Quotes About Futility

The shame of a genius may be his intellectual futility, the knowledge of how uncertain is all that he has accomplished. And genius is, above all, constant doubting.

If man merely sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility.

what is existence but an endless, ultimately futile delaying of the inevitable?

Painters, poets and philosophers have seen many things in the myth of Sisyphus. They have seen an image of the absurdity of human life, the futility of effort, the remorseless cruelty of fate, the unconquerable power of gravity. But they have seen too something of mankind's courage, resilience, fortitude, endurance and self-belief. They see something heroic in our refusal to submit.

Sisyphus is still there in the halls of Tartarus, pushing that boulder up the hill and getting almost to the top before it rolls back down and he has to start once again.

Might as well try to drink the ocean with a spoon as argue with a lover.

Shit don't mean shit

Around and around it went, and what was round had no point, any fool knew that.

ignorance to a certain degree can be corrected but, it shall always be an effort in futility to correct a certain degree of ignorance!

Go out onto the deck and stare at the sky for ten minutes, and remind yourself that ultimately ours is a meaningless and futile existence and that our little planet will probably be swallowed by a black hole, so none of this will have any point anyway.

Unfortunately, since there was only one of him, most of his riches were wasted.

mi viene in mente che i miei sentimenti - i sentimenti di tutti - sono inutili, andranno persi, lacrime nella pioggia.

Personas de gran exigencia intelectual y potentísima inteligencia son hoy plenamente conscientes de que su destino en la vida —explicar lo que han entendido y que los otros no comprenden o no quieren ver— no sirve para nada porque a los otros ni les incumbe ni lo comprenden ni lo quieren saber.

All the words that have passed between you and me to this point are nothing. The empty exhalations of the grave. The muttering of the wind through two exhumed skulls.

Haven't you ever thought how futile and ludicrous life is sometimes, and that if you don't take refuge in laughter you'll end up in a far worse place?

Eeltail and Splashfoot were standing over three small dark shapes. Eeltail looked up, her eyes brimming with pity. "I'm so sorry," she mewed. "We couldn't save them.

It seemed that her prospects were bleak but often when things are at their most desperate they become progressively worse leading to a spiral of despair that ends in inevitable destruction.

They were all lawyers, all schooled in the authority of words, though as their words turned to dust a pall of impotence and futility settled over the mission.

He that lives upon hope will die farting.

There was a certain futility to Elizabeth Colbert Busch's congressional campaign, one that had nothing to do with her and everything to do with the state and region she calls home.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

Why bother? It's impossible to compete with the dead.

Children parented in such a manner never come up against the necessary frustration that accompanies facing the impossible. They are deprived of the experience of transforming frustration into feelings of futility, of letting go and adapting.

When you know you're going to die, there's no comfort in cleverness. Genius is vain, and cleverness is hollow, at the end.