Quotes About Futile

I have to write, as if I were carrying out a punishment. And the greatest punishment is to know that whatever I write will be futile, flawed and uncertain.

Life would be intolerable if we were conscious of it. Happily, we are not. We live with the same unconsciousness as animals, in the same futile vain way, and if we think in advance about death (which they, in all probability, without being dogmatic do not do), we think about it through the veils of so many oblivions, so many distractions and meanderings, that it can hardly be said we think about it at all.

To try to fix the future is a manifest absurdity.

The blending in people's minds of art, status and virtue is an extension of Bell's principle of sartorial morality: people find dignity in the signs of an honourably futile existence removed from all menial necessities.

No amount of panicky protestation or indignant denial or futile attempt to prove a negative was likely to help, because the problem was not in the accused, but in the accuser.

Hitting his enormous body was useless. I might as well have pounded a huge leather sack filled with wheat. So

There is no more futile punishment than futile and hopeless labor.

the wipers beating at the rain like a fool waving in a parade.

Against stupidity the very godsThemselves contend in vain.

Always say "yes" to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to what already is? what could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say "yes" to life — and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.

There is a curious mental stimulus to a good but stupid woman in a bad man's badness. If she has a touch of the reformer in her, as most good women have, she soon becomes obsessed with the futile desire to save him from himself. And in seven cases out of ten her first step in doing so is to descend to his level. "Not

wondrously futile to build splendid buildings, to make music, to sing songs, to print huge books full of colorful birds in the face of the seismic, engulfing indifference of the world—what pretensions humans have! Why bother to make music when the silence and wind are so much larger? Why light lamps when the darkness will inevitably snuff them?

The few questions I had asked had been futile and I was suddenly dispirited, for it had occurred to me that had Holmes been present, he would have probably have solved the entire mystery by now.

It wasn't as if we were waiting for a train, it wasn't as if we were waiting for a meal - it was just that there were was nothing to wait for. Nothing.

They were such seriously futile people that she found herself wanting to cry out against their ready-made justifications for pointless lives.

To attempt to advise conceited people is like whistling against the wind.

The history of trying to start a daily where there already is one is that it has never worked.

My anger, being futile, flares in the wrong places and at the wrong times.

Nous sommes, par nature, si futiles, que seules les distractions peuvent nous empêcher vraiment de mourir.

When there is no context for justice, freedom-seeking behavior is seen as annoying. Or futile. Or a drag. Or oppressive. And dismissed and dismissed and dismissed and dismissed until that behavior is finally just not seen.

Biding time is easy -- and gets you nowhere.

And blood in torrents pourIn vain—always in vain,For war breeds war again.

On good days I hope we were formed for a purpose, but there is also a deep throbbing, a grim Celtic warning that life can be either full or futile. And there is no sense to how that will be revealed; we graft meaning on our lives as best we can.

No one can restrict and stop another one that stays wasting its time for nothing, realizing that impossible matters remain consequently impossible.