Helpless Quotes - Page 12

• The situation is that of him who is helpless, cannot act, in the event cannot paint, since he is obliged to paint. The act is of him who, helpless, unable to act, acts, in the event paints, since he is obliged to paint.

  Samuel Beckett

  Art, Events, Literature

  Samuel Beckett, Ruby Cohn (1983). “Disjecta: miscellaneous writings and a dramatic fragment”, Calder Publications Limited

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• Wherever the State touches the personal life of the infant, the child, the youth, or the aged, helpless, defective in mind, body or moral nature, there the State enters "woman's peculiar sphere," her sphere of motherly succor and training, her sphere of sympathetic and self-sacrificing ministration to individual lives.

  Anna Garlin Spencer

  Children, Sacrifice, Motherhood

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• If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it. In the law courts, in business, in government. There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow
  composed of the helpless and the impotent.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Government, Law, Missing

  Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Suttree”, p.15, Pan Macmillan

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• By "trampling upon the helpless abroad" with unchecked surveillance, Americans have learned, "by a natural process, to endure with apathy the like at home."

  Mark Twain

  Home, Tyrants, Apathy

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• Almost everywhere we find . . . the use of various coercive measures, to rid ourselves as quickly as possible of the child withinus--i.e., the weak, helpless, dependent creature--in order to become an independent competent adult deserving of respect. When we reencounter this creature in our children, we persecute it with the same measures once used in ourselves.

  Alice Miller

  Children, Independent, Order

  Alice Miller (2002). “For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence”, p.58, Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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• Parents sometimes think of newborns as helpless creatures, but in fact parents' behavior is much more under the infant's control than the reverse. Does he come running when you cry?

  Sandra Scarr

  Running, Thinking, Parent

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• The only thing I can see in Jasper Dale's face is helpless and utter confusion.

  Hetty King

  Confusion, Faces, I Can

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• Even our recreation was scheduled. There was no time to look for birds or wander into the nearby woods. We were put into teams and sent into violent pursuit of a helpless ball.

  Gloria Whelan

  Team, Bird, Balls

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• The law of karma is neither fatalistic nor punitive; nor is man a hapless, helpless victim in its bonds. God has blessed each one of us with reason, intellect and discrimination, as well as the sovereign free will. Even when our past karma inclines us toward evil, we can consciously tune our inclination towards detachment and ego-free action, thus lightening the karmic load.

  Dada Vaswani

  Karma, Blessed, Past

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• We live in an age of prejudice, dissimulation and paradox, wherein, like dry leaves caught in a whirlpool, some of us are tossed helpless . . . ever struggling between our honest convictions and fear of that cruelest of tyrants -- PUBLIC OPINION.

  H. P. Blavatsky

  Struggle, Tyrants, Age

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• Europe resolved a great problem-the problem of the Zionist danger. The Zionists, who constituted a strong political party in Europe, caused much disorder there. Since they had a lot of property and controlled an empire of propaganda, they made the European governments helpless.

  Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani

  Strong, Party, Europe

  Friday sermon on International Jerusalem Day, October 5, 2007.

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• The Virgin filled so enormous a space in the life and thought of the time that one stands now helpless before the mass of testimony to her direct action and constant presence in every moment and form of the illusion which men thought they thought their existence.

  Henry Adams

  Men, Direct Action, Space

  Henry Adams (1986). “Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres”, p.237, Penguin

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• Work, apart from devotion or love of God, is helpless and cannot stand alone.

  Ramakrishna

  Devotion To God, God Love, Stand Alone

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• Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king.

  Emma Goldman

  Kings, Army, Men

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism and Other Essays”, p.179, Library of Alexandria

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• The helpless ecstasy of loosing himself in her charm was a powerful opiate rather than a tonic.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald

  Powerful, Opiates, Charm

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• Outcast on a cold star, unable to feel anything but an awful helpless numbness. I look down into the warm, earthy world. Into a nest of lovers' beds, baby cribs, meal tables, all the solid commerce of life in this earth, and feel apart, enclosed in a wall of glass.

  Sylvia Plath

  Baby, Stars, Wall

  Sylvia Plath (2000). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950-1962”, Anchor

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• What would you prefer? 'What did the Count eat today, children? One helpless villager, two helpless villagers, three helpless villagers….

  Cassandra Clare

  Children, Two, Today

  Cassandra Clare (2011). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (4 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels”, p.1294, Simon and Schuster

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• I didn't say to act dead. I said act helpless.

  Arthur Golden

  Said

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• Society attacks early, when the individual is helpless. It enslaves him almost before he has tasted freedom. The 'ologies' will tell you how its done Theology calls it building a conscience or developing a spirit of selflessness. Psychology calls it the growth of the superego. Considering how long society has been at it, you'd expect a better job. But the campaigns have been badly planned and the victory has never been secured.

  B. F. Skinner

  Jobs, Long, Psychology

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• Do we dare to be ourselves?' This is the question that counts - and not, 'Must a man be helpless?' ...A man can do something for peace without having to jump into politics.

  Pablo Casals

  Men, Dare, Can Do Something

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• I know I'm famous and irresitible - a combination whose properties closely resemble radioactivity - and I know that you in this room are helpless against me.

  Jennifer Egan

  Rooms, Combination, Property

  Jennifer Egan (2010). “A Visit from the Goon Squad”, p.134, Anchor

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• He looks trapped, helpless and furious, and that’s a feeling I know too well. Know how much it hurts. Know how it holds you down, how every day there are a thousand little ways to see there is nothing you can do to change who or what you are.

  Elizabeth Scott

  Hurt, Feelings, Looks

  Elizabeth Scott (2011). “Between Here and Forever”, p.173, Simon and Schuster

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• Every object strives for its proper place. A book seeks to be near its truest admirer. Just as this helpless moth seeks to be near the candle that infatuates him.

  Vikram Seth

  Book, Strive, Admirer

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• A wretched soul, bruised with adversity, We bid be quiet when we hear it cry. But were we burd'ned with like weight of pain, As much or more we should ourselves complain: So thou, that hast no unkind mate to grieve thee, With urging helpless patience wouldst relieve me; But if thou live to see like right bereft, This fool-begged patience in thee will be left.

  William Shakespeare

  Pain, Adversity, Grieving

  William Shakespeare, Alfred Harbage (1977). “The complete works”

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• Painting is consequently an almost blind, desperate effort, like that of a person abandoned, helpless, in totally incomprehensible surroundings.

  Gerhard Richter

  Effort, Painting, Blind

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: text : writings, interviews and letters, 1961-2007”

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