Desolation Quotes - Page 4

• No matter how piercing and appalling his insights, the desolation
  creeping over his outer world, the lurid lights and shadows of his inner
  world, the writer must live with hope, work in faith

  J. B. Priestley

  Faith, Light, Shadow

  4 Copy quote

• Where there is hunger there is no hope. There is only desolation and pain. Hunger nurtures violence and fanaticism. A world where people starve will never be safe

  Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva

  Pain, People, World

  20 Copy quote

• They make a desolation and call it peace.

  Agha Shahid Ali

  Farewell

  Agha Shahid Ali (2009). “The Veiled Suite: The Collected Poems”, p.107, W. W. Norton & Company

  28 Copy quote

  Show source

• Wherefore, I beseech you let the dog and the onions and these people of the strange and godless names work out their several salvations from their piteous and wonderful difficulties without help of mine, for indeed their trouble is sufficient as it is, whereas an I tried to help I should but damage their cause the more and yet mayhap not live myself to see the desolation wrought.

  Mark Twain

  Dog, Math, Names

  Mark Twain (2016). “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court”, p.224, Mark Twain

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• We hold on STEVE's still smiling face as MICHAEL passes by. STEVE's eyes follow MICHAEL out of the room and then the smile disappears. It is replaced by a look of hunger and desolation.

  Stephen Fry

  Eye, Faces, Looks

  4 Copy quote

• to weep for someone who is gone is desolation, but to weep for someone who has never really existed is to lose a part of oneself.

  Margaret Campbell Barnes

  Gone, Oneself, Loses

  Margaret Campbell Barnes (1949). “Brief Gaudy Hour: A Novel of Anne Boleyn”, London : Macdonald

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Is there any wilderness of sand in the deserts of Arabia, is there any prospect of desolation among the ruins of Palestine, which can rival the repelling effect on the eye, and the depressing influence on the mind, of an English country town in the first stage of its existence, and in the transition state of its prosperity?

  Wilkie Collins

  Country, Depressing, Eye

  Wilkie Collins (2015). “The Woman in White: Wilkie Collins Top Collections”, p.432, 谷月社

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Antarctica is otherworldly, like nothing I've ever seen before. Stark, cold, beautiful desolation.

  Mark Hoppus

  Beautiful, Cold, Starks

  20 Copy quote

• O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand Between their loved home and the war's desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav'n rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation. Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.' And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

  Francis Scott Key

  Stars, War, Home

  Francis Scott Key, Roger Brooke Taney (1857). “Poems”, p.33

  31 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nobody can have the consolations of religion or philosophy unless he has first experienced their desolations.

  Aldous Huxley

  Philosophy, History, Firsts

  7 Copy quote

• Maybe I'll go where I can see stars, he said to himself as the car gained velocity and altitude; it headed away from San Francisco, toward the uninhabited desolation to the north. To the place where no living thing would go. Not unless it felt that the end had come.

  Philip K. Dick

  Stars, San Francisco, Car

  Philip K. Dick (2008). “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, p.227, Ballantine Books

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Second-hand gloves will become lovely again, their memories are what give them the need for other hands. And the desolation of lovers is the same: that enormous emptiness carved out of such tiny beings as we are asks to be filled; the need for the new love is faithfulness to the old.

  Galway Kinnell

  Memories, Love Is, Hands

  Galway Kinnell (2001). “A New Selected Poems”, p.95, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is a fearful splendor in absolute desolation.

  James A. Baldwin

  Splendor, Fearful, Absolutes

  4 Copy quote

• One thought alone preoccupies the submerged mind of Empire: how not to end, how not to die, how to prolong its era. By day it pursues its enemies. It is cunning and ruthless, it sends its bloodhounds everywhere. By night it feeds on images of disaster: the sack of cities, the rape of populations, pyramids of bones, acres of desolation.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Night, Cities, Pyramids

  J. M. Coetzee (1980). “Waiting for the Barbarians”, Penguin Group USA

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Leroy interrupted Chantal's fantasies: "Freedom? As you live our your desolation, you can be either unhappy or happy. Having that choice is what constitutes your freedom. You're free to melt your own individuality into the cauldron of the multitude either with a feeling of defeat or euphoria.

  Milan Kundera

  Choices, Feelings, Individuality

  4 Copy quote

• It is a time when one’s spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death. It is a time when one is filled with vague longings; when one dreams of flight to peaceful islands in the remote solitudes of the sea, or folds his hands and says, What is the use of struggling, and toiling and worrying any more? let us give it all up.

  Mark Twain

  Dream, Struggle, Past

  Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.1257, GENERAL PRESS

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• In times of storm and tempest, of indecision and desolation, a book already known and loved makes better reading than something new and untried ... nothing is so warming and companionable.

  Elizabeth Goudge

  Book, Reading, Storm

  12 Copy quote

• You pile of stones, you waste, you desolation, I'll stuff you with misery till it comes out of your eyes. I'll change your heart into green grass, and all you love into a sheep. I'll turn you into a bad poet with dreams.

  Peter S. Beagle

  Dream, Heart, Eye

  Peter S. Beagle (1968). “The Last Unicorn”, Roc

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Arrival often brings nothing but a sense of desolation and disappointment.

  Rosamunde Pilcher

  Disappointment, Hopefully, Arrivals

  50 Copy quote

• They're selling postcards of the hanging They're painting the passports brown The beauty parlor is filled with sailors The circus is in town Here comes the blind commissioner They've got him in a trance One hand is tied to the tight-rope walker The other is in his pants And the riot squad they're restless They need somewhere to go As Lady and I look out tonight From Desolation Row.

  Bob Dylan

  Hands, Squad, Needs

  Song: Desolation Row, Album: Highway 61 Revisited, 1965

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Angel, Men, Enemy

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (2004). “Frankenstein”, p.265, Collector's Library

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Thus violent deeds live after men upon the earth, and traces of war and bloodshed will survive in mournful shapes long after those who worked the desolation are but atoms of earth themselves.

  Charles Dickens

  War, Men, Long

  Charles Dickens, Bernard Shaw, Charles Pears, Frederick Barnard (1912*). “Old curiosity shop; coloured reproductions from ... drawing by Fred Barnard”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love—but sometimes it was so hard to love. Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up.

  Yann Martel

  Letting Go, Heart, Opening Up

  Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.300, Canongate Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I cling unto the burning Æthyr like Lucifer that fell through the Abyss, and by the fury of his flight kindled the air. And I am Belial, for having seen the Rose upon thy breast, I have denied God. And I am Satan! I am Satan! I am cast out upon a burning crag! And the sea boils about the desolation thereof. And already the vultures gather, and feast upon my flesh.

  Aleister Crowley

  Air, Sea, Rose

  Aleister Crowley (2012). “The Best of the Equinox, Enochian Magic”, p.141, Weiser Books

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Emptiness and boredom: what an understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair, and depression. Isn't there some other way to look at this? After all, angst of these dimensions is a luxury item. You need to be well fed, clothes, and housed to have time for this much self-pity.

  Susanna Kaysen

  Self, Luxury, Clothes

  13 Copy quote