Futility Quotes - Page 2

• It is the superfluous things for which men sweat.

  Seneca the Younger

  Men, Sweat, Togas

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• All work is empty save when there is love.

  Khalil Gibran

  Love, Motivational, Success

  Khalil Gibran (2007). “Kahlil Gibran: Masterpieces”

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• Was it for this the clay grew tall? O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all?

  Wilfred Owen

  Sleep, Clay, Toil

  'Greater Love' (written 1917)

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• The impossible exists only until we find a way to make it possible

  Mike Horn

  Inspirational, Optimistic, Unattainable

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• Once you see what you are doing or have been doing, you also see its futility, and that unconscious pattern then comes to an end by itself. Awareness is the greatest agent for change.

  Eckhart Tolle

  Doing You, Agents, Patterns

  Eckhart Tolle (2006). “A New Earth (Oprah #61): Awakening to Your Life's Purpose”, p.71, Penguin

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• The dread of futility has been my life-long plague.

  Maya Angelou

  Life, Long, Dread

  Maya Angelou (2012). “The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou”, p.190, Modern Library

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• The futility of everything that comes to us from the media is the inescapable consequence of the absolute inability of that particular stage to remain silent. Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presenters—there is no alternative but to fill the screen; otherwise there would be an irremediable void.... That’s why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of the presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness squinting out at us through this little window.

  Jean Baudrillard

  Media, Squinting, Inability

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• Commonly, people believe that defeat is characterized by a general bustle and a feverish rush. Bustle and rush are the signs of victory, not of defeat. Victory is a thing of action. It is a house in the act of being built. Every participant in victory sweats and puffs, carrying the stones for the building of the house. But defeat is a thing of weariness, of incoherence, of boredom. And above all of futility.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Believe, Sweat, People

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• So, it becomes an exercise in futility if you write something that does not express the film as the director wishes. It's still their ball game. It's their show. I think any successful composer learns how to dance around the director's impulses.

  Danny Elfman

  Writing, Exercise, Successful

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• No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be: am an attendant lord, one that will do to swell a progress, start a scene or two, advise the prince.

  T. S. Eliot

  Two, Progress, Were Meant To Be

  'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock' (1917)

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• I am a futility. The life of prayer begins with that. And God is not a comfort, to be offered like Kleenex. God is a poisoned sea, with broken syringes washing up on the beach. God is shopping malls stretching to the horizon and warplanes in the sky. God is a flat tire in a rainstorm and beer cans in the ditch, a bottle shattered on a highway and the taste of gunmetal in your mouth.

  Tim Farrington

  Beach, Prayer, Beer

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• The fatal futility of Fact.

  Henry James

  Science, Facts

  The Spoils of Poynton preface (1909)

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• I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

  T. S. Eliot

  Life, Success, Coffee

  "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" l. 51 (1917)

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• When I was still a rather precocious young man, I already realized most vividly the futility of the hopes and aspirations that most men pursue throughout their lives.

  Albert Einstein

  Men, Futility Of Life, Young

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• It occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility.

  Joseph Conrad

  Silence, Would Be, Speech

  Joseph Conrad “Heart of Darkness”, W. W. Norton & Company

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• The truth is that a vast restructuring of our society is needed if remedies are to become available to the average person. Without that restructuring the good will that holds society together will be slowly dissipated... It is that sense of futility which permeates the present series of protests and dissents. Where there is a persistent sense of futility, there is violence; and that is where we are today.

  William O. Douglas

  Average, Together, Our Society

  WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS (1970). “POINTS OF REBELLION”

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• Anything beyond the limits and grasp of the human mind is either illusion or futility; and because your god having to be one or the other of the two, in the first instance I should be mad to believe in him, and in the second a fool.

  Marquis de Sade

  Believe, Two, Mad

  Marquis de Sade (2016). “Dialogue Between a Priest and a Dying Man”, p.7, BoD – Books on Demand

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• you must not use wood to put out the fire.

  Bette Lord

  Fire, Use, Woods

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• As you learn to consciously observe the transformation process, you will watch yourself repeating a lot of old patterns long after you seemingly know better. Spiritually and intellectually, you realize there is another way, but emotionally you are still clinging to the old habits. This is a difficult time. Try to be patient and compassionate with yourself. When you recognize the futility of an old pattern so clearly, it's about to change! A short time later, you will suddenly begin to respond differently, in a more positive way.

  Shakti Gawain

  Old Habits, Long, Trying

  Shakti Gawain (2015). “The Shakti Gawain Essentials: 3 Books in 1: Creative Visualization, Living in the Light & Developing Intuition”, p.162, Mango Media Inc.

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• When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.

  Jacques Barzun

  People, Culture, Normal

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• It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild. (Ch.1)

  Jack London

  Futility Of Life, Laughing, Effort

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• It is futile to fight against, if one does not know what one is fighting for.

  Ayn Rand

  Peace, Truth, Freedom

  Ayn Rand, Nathaniel Branden, Alan Greenspan, Robert Hessen (1986). “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal”, p.224, Penguin

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• Hopelessness kills. Numerous studies in humans show that we can die as a result of dire beliefs and a sense of overwhelming futility.

  Larry Dossey

  Belief, Study, Hopelessness

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• Any story about revenge is ultimately a story about forgiveness, redemption, or the futility of revenge.

  Nick Wechsler

  Revenge, Stories, Redemption

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• The complicated futility of ignorance.

  Kurt Vonnegut

  Ignorance, Complicated

  Kurt Vonnegut (1997). “Hocus Pocus”, p.92, Penguin

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