Quotes About Helplessness

Oh, if we had only had them earlier we might have saved poor Lucy! Stop; that way madness lies!

No one cared what we watched or didn't, how we felt or what we wanted, and we hadn't yet become enthralled by the cult of victimization. It was, by comparison to what's now acceptable when children are coddled into helplessness, an age of innocence.

I believed for a long time that I could affect my mother's drinking. Like many children of alcoholics, I thought if I asked a certain way, or made some type of deal with my mother where I promised something, it would be compelling enough to make her stop.

Às vezes, as coisas aconteciam a despeito dos seus melhores esforços. E não havia muito a fazer.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged (...) Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

sometimes there was nothing you could do to save people; sometimes you just had to let go of them.

You could say to the universe, this is not fair. And the universe would say: Oh, isn´t it? Sorry. You could save people. You could get there in the nick of time. And something could snap its fingers and say, no, it has to be this way. Let me tell you how it has to be.

Pleasure always means not to think about anything, to forget suffering even where it is shown. Basically it is helplessness. It is flight; not, as is asserted, flight from a wretched reality, but from the last remaining thought of resistance.

And I can't get to her. My girl is half naked and dying and I can't get to her! I push forward. I ice solid. I crack it and pull back. Fuck!

I hate cages. For most folks, they're built from fear and they do it to themselves. Not me. Mine were forged of helplessness. Most kids' are.

A wave of frantic helplessness was building inside me, threatening to turn tidal. I didn't dare give in to panic. I had to stay calm and focused and work on moving forward however I could, even if it meant taking baby steps.

This waiting is worse than anything. It's like one of those nightmares where you know something terrible is going to happen and you don't know what it is, but you there's nothing you can do to stop it.

To awaken means to realize one's nothingness, that is, to realize one's complete and absolute mechanicalness, and one's complete and absolute helplessness... So long as a man is not horrified at himself, he knows nothing about himself.

It's frustrating for me to be unable to speak. To feel that I have so much to say, so many ways I can help, but I'm locked in a soundproof box, a game show isolation booth from which I can see out and I can hear what's going on, but they never turn on my microphone and they never let me out. It might drive a person mad. It certainly has driven many a dog mad.

Then Lucas would try to turn over, and there would be a low moan, and Christopher would get up, and I knew that Lucas was awake in the dark that he carried around with him all the time. 'What can I do?' Christopher would say. 'You weren't there. You can't do anything.' None of us knew how to make it light.

Sometimes we feel helpless when it comes to serving others because it seems that we can't do anything. We have all heard others say "Don't just stand there, do something." That's not always what people need. Often, they simply need someone to create space for them. In other words, "Don't just do something, stand there!

Brutality is not a sport, it's an impotence.

I told him I was sorry that the woman was gone, that it was brave of him to want to protect her, but there was nothing he could do anymore.

We often use our belief in another person's "resilience" as an emotional shield. We protect ourselves from the discomfort, confusion, and helplessness we feel in the face of their trauma. It's a kind of looking away; it lets our worldview go unchallenged and lets our life continue with minimal disruption.

Stephen... you know how, when a baby is first born, it just cries at the sheer horror of being alive?

To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul rid of it.

The most painful anguish that mortals suffer is to understand a great deal but to have no power at all.

he took a cable which had been service on a blue-bowed ship, made one end fast to a high column in the portico, and threw the other over the round-house, high up, so that their feet would not touch the ground. As when long-winged thrushes or doves get entangled in a snare . . . so the women's heads were held fast in a row, with nooses round their necks, to bring them to the most pitiable end. For a little while their feet twitched, but not for very long.

The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.