Gloomy Quotes - Page 4

• He never believed in fate or providence, or the future being made by someone in the sky. Instead, at every instant, a trillion trillion possible futures; the pickiness of pure chance and physical laws seemed like freedom from the scheming of a gloomy god.

  Ian Mcewan

  Fate, Law, Sky

  Ian McEwan (2010). “Saturday”, p.128, Random House

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is nothing dictators hate so much as that unassailable, eternally elusive, eternally provoking gleam. One of the main reasons why the very gallant Russian poet Gumilev was put to death by Lenin's ruffians thirty odd years ago was that during the whole ordeal, in the prosecutor's dim office, in the torture house, in the winding corridors that led to the truck, in the truck that took him to the place of execution, and at that place itself, full of the shuffling feet of the clumsy and gloomy shooting squad, the poet kept smiling.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Hate, Years, Squad

  18 Copy quote

• When he awoke it was dawn. Or something like dawn. The light was watery, dim and incomparably sad. Vast, grey, gloomy hills rose up all around them and in between the hills there was a wide expanse of black bog. Stephen had never seen a landscape so calculated to reduce the onlooker to utter despair in an instant. "This is one of your kingdoms, I suppose, sir?" he said. "My kingdoms?" exclaimed the gentleman in surprize. "Oh, no! This is Scotland!

  Susanna Clarke

  Light, Scotland, Rose

  Susanna Clarke, Portia Rosenberg (2005). “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell”, p.604, A&C Black

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• Anyone who is not totally dead to himself will soon find that he is tempted and overcome by piddling and frivolous things. Whoever is weak in spirit, given to the flesh and inclined to sensual things can, but only with great difficulty, drag himself away from his earthly desires. Therefore he is often gloomy and sad when he is trying to pull himself away from them, and easily gives way to anger should someone attempt to oppose him.

  Thomas a Kempis

  Giving, Sensual, Desire

  7 Copy quote

• It is the nature of the Kali Yuga that most human beings are now held back from spiritual liberation due to the gravity of inertia, apathy and laziness, (known in Sankrit as the quality of tapas) that overwhelms this age. Despite this seemingly gloomy prognosis, there is a way out of this predicament for those with the will and stamina to awaken from the rampant lethargy, within and outside of themselves, to take action.

  Zeena Schreck

  Spiritual, Age, Quality

  19 Copy quote

• But the morbidity of sorrow-not cultivated sorrow, but that which comes inevitably-is often a productive sluggishness, a time when the soul slows down, too weary to go on, and takes stock of where it's been and where it's going. During these gloomy pauses, we often discover parts of ourselves we never knew we possessed, talents that, properly activated, enrich our lives.

  Eric G. Wilson

  Grief, Soul, Suffering

  4 Copy quote

• To man, that was in th' evening made,
  Stars gave the first delight;
  Admiring, in the gloomy shade,
  Those little drops of light.

  Edmund Waller

  Stars, Men, Light

  Edmund Waller (1779). “The Works of the English Poets. With Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, by Samuel Johnson”, p.121

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• If I want to feel as if I'm being sucked down a fathomless gloomy tunnel for hours and hours then I have a complete set of Schopenhauer at home.

  Ned Beauman

  Home, Tunnels, Want

  "The Teleportation Accident". Book by Ned Beauman, July 19, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Bible is the light of my understanding, the joy of my heart, the fullness of my hope, the clarified of my affections, the mirror of my thoughts, the consoler of my sorrows, the guide of my soul through this gloomy labyrinth of time, the telescope went from heaven to reveal to the eye of man the amazing glories of the far distant world.

  William Jones

  Bible, Christian, Eye

  30 Copy quote

• I don't know about you, but I've saved cards that old high school flames wrote me as well as those that employees have written me over the years. The power of genuine, customized appreciation will never lose its value, even in a gloomy economy... in fact, it's probably what we're all thirsty for in this desert of a depression.

  Chip Conley

  Appreciation, School, Flames

  "The Best $73 I Ever Spent" by Chip Conley, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 5, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sounding cataract Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock, The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, An appetite; a feeling and a love that had no need of a remoter charm by thought supplied, nor any interest Unborrowed from the eye.

  William Wordsworth

  Love, Passion, Eye

  'Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey' (1798) l. 72

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• After World War II there were many Jews who remained in refugee camps...President Harry F. Truman called for the Harrison Commission to investigate the situation in the camps and it was a pretty gloomy report. There were very few Jews admitted into the United States.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, President, United States

  Source: thehumanist.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The religion of Jesus Christ is not ascetic, nor sour, nor gloomy, nor circumscribing. It is full of sweetness in the present and in promise.

  Henry Ward Beecher

  Jesus, Promise, Christ

  Henry Ward Beecher (1871). “The Plymouth pulpit. Sermons preached in Plymouth church, Brooklyn”, p.512

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of course my moods change, but the average is serenity. I have a firm faith in art, a firm confidence in its being a powerful stream which carries a man to a harbor, though he himself must do his bit too; at all events, I think it such a great blessing when a man has found his work that I cannot count myself among the unfortunate. I mean, I may be in certain relatively great difficulties, and there may be gloomy days in my life, but I shouldn't like to be counted among the unfortunate, nor would it be correct if I were.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Art, Powerful, Mean

  Vincent van Gogh (1971). “Van Gogh's "diary"; the artist's life in his own words and art”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Wine, like the rising sun, possession gains,
  And drives the mist of dullness from the brains,
  The gloomy vapor from the spirit flies,
  And views of gaiety and gladness rise.

  George Crabbe

  Wine, Views, Brain

  George Crabbe (1855). “Poetical Works: Preface to the Tales”, p.383

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• One cubic centimeter cures ten gloomy sentiments.

  Aldous Huxley

  Cures, Sentiments, Ten

  4 Copy quote

• There is that interesting thing that Haughton Forrest was imagining the landscapes. They are so dramatic. They are dark, big, gloomy paintings and he was making them during some of the most ominous massacres in Tasmania. Forrest was recording history but missing the human story.

  Ben Quilty

  Dark, Interesting, Missing

  Source: www.lucyreesart.com

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• If you happen to live in Korea, you might always suffer from anger towards people in power, because of political and social problems. I felt gloomy under this social dictatorship. Looking back, I feel like I never saw a sunrise in Seoul. When I was at university, the policemen used to measure how short the women's mini-skirts were and how long guys' hair was. We were living under a government that considers her people to be soldiers.

  Kim Hyesoon

  Hair, Government, Korea

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The gloomy months of November, when the people of England hang and drown themselves.

  Joseph Addison

  People, Months, England

  Joseph Addison, Sir Richard Steele, William Bond (1766). “The Spectator”, p.310

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• For men know not what the nature of the soul is; whether it is engendered with us, or whether, on the contrary, it is infused into us at our birth, whether it perishes with us, dissolved by death, or whether it haunts the gloomy shades and vast pools of Orcus.

  Lucretius

  Men, Soul, Shade

  Titus Lucretius Carus (1898). “Lucretius On the Nature of Things”, p.8

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Much too oft we make life gloomy-- When happy we might be, If we gathered more of sunshine, And not dark shadows see.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Life, Happiness, Dark

  4 Copy quote

• If the street life, not the Whitechapel street life, but that of the common but so-called respectable part of town is in any city more gloomy, more ugly, more grimy, more cruel than in London, I certainly don't care to see it. Sometimes it occurs to one that possibly all the failures of this generation, the world over, have been suddenly swept into London, for the streets are a restless, breathing, malodorous pageant of the seedy of all nations.

  Willa Cather

  Breathing, Cities, This Generation

  "Willa Cather in Europe". Book by Willa Cather, 1956.

  58 Copy quote

  Show source

• I now have had my foggy crystal ball for quite a long time. Its predictions are invariably gloomy and usually correct, but I am quite used to that and they won't keep me from giving you a few suggestions, even if it is merely an exercise in futility whose only effect is to make you feel guilty.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Exercise, Long, Giving

  10 Copy quote

• Byron owed the vast influence which he exercised over his contemporaries at least as much to his gloomy egotism as to the real power of his poetry.

  Thomas B. Macaulay

  Real, Influence, Byron

  4 Copy quote

• Britannia's shame! There took her gloomy flight, On wing impetuous, a black sullen soul . Less base the fear of death than fear of life. O Britain! infamous for suicide.

  Edward Young

  Suicide, Wings, Soul

  Edward Young, Charles Edward DE COETLOGON (1793). “Night thoughts on life death and immortality ... to which are added the life of the author and a paraphrase on part of the Book of Job”, p.103

  5 Copy quote

  Show source