Quotes About Helplessness

Perhaps it was inevitable that this quixotic boy should fall in love with Mary Kerr. She was so small and frail, so pathetic in her helplessness, and in her resignation to her fate. The boatman seemed a bully — the most despicable trait in the boy's eyes; sympathy for her came to him at their first meeting, a passionate pity that wrung his tender heart, and love followed with startling rapidity.

The hills had looked friendly in the sunshine, but in this wild weather their aspect had changed. They were not so much unfriendly as indifferent – old, grim and enigmatical. They made one feel that human life was a precarious thing. They made one feel helpless and ephemeral as a butterfly. It was a horrible feeling

They were all unhappy but I could do nothing to help them. Nobody could help them. Perhaps the worst part of it was their unkindness to one another—yes, that was the worst. I had never before met people like this: people who were bitter and unkind and hopeless, people who had no happiness in life nor any expectation of happiness

Here is the tragedy: when you are the victim of depression, not only do you feel utterly helpless and abandoned by the world, you also know that very few people can understand, or even begin to believe, that life can be this painful. There is nothing I can think of that is quite as isolating as this.

And now she's right where she wants to be, Lucy thought with a stab of fury. How easily men were taken in by women! A few tears, some sweet Southern helplessness. Oh,it must have been ridiculously easy for Raine.And here she, Lucy, was, harboring the woman under her own roof! It had the makings of a fine farce.

And then it finally did happen. I just lay there in shock. It hurt so bad, and I thought, "God, please, let me die." As he put himself inside me, I wanted to scream for help, but there was no one to help me. I had nowhere to hide. My mother's room, my little sister's embrace, Uncle Fred, Uncle Warren, nothing and no one would save me, and so I lay there silently, staring at the cracks in the ceiling, watching a part of me die.

I . . . For Pete's sake," snaps Tom. "How can you all just stand here asking me these questions when she's lying down there? Being pecked at, eaten, by crows, scavengers!

We do not want to comprehend that people may and do die of emotional pain, or to recognize the terror in ourselves when we cannot seem to help someone in despair -- when our words are empty.

Sometimes, Hoss," he said very gently, "you lose. Sometimes the darkness takes everyone. Sometimes the monster escapes to kill again another day." He shook his head and looked down. "Sometimes, Hoss, the innocent little ones are murdered. And there's not one goddamned thing you can do about it.

The damnedest thing was that there wasn't much I could do about it. Not because I was chained up, held at gunpoint, and probably going to die—though I had to admit, that might make things somewhat difficult

As it turned out, hell wasn't watching the people you love get hurt; it was coming in during the second act, when it was already too late to stop it from happening.

There are some weapons you can't protect yourself against.

Seeing someone you really care about being sad, and you cant do much...

I pitied the French for their naivete in believing that they had to visit a country in order to exploit it. Hollywood was much more efficient, imagining the countries it wanted to exploit. I was maddened by my helplessness before the Auteur's imaginations and machinations. His arrogance marked something new in the world, for this was the first war where the losers would write history instead of the victors.

in times of trouble it sometimes happened that even those who wanted to help were unable to. They might be tied down themselves for one reason or another; or else circumstances of expediency or some greater need could have kept them less involuntarily away.

I am so angry with myself because I cannot do what I should like to do, and at such a moment one feels as if one were lying bound hand and foot at the bottom of a deep dark well, utterly helpless.

She] had a habit of putting things in that way, as though she had accidently set your house on fire and had no choice now but to stand back and watch it burn.

The mass and majesty of this world, all That carries weight and always weighs the same Lay in the hands of others; they were small And could not hope for help and no help came: What their foes like to do was done, their shame Was all the worst could wish; they lost their pride And died as men before their bodies died.

Paul says that Spirit lives inside us, detecting needs we cannot articulate and expressing them in a language we cannot comprehend. When we don't know what to pray, he fills in the blanks. Evidently, it is our very helplessness that God, too, delights in. Our weakness gives opportunity for his strength.

Helplessness. If women were hope´s oldest companions, it was due to helplessness. Certainly women often exerciced dreadful power over a single hearth, but the world between hearths belonged to men.

They had me on my back. And then they all swarmed at once. Bony hands pawed at me. The grunts and groans rang in my ears. I screamed as their sharp fingers punctured my chest - and ripped it open. I kept screaming as they lowered their ugly heads and began to feed.

And then I heard the ring of metal on concrete, and I went cold, because one of them had found a piece of rebar lying around, and I knew with sudden certainty that these guys were going to kill me right here on this stupid sidewalk, for nothing, without even the reason of knowing my name or hating my politics. They were just going to kill me because they needed to kill something, and I was handy. At least zombies would have had a reason.

As Jess watched in numb horror, the man tore a page from the book and stuffed it into his mouth.

I used to believe our subconscious recognition of our true helplessness in the face of cosmic forces was what explained the insane lust for power that makes so many into murderers, rapists, thieves, and raving-mad ideologues. For their kind, such mean control allows the illusion of greatness, inspires even the foolish hope of immortality on Earth.