Quotes & Sayings About Futile Efforts

I think Westlife is very unique: we have a certain sound; we do our thing our way, and we don't try to change too much. I think that's what the fans love about us. We keep giving the fans what they want every year. The style of music never really changes too much. — Shane Filan

The life of man is a struggle on earth. But without a cross, without a struggle, we get nowhere. The victory will be ours if we continue our efforts courageously, even when at times they appear futile. — Boniface Wimmer

Among Evangelical Christians, all of whom await the Second Coming of Jesus, there are historically two camps: postmillennialists and premillennialists. For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, most were of the "post" variety, meaning that they expected the Messiah's return after the thousand-year reign of peace. In order to hasten His arrival, they set out to create that harmonious world here and now, fighting for the abolition of slavery, prohibition of alcohol, public education, and women's literacy.
The chaos of the Civil War and industrialization caused many evangelicals to rethink their optimism. They determined that Jesus would actually arrive before the final judgment. Therefore any efforts toward a just society here on earth were futile; what mattered was perfecting one's faith. As historian Randall Balmer writes, these believers "retreated into a theology of despair, one that essentially ceded the temporal world to Satan and his minions. — Mark Sundeen

I don't really plan. I'm almost intuitive about things. — Terry Pratchett

Sometimes, like when she got sick, the edge comes to me. Sometimes that happens for no reason. The chasm widens inexplicably even as I run from it-run for my life-until the ground beneath me evaporates and I am lost again despite my best, but futile efforts. — Ka Hancock

To all the talented young men who wander about feeling that there is nothing in the world for them to do, I should say: 'Give up trying to write, and, instead, try not to write. Go out into the world; become a pirate, a king in Borneo, a labourer in Soviet Russia; give yourself an existence in which the satisfaction of elementary physical needs will occupy almost all your energies.' I do not recommend this course of action to everyone, but only to those who suffer from the disease which Mr Krutch diagnoses. I believe that, after some years of such an existence, the ex-intellectual will fin that in spite of is efforts he can no longer refrain from writing, and when this time comes his writing will not seem to him futile. — Bertrand Russell

For my friend said that he opened his intellect as the sun opens the fans of a palm tree, opening for opening's sake, opening infinitely for ever. But I said that I opened my intellect as I opened my mouth, in order to shut it again on something solid. I was doing it at the moment. And as I truly pointed out, it would look uncommonly silly if I went on opening my mouth infinitely, for ever and ever. — G.K. Chesterton

No thinking being lives who, at some luminous point of his life of thought, has not felt himself lost amid the surges of futile efforts at understanding, or believing, that anything exists greater than his own soul. — Edgar Allan Poe

I had been asked to start going out for roles here and there throughout my career, but I know that acting is a hard thing; it takes a lot of work, and I was traveling. I didn't have the time to really focus on it, so I really waited for the right project to come along. — Marisa Miller

I feel that there is much to be said for the Celtic belief that the souls of those whom we have lost are held captive in some inferior being, in an animal, in a plant, in some inanimate object, and thus effectively lost to us until the day (which to many never comes) when we happen to pass by the tree or to obtain possession of the object which forms their prison. Then they start and tremble, they call us by our name, and as soon as we have recognised them the spell is broken. Delivered by us, they have overcome death and return to share our life.
And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) of which we have no inkling. And it depends on chance whether or not we come upon this object before we ourselves must die. — Marcel Proust

He's holding a squirming Jamie in his arms, but her efforts to wiggle out of his grip are futile, because her daddy's strong as fuck. — Elle Kennedy

Kind prince there is nothing in the realm of ideas that is absolute, therefore all efforts to form ideologies are ultimately futile. — Lao-Tzu

You swear you'll never become your parents. You listen to edgy music, you dress young and hip, you have sex standing up and on kitchen tables, you say "fuck" and "shit" a lot, and then one day, without warning, their words emerge from your mouth like long-dormant sleeper agents suddenly activated. You're still young enough to hear these words through the ears of the teenager sitting beside you, and you realize how pitiful and ultimately futile your efforts will be, a few measly sandbags against the tidal wave of genetic destiny. — Jonathan Tropper

Man has made remarkable strides in conquering outer space, but how futile have been his efforts in conquering inner space- the space in our hearts and minds of men. — Thomas S. Monson

And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves must die. — Marcel Proust

Let others consume their efforts in pointless trifles. Let others drain their energy in futile worries. — Quintus Curtius

How devastated I am to say that I will not be present at your petite soiree on June 10th. Unfortunately, the exceptionally weak drinks you ordinarily serve at these occasions are not sufficient to dull my senses to your boyfriend's futile efforts to grope me in the hallway. — A.C. Kemp

Among the loose animals, the Keeper's sick camel, a lady of brittle temper, had bobbed her tassels and sunk her yellow teeth three times into unguarded flesh; the dwarf ass brayed itself hoarse and the lion cubs, dear to Abernaci's heart, had shambled off, humping their fat, sandy rumps, to feast among the spilled milk in the wrecked kitchens. — Dorothy Dunnett

There are a lot of latchkey kids. I don't want to be sitting there when a guy blurts something out over the TV and have my daughters ask me what those words mean. — Doug Ose

The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile. — Alan Watts

Life is a mystery; that means it cannot be solved. And when all efforts to solve it prove futile, the mystery dawns upon you. Then the doors are open; then you are invited. As a knower, nobody enters the divine; as a child, ignorant, not knowing at all- the mystery embraces you. With a knowing mind you are clever, not innocent. Innocence is the door. — Rajneesh

You have a responsibility to confront the war games - the American killing machine. — Philip Berrigan

If nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such cases all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile — Adolf Hitler