Desolate Quotes - Page 3

• War wreaked on you his hideous ravishment;
  We, we alone, Nereids inviolate,
  Remain to weep, with the sea-birds to chant:
  Corinth is lost, Corinth is desolate.

  Hilda Doolittle

  War, Loss, Sea

  Hilda Doolittle, Louis L. Martz (1986). “Collected Poems 1912-1944”, p.338, New Directions Publishing

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• There's an aesthetic theme, which is cities at two o'clock in the morning. Not cities packed with people going out to clubs and dancing but desolate, empty streets. It's off-putting but there's a strange comfort to it as well, that desolate urban environment.

  Moby

  Morning, Cities, Two

  "'The Humility That Comes From Being Hated': Moby Interviewed". Interview with Stephen Dalton, thequietus.com. May 9, 2011.

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• A vacant mind invites dangerous inmates, as a deserted mansion tempts wandering outcasts to enter and take up their abode in its desolate apartments.

  George Stillman Hillard

  Art, Temptation, Mind

  George Stillman Hillard (1854). “Six Months in Italy”, p.121

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• No one is so accursed by fate, no one so utterly desolate, but some heart though unknown responds unto his own.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Heart, Fate, Destiny

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1849). “The Poems of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ; Complete in One Volume”, p.49

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• Standing on the Moon looking back at Earth - this lovely place you just came from - you see all the colours, and you know what they represent. Having left the water planet, with all that water brings to Earth in terms of colour and abudance life, the absence of water and atmosphere on the desolate surface of the Moon gives rise to a stark contrast.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Moon, Giving, Water

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• In my view, madness is a place. You go. You come back. And I think we all take turns being the mental patient. Without a touch of crazy, literature can be a desolate place. In the current climate of careful speech, even fearful speech, smoke-free film scripts, thought-free songs, and child-proof locks on American minds, the oft-repeated lament of the arts is "Where have all those wonderful madmen gone?"

  Carol O'Connell

  Song, Art, Children

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• When you're spending that much time by yourself in your car looking at landscapes, it's desolate. Most of the other people around you are invisible in their own cars. You're driving past houses where maybe once in a while somebody is out, but that's about it. So I was interested in that aesthetic and I decided I wanted to write an apocalyptic narrative, but the more I thought of it, it seemed bizarre and untenable to me to pick one, so I just didn't.

  Lucy Corin

  Writing, Past, Car

  Source: therumpus.net

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• We hear often of the distress of the negro servants, on the loss of a kind master; and with good reason, for no creature on God's earth is left more utterly unprotected and desolate than the slave in these circumstances.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Loss, Earth, Kind

  Harriet Beecher Stowe, Harriet Beecher STOWE (2016). “Collected Works (Complete and Illustrated Editions: Uncle Tom's Cabin, Queer Little Folks, The Chimney-Corner, ...)”, p.292, Harriet Beecher Stowe

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• Humanity has been passing through a gray and desolate time of confusion.

  John Steinbeck

  Confusion, Humanity, Passing

  John Steinbeck (2003). “America and Americans and Selected Nonfiction”, p.146, Penguin

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• The far northern scenery is absolutely desolate but is marvelously beautiful, and I shall never regret that I have seen it, even though it cost me the unbelievable privations and exertions which we suffer here.

  Robert Bunsen

  Beautiful, Regret, Suffering

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• Do not think I do not realise what I am doing. I am making a composition using the following elements: the winter beach; the winter moon; the ocean; the women; the pine trees; the riders; the driftwood; the shells; the shapes of darkness and the shapes of water; and the refuse. These are all inimical to my loneliness because of their indifference to it. Out of these pieces of inimical indifference, I intend to represent the desolate smile of winter which, as you must have gathered, is the smile I wear.

  Angela Carter

  Beach, Loneliness, Ocean

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• He that has no present Christ has a future, dark, chaotic, heaving with its destructive ocean; and over it there goes forever--black-pinioned winging its solitary and hopeless flight, the raven of his anxious thoughts, and finds no place to rest, and comes back again to the desolate ark with its foreboding croak of evil in the present and evil in the future.

  Alexander MacLaren

  Ocean, Dark, Anxious Thoughts

  Alexander Maclaren (1859). “Sermons preached in Union chapel, Manchester”, p.289

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• Wrapped in his sad-colored cloak, the Day, like a Puritan, standeth
  Stern in the joyless fields, rebuking the lingering color,--
  Dying hectic of leaves and the chilly blue of the asters,--
  Hearing, perchance, the croak of a crow on the desolate tree-top.

  Bayard Taylor

  Blue, Color, Tree

  Bayard Taylor (1875). “Home Pastorals, Ballads and Lyrics”, p.33

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• I hear there are people who actually enjoy moving. Sounds like a disease to me - they must be unstable. Though it does have it’s poetry, I’ll allow that. When an old dwelling starts looking desolate, a mixture of regret and anxiety comes over us and we feel like we are leaving a safe harbor for the rolling sea. As for the new place, it looks on us with alien eyes, it has nothing to say to us, it is cold.

  Jan Neruda

  Regret, Moving, Eye

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• Desolate--Life is so dreary and desolate--
  Women and men in the crowd meet and mingle,
  Yet with itself every soul standeth single,
  Deep out of sympathy moaning its moan--
  Holding and having its brief exultation--
  Making its lonesome and low lamentation--
  Fighting its terrible conflicts alone.

  Alice Cary

  Fighting, Men, Soul

  Alice Cary, Phoebe Cary, Mary Clemmer (1876). “The Poetical Works of Alice and Phoebe Cary”, p.180

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• You didn't want to die. Most mortals don't, even if they find themselves in as desolate and soul-destroying a spot as you. Almost all of those who take their own lives wish at the last moment that they hadn't. They see at the end how much they've given up, how precious life is, even when it's treated them like dirt and crushed their dreams. Many think they've passed beyond hope, but they never really have, not until they pass beyond life itself. Alas, that knowledge comes too late for most would-be-suicides and they die with regret. Very few are offered the chance that you have been handed.

  Darren Shan

  Suicide, Dream, Regret

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• I'm a winter girl. I like coming out when things are desolate and everybody's ready to slit their wrists.

  Tori Amos

  Girl, Winter, Coming Out

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• I am an absurd idealist. But I believe that all that must come true. For, unless it comes true, the world will be laid desolate. And I believe that it can come true.

  Leslie Charteris

  Laughter, Believe, Fighting

  "The Last Hero".

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• The heart's seasons seldom coincide with the calendar. Who among us has not been made desolate beyond all words upon some golden day when the little creatures of the air and meadow were life incarnate, from sheer joy of living? Who among us has not come home, singing, when the streets were almost impassable with snow, or met a friend with a happy, smiling face, in the midst of a pouring rain?

  Myrtle Reed

  Rain, Home, Heart

  Myrtle Reed (1909). “Old Rose and Silver”

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• If you live for your children, they may be smitten down and leave you desolate, or, what is far worse, they may desert you and leave you worse than childless in a cold and unfeeling world.

  Matthew Simpson

  Children, Desert, World

  Matthew Simpson (1885). “Sermons”

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• Our god is the thing, or person, which we think most precious, for whom we would make the greatest sacrifice, and who moves our heart with the warmest love. He is the person or thing that if lost would leave us desolate.

  Alan Redpath

  Moving, Heart, Sacrifice

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• Truffles must come to the table in their own stock and as you break open this jewel sprung from a poverty-stricken soil, imagine - if you have never visited it - the desolate kingdom where it rules.

  Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

  Food, Jewels, Cooking

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• Saying Good-bye to the God of Disease (1) Mauve waters and green mountains are nothing when the great ancient doctor Hua To could not defeat a tiny worm. A thousand villages collapsed, were choked with weeds, men were lost arrows. Ghosts sang in the doorway of a few desolate houses. Yet now in a day we leap around the earth or explore a thousand Milky Ways. And if the cowherd who lives on a star asks about the god of plagues, tell him, happy or sad, the god is gone, washed away in the waters. July 1, 1958

  Mao Zedong

  Life, Weed, Stars

  Zedong Mao (2008). “The Poems of Mao Zedong”, p.89, Univ of California Press

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• But evil things, in robes of sorrow, Assailed the monarch's high estate; (Ah, let us mourn, for never morrow Shall dawn upon him desolate!) And round about his home the glory That blushed and bloomed, Is but a dim-remembered story Of the old time entombed.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Home, Evil, Sorrow

  Edgar Allan Poe (2015). “Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe:”, p.99, Sheba Blake Publishing

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• Mayfield said, "You asked what I was thinking. Well, I will tell you. I was thinking that a man like myself, after suffering such a blow as you men have struck on this day, has two distinct paths he might travel in his life. He might walk out into the world with a wounded heart, intent on sharing his mad hatred with every person he passes; or, he might start out anew with an empty heart, and he should take care to fill it up with only proud things from then on, so as to nourish his desolate mind-set and cultivate something positive or new.

  Patrick deWitt

  Heart, Blow, Men

  Patrick deWitt (2011). “The Sisters Brothers”, p.105, Granta Books

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