Quotes About Disillusionment

Beauties" by Anton Chekhov, "The Doll's House" by Katherine Mansfield, "A Perfect Day for Bananafish" by J. D. Salinger, "Brownies" or "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" both by ZZ Packer, "In the Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried" by Amy Hempel, "Fat" by Raymond Carver, "Indian Camp

Lambiase is recently divorced. He had married his high school sweetheart, so it took him a long time to realize that she was not, in fact, a sweetheart or a very nice person at all.

Timothy supposed this was what you got when you crossed youthful idealism with anger and a sense of futility. And weed.

Politics disgusts me.

Die Parteispitze, die Intelligenz – alle rockten und rollten durch die Gegend, und unsere braven stinklangweiligen DDR-Lipsi hatten restlos verloren. Ein wenig befremdend ist es immer wieder für mich, zu sehen, wie Genossen ihre Häute abwerfen und schwache Menschen werden. (Ich hab so einen netten Kinderglauben an die Kraft von Ideen, die den Menschen auch in seinem tiefsten Innern verwandeln. Aber nein, man spürt nichts davon.

However, as pursuit of happiness morphed into pursuit of material, all of the promises became compromised. So what went wrong? How did this happen?

The exit in a blaze of glory is bullshit.

I'll try a pagan friend, thought I, since Christian kindness has proved but hollow courtesy

By vast pains we mine into the pyramid; by horrible gropings we come to the central room; with joy we espy the sarcophagus; but we lift the lid- and nobody is there!-appallingly vacant as vast is the soul of a man!

You call this progress, because you have motor cars and telephones and flying machines and a thousand potions to make you smell better? And people sleeping on the streets?

It has spread among skilled workers, white-collar workers, professionals; for the first time in the nation's history, perhaps, both the lower classes and the middle classes, the prisoners and the guards, were disillusioned with the system.

An unfinished bottle of champagne found in an old cupboard with all the sparkle gone.

Youths are passed through schools that don't teach. Then forced to search for jobs that don't exist and finally left stranded to stare at the glamorous lives advertised around them.

We came out here to find the American Dream, and now that we're right in the vortex you want to quit ... You must realize that we've found the main nerve. I know, he said. That's what gives me the Fear.

But I knew it was pure masturbation, because down in my gut I wanted nothing more than a clean bed and a bright room and something solid to call my own at least until I got tired of it. There was an awful suspicion in my mind that I'd finally gone over the hump, and the worst thing about it was that I didn't feel tragic at all, but only weary, and sort of comfortably detatched.

Liberalism itself has failed, and for a pretty good reason. It has been too often compromised by the people who represented it.

The difference between the student radicals and the Hell's Angels is that the students are rebelling against the past, while the Angels are fighting the future. Their only common ground is their disdain for the present, or the status quo.

Oh ignorant youth, the world is not a joyous place.

There is a beautiful consistency about Buzzard; he is a porcupine among men, with his quills always flared. If he won a new car with a raffle ticket bought in his name by some momentary girlfriend, he would recognize it at once as a trick to con him out of a license fee. He would denounce the girl as a hired slut, beat up the raffle sponsor, and trade off the car for five hundred Seconals and a gold-handled cattle prod.

A week earlier I'd been locked into the idea that the Redskins would win easily -- but when Nixon came out for them and George Allen began televising his prayer meetings I decided that any team with both God and Nixon on their side was fucked from start.

What depressed me, I think, was that McGovern was the only alternative available this time around, and I was sorry I couldn't get up for it. I agreed with everything he said, but I wished he would say a lot more—or maybe something different. Ideas? Specifics? Programs? Etc.? Well

Later, when I travelled to other parts of the world and saw numerous cities and glittering lights and the vitality of those crowds of people, I was struck with disappointment and disgust at how they had all abandoned us and looked the other way.

becoming a grown-up did not mean good things were waiting for you.

But, however splendid a job may seem when one does not have it, it rarely stands up to close acquaintanceship.