Bereft Quotes - Page 2

• To the lazy man the world appears bereft of all blessings; if poor, he has no friends; if rich, he has no ambition; he aims at nothing, and generally hits his mark.

  James Ellis

  Ambition, Blessing, Men

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• We're so bereft of support of theatre in this day and age.

  Stefanie Powers

  Support, Age, Theatre

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• I've never felt so bereft and panicky. What do I do without my phone? How do I function? My hand keeps automatically reaching for my phone in its usual place in my pocket. Every instinct in me wants to text someone, 'OMG, I've lost my phone! ' but how can do that without a bloody phone?

  Sophie Kinsella

  Phones, Hands, Want

  Sophie Kinsella (2012). “I've Got Your Number”, p.16, Random House

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• A wretched soul, bruised with adversity, We bid be quiet when we hear it cry. But were we burd'ned with like weight of pain, As much or more we should ourselves complain: So thou, that hast no unkind mate to grieve thee, With urging helpless patience wouldst relieve me; But if thou live to see like right bereft, This fool-begged patience in thee will be left.

  William Shakespeare

  Pain, Adversity, Grieving

  William Shakespeare, Alfred Harbage (1977). “The complete works”

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• It is a great thing to have a big brain, a fertile imagination, grand ideals, but the man with these, bereft of a good backbone, is sure to serve no useful end.

  George Matthew Adams

  Men, Imagination, Brain

  George Matthew Adams (2016). “You Can: A Collection of Brief Talks on the Most Important Topic in the World-Your Success”, p.28, Ravenio Books

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• As a reader, I want a book to kidnap me into its world. Its world must make my so-called real world seem flimsy. Its world must lure me to return. When I close the book, I should feel bereft.

  Erica Jong

  Real, Book, World

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• Had I no eyes but ears, my ears would love. That inward beauty and invisible; Or were I deaf, thy outward parts would move each part in me that were but sensible: Though neither eyes nor ears, to hear nor see, yet should I be in love by touching thee. 'Say, that the sense of feeling were bereft me, and that I could not see, nor hear, nor touch, and nothing but the very smell were left me, yet would my love to thee be still as much; for from the stillitory of thy face excelling comes breath perfum'd that breedeth love by smelling.

  William Shakespeare

  Moving, Eye, Smell

  William Shakespeare (1821). “Venus and Adonis. Rape of Lucrece. Sonnets. Lover's complaint. Passionate pilgrim. Memoirs of Lord Southhampton”, p.36

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• Pick a man, any man. Every guy I fall for becomes Jesus Christ within the first twenty-four hours of our relationship. I know that this happens, I see it happening, I even feel myself, sometimes, standing at some temporal crossroads, some distinct moment at which I can walk away and keep it from happening, but I never do. I grab at everything, I end up with nothing, and then I feel bereft. I mourn for the loss of something I never even had.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Jesus, Fall, Loss

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• I suppose that anyone who does any kind of creative work some time in their life - especially as you grow into middle age! - you come to a time where you really question more and more frequently, whether you have anything else to offer. And at its worst, you feel utterly bereft of whatever creative force it takes to do that work.

  Daniel Day-Lewis

  Creative, Age, Doe

  "The Daniel Day-Lewis Nine Interview". Interview with Prairie Miller, newsblaze.com. December 17, 2009.

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• So many people seem to spend their lives trying to appear normal, predictable and consistent to themselves and those that surround them. They just end up bored with themselves, bereft of any depth of inner resources, suffocated by the inhibitions that defend their own monolithic identities.

  Peter J. Carroll

  Life, Self, People

  "Psybermagick: Advanced Ideas in Chaos Magick". Book by Peter J. Carroll, 1995.

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• This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It's expired and gone to meet its maker. This is a late parrot. It's a stiff. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. If you hadn't nailed it to the perch, it would be pushing up the daisies. It's rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-parrot.

  Graham Chapman

  Death, Rest In Peace, Would Be

  Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Gilliam, Terry Jones (2009). “Monty Python Live!”, Hyperion

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• I have never felt bereft of anything.

  Ben Kingsley

  Felt

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• O loving woman, man's fulfillment, sweet,
  Completing him not otherwise complete!
  How void and useless the sad remnant left
  Were he of her, his nobler part, bereft.

  Abraham Coles

  Sweet, Women, Useless

  Abraham Coles (1866). “The Microcosm: A Poem, Read Before the Medical Society of New Jersey at Its Centenary Anniversary: with the Address Delivered as President, Jan. 24, 1866”, p.79

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• Years ago I met Richard Burton in Port Talbot, my home town, and afterwards he passed in his car with his wife, and I thought, 'I want to get out and become like him'. Not because of Wales, because I love Wales, but because I was so limited as a child at school and so bereft and lonely, and I thought becoming an actor would do that.

  Anthony Hopkins

  Lonely, Children, Home

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• Everything he'd done with regard to her in the last three years had been calculated to foreclose the intensely personal sort of talks they'd had when he was younger: to get her to shut up, to train her to contain herself, to make her stop pestering him with her overfull heart and her uncensored self. And now that the training was complete and she was obediently trivial with him, he felt bereft of her and wanted to undo it.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Heart, Self, Years

  Jonathan Franzen (2010). “Freedom: A Novel”, p.242, Macmillan

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• I am no fun at all. In fact, I am anti-fun. Not as in anti-violence, but as in anti-matter. I am not so much against fun - although I suppose I kind of am - as I am the opposite of fun. I suck the fun out of a room. Or perhaps I'm just a different kind of fun; the kind that leaves on bereft of hope; the kind of fun that ends in tears.

  David Rakoff

  Fun, Opposites, Tears

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• If you can't be pretty, you have to learn to make yourself attractive. I found that all the pretty girls I went to high school with came to middle age as frumps, because they just got by with their pretty faces, so they never developed anything. They never learned how to be interesting. But if you are bereft of certain things, you have to make up for them in certain ways. Don't you think?

  Iris Apfel

  Girl, School, Thinking

  "Iris Apfel, fashion darling. Aged 88" by Gaby Wood, www.theguardian.com. January 16, 2010.

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• No soul can be forever banned, Eternally bereft, Whoever falls from God's right hand Is caught into his left.

  Edwin Markham

  Fall, Hands, Forever

  Edwin Markham (1920). “Gates of Paradise and Other Poems: The Fourth Volume of Verse”

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• There are few of us but who have been touched somehow by death. Some may not have been touched closely by it nor yet have kept vigil with it, but somewhere along our lives, most of us are sorely bereft of someone near and deeply cherished - and all of us will some day meet it face to face.

  Richard L. Evans

  Life, May, Faces

  Richard L. Evans (1973). “Richard L. Evans--the man and the message”

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• Are we bereft of citizenship because we are mothers, wives and daughters of a mighty people? Have women no country--no interests staked in public weal--no liabilities in common peril--no partnership in a nation's guilt and shame?

  Angelina Grimke

  Daughter, Mother, Country

  Sarah Grimke, Angelina Grimke (2015). “On Slavery and Abolitionism: Essays and Letters”, p.197, Penguin

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• Hard to believe that so nearby, just across the Channel, such atrocities could still occur in their supposedly civilized world, that one could wake up one morning and find oneself bereft of brothers, parents, friends, all with the slice of an ax.

  Lauren Willig

  Morning, Brother, Believe

  Lauren Willig (2010). “The Mischief of the Mistletoe: A Pink Carnation Christmas”, p.65, Penguin

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• Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war... Mostly the animals understand their roles, but man, by comparison, seems troubled by a message that, it is often said, he cannot quite remember or has gotten wrong... Bereft of instinct, he must search continually for meanings... Man was a reader before he became a writer, a reader of what Coleridge once called the mighty alphabet of the universe.

  Loren Eiseley

  Beach, War, Animal

  "The Unexpected Universe". Book by Loren Eiseley, www.wired.com. 1964.

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• The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master.He supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual characters, intentions or opinions, and is persuaded that he was born to supersede the necessity of their having any.If he were to make a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned - would never recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die.

  Charles Dickens

  Character, Discovery, Would Be

  Charles Dickens (1853). “Bleak House”, p.59

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• I do understand that you can look into someone’s eyes,” I heard myself saying, “and suddenly know that life will be impossible without them. Know that their voice can make your heart miss a beat and that their company is all your happiness can ever desire and that their absence will leave your soul alone, bereft and lost.

  Bernard Cornwell

  Heart, Eye, Voice

  Bernard Cornwell (1997). “The Winter King: A Novel of Arthur”, p.360, Macmillan

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• It is only on the basis of the probable and the apparent that men bereft of a sixth sense are able to sit in judgment over other men.

  Petrus Borel

  Men, Able, Sixth Sense

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