Quotes & Sayings About Lost Causes
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Top Lost Causes Quotes
Glory, causes, careers, and love mean nothing on an empty stomach. Because of food, I lost my self-respect; because of food, I suffered the humiliation of a lowly cur; and because of food I took up creative writing, with a vengeance. — Mo Yan
Cosca smiled up at the dragon, hands on hips. 'It certainly is a remarkable curiosity. A magnificent relic. But against what is already boiling across the plains? The legion of the dumb? The merchants and farmers and makers of trifles and filers of papers? The infinite tide of greedy little people?' He waved his hat towards the dragon. 'Such things as this are worthless as a cow against a swarm of ants. There will be no place in the world to come for the magical, the mysterious, the strange. They will come to your sacred places and build . . . tailors' shops. And dry-goods emporia. And lawyers' offices. They will make of them bland copies of everywhere else.' The old mercenary scratched thoughtfully at his rashy neck. 'You can wish it were not so. I wish it were not so. But it is so. I tire of lost causes. The time of men like me is passing. The time of men like you?' He wiped a little blood from under his fingernails. 'So long passed it might as well have never been. — Joe Abercrombie
So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many many other evils ... the quarrel between North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel. — Charles Dickens
The real explanation of this failure of Hindu-Muslim unity lies in the failure to realize that what stands between the Hindus and Muslims is not a mere matter of difference, and that this antagonism is not to be attributed to material causes. It is formed by causes which take their origin in historical, religious, cultural and social antipathy, of which political antipathy is only a reflection. These form one deep river of discontent which, being regularly fed by these sources, keeps on mounting to a head and overflowing its ordinary channels. Any current of water flowing from another source however pure, when it joins it, instead of altering the colour or diluting its strength becomes lost in the main stream. The silt of this antagonism which this current has deposited, has become permanent and deep. So long as this silt keeps on accumulating and so long as this antagonism lasts, it is unnatural to expect this antipathy between Hindus and Muslims to give place to unity. — B.R. Ambedkar
I know your cause is lost, but in the heart / Of all right causes is a cause that cannot lose. — Christopher Fry
When a child loses his parent, they are called an orphan. When a spouse loses her or his partner, they are called a widow or widower. When parents lose their child, their isn't a word to describe them. This month recognizes the loss so many parents experience across the United States and around the world. It is also meant to inform and provide resources for parents who have lost children due to miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy, stillbirths, birth defects, SIDS, and other causes. — Ronald Reagan
In dreams the images in the mind, in the subconscious, merge with and obliterate the perceptions from the astral senses, in a similar way that in daily life the subconscious causes the external world to be perceived with the colorations of thoughts, feelings, images, and emotions; in other words, we daydream or get lost in thoughts. — Belsebuub
An intelligent person fights for lost causes, realizing that others are merely effects — E. E. Cummings
Home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and unpopular names, and impossible loyalties! — Matthew Arnold
Kind words are the music of the world. They have a power which seems to be beyond natural causes, as if they were some angel's song, which had lost its way and come on Earth, and sang on undyingly, smiting the hearts of men with sweetest wounds, and putting for the while an angel's nature into us. — Frederick William Faber
In the middle '50s, I had written that the point would come, inevitably, at which the relationship between the cause of conflict and political objectives would be lost. — Henry A. Kissinger
Truthfully I don't remember much about anything after the Olympics 'cause I, I lost everything. — Tonya Harding
Grief causes you to leave yourself. You step outside your narrow little pelt. And you can't feel grief unless you've had love before it - grief is the final outcome of love, because it's love lost. [ ... ] It's the cycle of love completed: to love, to lose, to feel grief, to leave, and then to love again. Grief is the awareness that you will have to be alone, and there is nothing beyond that because being alone is the ultimate final destiny of each individual living creature. That's what death is, the great loneliness. — Philip K. Dick
St. Jude is the patron saint of lost causes. But no cause is lost if there is still one person devoted to it. So Jude might as well be the patron saint of us all. — Corey Taylor
In an age in which we can project an image and score that image based on immediate Facebook and Twitter feedback, thus making a video game of life and a false-reality composed of lies, what gets lost is a joyful obsession with the work we create from the purest of motives, a sheer joy in the act of creation itself that causes us to lose ourselves in something else, and in a way die to ourselves over the absolute love of a thing we are breathing into life. — Donald Miller
Like all the other arrivals to the tournament, Hank had erected a banner in front. It was a long, tapering pennant with a blue and red circular design in the center and the words GO CUBS! on both sides.
Interesting," said Hugo. "What does it mean?"
It was a gift from Sam," Hank explained as they entered the tent. "He said it used to represent Triumph over Adversity, but now better represents Impossible Quests and Lost Causes."
I think I preferred not knowing that," said Hugo.
Hank grinned. "You're a Sox fan too, hey? — James A. Owen
Of lunacy,
Innumerous were the causes; humbled pride,
Ambition disappointed, riches lost,
And bodily disease, and sorrow, oft
By man inflicted on his brother man;
Sorrow, that, made the reason drunk, and yet
Left much untasted. So the cup was fill'd. — Robert Pollok
I've come to the conclusion that a man without a cause is nothing. He has nothing to look forward to, he has nothing to work toward; he is as a man lost, wandering in the darkest part of his heart to find a deeper, better purpose in his life. — Hazel B. West
My message to all men is that you have to kill pride. You've been taught that pride is a manly thing, that pride is a good thing. But the problem with pride is that it stops you from growth. When you're so proud that you won't change, you've got problems. Male pride causes wars; millions of people have died because of male pride, because one man would not back down. Male pride will say, "I'd rather blow up my whole family than have everyone look at me as though I've lost." That is so dangerous. — Terry Crews
He reflected deeply, until this feeling completely overwhelmed him and he reached a point where he recognized causes; for to recognize causes, it seemed to him, is to think, and through thought alone feelings become knowledge and are not lost, but become real and begin to mature. — Hermann Hesse
Because I don't expect or demand perfection, and I've learned to enjoy the ride no matter what happens. I don't waste time on lost causes. — John Carlton
Memories begin to creep forward from hidden corners of your mind. Passing disappointments. Lost chances and lost causes. Heartbreaks and pain and desolate, horrible loneliness. Sorrows you thought long forgotten mingle with still-fresh wounds. — Erin Morgenstern
Sadly, some Christians think that they should not grieve. "My loved one is in a better place, so why should I grieve?" Yes, your loved one may well be in a better place, but you have lost an important part of your life, and that causes mourning and grief. We miss that person and the love we shared. Being a Christian does not remove your human feelings from you. You will grieve that loss, just like every other human being. So — James R. White
I also believe that when people are going through difficult situations in life ... it causes them to search a lot more. They search life and search their soul. When you're searching, you're suddenly a lot more open to the world around you, to the possibilities, to things you never thought about before. - When you're happy, you don't question the world so much. When you're lost, you question everything. The very reason why it is so essential to human self-discovery — Cecelia Ahern
Some people still have causes they will not desert, even though the cause seems lost. — Lewis B. Smedes
In the beginning the word was with God; all explanations, physical and moral, rested on the divine. And now for storytellers, even though those patterns of explanation are strictly human, the word has not lost a superhuman power to connect young and old, writer and reader; to connect us with each other and with the causes and consequences of what we do. — Jill Paton Walsh
I'm just saying that if we stopped fighting for lost causes, where would we be? — Neal Shusterman
But sometimes Belbo, when he became really angry, lost his composure. Since loss of composure was the one thing he could not tolerate in others, his own was wholly internal - and regional. He would purse his lips, raise his eyes, then look down, tilt his head to the left, and say in a soft voice: "Ma gavte la nata." For anyone who didn't know that Piedmontese expression, he would occasionally explain: "Ma gavte la nata. Take out the cork." You say it to one who is full of himself, the idea being that what causes him to swell and strut is the pressure of a cork stuck in his behind. Remove it, and phsssssh, he returns to the human condition. — Umberto Eco
For me, lost causes are the only ones that are worth fighting for. The other stuff is not worth fighting for. — Guillermo Del Toro
We were always loyal to lost causes, the professor said. Success for us is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. We were never loyal to the successful. We serve them. I teach the blatant Latin language. I speak the tongue of a race the acme of whose mentality is the maxim: time is money. Material domination. — James Joyce
To identify the causes, so it seemed to him, is the very essence of thinking, and by this alone sensations turn into realizations and are not lost, but become entities and start to emit like rays of light what is inside of them. — Hermann Hesse
Some people look like they're lost causes, but they're not. Even if they're in a messed up situation, the one little thing you do to help can go a long way. — Keith Stanfield
If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors' victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that anything will triumph. — T. S. Eliot
Remarkably, [Sen. Dianne] Feinstein was reading her statement. So her mare's-nest of inapposite words and unclear thoughts cannot be excused as symptoms of Biden's Disease, that form of logorrhea that causes victims, such as Sen. Joe Biden, to become lost on the syntactical back roads of their extemporaneous rhetoric. — George Will
Had campaigned hard to the very end, but Barack had won and now it was time to support him. The causes and people I had campaigned for, the Americans who had lost jobs and health care, who couldn't afford gas or groceries or college, who had felt invisible to their government for the previous seven years, now depended on his becoming the forty-fourth President of the United States. — Hillary Rodham Clinton
We are all a collection of lost causes, stashed here so no one has to see just how wounded we are. — Meg Haston
Going to church, giving money to worthy causes, and moral goodness is commendable, but beware; you can be a good person and still be lost. When it comes to getting into heaven, the only righteousness God accepts is the righteousness of Jesus Christ. And the only way to get Christ's righteousness is to believe in Him and ask Jesus to save you. When a person makes Jesus his/her Saviour, Jesus imputes or gives His righteousness to them. The instant a person repents and believes in Jesus — Joseph Dulmage
Do I think it was inherent nobility that brought us out here?" He shook his head. "Maybe. I don't call it nobility, though. I think it's our innate human need to champion the underdog. We are constant optimists. We're the emotional descendents of the caveman who stood defiant in the front of the wooly mammoth. We rebuild cities at the base of Vesuvius, get back on the bicycle when we fall off, whack that hornet's nest every spring. Humans cheer for the couldn't be, believe in the shouldn't be. We love causes; the harder, the more lost they are, the more we love them. Is that nobility?Maybe. Maybe it's a pernicious genetic defect that makes our species susceptible to shared delusion. Whatever it is, it keeps life interesting. — Cassandra Davis
The loss of innocence is inevitable, but the death of innocence disturbs the natural order. The death of innocence causes an imbalance and initiates an internal war that manifests differently in each individual, but almost always includes anger, withdrawal and severe depression. — B.G. Bowers
It's tucked away in a quiet corner, shadowed and obscured, no part of the Nightside's usual bright gaudy neon noir. It doesn't advertise and it doesn't care if you habitually pass by on the other side. It's just there for when you need it. Dedicated to the patron saint of lost causes, St. Jude's is an old old place ... St. Jude's isn't a place for comfort for frills and fancies and the trappings of religion. just a place where you can talk to your god and sometimes get an answer. — Simon R. Green
I have few illusions: the cause is lost in advance. As for me, I do my part, which is to drag a fairly drab existence to its conclusion. — Rene Magritte
According to the doctrine of chance, you ought to put yourself to the trouble of searching for the truth; for if you die without worshiping the True Cause, you are lost. "But," say you, "if He had wished me to worship Him, He would have left me signs of His will." He has done so; but you neglect them. Seek them, therefore; it is well worth it. — Blaise Pascal
She thought it funny how the poor environment had been raped just fine until there was a sufficient excess of the people who had effected the raping to produce sufficient numbers of themselves who were sufficiently idle that they might begin to protest the raping of the environment, which was irretrievably lost to the raping by that point.
And this would be the great soothing cathedral music, the stopping of the chainsaws amid the patter of acid rain, that all good citizens would listen to for the quarter-century it took them all to wire up to cyberspace and forget about the lost hopeless run-over gang-ridden land, reproducing madly still all the while, inside their bunkers listening to NPR. — Padgett Powell
Oh!
and I speak out of later knowledge
Heaven forefend me from the most of the average run of male humans who are not good fellows, the ones cold of heart and cold of head who don't smoke, drink, or swear, or do much of anything else that is brase, and resentful, and stinging, because in their feeble fibres there has never been the stir and prod of life to well over its boundaries and be devilish and daring. One doesn't meet these in saloons, nor rallying to lost causes, nor flaming on the adventure-paths, nor loving as God's own mad lovers. They are too busy keeping their feet dry, conserving their heart-beats, and making unlovely life-successes of their spirit-mediocrity. — Jack London
For too long I have played on the stage of lucidity, and I have lost. Now I need to accustom my eyes to the falling darkness. I need to contemplate the natural slumber of all things, which the light calls forth, yet also causes to tire. Life must begin in darkness. Its powers of germination lie hidden. Every day has its night, every light has its shadow.
I cannot be asked to accept these shadows gladly. It is enough that I accept them. — Mihail Sebastian
You know, Christianity has its own superstition anyway: Why you turn three times, what this saint means, why you pray to the patron saint of lost causes, why you go this way or that way. — Ciaran Hinds
People don't commit suicide. They get lost in darkness because they can't find any lights of hope. — Debasish Mridha
People love their causes they champion; they love their divisions and neatly packaged boxes of identity; for without them, they would be forced to look within, find themselves, set aside pettiness and face reality (that's quite frightening to most). As a result, they are like a lost ship at sea, forced to submit to the waves of society. — Dara Reidyr
There's a word in Portuguese that my dad wrote about in one of his books: saudade.
It's the sadness you feel for something that isn't gone yet, but will be. The sadness of lost causes. The sadness of being alive. — Tommy Wallach
I'm not a stranger to your love of lost causes, dear one. But you have to be careful who you meet," he said, stoking a pipe thoughtfully. "You can't unmeet them. — Jodi Lynn Anderson
of yourself and of other people. If you wish to attain to lasting happiness you must be ready to hate father, mother, even your own life and to take leave of all your possessions. How? Not by renouncing them or giving them up because what you give up violently you are forever bound to. But rather by seeing them for the nightmare they are; and then, whether you keep them or not, they will have lost their grip over you, their power to hurt you, and you will be out of your dream at last, out of your darkness, your fear, your unhappiness. So spend some time seeing each of the things you cling to for what it really is, a nightmare that causes you excitement and pleasure on the one hand but also worry, insecurity, tension, anxiety, fear, unhappiness on the other. — Anthony De Mello
In not a single one of these little campaigns was I victorious. In other words, in each case, I personally failed, but I have lived to see the thesis upon which I was operating vindicated. And what I very often say is that I've lived to see my lost causes found. — Pauli Murray
The theory which I would offer, is simply, that as the land with the attached reefs subsides very gradually from the action of subterranean causes, the coral-building polypi soon raise again their solid masses to the level of the water: but not so with the land; each inch lost is irreclaimably gone; as the whole gradually sinks, the water gains foot by foot on the shore, till the last and highest peak is finally submerged. — Charles Darwin
You know me, I love lost causes. — Mort Sahl
Jude is my favorite of all the saints," he says. "Patron saint of lost causes. The saint to call on when all hope is gone. The one in charge of miracles. — Jandy Nelson
Americans have become a nation afraid." "Of?" "A shooter on a rampage in a school cafeteria. A hijacked plane toppling a high-rise building. A bomb in a train or rental van. A postal delivery carrying anthrax. The power to kill is out there for anyone willing to use it. All it takes is access to the Internet or a friendly gun shop." Ryan let me go on. "We fear terrorists, snipers, hurricanes, epidemics. And the worst part is we've lost faith in the government's ability to protect us. We feel powerless and that causes constant anxiety, makes us fear things we don't understand. — Kathy Reichs
Paul reminds us that we cannot look at people through "worldly" eyes! The world only sees what is on the outside--the burqa or the head scarf, or the beard and the turban. But the gospel causes us to look at the individuals as God sees them. Lost. In need of a Savior. Worth dying for! When we look at people through Jesus' eyes, it is as if the scales fall off and we see everything new. — John Klaassen
It's time to re-think charity. It's time to give charity the big-league freedoms we really give to business. The fight for these freedoms must be our new cause, because without them, all of our causes are ultimately lost. — Dan Pallotta
Deep caring about each other's fate does seem to be on the decline, but I do not believe that New Age narcissism is much to blame. The external causes of our moral indifference are a fragmented mass society that leaves us isolated and afraid, an economic system that puts the rights of capital before the rights of people, and a political process that makes citizens into ciphers.
These are the forces that allow, even encourage, unbridled competition, social irresponsibility, and the survival of the financially fittest. The executives who brought down the major corporations by taking indecent sums off the top while wage earners of modest means lost their retirement accounts were clearly more influenced by capitalist amorality than by some New Age guru. — Parker J. Palmer
Most lawyers who win a case advise their clients, "We have won," and when justice has frowned upon their cause ... "You have lost. — Louis Nizer
I've lost many, many friends through natural causes, through alcohol, through drugs, through AIDS. And every time I lose a friend or a loved one, it reminds me how great life is. — Patti Smith
Worry is allowing problems and distress to come between us and the heart of God. It is the view that God has somehow lost control of the situation and we cannot trust Him. A legitimate concern presses us closer to the heart of God and causes us to lean and trust on Him all the more. — Gary E. Gilley
Lost in the barrage of images and self-serving analysis are the economic and social causes of the conflict. — Michel Chossudovsky
There was one theory put forth by a journalist recently. I have a lot of friends that have died prematurely and a lot of friends that have died of natural causes. I've lost a lot of people over the years. This journalist basically recommended to me that God keeps me around because I amuse him. — Al Jourgensen
But now? Now? Children in the twentieth and this early twenty-first century hated the Alice books, couldn't read them, and why should they? Their world had strayed into madness long ago. Look at the planet. Rain is acid, poisonous. Sun causes cancer. Sex=death. Children murder other children. Parents lie, leaders lie, the churches have less moral credibility than Benetton ads.
And the faces of missing children staring out from milk cartons-imagine all those poor Lost Boys, and Lost Girls, not in Neverland but lost here, lost now. No wonder Wonderland isn't funny anymore: We live there full-time. We need a break from it. — Gregory Maguire
If it seems like I've been lost in 'lets remember', If it seems I'm gettin' older and missin' my younger days, well you shoulda known me much better, cause the past is something that never got in my way. — Billy Joel
Our national fondness for celebrating the physical heroism of soldiers - the apparent readiness with which they sacrifice their lives to larger causes - eclipses the far less romantic displays of moral and intellectual fortitude that also distinguish so many of them. In turning them all into heroes, we have lost a sense of the individuality they also fight to preserve. — Elizabeth Samet
Mother Teresa's detractors have accused her of overemphasizing Calcuttans' destitution and of coercing conversion from the defenseless. In the context of lost causes, Mother Teresa took on battles she knew she could win. Taken together, it seems to me, the criticisms of her work do not undermine or topple her overall achievement. — Bharati Mukherjee
There are no lost causes because there are no gained causes. — Russell Kirk
The publication of the Darwin and Wallace papers in 1858, and still more that of the 'Origin' in 1859, had the effect upon them of the flash of light, which to a man who has lost himself in a dark night, suddenly reveals a road which, whether it takes him straight home or not, certainly goes his way. That which we were looking for, and could not find, was a hypothesis respecting the origin of known organic forms, which assumed the operation of no causes but such as could be proved to be actually at work. We wanted, not to pin our faith to that or any other speculation, but to get hold of clear and definite conceptions which could be brought face to face with facts and have their validity tested. The 'Origin' provided us with the working hypothesis we sought. — Thomas Henry Huxley
I've always had a weakness for lost causes once they're really lost. — Margaret Mitchell
The Bible teaches that there are no lost causes. No permanent pit-dwellers except those who refuse to leave. — Beth Moore
There is no such thing as a lost cause, because there is no such thing as a gained cause — T. S. Eliot
He'd come back from a night out drinking, and I'd ask him how the bar was, whatever bar, and he'd so often say: "Totally inundated bgy Lost Causes," his code for women my age. At the time, a girl barely in her thirties, I'd smirked along with him as if that would never happen to me. Now I am his Lost Cause, and he's trapped with me, and maybe that's why he's so angry. — Gillian Flynn
We were always loyal to lost causes...Success for us is the death of the intellect and of the imagination. ~ Professor MacHugh — James Joyce
I try not to be a sucker to our natural tendency to seek pleasure and satisfaction, which causes us to believe almost anything that makes us feel better and then deem it "right." But I cannot exclude the possibility that there may be other dimensions to the world aside from the familiar ones and that something lives on beyond my physical self. If so, when I pass on, it will be a celebration for some other beginning and not an end. Even if that is not the case, I have lost nothing and gained much. — Bernd Heinrich
Seek comfort in the warmth of the morality of your choosing. Not in the depravity and fear of lost causes, in which you should turn away, before it sees you, as well.
- Plight, 2015 — Don Swann II
Thinking ahead often seems to be a lost art. Many people are so caught up in instant gratification that they never stop to think about the long-term effects of some of their actions. They also don't see the connections between today's actions and tomorrow's results - and this causes an awful lot of pain and frustration in life. Whatever I do today, I should be aware of the possible effects - negative and positive - that can show up in the future, near or far. Of course, we can't let the fear of what might happen in the future keep us from acting today. But we can make our lives much easier if we just remember the law of cause and effect, and realize that some of what we do today will be the cause of effects that won't show up until later. — Tom Walsh
Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously, I lost track of what I was taught. — Tiger Woods
When I think of the causes for which people more commonly give up their lives-nationalism, religion, ethnicity-it seems to me that a thirty-five pound bag of rocks and the lost world it represents, is not such a bad thing to die for. — Anne Fadiman
But this is my contentment, that I've lost what I never needed and what I need I can never lose: these two things, universal nature and one's personal virtue.
For this is the intention of the creator of the world, whatever he may be - whether an all-powerful Deity, or some incorporeal Reason contriving vast works, or a divine Spirit pervading all things from the least to the largest with a uniform energy, or Fate, or an inalterable sequence of Causes clinging one to another - whatever the Intender, I say, this is his intention: that nothing of ours can fall under the control of others except that which is finally and truly worthless to us.
The best of any man lies beyond the power of other men, either to give it or take it away. — Walter Wangerin Jr.
Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for. — Clarence Darrow