Desperate Quotes - Page 13

• In my work in Haiti, I've seen the hugely positive effects that happen when people come together to build something in the middle of the most desperate situations.

  Olivia Wilde

  Desperate Situations, People, Together

  14 Copy quote

• The Lord knew I would someday be charged with the priesthood responsibility for hundreds and even thousands of Heavenly Father's children who were in desperate temporal need.

  Henry B. Eyring

  Children, Father, Responsibility

  6 Copy quote

• I realize how desperate it sounds for me, as a comedian, to ask you to laugh at my jokes.

  John Oliver

  Laughing, Comedian, Sound

  4 Copy quote

• His air of failure had nothing desperate about it; rather, it seemed to stem from an unresented realisation that he was not cut out for success, and his duty was therefore to ensure only that he failed in the correct and acceptable fashion.

  Julian Barnes

  Fashion, Cutting, Air

  Julian Barnes (1984). “Flaubert's parrot”, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• A man who wants to die feels angry and full of life and desperate and bored and exhausted, all at the same time; he wants to fight everyone, and he wants to curl up in a ball and hide in a cupboard somewhere. He wants to say sorry to everyone, and he wants everyone to know just how badly they've all let him down.

  Nick Hornby

  Death, Sorry, Fighting

  8 Copy quote

• We all spend so much time not saying what we want, because we know we can't have it. And because it sounds ungracious, or ungrateful, or disloyal, or childish, or banal. Or because we're so desperate to pretend that things are OK, really, that confessing to ourselves they're not looks like a bad move. Go on, say what you want. ... Whatever it is, say it to yourself. The truth will set you free. Either that or it'll get you a punch in the nose. Surviving in whatever life you're living means lying, and lying corrodes the soul, so take a break from the lies for just one minute.

  Nick Hornby

  Lying, Moving, Mean

  16 Copy quote

• Love After Love The time will come when, with elation you will greet yourself arriving at your own door, in your own mirror and each will smile at the other's welcome, and say, sit here. Eat. You will love again the stranger who was your self. Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart to itself, to the stranger who has loved you all your life, whom you ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.

  Derek Walcott

  Heart, Wine, Mirrors

  Derek Walcott (2014). “The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013”, p.227, Macmillan

  80 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Funny, Pain, Memories

  Edgar Allan Poe, Simon Marsden (1988). “Visions of Poe: a personal selection of Edgar Allan Poe's stories and poems”, Michael Joseph

  253 Copy quote

  Show source

• Night poured over the desert. It came suddenly, in purple. In the clear air, the stars drilled down out of the sky, reminding any thoughtful watcher that it is in the deserts and high places that religions are generated. When men see nothing but bottomless infinity over their heads they have always had a driving and desperate urge to find someone to put in the way.

  Terry Pratchett

  Stars, Thoughtful, Night

  6 Copy quote

• The Ogre does what ogres can,
  Deeds quite impossible for Man,
  But one prize is beyond his reach,
  The Ogre cannot master Speech:
  About a subjugated plain,
  Among its desperate and slain,
  The Ogre stalks with hands on hips,
  While drivel gushes from his lips.

  W. H. Auden

  Men, Hands, Doe

  "August 1968". Poem by W. H. Auden,

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• You have not wasted your time; you have helped to save the world. We are not buffoons, but very desperate men at war with a vast conspiracy.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  War, Men, World

  Gilbert K. Chesterton (2013). “The Essential Gilbert K. Chesterton”, p.231, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest.

  Anais Nin

  Self, Two, Curiosity

  23 Copy quote

• How does it feel? I feels exactly like one of those dreams in which you suddenly realize that you have to take a test you haven't studied for and you aren't wearing any clothes. And you've left your wallet at home. When I am out there, in time, I am inverted, changed into a desperate version of myself. I become a thief, a vagrant, an animal who runs and hides. I startle old women and amaze children. I am a trick, an illusion of the highest order, so incredible that I am actually true.

  Audrey Niffenegger

  Running, Dream, Children

  Audrey Niffenegger (2014). “The Time Traveler's Wife”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The term itself--my life--is a desperate overstatement.

  Don DeLillo

  Life Is, Term, Overstatement

  Don DeLillo (2011). “Valparaiso”, p.44, Pan Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• When you're in a competitive environment, always give out the impression that you don't care. It makes people want you more. If you act desperate, it's over. I think a passive attitude is helpful. It comes naturally because I'm lazy.

  Diablo Cody

  Attitude, Thinking, People

  "Running with Diablo". Interview with Matt Smith, www.citypages.com. December 26, 2007.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I didn't know what hate felt like, not the hate that comes after love. It's huge and desperate and it longs to be proved wrong. And every day it's proved right it grows a little more monstrous. If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession. A need to see the once-loved weak and cowed beneath pity. Disgust is close and dignity is far away. The hate is not only for the once loved, it's for yourself too; how could you ever have loved this?

  Jeanette Winterson

  Hate, Passion, Needs

  "The Passion". Book by Jeanette Winterson, 1987.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• With the arrival of electric technology, man extended, or set outside himself, a live model of the central nervous system itself. To the degree that this is so, it is a development that suggests a desperate and suicidal autoamputation, as if the central nervous system could no longer depend on the physical organs to be protective buffers against the slings and arrows of outrageous mechanism.

  Marshall McLuhan

  Suicidal, Technology, Men

  "Understanding media: the extensions of man".

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Love After Love all your life, whom you have ignored for another, who knows you by heart. Take down the love letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes, peel your own image from the mirror. Sit. Feast on your life.

  Derek Walcott

  Heart, Mirrors, Letters

  Derek Walcott (2014). “The Poetry of Derek Walcott 1948-2013”, p.227, Macmillan

  23 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Hallows, the Hallows. A desperate man’s dream!

  J. K. Rowling

  Dream, Men

  4 Copy quote

• Remember; no matter how desperate the situation seems, time spent thinking clearly is never time wasted.

  Max Brooks

  Thinking, Matter, Remember

  Max Brooks (2003). “The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead”, p.87, Broadway Books

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• You know, there's a big world out there filled with desperate orphans who would gladly swim across an ocean of thumbtacks just to be eclipsed by the long shadow that is cast by my accomplishments.

  Daniel Handler

  Ocean, Long, Accomplishment

  7 Copy quote

• Desperate times call for desperate measures" is an aphorism which here means "sometimes you need to change your facial expression in order to create a workable disguise." The quoting of an aphorism, such as "It takes a village to raise a child," "No news is good news," and "Love conquers all," rarely indicates that something helpful is about to happen, which is why we provide our volunteers with a disguise kit in addition to helpful phrases of advice.

  Daniel Handler

  Love, Children, Mean

  4 Copy quote

• Inside me is the same desperate hope I have watching the ravenous dead and thinking, Oh please, oh please, oh please. The craving inside of me is to be clutched at by some dead girl. To put my ear to her chest and hear nothing. Even getting munched on by zombies beats the idea that I'm only flesh and blood, skin and bone. Demon or angel or evil spirit, I just need something to show itself. Ghoulie or ghosty or long-legged beastie, I just want my hand held.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Girl, Angel, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• You’re pretty sharp, Clive. Do you believe in God?” Clive smiled. “I don’t know, should I?” Actually, approaching the matter from a purely logical perspective, yes. All the evidence points to the existence of a creator. The single greatest body of evidence is the dismal failure of man’s desperate attempts to come up with a reasonable alternative, beginning with evolution. I’ve always looked at the universe and seen a creator as plainly as most people who look at the ocean see water.

  Ted Dekker

  Believe, Ocean, Men

  8 Copy quote

• His contagious conviction that our love was unique and desperate infected me with an anxious sickness; soon we would learn to treat one another with the circumspect tenderness of comrades who are amputees, for we were surrounded by the most moving images of evanesecence, fireworks, morning glories, the old, children. But the most moving of these images were the intagible relfections of ourselves we saw in one another's eyes, reflections of nothing but appearances, in a city dedicated to seeming, and, try as we might to possess the essence of each other's otherness, we would inevitably fail.

  Angela Carter

  Morning, Children, Moving

  19 Copy quote