Bleak Quotes - Page 7

• When you do well in school as a young person you can foresee a bountiful future for yourself. When you don't do well, the future you see is bleak. It's tough to find an honour student in trouble with the law. We have to feel that we're of value and we get that from people reacting to our prudence.

  George Chuvalo

  School, Law, People

  Source: fightnetwork.com

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• Give a man secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn it into a garden; give him nine years' lease of a garden, and he will convert it into a desert.

  Arthur Young

  Men, Garden, Rocks

  Arthur Young (1792). “Travels during the years 1787, 1788, and 1789: undertaken more particularly with a view of ascertaining the cultivation, wealth, resources, and national prosperity of the kingdom of France”, p.37

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• Having seen Justin's work on Bleak House, I knew that he'd be incredibly well prepared and interesting stylistically for this and that was definitely the case. It's very liberating for actors - and I can only speak for myself here - but he creates a very loose environment and he's a great collaborator.

  Eric Bana

  Interesting, House, Actors

  "The Other Boleyn Girl - Eric Bana interview". Interview with Rob Carnevale, www.indielondon.co.uk.

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• Now '90210' is returning with an all-new cast of slightly more plausible teens. I'll be honest: I wish the old cast was back. Ideally, this spin-off would be an Ice Storm-esque exploration of the West Beverly gang's bleak adult lives.

  Diablo Cody

  Ice, Wish, Storm

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• Of my conception I know only what you know of yours. It occurred in darkness and I was unconsenting... By some bleak alchemy what had been mere unbeing becomes death when life is mingled with it.

  Marilynne Robinson

  Darkness, Life Is, Alchemy

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• Yes, it looks bleak. But you are still alive now. You are alive with all the others, in this present moment. And because the truth is speaking in the work, it unlocks the heart. And there’s such a feeling and experience of adventure. It’s like a trumpet call to a great adventure. In all great adventures there comes a time when the little band of heroes feels totally outnumbered and bleak, like Frodo in Lord of the Rings or Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s Progress. You learn to say ‘It looks bleak. Big deal, it looks bleak.’

  Joanna Macy

  Hero, Heart, Adventure

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• For readers worldwide, the attraction of romance novels seems to be that they provide hope, strength, and the assurance that happy endings are possible. Romance makes the promise that no matter how bleak things sometimes look, in the end everything will turn out right and true love will triumph -- and in an uncertain world, that's very comforting.

  Leigh Michaels

  Romance, Comforting, Promise

  Leigh Michaels (2007). “On Writing Romance: How to Craft a Novel That Sells”, p.5, Writer's Digest Books

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• Ah, children, pity level-crossing keepers, pity lock-keepers - pity lighthouse-keepers - pity all the keepers of this world (pity even school teachers), caught between their conscience and the bleak horizon.

  Graham Swift

  Teacher, Children, School

  Graham Swift (1991). “Waterland”, Simon & Schuster

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• Dont ever lose hope. Even when life seems bleak and hopeless, know that you are not alone.

  Nancy Reagan

  Losing, Hopeless, First Lady

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• Come, come thou bleak December wind,
  And blow the dry leaves from the tree!
  Flash, like a Love-thought, thro'me, Death
  And take a Life that wearies me.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Blow, Wind, Tree

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2011). “Samuel Taylor Coleridge”, p.5, Faber & Faber

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• Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December;
  And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
  Eagerly, I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow
  From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Leonore -
  For the rare and radiant maiden who the angels name Lenore -
  Nameless here for evermore.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Book, Angel, Names

  "The Raven" l. 7 (1845)

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• A life of love is difficult, but it is not a bleak or unrewarding life. In fact, it is the only true human and happy life, for it is filled with concerns that are as deep as life, as wide as the whole world, and as far reaching as eternity. It is only when we have consented to love, and have agreed to forget ourselves, that we can find our fulfillment. This fulfillment will come unperceived and mysterious like the grace of God, but we will recognize it and it will be recognized in us.

  John Powell

  Love, Happy Life, Grace

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• It doesn't really matter whether we reflect the light through our authentic gifts or whether our authentic calling is to spread it. What matters is that tonight is that the world is dark, cold, and bleak. Your flame burns so brightly. Share your Love and warmth with others. Watch the Light return.

  Sarah Ban Breathnach

  Healing, Dark, What Matters

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• Nothing that's ever happened has taken away the optimist in me. It's always, "Whatever-let's go to Disneyland." Yes, I have my bleak, tortured-artist moments, but you have to hold on to what's positive.

  Mariah Carey

  Attitude, Taken, Artist

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• Although love dwells in gorgeous palaces, and sumptuous apartments, more willingly than in miserable and desolate cottages, it cannot be denied but that he sometimes causes his power to be felt in the gloomy recesses of forests, among the most bleak and rugged mountains, and in the dreary caves of a desert.

  Giovanni Boccaccio

  Climbing, Mountain, Desert

  Giovanni Boccaccio, Charles Balguy (1822). “The decameron, or, Ten days' entertainment, of Boccaccio:”, p.148

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• Hiro is a talented drifter. This is the kind of lifestyle that sounded romantic to him as recently as five years ago. But in the bleak light of full adulthood, which is to one's early twenties as Sunday morning is to Saturday night, he can clearly see what it really amounts to: He's broke and unemployed.

  Neal Stephenson

  Morning, Sunday, Night

  Neal Stephenson (2003). “Snow Crash”, p.21, Spectra

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• Without a quest, life is quickly reduced to bleak black and wimpy white, a diet too bland to get anybody out of bed in the morning. A quest fuels our fire. It refuses to let us drift downstream gathering debris.

  Charles R. Swindoll

  Morning, Fire, White

  Charles R. Swindoll (2005). “Day by Day with Charles Swindoll”, p.286, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• When everything around you seems bleak, sick and empty - the antidote is forgiveness and love of yourself, and others, plus a dollop of gratitude.

  Jan Hellriegel

  Gratitude, Sick, And Love

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• Mr Earbrass stands on the terrace at twilight. It is bleak; it is cold; and the virtue has gone out of everything. Words drift through his mind: anguish turnips conjunctions illness defeat string parties no parties urns desuetude disaffection claws loss Trebizond napkins shame stones distance fever Antipodes mush glaciers incoherence labels miasma amputation tides deceit mourning elsewards.

  Edward Gorey

  Distance, Twilight, Party

  Edward Gorey (1953). “The Unstrung Harp, Or, Mr. Earbrass Writes a Novel”, Harcourt

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• A nasty day! A nasty day! 'Twas thus I heard a critic say Because the skies were bleak and gray— And yet it somehow seemed to me The day was all that it should be. I looked it very closely o'er; Its hours still were twenty-four, With sixty minutes each—no less— For deeds of good and helpfulness; And every second full of chance To give the day significance; And every hour full of growth For everybody but the sloth— I couldn't see it quite that way, For though the skies were bleak and gray The day itself, it seemed to me, Was all a day could rightly be.

  John Kendrick Bangs

  Attitude, Sixty Minutes, Sky

  John Kendrick Bangs (1920). “The Cheery Way: A Bit of Verse for Every Day”

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• The lyric abstrusities of Auden ring mystically down the circular canals of my ear and it begins to look like snow. The good gray conservative obliterating snow. Smoothing (in one white lacy euphemism after another) out all the black bleak angular unangelic nauseous ugliness of the blasted sterile world: dry buds, shrunken stone houses, dead vertical moving people all all all go under the great white beguiling wave. And come out transformed. Lose yourself in a numb dumb snow-daubed lattice of crystal and come out pure with the white virginal veneer you never had.

  Sylvia Plath

  Moving, Weather, White

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.73, Anchor

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• Bleak factory buildings and billboard-cluttered avenues look as beautiful, through the camera's eye, as churches and pastoral landscapes.

  Susan Sontag

  Beauty, Beautiful, Eye

  Susan Sontag (2011). “On Photography”, p.72, Macmillan

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• I didn't actually know what the protesters in the West really wanted. It was fantastic here, so much freedom, and that was what they were calling musty, middle-class, and fascistic, a bleak period. Bleak was what the GDR was, and it alone had adopted, almost unchanged, Nazi Germany's methods of intimidation and ideas about propaganda and the use of force.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Class, Ideas

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• Gay life in 1970 was very bleak, compartmentalized. You didn't take it to work. You had to really lead a double life. There were bars, but you sort of snuck in and snuck out. Activism and gay pride simply didn't exist. I don't even think the word 'gay' was in existence.

  Larry Kramer

  Pride, Gay, Thinking

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• In the street, your mouth's a beak, big like a bird, and your future's bleak.

  Kool Moe Dee

  Reality, Bird, Mouths

  Song: No Respect

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