Quotes About Futility

And with the final question, "Why didn't they fight back?" came the inevitable dismissal. "Because it would not have made a difference.

How many churches today find themselves paralyzed in the upper room? How many congregations have just enough religion to come together, but not enough passion to go out. If the doors aren't locked, they might as well be. Upper room futility - a little bit of faith but very little fire.

The dread of futility has been my life-long plague.

What's the point? was my attitude. We're all just going to die and then NOT be let on the boat.

Surely it is counterproductive to expect sense from someone you are beating senseless.

Three things see no end- A flower blighted ere it bloomed, A message that was wasted, And a journey that was doomed.

There's a saying in Hardorn," she continued. "'You shouldn't attempt to teach a goat to sing. It will waste your time, hurt your ears, and annoy the goat.' I can say without fear of contradiction that the goat is getting annoyed.

So limp of brain that for them to conceive an idea is to risk a haemorrhage. So limp of body that their purple dresses appear no more indicative of housing nerves and sinews than when they hang suspended from their hooks.

All the labor of all the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius are destined to extinction. So now, my friends, if that is true, and it is true, what is the point?

Santayana....reasoned that the young men who were being killed in the war would die anyhow sooner or later, and would be good for nothing while they lived.

Like night, the desert is boundless, comfortless and infinite. Like night, it intrigues the mind and leads it to futility. When you have flown halfway across a desert, you experience the desperation of a sleepless man waiting for dawn which only comes when the importance of it's coming is lost. You fly forever, weary with an invariable scene, and when you are at last released from its monotony, you remember nothing of it because there was nothing there.

I experienced that sense of futility all pilots must sometimes feel when the natural forces that rule this planet reassert their sovereignty (and express their contempt) for Man the Pretender.

Uncle Harry Wentworth's dollar was turned deep under the sod. But though the sun shone on it and the rain fell, nothing ever came from it,— not a green thing nor a singing thing nor a human soul.

You should no longer walk as the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their thoughts. Ephesians 4:17

By aiming for paradise, we lose sight of earth. Hope of a beyond and aspiration to an afterlife engender a sense of futility in the present. If the prospect of getting taken up to paradise generates joy, it is the mindless joy of a baby picked up from his crib.

There's no point to anything if you get right down to it. We could all blow out brains out, but we don't.

this endless reaching for what couldn't be reached. It seemed foolish

out. I was sure not only that everything worth doing had already been done while I was asleep but also that, now that I was awake, there was no longer anything worth doing.

Tout est inutile et il faut au moins avoir le courage de ne pas se faire de prétextes. J'aurais aimé clouer la nuit sur du papier, comme un grand papillon nocturne. Mais, plutôt, c'est elle qui m'a soulevé de ses eaux, comme le corps livide d'un mort et qui me pousse, inexorablement, au milieu du froid et de l'écume vaporeuse, au-devant d'elle.

I was shocked at the revelation of her vaulting ambition, her greed. I should have loathed her or, knowing what kind of a person she was, I should have realized the futility of any personal attachment, the impossibility of its maturing into something warm, human enduring. By then, I had known a bit of the prostitute's psychology, the ruthlessness which marked her relationship with men but I ignored these.

I can't rescue what never happened though I came here to do so.

We would mull over the ills of Italy and the ills of the world, and conclude at the end that everyone's crazy so what's the use, let's go have some lunch and a little wine.

Ante mis ojos, inútilmente abiertos, se extiende la noche profunda, la noche vacía, el negro definitivo donde todo lo que alienta, tarde o temprano, se deshace.

Patalear contra la muerte, y ya de paso contra todo lo demás, es el prototipo de sublevación inútil que nunca deja de encontrar angustiada y humorística complicidaden todo optimista bien nacido.