Bleak Quotes - Page 3

• It is at this moment, when things appear so bleak that we must redouble our efforts and not give up. We must believe that we can remake the world in a more peaceful reality.

  Cynthia McKinney

  Giving Up, Believe, Reality

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• Every story has already been told. Once you've read Anna Karenina, Bleak House, The Sound and the Fury, To Kill a Mockingbird and A Wrinkle in Time, you understand that there is really no reason to ever write another novel. Except that each writer brings to the table, if she will let herself, something that no one else in the history of time has ever had.

  Anna Quindlen

  Inspirational Life, Writing, Wrinkles

  Anna Quindlen (2009). “Being Perfect”, p.36, Random House

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• If we do nothing, we still get to a post-carbon future, but it will be bleak. However, if we plan the transition, we can have a world that supports robust communities of healthy, creative people and ecosystems with millions of other species.

  Richard Heinberg

  Ecosystems, People, Support

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• I don't deliberately look for something dark or bleak or disconnected, in fact that's not something I'm even conscious of in the work as I'm making it. I'm always trying to create beauty, reveal hope, show the sense of longing that exists in isolation and loneliness, and capture the search for something greater inside all of my subjects.

  Gregory Crewdson

  Beauty, Photography, Hope

  "Creating Photographic Art - Exclusive Interview With Gregory Crewdson". Interview with David Geffin, fstoppers.com. October 11, 2014.

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• At times, life is hard, as hard as crucible steel. It has its bleak and painful moments. Like the ever flowing water of a river, life has its moments of drought and its moments of flood. Like the ever-changin cycle of the seasons, life has the soothing warmth of the summers and the piercing chill of its winters. But through it all, God walks with us. Never forget that God is able to lift you from the fatigue of despair to the buoyancy of hope, and transform dark and desolate valleys into sunlit paths of inner peace.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Summer, Religious, Dark

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• These European White Men, then, with civilization in their blood and in their destiny, crossed the Atlantic and set up a new civilization on a bleak and rock bound coast. It was the White Men who drove north to Alaska and west to California; the men who opened up the tropics and subdued the Arctics; the men who mastered the African Veldts; the men who peopled Australia and seized the gates of the world at Suez, Gibraltar and Panama.

  Ben Klassen

  Destiny, Men, Alaska

  "Nature's Eternal Religion" by Ben Klassen, (Ch. 2, Paragraph 3), 1973.

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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 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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• 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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• 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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• In his bleak mercy, Death forever strips The soul of light and memory, rendering blind Our vision, lest surmounted deeps appal, As when on mountain-heights a glance behind Betrays with knowledge, and the climber slips Down gulfs of fear to some enormous fall.

  Clark Ashton Smith

  Death, Memories, Fall

  Clark Ashton Smith, “The Unremembered”

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• We laughed a lot. That's one thing we forgot about for a few years - laughing. When we went through all the lawsuits, it looked as if everything was bleak, but when I think back to before that, I remember we used to laugh all the time.

  George Harrison

  Thinking, Years, Laughing

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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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• Somebody finally has to get out an ad, often after hours. Somebody has to stare at a blank piece of paper. Probably nothing was ever more bleak. This is probably the very height of lonesomeness. He is one person and he is alone

  Fairfax M. Cone

  Business, After Hours, Pieces

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• We write to expose the unexposed. Most human beings are dedicated to keeping that one door shut. But the writer's job is to see what's behind it, to see the bleak unspeakable stuff, and to turn the unspeakable into words - not just into any words but if we can, into rhythm and blues. You can't do this without discovering your own true voice, and you can't find your true voice and peer behind the door and report honestly and clearly to us if your parents are reading over your shoulder.

  Anne Lamott

  Jobs, Reading, Writing

  Anne Lamott (2007). “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life”, p.198, Anchor

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• History is the art of making an argument about the past by telling a story accountable to evidence. In the writing of history, a story without an argument fades into antiquarianism; an argument without a story risks pedantry. Writing history requires empathy, inquiry, and debate. It requires forswearing condescension, cant, and nostalgia. The past isn’t quaint. Much of it, in fact, is bleak.

  Jill Lepore

  Art, Writing, Past

  Jill Lepore (2012). “The Story of America: Essays on Origins”, p.15, Princeton University Press

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• He lay listening to the water drip in the woods. Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Heart, Air, Wind

  Cormac McCarthy (2010). “The Road”, p.10, Pan Macmillan

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• Reality has become so intolerable, she said, so bleak, that all I can paint now are the colors of my dreams.

  Azar Nafisi

  Dream, Reality, Color

  Azar Nafisi (2003). “Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books”, p.11, Random House

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• Envy is the coward side of Hate, And all her ways are bleak and desolate.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Hate, Envy, Coward

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• I think about my choice. Either outcome is bleak. If I stay and live through high school, go to college, get a job, what will ever change? This blackness inside will never go away. I don't make friends; I'll always be alone. If I go, at least there's hope of peace. Chance of a new and better life on the other side.

  Julie Anne Peters

  Jobs, School, College

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