Disillusioned With Life Quotes & Sayings

What of the hundreds of faceless men on the streets looking for work, trying to pick up the threads of family life, hoping that the dying had made a better Britain, and finding they were lost in it. Faceless men ... People stepped around them now, ignored the brave boy who'd marched away to glory and now begged on the street because a one-armed man couldn't work. He thought sometimes, in the dark corners of his mind, that the dead were the lucky ones. They hadn't been disillusioned. — Charles Todd

It is impossible to read the daily press without being diverted from reality. You are full of enthusiasm for the eternal verities - life is worth living, and then out of sinful curiosity you open a newspaper. You are disillusioned and wrecked. — Patrick Kavanagh

No person is free until he or she is free at the center. When we let go there, we are free indeed. When the self is renounced, then one stands utterly disillusioned, apart, asking for nothing. If anything comes to us, it is all sheer gain. Then life becomes one constant surprise. — E. Stanley Jones

Our greatest illusion is disillusion. We imagine that we are disillusioned with life, when the truth is that we have not even begun to live. — Paul Brunton

He yawned; he had finished the day, and he had also finished with his youth. Various tried and proved rules of conduct had already discreetly offered him their services: disillusioned epicureanism, smiling tolerance, resignation, flat seriousness, stoicism
all the aids whereby a man may savor, minute by minute, like a connoisseur, the failure of a life ... 'I have attained the age of reason. — Jean-Paul Sartre

Since I'm an asshat, I thought I'd have a choice with you, that I'd be able to walk away if you disillusioned me or turned out to be a blood-sucking creature of the night - and okay, I would have bailed if you were evil . . . Or maybe not. Knowing myself, I'd want to save you. But you're not evil. The point is, I'm realizing you're the same as everyone else in my life, only a thousand times more potent, and that has nothing to do with where you come from. I can grit my teeth about what you do, but I can't control how I react to your laugh. I would rather be near you, see you touch everything but me, than be holding any other girl. I like being with you, Love. Playing, talking, fighting, not-touching. — Natalia Jaster

It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go - let it die away - go on through that period of death into the quieter interest and happiness that follow - and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life. — C.S. Lewis

This self-absorbed perspective treats God as a genie who simply exists to serve you in your selfish pursuit of personal fulfillment. But God is not your servant, and if you fall for the idea that life is supposed to be easy, either you will become severely disillusioned or you will live in denial of reality. Never forget that life is not about you! You exist for God's purposes, not vice versa. Why would God provide heaven on earth when he's planned the real thing for you in eternity? God gives us our time on earth to build and strengthen our character for heaven. — Rick Warren

We are living in perilous times when the hearts and souls of men are sorely tried. Never before has the future been so utterly unpredictable; we are not so much in a period of transition with belief in progress to push us on, rather we seem to be entering the realm of the unknown, joylessly, disillusioned, and without hope. The whole world seems to be in a state of spiritual widowhood, possessed of the harrowing devastation of one who set out on life's course joyously in intimate comradeship with another, and then is bereft of that companion forever. — Fulton J. Sheen

He believed in nothing. Which is why his departures and his pursuit of the most intense feelings and acts were so radical, so deep and honest. The truth of life was perfectly clear to him. Nothing was made, every new morning was clear. His only challenge was inward. He had not been disillusioned or had some bad experience that he could put it all down to. He had simply seen the world and that was that. And he understood how slippery every moment was and he liked the thrill of it. Slipping from the knowable to the unknown, walking from one street to the next, being different all the time. In one afternoon he could slip from one personality to another. Why not? — Dionne Brand

One of the great sadnesses of modern life, because of our disenfranchisement and disillusionment with religion, is that we don't have access to these ideas. Yoga and meditation, for me, is a way of, in this secular world, accessing very very beautiful principles that would perhaps make us happier, at a time when people feel disillusioned with the economy, concerned about the ecology, worried with politicians, and don't trust what they're being told on television. — Russell Brand

Disillusionment means having no more misconceptions, false impressions, and false judgments in life; it means being free from these deceptions. Refusing to be disillusioned is the cause of much of the suffering of human life. — Oswald Chambers

When she was younger, my mother was quite committed to Roman Catholicism. But she got disillusioned with it and moved closer to something like Buddhist beliefs near the end of her life. — Ralph Fiennes

Living in an age of advertisement, we are perpetually disillusioned. The perfect life is spread before us every day, but it changes and withers at a touch. — J.B. Priestley

At lilac evening I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver colored section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night ... I wished I were a Denver Mexican, or even a poor overworked Jap, anything but what I was so drearily, a "white man" disillusioned. All my life I'd had white ambitions; that was why I'd abandoned a good woman like Terry in the San Joaquin Valley I passed the dark porches of Mexican and Negro homes. — Jack Kerouac

To become a villain, you had to have become disillusioned, and in order to become disillusioned you had to have been passionate about something you believed in that was shaken and ripped from your grasp as a protagonist in that stage of your life, leaving you disillusioned with God, if you will. — Matthew Davis

I was a time bomb waiting to detonate, burned out, sick of the music business, out of touch with everything and heavily abusing various substances, disillusioned with life, and intensely needed to work on my character. The only way I could see to do that was to withdraw completely from public life as I had known it before. — Charles Lloyd

Life when one first arrives is a continual mortification as one's romantic illusions are successively shattered and the musical treasure-house of one's imagination crumbles before the hopelessness of the reality. Every day fresh experiences bring fresh disappointments. — Hector Berlioz

To have regret is to be disappointed with yourself and your choices. Those who are wise, see their life like stepping stones across a great river. Everyone misses a stone from time to time. No one can cross the river without getting wet. Success is measured by your arrival on the other side, not on how muddy your shoes are. Regrets are only felt by those who do not understand life's purpose. They become so disillusioned that they stand still in the river and do not take the next leap. — Colleen Houck

To be poor, ugly and, moreover, intelligent condemns one in our society to a dark and disillusioned life ... to beauty all is forgiven. — Muriel Barbery

The point of modernity is to live a life without illusions while not becoming disillusioned — Antonio Gramsci

Young men and women are causing wealth loss to their generation because they are sitting on inert ideas, bottled-up potential energy and scratching the ground when they should be gliding the skies and perambulating with the stars. These people are so disillusioned they live life without any urgency. — Nana Awere Damoah

Apparently, now and again adults take the time to sit down and contemplate what a disaster their life is. They complain without understanding and, like flies constantly banging against the same old windowpane, they buzz around, suffer, waste away, get depressed then wonder how they got caught up in this spiral that is taking them where they don't want to go.
The most intelligent among them turn their malaise into a religion: oh, the despicable vacuousness of bourgeois existence! Cynics of this kind frequently dine at Papa's table: "What has become of the dreams of our youth?" they ask, with a smug, disillusioned air. "Those years are long gone, and life's a bitch."
I despise this false lucidity that comes with age. The truth is that they are just like everyone else: nothing more than kids without a clue about what has happened to them, acting big and tough when in fact all they want is to burst into tears. — Muriel Barbery

Refusing to be disillusioned is the cause of much of the suffering of human life. And this is how that suffering happens-if we love someone, but do not love God, we demand total perfection and righteousness from that person, and when we do not get it, we become cruel and vindictive; yet we are demanding of a human being which he or she cannot possibly give. — Oswald Chambers

When the plot is discovered no one suspects him and he remains close to Rosas for a while, then decides to flee, even though his life is not really in danger; he takes refuge in the house of his cousin Amparo Escalada. He lives hidden in the cellar of her house for some six months. The woman will have a son by him, a child Ossorio will never know. In 1842 he crosses to Montevideo. The exiles are fearful; they think he is a double agent. Isolated and disillusioned with politics, he goes to Brazil, where he settles in Rio Grande do Sul, lives with a black woman slave, and devotes himself to writing poetry and contracting syphilis. — Ricardo Piglia

But what will he do when he sees only too clearly why his patient is ill; when he sees that it arises from his having no love, but only sexuality; no faith, because he is afraid to grope in the dark; no hope, because he is disillusioned by the world and by life; and no understanding, because he has failed to read the meaning of his own existence? — C. G. Jung

Abundant living is realizing that life is a privilege whether it's adhering to our scripts or not. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Life can be so good if you let it. But you must trade with life. You give something and you get something, then you give something of yourself again and you receive something again. Life goes bad when people try to take from it without giving. Then they came away empty-handed, and they grab harder and more often, growing more disappointed and disillusioned each time. — Judith McNaught

All men and women are connected by an energy which we call love, but which is, in fact, the raw material from which the universe was built. This energy cannot be manipulated, it leads us gently forward, it contains all we have to learn in this life. If we try to make it go in the direction we want, we end up desperate, frustrated, disillusioned, because that energy is free and wild. — Paulo Coelho

One of the fundamental reasons why so many doctors become cynical and disillusioned is precisely because, when the abstract idealism has worn thin, they are uncertain about the value of the actual lives of the patients they are treating. This is not because they are callous or personally inhuman: it is because they live in and accept a society which is incapable of knowing what a human life is worth. — John Berger

Humanity is under great pressure to evolve because it is our only chance of survival as a race. This will affect every aspect of your life and close relationships in particular. Never before have relationships been as problematic and conflict ridden as they are now. As you may have noticed, they are not here to make you happy or fulfilled. If you continue to pursue the goal of salvation through a relationship, you will be disillusioned again and again. But if you accept that the relationship is here to make you conscious instead of happy, then the relationship will offer you salvation, and you will be aligning yourself with the higher consciousness that wants to be born into this world. For those who hold on to the old patterns, there will be increasing pain, violence, confusion, and madness. — Eckhart Tolle

Nothing can resist the person who smiles at life - I don't mean the ironic and disillusioned smile of my grandfather, but the triumphant smile of the person who knows that he will survive, or that at least he will be saved by what seems to be destroying him. — Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

The reason we feel disillusioned about our life and faith is not because Christianity isn't fulfilling, but because we've stopped thinking and acting like a Christian - someone who has sold all she has for the pearl of great value, someone who considers everything a loss compared to the greatness of knowing Jesus Christ. Without this opportunity to suffer we will, like Lance, "go crazy," becoming undisciplined robots who think that relief is found in leisure and irresponsibility when in fact it comes from being wholly devoted to God's kingdom. — Gary L. Thomas

As far as he could discover, there were no signs of spring. The decay that covered the surface of the mottled ground was not the kind in which life generates. Last year, he remembered, May had failed to quicken these soiled fields. It had taken all the brutality of July to torture a few green spikes through the exhausted dirt.
What the little park needed, even more than he did, was a drink. Neither alcohol nor rain would do. Tomorrow, in his column, he would ask Broken-hearted, Sick-of-it-all, Desperate, Disillusioned-with-tubercular-husband and the rest of his correspondents to come here and water the soil with their tears. Flowers would then spring up, flowers that smelled of feet.
"Ah, humanity ... " But he was heavy with shadow and the joke went into a dying fall. He trist to break its fall by laughing at himself. — Nathanael West

True that Benjamin used a communist language in the last years of his life, so he looks different to us now. But that's because he died in 1940. Those last years were the ones in which communist language regained authority--seen as necessary to fight fascism (identified as The Enemy). Had Benjamin lived as long as Adorno he would have become as a-social, as disillusioned with left as Adorno did. — Susan Sontag

If we think we will have joy only by praying and singing psalms, we will be disillusioned. But if we fill our lives with simple good things and constantly thank God for them, we will be joyful, that is, full of joy. And what about our problems? When we determine to dwell on the good and excellent things in life, we will be so full of those things that they will tend to swallow our problems. — Richard J. Foster

A long decade ago economic growth was the reigning fashion of political economy. It was simultaneously the hottest subject of economic theory and research, a slogan eagerly claimed by politicians of all stripes, and a serious objective of the policies of governments. The climate of opinion has changed dramatically. Disillusioned critics indict both economic science and economic policy for blind obeisance to aggregate material "progress," and for neglect of its costly side effects. Growth, it is charged, distorts national priorities, worsens the distribution of income, and irreparably damages the environment. Paul Erlich speaks for a multitude when he says, "We must acquire a life style which has as its goal maximum freedom and happiness for the individual, not a maximum Gross National Product." [in Nordhaus, William D. and James Tobin., "Is growth obsolete?" Economic Research: Retrospect and Prospect Vol 5: Economic Growth. Nber, 1972. 1-80] — James Tobin

I have no routines or personal history. One day I found out that they were no longer necessary for me and, like drinking, I dropped them. One must have the desire to drop them and then one must proceed harmoniously to chop them off, little by little. If you have no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with your acts. And above all no one pins you down with their thoughts. It is best to erase all personal history because that makes us free from the encumbering thoughts of other people. I have, little by little, created a fog around me and my life. And now nobody knows for sure who I am or what I do. Not even I. How can I know who I am, when I am all this? — Carlos Castaneda

We are not disillusioned because we have no illusions ... What we have and what is our strength, is our joy in life ... in all its amoral aspects. That is also the basis of our contemporary art. — Asger Jorn