Quotes & Sayings About Futile Things

Maeniel felt this was why all the great sages never wrote anything down. In the final analysis, scriptures are futile things, dependent as they are on the intentions of the interpreter. All too often too literal a mind can lead human students into strange follies. Sometimes it is better to allow the searchers to try to plumb the depths of the great mystery on their own and accept that not every one of those taking the road will see the same end. — Alice Borchardt

The great city seemed to weigh upon me, as though it were crushing me under its heap of brick and stone. Gray, drizzly skies, congested streets, the soot-belching boats and barges chugging up and down the Thames, the teeming mass of four millions hastening about the countless activities of daily life in a metropolis, things adventurous, meaningful, spiritual, quotidian, futile, criminal, meaningless and absurd. Amidst this seething stew of humanity, I painted. — Gary Inbinder

This is a story, told the way you say stories should be told: Somebody grew up, fell in love, and spent a winter with her lover in the country. This, of course, is the barest outline, and futile to discuss. It's as pointless as throwing birdseed on the ground while snow still falls fast. Who expects small things to survive when even the largest get lost? People forget years and remember moments. Seconds and symbols are left to sum things up: the black shroud over the pool. Love, in its shortest form becomes a word. — Ann Beattie

The possessions God allows us to have are intended for our use, not our enjoyment. Trying to squeeze something out of them that was never in them in the first place is a futile endeavor. A cow's udders, gently pressed, will yield sweet milk, nourishing and refreshing. Applying more and more pressure will not produce greater quantities of milk. We lose the good of material things by expecting too much from them. Those who try hardest to please themselves with earthly goods find the least satisfaction in them. — William Gurnall

Ascend beyond the sickly atmosphere
to a higher plane, and purify yourself
by drinking as if it were ambrosia
the fire that fills and fuels Emptiness.
Free from the futile strivings and the cares
which dim existence to a realm of mist,
happy is he who wings an upward way
on mighty pinions to the fields of light;
whose thoughts like larks spontaneously rise
into the morning sky; whose flight, unchecked,
outreaches life and readily comprehends
the language of flowers and of all mute things. — Charles Baudelaire

It's futile to predict what love will make of you, but sometimes it brings you things you never knew you wanted. — Mohammed Hanif

The world is hard because you may wake up today but not tomorrow. And yet no one will accept "fear of death and a futile existence" as a reasonable excuse to miss work.
The world is hard because you will have to fight for the things you love or worse, fight the things you love. — Iain Thomas

20 Samuel said to the people, "Fear not! Indeed you have done all this evil, yet do not turn aside from following ADONAI, but worship ADONAI with all your heart. 21 Do not turn aside to go after empty things that cannot profit or deliver, for they are futile. — Messianic Jewish Bible

I thought of all the tender bonds that were torn by the tsunami, and of how we humans try and try again to knit ourselves together, and how we are at our best and our happiest when we do. I thought that of all the cruel and futile things that can happen to us in life, the very worst is when we are separated. — Marie Mutsuki Mockett

Why shouldnt things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? they are so, and we are so, and they and we go together. — George Santayana

The cause which is blocking all progress today is the subtle scepticism which whispers in a million ears that things are not good enough to be worth improving. If the world is good we are revolutionaries, if the world is evil we must be conservatives. These essays, futile as they are considered as serious literature, are yet ethically sincere, since they seek to remind men that things must be loved first and improved afterwards. — G.K. Chesterton

The theological truth is based on historical truth. That's the way the New Testament talks. Look at the sermon of Peter in the second chapter of Acts. He stands up and says, 'You guys are a witness of these things; they weren't done in secret. David's tomb is still with us, but God has raised Jesus from the dead. Therefore we proclaim him to be the Son of God.' "Take away miracles and you take away the Resurrection, and then you've got nothing to proclaim. Paul said that if Jesus wasn't raised from the dead, our faith is futile, it's useless, it's empty. — Lee Strobel

Sometimes in life we fear a dark season that may never arrive, the underpinnings of those grave days set on some unknowable horizon. I had feared a lot of things that in the end proved futile - my — Addison Moore

Don't bother to argue anything on the Internet. And I mean, ANYTHING ... The most innocuous, innocent, harmless, basic topics will be misconstrued by people trying to deconstruct things down to the sub-atomic level and entirely miss the point ... Seriously. Keep peeling the onion and you get no onion. — Vera Nazarian

Live in hope. Because things do happen. Things do change. Worry really is futile. Don't fear the future. Dreams do come true. — Miranda Hart

Obviously, I believe that to pursue the American Dream is not only futile but self-destructive because ultimately it destroys everything and everyone involved with it. By definition it must, because it nurtures everything except those things that are important: integrity, ethics, truth, our very heart and soul. Why? The reason is simple: because Life/life is giving, not getting. — Hubert Selby Jr.

Since the day that our forefather and mother were exiled out of the garden of Eden, we've been lost, trying to get back in, trying to find oneness with each other and the Lord, trying to find communion, our way home. We've been trying to be found. The truth is that without Christ, we are utterly alone, and our attempts to fill our hours with goodies or texting or work or even ministry are simply futile attempts to assure ourselves that things aren't so bad after all. But at the end of the day, in the middle of the night, and at the end of our lives, without the love and work of Jesus Christ, the God-man, we are alone and we know it - and it terrifies us. Every one of us is standing on that darkened stage, condemned, lost and wandering, needing to be found. — Elyse M. Fitzpatrick

Reality [ ... ] at every level from photons to philosophical fancies to the consciousness of living organisms was fluid [ ... ]. To break apart and confine this reality into separate categories created by the mind was foolish and futile, much like trying to capture a ray of light inside a dark wooden box. This urge to categorize was the true fall of man [ ... ] the infinite became finite, good opposed evil, thoughts hardened into beliefs, one's joys and discoveries became dreadful certainties, man became alienated from what he perceived as other ways and other things, and, ultimately, divided against himself, body and soul. [ ... ] Always seeking meaning, always making their lives safe and comfortable, human beings do not truly live. — David Zindell

All comparison is based on memory, and memory is an image based on engrams. It follows that all judgement, evaluation, is an interpretation of images, for even the present is already a memory by the time we have seized it.
Therefore the unending process of finding things "good" or "not so good" is a work of imagination. Would in not be futile indeed to suppose that such judgments, that is any and all judgments, could have any absolute existence or value? — Wei Wu Wei

No man will speak to his master; but to a wanderer and a friend, to him who does not come to teach or to rule, to him who asks for nothing and accepts all things, words are spoken by the camp-fires, in the shared solitude of the sea, in riverside villages, in resting-places surrounded by forests - words are spoken that take no account of race or colour. One heart speaks - another one listens; and the earth, the sea, the sky, the passing wind and the stirring leaf, hear also the futile tale of the burden of life. — Joseph Conrad

Nothing is more futile than looking for meaning in things that have none. — Marty Rubin

The human animal is a fascinating beast. Watching people and trying to learn how and why they do things, and to engage in the somewhat futile attempt to explain them ... it's my reason for living I guess ... to ask 'why?'. I don't know what else to do with myself. In some strange way it's probably an attempt to understand myself and my own relationship to the world. — Andrew Neel

Movement, after all, seemed futile to him. He felt that imagination could easily be substituted for the vulgar realities of things. It was possible, in his opinion, to gratify the most extravagant, absurd desires by a subtle subterfuge, by a slight modification of the object of one's wishes. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

You choose to let things bother you. You can just as easily choose not to notice the irritating offender, to consider the matter trivial and unworthy of your interest. That is the powerful move. What you do not react to cannot drag you down in a futile engagement. Your pride is not involved. The best lesson you can teach an irritating gnat is to consign it to oblivion by ignoring it. — Robert Greene

I have no more goals, all I'm gonna do is deal with the days Nature will give me along. I have lost too much strength on futile things until then ! — Laure Lacornette

1) everything that's already in the world when you're born is just normal;
2) anything that gets invented between then and before you turn thirty is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it;
3) anything that gets invented after you're thirty is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it until it's been around for about ten years when it gradually turns out to be alright really. — Douglas Adams

He took a grim and ironic pleasure from the possibility that what little learning he had managed to acquire had led him to this knowledge: that in the long run all things, even the learning that let him know this, were futile and empty, and at last diminished into a nothingness they did not alter. — John Williams

They say that depression makes you see everything in a negative light. I disagree. It makes you see things for what they are. It makes you take off the fucking rose-tinted glasses and look around and see the world as it really is- cruel, harsh and unfair. It makes you see people in their true colours- stupid, shallow and self-absorbed. All that ridiculous optimism, all that carpe diem and life-is-what-you-make-of-it. Words, jsut empty words in an attempt to give meaning to an existence taht is both doomed and futile. — Tabitha Suzuma

Twenty million people are underfed but literally everyone in England has access to a radio. What we have lost in food we have gained in electricity. Whole sections of the working class who have been plundered of all they really need are being compensated, in part, by cheap luxuries which mitigate the surface of life.

Do you consider all this desirable? No, I don't. But it may be that the psychological adjustment which the working class are visibly making is the best they could make in the circumstances. They have neither turned revolutionary nor lost their self-respect; merely they have kept their tempers and settled down to make the best of things on a fish-and-chip standard. The alternative would be God knows what continued agonies of despair; or it might be attempted insurrections which, in a strongly governed country like England, could only lead to futile massacres and a regime of savage repression. — George Orwell

All things are transitory. All things must pass. Attachments whether to material possessions, to people, to places to name, are futile. Despite your clinging, these things will fade away. — Hari Kunzru

In history, and in evolution, progress is always a futile, Sisyphean struggle to stay in the same relative place by getting ever better at things. Cars move through the congested streets of London no faster than horse-drawn carriages did a century ago. Computers have no effect on productivity because people learn to complicate and repeat tasks that have been made easier. — Matt Ridley

It is odd to watch with what feverish ardour Americans pursue prosperity, ever tormented by the shadowy suspicion that they might not have chosen the shortest route to get it. They cleave to the things of this world as if assured they will never die, and yet rush to snatch any that comes within their reach, as if they expected to stop living before relishing them. Death steps in, in the end, and stops them, before they have grown tired of this futile pursuit of that complete felicity which always escapes them. — Alexis De Tocqueville

[I] learned ... that friends are a good source of food and soul when one has not yet gotten the hang of cooking or living (as opposed to dying) alone. That nothing-not booze, not love, not sex, not work, not moving from state to state-will make the past disappear. Only time and patience heal things. I learned that cutting up your arms in an attempt to make the pain move from inside to outside, from soul to skin, is futile. That death is a cop-out. I tried all of these things. — Marya Hornbacher

The failure of a political enterprise intended to bring about a fundamental change in the order of society can have one of three different effects on a man who has undertaken it. He may go on trying to do the same thing in the same way, always hoping that he will have better luck next time. Or he may come to the conclusion that his whole effort is futile and that he may as well accept the established order of things. Or he may continue to adhere to his faith, but recognize that the difficulties are greater than he had previously supposed and that he must adopt a more gradual method of approach to a goal which has receded into the far distance. — Geoffrey Francis Hudson

Complaints of feeling cut off, shut off, out of touch, feeling apart or strange, of things being out of focus or unreal, of not feeling one with people, or of the point having gone out of life, interest flagging, things seeming futile and meaningless, all describe in various ways this state of mind. Patients usually call it 'depression', but it lacks the heavy, black, inner sense of brooding, of anger and of guilt, which are not difficult to discover in classic depression. Depression is really a more extraverted state of mind, which, while the patient is turning his aggression inwards against himself, is part of a struggle not to break out into overt angry and aggressive behaviour. The states described above are rather the 'schizoid states'. They are definitely introverted. Depression is object-relational. The schizoid person has renounced objects, even though he still needs them. — Harry Guntrip

One may be doing all good and right things, but if they aren't done with good intentions, they are futile. Having right intentions is the most important! Even the prayers are of no use if not done in the right earnest! — Neelam Saxena Chandra

The one who loves money is never satisfied with money, and whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with income. This too is futile. 11 When good things increase, the ones who consume them multiply; what, then, is the profit to the owner, except to gaze at them with his eyes? 12 The sleep of the worker is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of the rich permits him no sleep. — Anonymous

I think the notion of dreaming in a time where we are told that it is foolish, futile or not useful is one of the most revolutionary things we can do. To have our lives determined by our dreams of a free world
instead of reactions to a state-imposed reality
is one of the most powerful tools of decolonization. — Harsha Walia

Are you prepared to be the complete Watson?" he asked.
"Watson?"
"Do-you-follow-me-Watson; that one. Are you prepared to have quite obvious things explained to you, to ask futile questions, to give me chances of scoring off you, to make brilliant discoveries of your own two or three days after I have made them myself all that kind of thing? Because it all helps."
"My dear Tony," said Bill delightedly, "need you ask?" Antony said nothing, and Bill went on happily to himself, "I perceive from the strawberry-mark on your shirt-front that you had strawberries for dessert. Holmes, you astonish me. Tut, tut, you know my methods. Where is the tobacco? The tobacco is in the Persian slipper. Can I leave my practice for a week? I can. — A.A. Milne

It's funny to consider how important things like that felt to me then. Proving people wrong. Fighting stupidity. Wanting formal recognition. It took me a long time to learn that proving people wrong is purposeless, fighting stupidity is futile, and formal recognition prevents people from underestimating you - and thereby from ceding to you surprise and other tactical advantages. — Barry Eisler

Nobody adores fertilizer. Nobody devotes their life to fertilizer (unless they own a fertilizer company). But, shit, you need it to grow the crops. The land is arid and dry without it, and trying to grow things is likely to be futile. — Shellen Lubin

Demanding recognition for something you did and getting angry or upset if you don't get it; trying to get attention by talking about your problems, the story of your illnesses, or making a scene; giving your opinion when nobody has asked for it and it makes no difference to the situation; being more concerned with how the other person sees you than with the other person, which is to say, using other people for egoic reflection or as ego enhancers; trying to make an impression on others through possessions, knowledge, good looks, status, physical strength, and so on; bringing about temporary ego inflation through angry reaction against something or someone; taking things personally, feeling offended; making yourself right and others wrong through futile mental or verbal complaining; wanting to be seen, or to appear important. — Eckhart Tolle

The act of gaining true insights from self - reflection is a futile action for most ... as there are easy way out things like self justification, rationalization, delusions and denial which keeps us away from our true self, the inner core and thus we live contented — Anubhav Mishra

Envy is resentment of good things that happen to other people. Jealousy increases the importance of the person we wish belonged only to us. Envy, as I told you, is poison, and futile - we want to be the other person. But jealousy is generous - we want the other person to be ours. — Carlos Fuentes

Are you prepared to have quite
obvious things explained to you, to ask futile questions, to give me
chances of scoring off you, to make brilliant discoveries of your own
two or three days after I have made them myself all that kind of thing? — A.A. Milne

Amazing how the most obvious things escape your notice. Maybe the truth is exactly the things you don't notice. Maybe the aim to see and tell the truth is inherently futile, a contradiction in terms, and it's exactly those things about oneself and the world that are invisible because they are woven into one's fabric that are the truth. Just like a person can't see his own eyes. You search and search and search, and the truth, by definition, is exactly that which you don't find. You don't see the truth, you are the truth. "Habits of attention are reflexes of the complete character of an individual." And how could you notice your own habits of attention? By writing. Well, at their most profound level? It doesn't make any difference. That is the point. It's like Zen. The truth is not straining for the truth, the truth is in effortlessness. The truth is in being, not trying. Aw hell, that doesn't leave much too chew on. — Richard Hell

We are human beings, Lord, and we do not know our own greatness. Lord, give us the humility to ask for what we need, because no desire is vain and no request is futile. Each of us knows how best to feed our own soul; give us the courage to see our desires as coming from the fount of Your eternal Wisdom. Only by accepting our desires can we begin to understand who we are. Amen."
"Lord, help me understand that all the good things in life that happen to me do so because I deserve them. Help me understand that what moves me to seek out Your truth is the same force the moved the saints, and the doubts I have are the same doubts that the saints had, and my frailties are the same frailties. Help me to be humble enough to accept that I am no different from other people. Amen. — Paulo Coelho