What is the best Futility quote?

"Listen up - there's no war that will end all wars." - Haruki Murakami

What are some Futility quotes?

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." - Henry David Thoreau "Life ... is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." - William Shakespeare "The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat." - Confucius

47 Futility Quotes & Sayings with Wallpapers & Posters

Q: What are some short Futility quotes?

"I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved." - Søren Kierkegaard "I am somewhat exhausted; I wonder how a battery feels when it pours electricity into a non-conductor?" - Arthur Conan Doyle "Man makes plans . . . and God laughs." - Michael Chabon

Q: What is good short Futility quote?

"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." - W.B. Yeats

Even at that time the hope of leaving behind messages in bottles on the flood of barbarism bursting on Europe was an amiable illusion: the desperate letters stuck in the mud of the spirit of rejuvenesence and were worked up by a band of Noble Human-Beings and other riff-raff into highly artistic but inexpensive wall-adornments. Only since then has progress in communications really got into its stride. Who, in the end, is to take it amiss if even the freest of free spirits no longer write for an imaginary posterity, more trusting, if possible, than even their contemporaries, but only for the dead God?

The universe loves irony even more than it loves futility.

Futility Quotes Immaculate Blue Quotes Irony Quotes

The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me, I bestir myself mechanically or out of charity, without ever being caught up, without ever being somewhere. What attracts me is somewhere else, and I don’t know what that elsewhere is.

Futility Quotes Not belonging Quotes Pretending interest Quotes Somewhere else Quotes

What an odd creature you are, Bernard, with your constant fear of death! Do you never have a feeling, as I do, of utter futility? No? Doesn't it occur to you that the sort of life people like us lead is remarkably like death?

Boredom Quotes Death Quotes Futility Quotes Thérèse Desqueyroux Quotes

He had come to that moment in his age when there occurred to him, with increasing intensity, a question of such overwhelming simplicity that he had no means to face it. He found himself wondering if his life were worth the living; if it had ever been. It was a question, he suspected, that came to all men at one time or another; he wondered if it came to them with such impersonal force as it came to him. The question brought with it a sadness, but it was a general sadness which (he thought) had little to do with himself or with his particular fate; he was not even sure that the question sprang from the most immediate and obvious causes, from what his own life had become. It came, he believed, from the accretion of his years, from the density of accident and circumstance, and from what he had come to understand of them. He took a grim and ironic pleasure from the possibility that what little learning he had managed to acquire had led him to this knowledge: that in the long run all things, even the learning that let him know this, were futile and empty, and at last diminished into a nothingness they did not alter.

Knowledge Quotes / Age Quotes Futility Quotes Life Quotes Stoner Quotes

Superficially my war was a comfortable exercise in futility carried out in a grand Scottish hotel amongst the bridge players and swillers of easy-come-by whisky. My chest got me out of active service and into guilt, as I wrote two, or is it three of the novels for which I am now acclaimed.

War Quotes / Comfort Quotes Futility Quotes Hotels Quotes Novels Quotes Three Uneasy Pieces Quotes Whisky Quotes

Joy, joy, joy!Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers,And the future is dark, and the present is spread,Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head.

Death Quotes Futility Quotes Man Quotes Prometheus Unbound Quotes

How quickly people changed, with their interests, their feelings. Well-made phrases replaced by well-made phrases, time is a flow of words coherent only in appearance, the one who piles up the most is the one who wins.

Time Quotes / Futility Quotes Life Quotes The Story of a New Name Quotes Words Quotes

(He) mourned mankind, and the blindness of men, who thought that the Kosmos had rules and limits that would shelter them from their own freedom. There were no shelters. There were no final purposes. Futility, and freedom, were Absolute

Freedom Quotes / Absolutes Quotes Futility Quotes Mankind Quotes Schismatrix Quotes

I wouldn't have missed it for the world," said Mrs. Bridge, smiling all around, "and I feel awfully lucky. Even so we were certainly glad to see the Union Station. I suppose no matter how far you go there's no place like home." She could see they agreed with her, and surely what she had said was true, yet she was troubled and for a moment she was almost engulfed by a nameless panic.

Futility Quotes Life Quotes Mrs. Bridge Quotes Travels Quotes

Η ματαιότητα του κόσμου πάγωνε την καρδιά μου σαν τα κρύα πρωινά του Δεκέμβρη.

Futility Quotes The Wanderer Quotes

We do naught but scratch the world, frail and fraught. Every vast drama of civilizations, of peoples with their certainties and gestures, means nothing, affects nothing. Life crawls on, ever on.

Philosophy Quotes / Absurdism Quotes Futility Quotes Life Quotes Malazan Quotes

The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.

Futility Quotes Pessimism Quotes The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats Quotes

[…] as if the next thing must quickly come along to occupy her, or the abyss might open. What abyss? The abyss that waits for all of us, when all our actions seem futile, when the ability to fill the day seems stalled, and the waiting takes on an edge of dread.

Abyss Quotes Futility Quotes Latecomers Quotes

I turned away from him and went on my way, up the street and about my business. The past was dead. The future was resignation, fatality, and could only end one way now. The present was numbness, that could feel nothing. Like Novocaine needled into your heart. What was there in all the dimensions of time for me? ("Life Is Weird Sometimes" first chapter of unpublished novel THE LOSER)

Futility Quotes Life Quotes Numb Quotes Numbness Quotes Past future Quotes Resignation Quotes

What do you expect? This place is one big anti-climax.

Habit Quotes Time Quotes / Anticlimactic Quotes Apathy Quotes Existence Quotes Existentialism Quotes Futility Quotes Hopeless Quotes

A Cathedral Façade at MidnightAlong the sculptures of the western wallI watched the moonlight creeping:It moved as if it hardly moved at allInch by inch thinly peepingRound on the pious figures of freestone, broughtAnd poised there when the Universe was wroughtTo serve its centre, Earth, in mankind’s thought.The lunar look skimmed scantly toe, breast, arm,Then edged on slowly, slightly,To shoulder, hand, face; till each austere formWas blanched its whole length brightlyOf prophet, king, queen, cardinal in state,That dead men’s tools had striven to simulate;And the stiff images stood irradiate.A frail moan from the martyred saints there setMid others of the erectionAgainst the breeze, seemed sighings of regretAt the ancient faith’s rejectionUnder the sure, unhasting, steady stressOf Reason’s movement, making meaningless.

Faith Quotes / Cathedrals Quotes Collected Poems Quotes Futility Quotes Moonlight Quotes Mortality Quotes Night Quotes

The hardest thing of all is to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat.

Knowledge Quotes / Futility Quotes Religion Quotes

He thought incessantly, for he could not do otherwise; but he no longer took pleasure in his thoughts. To everything that they proposed to him in a whisper, he replied in his darkness: "What is the use?

Futility Quotes Les Misérables Quotes

Each of us is aware he's a material being, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and that the strength of all our emotions combined cannot counteract those laws. It can only hate them. The eternal belief of lovers and poets in the power of love which is more enduring that death, the finis vitae sed non amoris that has pursued us through the centuries is a lie. But this lie is not ridiculous, it's simply futile. To be a clock on the other hand, measuring the passage of time, one that is smashed and rebuilt over and again, one in whose mechanism despair and love are set in motion by the watchmaker along with the first movements of the cogs. To know one is a repeater of suffering felt ever more deeply as it becomes increasingly comical through a multiple repetitions. To replay human existence - fine. But to replay it in the way a drunk replays a corny tune pushing coins over and over into the jukebox?

Love Quotes Time Quotes / Drunk Quotes Futility Quotes God Quotes Jukebox Quotes Physics Quotes Solaris Quotes

Women are often belittled for trying to resurrect these men and bring them back to life and to love. They are in a world that would be even more alienated and violent if caring women did not do the work of teaching men who have lost touch with themselves how to love again. This labor of love is futile only when the men in question refuse to awaken, refuse growth. At this point it is a gesture of self-love for women to break their commitment and move on.

Growth Quotes Love Quotes / All About Love: New Visions Quotes Commitment Quotes Futility Quotes Labor Quotes Life Quotes Resurrection Quotes

Allt som jag verkligen tänker, så som jag framlagt det i detta arbete, är det både farligt att säga och totalt hopplöst.

Futility Quotes The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956 Quotes

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Aspirations Quotes Castles in the air Quotes Dreams Quotes Foundations Quotes Futility Quotes Goals Quotes

Felix had gone to live in a lotus land of his imagination. Where what is desired is dreamed of as already happened, where obstacles dissolve under the weight of desire, and where reality has vanished entirely.

Castles in the air Quotes Cloud cuckoo land Quotes Desires Quotes Dreams Quotes Futility Quotes Imagination Quotes

Wise men have interpreted dreams, and the gods have laughed.

Dreams Quotes Futility Quotes Hypnos Quotes Interpretation Quotes Interpretation of dreams Quotes Meaning Quotes

In all we do, and hear, and see,Is restless Toil and Vanity.While yet the rolling earth abides,Men come and go like ocean tides

Futility Quotes Life Quotes Poems by Currer Quotes Ellis Quotes and Acton Bell Quotes Poetry Quotes

But other hordes would come, and other false prophets. Our feeble efforts to ameliorate man’s lot would be but vaguely continued by our successors; the seeds of error and of ruin contained even in what is good would, on the contrary, increase to monstrous proportions in the course of centuries. A world wearied of us would seek other masters; what had seemed to us wise would be pointless for them, what we had found beautiful they would abominate. Like the initiate to Mithraism the human race has need, perhaps, of a periodical bloodbath and descent into the grave. I could see the return of barbaric codes, of implacable gods, of unquestioned despotism of savage chieftains, a world broken up into enemy states and eternally prey to insecurity. Other sentinels menaced by arrows would patrol the walls of future cities; the stupid, cruel, and obscene game would go on, and the human species in growing older would doubtless add new refinements of horror. Our epoch, the faults and limitations of which I knew better than anyone else would perhaps be considered one day, by contrast, as one of the golden ages of man.

Evil Quotes History Quotes Time Quotes War Quotes / Existence Quotes Existentialism Quotes Futility Quotes Memoirs of Hadrian Quotes

But even if I know what governs their trajectory, if I know the rules of the movement of things and how things are organized and how certain mutations, transformations, gestations take place, even if I know all that, I shall only have learnt how to get along after a fashion in the enormous gaol, the oppressive prison in which I am held. What a farce, what a snare, what a booby-trap. We were born cheated. For if we are not to know, if there is nothing to know, why do we have this longing to know?

Fragments of a Journal Quotes Futility Quotes Human condition Quotes Knowing Quotes Prisons Quotes

I am like a prisoner who is trying to escape from jail by the wrong route. For all one knows, that door may stand open, although I continue to dig a tunnel with a teaspoon.

Futility Quotes The Journals of John Cheever Quotes Writing Quotes

Dabbling in the sandbox gives Rabbit a small headache. Over at the pavilion the rubber thump of Roofball and the click of checkers call to his memory, and the forgotten smell of that narrow plastic ribbon you braid bracelets and whistlechains out of and of glue and of the sweat on the handles on athletic equipment is blown down by a breeze laced with children's murmuring. He feels the truth: the thing that has left his life has left irrevocably; no search would recover it. No flight would reach it. It was here, beneath the town, in these smells and these voices, forever behind him. The fullness ends when we give Nature her ransom, when we make children for her. Then she is through with us, and we become, first inside, and then outside, junk. Flower stalks.

Childhood Quotes / 1960 Quotes Futility Quotes Lost innocence Quotes Lost youth Quotes Rabbit angstrom Quotes Rabbit Quotes

If you're a sailor, best not know how to swim. Swimming only prolongs the inevitable—if the sea wants you and your time has come.

1541 Quotes 1966 Quotes Drowning Quotes Futility Quotes Orlov Quotes Sailing Quotes

I feel as if I were a piece in a game of chess, when my opponent says of it: That piece cannot be moved.

Frustration Quotes Futility Quotes Life Quotes

But how can anyone put a bridle on man's vanity and arrogance? But how can Purity walk the earth without covering her feet with mud?

1962 Quotes Arrogance Quotes Futility Quotes Purity Quotes Saint francis Quotes Vanity Quotes

Or even knows they need attendin to. But I never done it to benefit myself. Shot that thing. Like I kept peace for seven year sake of a man I never knowed nor seen his face and like I seen them fellers never had no business there and if I couldn’t run em off I could anyway let em know they was one man would let on that he knowed what they was up to. But I knowed if they could build it they could build it back and I done it anyway. Ever man loves peace and a old man best of all.

Futility Quotes Old men Quotes

How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.

War Quotes / All Quiet on the Western Front Quotes Futility Quotes

There is, in the Army, a little known but very important activity appropriately called Fatigue. Fatigue, in the Army, is the very necessary cleaning and repairing of the aftermath of living. Any man who has ever owned a gun has known Fatigue, when, after fifteen minutes in the woods and perhaps three shots at an elusive squirrel, he has gone home to spend three-quarters of an hour cleaning up his piece so that it will be ready next time he goes to the woods. Any woman who has ever cooked a luscious meal and ladled it out in plates upon the table has known Fatigue, when, after the glorious meal is eaten, she repairs to the kitchen to wash the congealed gravy from the plates and the slick grease from the cooking pots so they will be ready to be used this evening, dirtied, and so washed again. It is the knowledge of the unendingness and of the repetitious uselessness, the do it up so it can be done again, that makes Fatigue fatigue.

Army Quotes Chores Quotes Domesticity Quotes Fatigue Quotes From Here to Eternity Quotes Futility Quotes

Listen up - there's no war that will end all wars.

War Quotes / Futility Quotes Kafka on the Shore Quotes

I saw only the reality of his destiny, which he had knownhow to follow with unfaltering footsteps, that life begun in humblesurroundings, rich in generous enthusiasms, in friendship, love, war--inall the exalted elements of romance.

Ambition Quotes Hope Quotes Humility Quotes Love Quotes Romance Quotes / Benevolent Quotes Butterflies Quotes Destiny Quotes Fall Quotes Futility Quotes Glory Quotes

There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp.

Depression Quotes Hope Quotes / Ashes in the mouth Quotes Bittersweet memories Quotes Dark history Quotes Despair Quotes Disappointment Quotes Expectations Quotes

Once, I remember, we came upon a man-of-war anchored off the coast. There wasn't even a shed there, and she was shelling the bush. It appears the French had one of their wars going on thereabouts. Her ensign dropped limp like a rag; the muzzles of the long six-inch guns stuck out all over the low hull; the greasy, slimy swell swung her up lazily and let her down, swaying her thin masts. In the empty immensity of earth, sky, and water, there she was, incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the six-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech—and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there was a camp of natives—he called them enemies!—hidden out of sight somewhere.

Thinking Quotes / Futility Quotes Heart of Darkness Quotes Hypocrisy Quotes Life Quotes