Merciless Life Quotes & Sayings

Elder brothers have an undercurrent of anger toward life circumstances, hold grudges long and bitterly, look down at people of other races, religions, and lifestyles, experience life as a joyless, crushing drudgery, have little intimacy and joy in their prayer lives, and have a deep insecurity that makes them overly sensitive to criticism and rejection yet fierce and merciless in condemning others. What a terrible picture! And yet the rebellious path — Timothy Keller

From the moment of birth, the hunger of death feeds from an army of life. Day by day it creeps ever closer, a silent, merciless hunter, its endurance without end, its clemency non-existent. It chews on the mind, feeds on the body, digests the spirit, and regurgitates the soul. It is the single, inescapable, inevitable end of everyone, and — Thomas L. Scott

Milton, when he went blind, declared that he could now begin the real work of his life. Similarly, with the merciless passage of time reducing my phisical strengh, I find myself less able to explore the outer world, but better prepared to explore the inner. — Doug Scott

Droll thing life is
that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself
that comes too late
a crop of inextinguishable regrets. — Joseph Conrad

Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail's bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart. But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life? His mother's prostrate body the fiery Columbanus in holy zeal bestrode. She was no more: the trembling skeleton of a twig burnt in the fire, an odour of rosewood and wetted ashes. She had saved him from being trampled underfoot and had gone, scarcely having been. A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped. — James Joyce

Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless ... - Oscar Wilde — J.J. McAvoy

An intolerable pain pierced him. He was totally lost without her ... estranged from his life utterly, and from the world. This was the world into which he'd been born; the only world he would ever know. Yet nowhere in it did he feel the slightest degree at home. She was his home ... his one sanctuary upon earth ... the only place of safety for him in the whole universe. But he had lost her ... and consequently was doomed to absolute loneliness in an alien, frozen vacancy ... at the mercy of something huge, insensate and merciless as an eclipse ... For a moment his isolation was so agonisingly intense that it seemed impossible to go on living. He longed only to plunge into the black pit of annihilation opening before him. — Anna Kavan

I never blame failure - there are too many complicated situations in life - but I am absolutely merciless toward lack of effort. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I had never felt like that before, as if there were a sort of curse, a merciless force in the light that shone on a world where life is borken and lost, where each new day takes something from the day that precedes it, where suffering is inmovable ... — Jean-Marie G. Le Clezio

Once their rage explodes, they recover their lost coherence, they experience self-knowledge through reconstruction of themselves; from afar we see their war as the triumph of barbarity; but it proceeds on its own to gradually emancipate the fighter and progressively eliminates the colonial darkness inside and out. As soon as it begins it is merciless. Either one must remain terrified or become terrifying - which means surrendering to the dissociations of a fabricated life or conquering the unity of one's native soil. When the peasants lay hands on a gun, the old myths fade, and one by one the taboos are overturned: a fighter's weapon is his humanity. For in the first phase of the revolt killing is a necessity: killing a European is killing two birds with one stone, eliminating in one go oppressor and oppressed: leaving one man dead and the other man free; — Frantz Fanon

You get on the bull, and you ride until he sees who the master is. Relentless. Unforgiving. Merciless." ~Kane~ — Lucian Bane

Therapy when practiced well is a fine but delicately balanced intervention in another person's life. It requires a devotion to truth and a merciless pursuit of right living. Expertise in bringing people out of the darkness of a disappointed or bitter life into the light of a new vitality is hard earned. It is a privilege and a pleasure when it works well. But that level of engagement with clients is also extremely demanding and it can never be achieved by trotting out stereotyped tricks from approved textbooks. — Emmy Van Deurzen

The world is merciless, and it's also very beautiful. — Hajime Isayama

You always hear these stories of how Hollywood is so merciless on composers and how they all get beaten up. Nobody beats me up as much as I beat myself up. This is what I love doing and I have one life to do it in, and I better do it right. I better do it well. — Hans Zimmer

New York was a new and strange world. Vast, impersonal, merciless ... Always before I had felt like a person, an individual, hopeful that I could mold my life according to some desire of my own. But here in New York I was ignorant, insignificant, unimportant
one in millions whose destiny concerned no one. New York did not even know of my existence. Nor did it care. — Agnes Smedley

Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is
that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. — Joseph Conrad

I think time is a merciless thing. I think life is a process of burning oneself out and time is the fire that burns you. — Tennessee Williams

Life is hard. It's cruel sometimes. It's merciless and unfair, but we all go through difficult times, one way or another. You've had more than your share of knocks lately, I'll give you that, but it doesn't mean you get to quit. No one gets to quit. You keep fighting, every day, and sooner or later, the grief fades a little. You grow stronger, find joy again, and everything gets easier. You come out of it more equipped to handle the next wave, which will come eventually. There will always be waves. — Julianne MacLean

The GhostWalker Creed:
We are the GhostWalkers, we life in the shadows. The sea, the earth, and the air are our domain. No fallen comrade will be left behind. We are loyalty and honor bound. We are invisible to our enemies and we destroy them where we find them. We believe in justice and we protect our country and those unable to protect themselves. What goes unseen, unheard, and unknown are GhostWalkers. There is honor in the shadows and it is us. We move in complete silence whether in jungle or desert. We walk among our enemy unseen and unheard. Striking without sound and scatter to the winds before they have knowledge of our existance. We gather information and wait with endless patience for that perfect moment to deliver swift justice. We are both merciful and merciless. We are relentless and implacable in our resolve. We are the GhostWalkers and the night is ours. — Christine Feehan

Writers haven't got any rockets to blast off. We don't even trundle the most insignificant auxiliary vehicle. We haven't got any military might. So what can literature do in the face of the merciless onslaught of open violence? One word of truth outweighs the whole world. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

One day, I started writing, not knowing that I had chained myself for life to a noble but merciless master. When God hands you a gift, he also hands you a whip; and the whip is intended solely for self-flagellation ... I'm here alone in my dark madness, all by myself with my deck of cards - and, of course, the whip God gave me. — Truman Capote

Bedu notice everything and forget nothing. Garrulous by nature, they reminisce endlessly, whiling away with the chatter the long marching hours, and talking late into the night round their camp fires. Their life is at all times desperately hard, and they are merciless critics of those who fall short in patience, good humour, generosity, loyalty, or courage. They make no allowance for the stranger. Whoever lives with the Bedu must accept Bedu conventions, and conform to Bedu standards. Only those who have journeyed with them them can appreciate the strain of such a life. — Wilfred Thesiger

Her heart nearly burst as she at last plunged into his embrace in one wild rush, screaming out her need, her love, her completion, wanting only to know his name so she might give everything of herself to him. His glowing smile was for her and her alone. His lips were for her and her alone. She closed that last bit of space toward him, longing to at last kiss the love of her life, the mate to her soul, the one and only true passion in all of life.
His lips were there, at last, she fell into his outstretched arms, into his embrace, into his perfect kiss.
In that flawless instant when her lips were just touching his, she saw through him, just beyond him, the merciless unyeilding valley floor hurtling up toward her, and she knew at last his name.
Death. — Terry Goodkind

Nay," she said stubbornly. "I have just been told that the only chance I have for freedom is in your hands and by all that is holy, you will deliver me my freedom or I shall see to it that you live out the rest of your life in merciless misery."
He gaped at her. On any other man such an expression would have looked foolish, but to credit Lord Stryder, even when taken by surprise, he still managed to carry off an air of supreme authority and handsomeness. "I beg your pardon? Have you gone completely mad?"
"Not I, but rather the king you love so well. It appears he would see us marry."
"My hairy arse."
She gave him a droll stare. "That is much more information about your person, Lord Stryder, than I care to know. — Kinley MacGregor

Who said childhood was the best time of life? When in reality it was the most terrible, the most merciless era, the barbaric time when there were no police to protect you, only parents preoccupied with themselves and their taller world. — Ray Bradbury

As Ganin looked up at the skeletal roof in the ethereal sky he realized with merciless clarity that his affair with Mary was ended forever. It had lasted no more than four days - four days which were perhaps the happiest days of his life. But now he had exhausted his memories, was sated by them, and the image of Mary, together with that of the old dying poet, now remained in the house of ghosts, which itself was already a memory — Vladimir Nabokov

Each life has its share of heroism, an obscure heroism, born of abdication, of renunciation and acceptance under the merciless whip of fate. — Mariama Ba

The world was a merciless place. Hard and cruel. Except when you found someone to trust and love. Life, however fleeting, possessed meaning then. — Sophie Jordan

Only a handful of Germans in the Reich had the slightest conception of the eternal and merciless struggle for the German language, German schools, and a German way of life. Only today, when the same deplorable misery is forced on many millions of Germans from the Reich, who under foreign rule dream of their common fatherland and strive, amid their longing, at least to preserve their holy right to their mother tongue, do wider circles understand what it means to be forced to fight for one's nationality. — Adolf Hitler

That pain you feel," Master Blint said almost gently, "is the pain of abandoning a delusion. The delusion is meaning, Kylar. There is no higher purpose. There are no gods. No arbiters of right and wrong. I don't ask you to like reality. I only ask you to be strong enough to face it. There is nothing beyond this. There is only the perfection we attain by becoming weapons, as strong and merciless as a sword. There is no essential good in living. Life is nothing in itself. It's a place marker that proves who's winning, and we are the winners. We are always the winners. There is nothing by the winning. Even winning means nothing. We win because it's an insult to lose. The ends don't justify the means. The means don't justify the ends. There is no one to justify to. There is no justification. — Brent Weeks

We tend to suffer from the illusion that we are capable of dying for a belief or theory. What Hagakure is insisting is that even in merciless death, a futile death that knows neither flower nor fruit has dignity as the death of a human being. If we value so highly the dignity of life, how can we not also value the dignity of death? No death may be called futile. — Yukio Mishima

I watch life trickle from the bullet wound of a sixteen-year-old "example" and marvel how things weak, even words, will turn vicious and merciless to gain power,despite reason or history — Susan Abulhawa

Oh, merciless freedom, you continue to overwhelm me! You demand that I challenge myself and feel ashamed, and yet continue to feel so outrageously proud to live a life full of my desires. — Nina George

There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful. — Theodore Roosevelt

Had the cub thought in man-fashion, he might have epitomized life as a voracious appetite, and the world as a place wherein ranged a multitude of appetites, pursuing and being pursued, hunting and being hunted, eating and being eaten, all in blindness and confusion, with violence and disorder, a chaos of gluttony and slaughter, ruled over by chance, merciless, planless, endless. — Jack London

The most important trait of a writer is an authentic voice. Writers have to have faith in their own voice, and their own way of doing things. Originality is the gem that every writer possesses. Originality also brings on the most merciless attacks. The world resents originality in the beginning writer, and then rewards it abundantly once that writer has been successfully published. Cherish your own voice. Don't try to sound like anybody else. Sound like yourself and take the slings and arrows and keep going. — Anne Rice

Metal is made up of many silly cliches, and Dio's songs rarely shied away from a good cheeseball lyric about medieval knights and crystal balls. But the amazing thing is, Dio the man never succumbed to the typical ravages of drugs, booze or hideous all-body tattoos. He never gained 75 pounds later in life or lost most of his voice through merciless shredding and ended it all playing county fairs for 19 drunk dudes in a barn before collapsing in a heap in a motel room in Jersey. There's a lesson in there somewhere. Or everywhere. — Mark Morford

Even after the stormiest weather, a true warrior will still reflect the brilliant rays of the magnificent sun through both his or her eyes. You may get hit by sudden lighting or take severe beatings from the cruel wind, but you will always get back up and stand strong on your feet again, soak in the sunlight, and be prepared to get hit by even the most merciless hail - time and time again. — Suzy Kassem

Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is ... and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be ... and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart ... no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them. — Robert A. Heinlein

She heard the trace of fear in his voice. The fear that a small boy must have felt when every woman he loved had disappeared from his life, swept away by a merciless fever. She didn't know how to reassure him, or how to console his long-ago grief. — Lisa Kleypas

Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species - including man - crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue. — Werner Herzog

In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death. But we are all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change or end. Death on the other hand, is the final silence. And that might be coming quietly now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone Else's words ... I was going to die, if not sooner then later whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. — Audre Lorde

Without a doubt, the next few minutes would be the most hellishly exciting in my life. Grinding pain and killer fatigue waited just beyond the word, "Partez." But I tried to ignore those prespects, and concentrate on the priceless feelings that also awaited. I thought about the perfect strokes we would take, and about the merciless surge of power we would unleash in the last 500 meters. — Brad Alan Lewis

Life is a merciless bully for children born into circumstances of grinding poverty, to unhappy families broken apart by crime, drugs, alcohol. It brutalises the affections, cramps the intellect, destroys aspiration. — Victoria Clayton