Helpless Quotes - Page 7

• The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact. Our civilization is founded on the shambles, and every individual existence goes out in a lonely spasm of helpless agony.

  William James

  Lonely, Civilization, Agony

  William James (2015). “The Varieties of Religious Experience”, p.158, Booklassic

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• Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement.

  Jane Welsh Carlyle

  Death, Bereavement, Trying

  Jane Welsh Carlyle (1883). “Letters and Memorials...”

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• In my experience, fear comes from not knowing what to expect and not feeling you have any control over what’s about to happen. When you feel helpless, you’re far more afraid than you would be if you knew the facts.

  Chris Hadfield

  Knowing, Feelings, Would Be

  Chris Hadfield (2013). “An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth”, p.37, Pan Macmillan

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• We are born helpless. As soon as we are fully conscious we discover loneliness.

  C. S. Lewis

  Loneliness, Conscious, Born

  C.S. Lewis (1996). “Joyful Christian”, p.186, Simon and Schuster

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• Neil Young played Helpless, and by the time he finished, we were asking him if we could join his band

  David Crosby

  Music, Band, Asking

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• Knowledge is essential to conquest; only according to our ignorance are we helpless. Thought creates character. Character can dominate conditions. Will creates circumstances and environment.

  Annie Besant

  Ignorance, Character, Essentials

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• I think that one wants from a painting a sense of life. The final suggestion, the final statement, has to be not a deliberate statement but a helpless statement. It has to be what you can't avoid saying.

  Jasper Johns

  Thinking, Suggestions, Finals

  Jasper Johns, Museum of Modern Art (Oxford, England) (1974). “Jasper Johns: drawings”

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• It's one thing to be helpless as one tries to lace a corset or to mount an elephant, quite another to be helpless as a bandit pushes a black steel knife against the flesh of your throat while his brother comes to join him.

  John Speed

  Brother, Knives, Elephants

  John Speed (2007). “The Temple Dancer: A Novel of India”, p.86, Macmillan

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• In everything, depend upon yourself, but work in harmony with all things. Do not depend even upon the Infinite, but learn to work and live in harmony with the Infinite. The highest teachings of the Christ reveal most clearly the principle that no soul was created to be a mere helpless instrument in the hands of Supreme Power, but that every soul should act and live in perfect oneness with that Power. And the promise is that we all are not only to do the things that Christ did, but even greater things.

  Christian D. Larson

  Teaching, Hands, Oneness

  Christian D. Larson (2012). “The Optimist Creed”, p.339, Penguin

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• I grew a love for helpless, defenseless things. People would give me lions and jaguars. I had cheetahs, monkeys.

  Dick Dale

  People, Giving, Lions

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• My story starts at sea... a perilous voyage to an unknown land... a shipwreck... The wild waters roar and heave... The brave vessel is dashed all to pieces, and all the helpless souls within her drowned... all save one... a lady... whose soul is greater than the ocean... and her spirit stronger than the sea's embrace... Not for her a watery end, but a new life beginning on a stranger shore. It will be a love story... for she will be my heroine for all time. And her name will be... Viola.

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Ocean, Sea

  "Fictional character: William Shakespeare". "Shakespeare in Love", 1998.

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• Helplessness is such a rotten feeling. There's nothing you can do about it. Being helpless is like being paralyzed. It's sickness. The cure calls for a monumental effort to stand up and start walking somewhere, anywhere. But that takes some doing.

  Chuck Barris

  Effort, Feelings, Rotten

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• Once we remember that all that takes place during the first days of life on the emotional level shapes the patterns of all future reactions , we cannot but wonder why such a torture has been inflicted on the child. How could a being who has been aggressed in this way, while totally helpless, develop into a relaxed, loving, trusting person? Indeed, he will always never be able to trust anyone in life. He will always be on the defensive, unable to open up to others and to life.

  Frederick Leboyer

  Children, Emotional, Levels

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• Health is the greatest of God's gifts, but we take it for granted; yet it hangs on a thread as fine as a spider's web and the tiniest thing can make it snap, leaving the strongest of us helpless in an instant.

  Jennifer Worth

  Leaving, Spiders, Granted

  Jennifer Worth (2005). “Shadows of the workhouse”, George Weidenfeld & Nicholson

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• Let us not be afraid to be humble, small, helpless to prove our love for God. The cup of water you give the sick, the way you lift a dying man, the way you feed a baby, the way you teach a dull child, the way you give medicine to a sufferer of leprosy, the joy with which you smile at your own at home - all this is God's love in the world today.

  Mother Teresa

  Baby, Children, Home

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• When "news stories" are broken, do we not expect a certain amount of fact-checking or source-checking? One has to ask if this falls under the guise of sloppy reporting or deception as a source of spin. We seem to accept a certain amount of deception and we seem to be helpless to doing anything about it, as illustrated so clearly by where we are right now in this moment in history.

  Sheryl Crow

  Fall, Acceptance, Media

  "On Deception, Spin, and Losing Our Way" by Sheryl Crow, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 4, 2007.

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• Anyone as selfish and determined as you are is never helpless.

  Margaret Mitchell

  Selfish, Determined, Rhett Butler

  Margaret Mitchell (2016). “Gone with the Wind”, p.249, Hamilton Books

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• The Law requires much, but offers no help in the carrying out of its requirements. The Lord Jesus requires just as much, yea even more (Matt. 5:21-48), but what he requires from us he himself carries out in us. The law makes demands and leaves us helpless to fulfill them; Christ makes demands, but he himself fulfills in us the very demands he makes.

  Watchman Nee

  Jesus, Law, Demand

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• Man learned to resort to the dance when he felt helpless or fragmentary, when he felt dislocated in his universe.

  Mary Hunter Austin

  Men, Dancing, Resorts

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• I find along with many virtues in my countrymen there is a jealousy, a soreness, and readiness to take offence, as if they were the most helpless and impotent of mankind, and yet a violence... and a boistrousness in their resentment, as if they had been puffed up with the highest prosperity and power. they will not only be served, but it must also be in their own way and on their own principles and even in words and language that they liked... which renders it very difficult for a plain unguarded man as I am to have anything to do with them or their affairs.

  Edmund Burke

  Men, History, Way

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• A society remotely worth its salt eventually has to come to grips with the barbarism practiced upon helpless creatures in the name of scientific experimentation, tastier/tenderer meat, or more and larger eggs!

  William Kunstler

  Animal, Names, Eggs

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• I'm tired of being Scarlett O'Hara. In my next life I'm going to come back as Melanie Wilkes, fragile and helpless.

  Linda Fairstein

  Tired, Next, Scarlett O Hara

  Linda Fairstein (1997). “Final Jeopardy”, p.35, Simon and Schuster

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• The man-worshipers, in my sense of the term, are those who see man's highest potential and strive to actualize it. The man-haters are those who regard man as a helpless, depraved, contemptible creature-and struggle never to let him discover otherwise.

  Ayn Rand

  Trust, Struggle, Men

  Ayn Rand (2005). “The Fountainhead”, p.12, Penguin

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• What can I do now? What am I to become? How can I live in this world I'm condemned to but can't endure? They couldn't stand it either, so they made a world of their own. Well, they have each other's company, and they are heroes, whereas I'm quite alone, and have none of the qualities essential to heroism - the spirit, the toughness, the dedication. I'm back where I was as a child, solitary, helpless, unwanted, frightened.

  Anna Kavan

  Children, Hero, Dedication

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• Scarlett: You should die of shame to leave me here alone and helpless. Rhett: You helpless? (laughs) Heaven help the Yankees if they capture you.

  Vivien Leigh

  Yankees, Laughing, Heaven

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