer

  America, Going Away, United States

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• We all need a story. It just turns out that the story we have been told for years - that people are naturally and primarily competitive and self-interested and that life is best shaped around that bleak fact - is bunkum

  Ed Mayo

  Business, Self, Years

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• we are far too used to the assumption that poetry and poets will be there when we want them, no matter how long they have been ignored, taken for granted, misused. After all, isn't poetry a form of prophecy, and aren't prophets known for their talent for flourishing in inhospitable deserts and other bleak surroundings? Maybe. But maybe not indefinitely.

  Jan Clausen

  Taken, Long, Poetry

  Jan Clausen (1982). “A movement of poets: thoughts on poetry and feminism”, Long Haul Pr

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• You can always accuse my records of being harrowing or dark or bleak. There is processing of trauma on my records and they contain a lot of healing. As a person who has been watching other's rage for years, instead of having my own tantrums, I keep the feelings inside until I can find a way of making them into music. The songs are like healing spells and it really works for me. When I really do a good job on a song, it gets rid of a weight. As far as hope goes, there is hope that you can heal through processing stuff and make it through to the other side. That's all I can hope for.

  Erika M. Anderson

  Song, Healing, Dark

  Source: thequietus.com

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• You can find the richness in any moment, even the most seemingly bleak. To try to do a movie about that was a joyful experience. So actually, it was really the context of it that made the experience so worthwhile, rather than the actual subject matter, if that makes sense.

  Billy Crudup

  Trying, Moments, Joyful

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• The university is well structured, well tooled, to turn out people with all the sharp edges worn off, the well-rounded person. The university is well equipped to produce that sort of person, and this means that the best among the people who enter must for four years wander aimlessly much of the time questioning why they are on campus at all, doubting whether there is any point in what they are doing, and looking toward a very bleak existence afterward in a game in which all of the rules have been made up, which one cannot really amend.

  Mario Savio

  Mean, Years, Games

  "An End To History". Humanity magazine, www.historyisaweapon.com. December 1964.

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