Lamentable Quotes & Sayings

There is no need to complain of particular grievances, for life in its entirety is lamentable. — Seneca.

Bloodshed, gentlemen, no doubt is lamentable. I have seen some of it
more perhaps than many of those who talk about it with such levity. But there are worse things than bloodshed, even on an extreme scale ... The trampling down of law and order which, under the conditions of a civilised state, assure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness
all this would be worse than bloodshed. — Winston S. Churchill

If I am so terribly limited as to view my handicaps as nothing more than lamentable limitations, then I have taken some of my greatest God-given assets and completely handicapped them. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Lizzie, Lizzie, have you tasted

For my sake the fruit forbidden?

Must your light like mine be hidden,

Your young life like mine be wasted,

Undone in mine undoing,

And ruined in my ruin,

Thirsty, cankered, goblin-ridden?' -

She clung about her sister,

Kissed and kissed and kissed her:

Tears once again

Refreshed her shrunken eyes,

Dropping like rain

After long sultry drouth;

Shaking with aguish fear, and pain,

She kissed and kissed her with a hungry mouth.

Her lips began to scorch,

That juice was wormwood to her tongue,

She loathed the feast:

Writhing as one possessed she leaped and sung,

Rent all her robe, and wrung Her hands in lamentable haste... — Christina Rossetti

That our sanctification did not depend upon changing our works, but in doing that for GOD's sake, which we commonly do for our own. That it was lamentable to see how many people mistook the means for the end, addicting themselves to certain works, which they performed very imperfectly, by reason of their human or selfish regards. — Brother Lawrence

People (a group that in my opinion has always attracted an undue amount of attention) have often been likened to snowflakes. This analogy is meant to suggest that each is unique - no two alike. This is quite patently not the case. People, even at the current rate of inflation - in fact, people especially at the current rate of inflation - are quite simply a dime a dozen. And, I hasten to add, their only similarity to snowflakes resides in their invariably and lamentable tendency to turn, after a few warm days, to slush. — Fran Lebowitz

I am pleased to say I find nothing funny, sir," Bent replied as they reached the bottom of the stairs. "I have no sense of humor whatsoever. None at all. It has been proven by phrenology. I have Nichtlachen-Keinwortz syndrome, which for some curious reason is considered a lamentable affliction. I, on the other hand, consider it a gift. I am happy to say that I regard the sight of a fat man slipping on a banana skin as nothing more than an unfortunate accident that highlights the need for care in the disposal of household waste." "Have you tried - " Moist began, but Bent held up a hand. "Please! I repeat, I do not regard it as a burden! And may I say it annoys me when people assume it is such! Do not feel impelled to try to make me laugh, sir! If I had no legs, would you try to make me run? I am quite happy, thank you!" He — Terry Pratchett

Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment. — George Santayana

I'm busy, man, too busy. There's a lamentable absence of free time. — Juan Pablo Montoya

When we see that almost everything men devote their lives to attain, sparing no effort and encountering a thousand toils and dangers in the process, has, in the end, no further object than to raise themselves in the estimation of others; when we see that not only offices, titles, decorations, but also wealth, nay, even knowledge[1] and art, are striven for only to obtain, as the ultimate goal of all effort, greater respect from one's fellowmen, - is not this a lamentable proof of the extent to which human folly can go? — Arthur Schopenhauer

Theophilos, the light of reason that we both reverence is not a god. Neither does the highest development of the human mind confer divinity upon us. We may quote Aristotle one moment and in the next find ourselves betraying our wives and children - for the sake of passion, in the name of love - and not know how we arrived at that lamentable state. Reason is a gift of God but of itself cannot ennoble a man. — Michael D. O'Brien

A person who thinks should not try to persuade others to his belief; that is what puts him on the road to a system; on the lamentable road of the "man of conviction"; politicians like to call themselves that; but what is a conviction? It is a thought that has come to a stop, that has congealed, and "the man of conviction" is a man restricted. — Milan Kundera

The Sunday Tidings, which had for some years been pursing a policy of intellectual sensationalism, had never found it easy to maintain its supply of material. The stuff of mere emotional sensationalism, as used by its cheaper and less dignified contemporaries, lay thickly all around, easily malleable into shapes attractive to the constant human passions. Intellectual sensationalism, however, was a much more tricky business. In addition to avoiding the suggestion of sensationalism for sensationalism's sake, it required knowledge, research, careful timing, and, if possible, some literary ability. Inevitably, therefore, its policy was subject to lamentable gaps during which it could find nothing topical on its chosen level to disclose. — John Wyndham

Politics is much too serious to be taken too seriously; equally, there are many aspects of it so laughable as to be lamentable. — Charles Kennedy

Comrades in the struggle! The position of modern man is not merely lamentable; one might even say that there is no condition, because man hardly exists. Nothing exists to which one could point and say: 'There, that is Homo Zapiens.' HZ is simply the residual luminescence of a soul fallen asleep; it is a film about the shooting of another film, shown on a television in an empty house. — Victor Pelevin

I believe a time will come when an opportunity will be offered to abolish this lamentable evil. — Patrick Henry

Jesus came into the world with good news, not bad news. He does not call us to a willpower religion that feels only duty and no delight. He calls us to himself and to his Father. Therefore, he calls us to joy. Of course, it is not joy in things. Jesus is not preaching a health, wealth, and prosperity gospel - one of America's most lamentable exports to the world. It is joy in God and in his Son. — John Piper

The lamentable expression: 'But it was only a dream, the increasing use of which - among others in the domain of the cinema - has contributed not a little to encourage such hypocrisy, has for a long while ceased to merit discussion. — Andre Breton

Weaknesses in men of genius are usually an exaggeration of their personal feeling; in the hands of feeble imitators they become the most flagrant blunders. Entire schools have been founded on misinterpretations of certain aspects of the masters. Lamentable mistakes have resulted from the thoughtless enthusiasm with which men have sought inspiration from the worst qualities of remarkable artists because they are unable to reproduce the sublime elements in their work. — Eugene Delacroix

Well," the voice said, seemingly oblivious, "one thing that does happen when you live a long time is that you start to realise the essential futility of so much that we do, especially when you see the same patterns of behaviour repeated by succeeding generations and across different species. You see the same dreams, the same hopes, the same ambitions and aspirations, reiterated, and the same actions, the same courses and tactics and strategies, regurgitated, to the same predictable and often lamentable effects, and you start to think, So? Does it really matter? Why really are you bothering with all this? Are these not just further doomed, asinine ways of attempting to fill your vacuous, pointless existence, wedged slivered as it is between the boundless infinitudes of dark oblivion book-ending its utter triviality?" "Uh-huh, — Iain M. Banks

I don't like this."
"I know you don't, my little spaetzel. But I am too worn out to run from both the police and your murderous twin, and Damian's looking peaky, plus Christian did apologize for trying to kill us earlier."
"I wasn't talking about that. It's your lamentable habit of using completely unsuitable love names for me that gives me grief," Adrian groused. "I am not a lambypie, nor am I a spaetzel. — Katie MacAlister

The umbrella assertion made by Team B - and the most inflammatory - was that the previous National Intelligence Estimates "substantially misperceived the motivations behind Soviet strategic programs, and thereby tended consistently to underestimate their intensity, scope, and implicit threat." Soviet military leaders weren't simply trying to defend their territory and their people; they were readying a First Strike option, and the US intelligence community had missed it. What led to this "grave and dangerous flaw" in threat assessment, according to Team B, was an overreliance on hard technical facts, and a lamentable tendency to downplay "the large body of soft data." This "soft" data, the ideological leader of Team B, Richard Pipes, would later say, included "his deep knowledge of the Russian soul. — Rachel Maddow

Nothing made him desist except his own lamentable state of demoralization. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Despite this lamentable lack of balance in our education I do not believe that either children or adults in my country are permeated by a widespread hostility to Germany. — Douglas Hurd

Nothing is more sterile or lamentable than the man content to live within himself. — Harold Pinter

It is a lamentable observation that because of the way our laws are skewed toward the plaintiff, London has become the libel capital of the world. — Richard Dawkins

I turn aside with a shudder of horror from this lamentable plague of functions which have no derivatives. — Charles Hermite

It struck me that the chief obstacle to marital contentment was this perpetual gulf between the well-founded, commendable pessimism of women and the sheer dumb animal optimism of men, the latter a force more than any other responsible for the lamentable state of the world. — Michael Chabon

Every Day Is for the Thief, by turns funny, mournful, and acerbic, offers a portrait of Nigeria in which anger, perhaps the most natural response to the often lamentable state of affairs there, is somehow muted and deflected by the author's deep engagement with the country: a profoundly disenchanted love. Teju Cole is among the most gifted writers of his generation. — Salman Rushdie

If just once you were depressed for no reason, you have been so all your life without knowing it.
Becoming: an agony without an ending.The older I grow, the less I enjoy performing my little Hamlet. The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death. If History had a goal, how lamentable would be the fate of those of us who have accomplished nothing!
On the frontiers of the self: 'What I have suffered, what I am suffering, no one will ever know, not even I'. Events - tumours of time.
Man secretes disaster.
The secret of my adaptation to life? - I've changed despairs the way I've changed shirts. Each day is a Rubicon in which I aspire to be drowned. — Emil M. Cioran

This book aims, in part, to help reverse the lamentable public retreat of religious liberals in recent decades. Yet, religious liberalism on the whole in the United States is by no means diminishing. Recent studies indicate that approximately one in four Americans describe themselves as religious liberals, roughly the same number as those who describe themselves as religious conservatives - and some suggest that the number of religious liberals may be even higher. To make sense of the numbers, we need to define religious liberal. While there are many — Paul B. Rasor

Before the whole world, I accuse you, German intellectuals, you non-Nazis, as those truly guilty of all these Nazi crimes, all this lamentable breakdown of a great people
a destruction which shames the whole white race ... — Bronislaw Huberman

What is our policy? ... to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalogue of human crime. — Winston Churchill

I turn away with fright and horror from the lamentable evil of functions which do not have derivatives. — Charles Hermite

I sing the Equalities, modern or old,
I sing the endless finales of things;
I say Nature continues - Glory continues;
I praise with electric voice;
For I do not see one imperfection in the universe;
And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the universe.
O setting sun! though the time has come,
I still warble under you, if none else does, unmitigated adoration. — Walt Whitman

Incredibly, there are people - smart people - who think a prim disdain for drama is somehow a sign of "good taste." It is more often the reverse: a lamentable insensitivity to the essence of the art, a failure to "get it" on the most essential level. It is more often a sign not of good taste but of artistic insecurity. Not knowing how far to go, the writer goes nowhere. Lifelessness is not a form of elegance you should pursue. — Stephen Koch

Honestly, what can really be said about 'the Jewish people' as a whole? Is it not a lamentable stereotype to make large generalizations about all Jews, and to presume they all share the same political commitments? — Judith Butler

I snorted. 'For a great sultan who is lord and ruler of all that he surveys, his English is lamentably poor. He can't even spell England properly.'
Still holding the note, Mr Ascham looked up at me. 'Is that so? Tell me, Bess, do you speak his language? Any Arabic or Turkish-Arabic?'
'You know that I do not.'
'Then however lamentable his English may be, he still speaks your language while you cannot speak his. To me, this gives him a considerable advantage over you. Always pause before you criticise, and never unduly criticise one who has made an effort at something you yourself have not even attempted. — Matthew Reilly

The accumulation of personal wealth and the extension of commercial transactions have developed a great and lamentable increase in certain classes of crimes, while the improvements in transport have largely facilitated the escape of fugitive criminals. — Edward Blake

Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart - its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life. — Joseph Conrad

to follow one's instincts with due regard to the policeman round the corner, had not acted very well there: it was because Cronshaw had done this that he had made such a lamentable failure of existence. It seemed that the instincts could not be trusted. Philip was puzzled, and he asked himself what rule of life was there, if that one was useless, and why people acted in one way rather than in another. They acted according to their emotions, but their emotions might be good or bad; it seemed just a chance whether they led to triumph or disaster. Life seemed an inextricable confusion. Men hurried hither and thither, urged by forces they knew not; and the purpose of it all escaped them; they seemed to hurry just for hurrying's sake. — William Somerset Maugham

It is a rather lamentable fact that few can call upon courage with the expediency they can fear. — Gitty Daneshvari

What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles, when it is their own transgressions which bring them suffering that was not their destiny. — Homer

A breakfast-room adjoined the drawing-room, I slipped in there. It contained a bookcase: I soon possessed myself of a volume, taking care that it should be one stored with pictures. I mounted into the window-seat: gathering up my feet, I sat cross-legged, like a Turk; and, having drawn the red moreen curtain nearly close, I was shrined in double retirement. Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast. I — Charlotte Bronte

There is something ridiculous and even quite indecent in an individual claiming to be happy. Still more a people or a nation making such a claim. The pursuit of happiness ... is without any question the most fatuous which could possibly be undertaken. This lamentable phrase the pursuit of happiness is responsible for a good part of the ills and miseries of the modern world. — Malcolm Muggeridge

Without constant restoration we are not ready for the perpetual assaults of hell, or the stern afflictions of heaven, or even for the strifes within. When the whirlwind shall be loosed, woe to the tree that has not sucked up fresh sap, and grasped the rock with many intertwisted roots. When tempests arise, woe to the mariners that have not strengthened their mast, nor cast their anchor, nor sought the haven. If we allow the good to grow weaker, the evil will surely gather strength and struggle desperately for the mastery over us; and so, perhaps, a painful desolation, and a lamentable disgrace may follow. Let us draw near to the footstool of divine mercy in humble entreaty, and we shall realize the fulfillment of the promise, Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

To be obliged to beg our daily happiness from others bespeaks a more lamentable poverty than that of him who begs his daily bread. — Charles Caleb Colton

It is lamentable, that to be a good patriot one must become the enemy of the rest of mankind. — Voltaire

It's terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. This is so horrible to contemplate that we shouldn't even say it. But the general situation in which we are involved is lamentable. — Jacques-Yves Cousteau

She says a wedding is one of the most lamentable spectacles on earth. — Kate Chopin

19Then the king arose very early in the morning, and went in haste unto the den of lions. 20And when he came to the den, he cried with a lamentable voice unto Daniel: and the king spake and said to Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions? + 21Then said Daniel unto the king, O king, live for ever. 22My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him innocency was found in me; and also before thee, O king, have I done no hurt.* + — Anonymous

It's so unfortunate the way people can never look past his truly lamentable looks to see the pure heart that beats within." I grinned, liking him immediately. "Yeah, well I'm actually blind, so I was able to encounter him without the weight of societal constructions of beauty between us. Plus I totally believed him when he said he was super attractive. — Roan Parrish

It's lamented that the youth get their news from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. It's lamentable that they get more from them than from the news. — Dick Cavett

There was a man with tongue of wood who essayed to sing,
and in truth it was lamentable;
but there was one who heard the clip-clapper of this tongue of wood,
and knew what the man wished to sing,
and with that the singer was content. — Stephen Crane

Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment, being scribbled o'er, should undo a man? Some say the bee stings: but I say, 'tis the bee's wax; for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since. — William Shakespeare

We humans have a lamentable tendency to spend more time theorizing the reasons behind human suffering, than working to alleviate human suffering. — Terryl L. Givens

Deficiency in judgement is properly that which is called stupidity; and for such a failing we know no remedy. A dull or narrow-minded person, to whom nothing is wanting but a proper degree of understanding, may be improved by tuition, even so far as to deserve the epithet of learned. But as such persons frequently labour under a deficiency in the faculty of judgement, it is not uncommon to find men extremely learned who in the application of their science betray a lamentable degree this irremediable want.] — Immanuel Kant

As I walked through the wilderness of this world, I lighted on a certain place, where was a den; and I laid me down in that place to sleep: and as I slept I dreamed a dream. I dreamed, and behold I saw a man clothed with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open the book, and read therein; and as he read, he wept and trembled: and not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry; saying, 'What shall I do?' — John Bunyan

In the battlefield men grapple each other and die;
The horses of the vanquished utter lamentable cries to heaven,
While ravens and kites peck at human entrails,
Carry them up in their flight, and hang them on the branches of dead trees. — Li Bai

There are three sorts of lawyers - able, unable and lamentable. — Robert Smith Surtees

Love is an art, Berk. Just like painting or music. Some painters draw mere lines, scratches on the canvas and call them art; some paint stars studded skies like van Gogh; or Chopin's music conquers the hearts of millions while the execrable disco music blaring out of the open windows of a car have also their audience. Some describe love in high-flown flowery language and you identify yourself with the hero and the heroine and feel yourself in the seventh heaven while some give such a lamentable picture of it that you almost curse it! — T. Afsin Ilgar

Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered a pale blank of mist and cloud; near a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and lamentable blast. — Charlotte Bronte

Her ambitions have always exceeded her abilities." He paused, and looked directly at Regal. "In royalty, that is a most lamentable failing. — Robin Hobb

SATAN, n. One of the Creator's lamentable mistakes, repented in sashcloth and axes. Being instated as an archangel, Satan made himself multifariously objectionable and was finally expelled from Heaven. Halfway in his descent he paused, bent his head in thought a moment and at last went back. "There is one favor that I should like to ask," said he. "Name it." "Man, I understand, is about to be created. He will need laws." "What, wretch! you his appointed adversary, charged from the dawn of eternity with hatred of his soul - you ask for the right to make his laws?" "Pardon; what I have to ask is that he be permitted to make them himself." It was so ordered. — Ambrose Bierce

Be informed, also, that this good and savoury Parish is the home of Hectors, Trapanners, Biters who all go under the general appelation of Rooks. Here are all the Jilts, Cracks, Prostitutes, Night-walkers, Whores, Linnen-lifters, who are like so many Jakes, Privies, Houses of Office, Ordures, Excrements, Easments and piles of Sir-reverence: the whores of Ratcliffe High-way smell of Tarpaulin and stinking Cod from their continuall Traffick with seamen's Breeches. There are other such wretched Objects about these ruined Lanes, all of them lamentable Instances of Vengeance. And it is not strange (as some think) how they will haunt the same Districts and will not leave off their Crimes until they are apprehended, for these Streets are their Theatre. Theft, Whoredom and Homicide peep out of the very Windows of their Souls; Lying, Perjury, Fraud, Impudence and Misery are stamped upon their very Countenances as now they walk within the Shaddowe of my Church. — Peter Ackroyd

Can there be a more lamentable picture than that of a Chancellor of the Exchequer seated on an empty chest by a pool of bottomless deficiency fishing for a budget? — Robert Peel

The utter folly of our time is lamentable, that men should think to assist God with human help and to protect the Church of Christ by worldly ambition. — Hilary Of Poitiers