Sad And Useless Quotes & Sayings

Compared to the spoken word, a picture is a pitiful thing, indeed. — Charles Osgood

The Herald Tribune headed the story, "PRESIDENT SAYS PRAYER IS PART OF DEMOCRACY." The implication in such a pronouncement, emanating from the seat of government, is that religious faith is a condition, or even a precondition, of the democratic life. — E.B. White

One single act of defiance against power, against the State that seems omnipotent but is not, transforms and transfigures the human personality. At least for a time. For a while. Perhaps that is enough. — Edward Abbey

Being president is like running a cemetery: you've got a lot of people under you and nobody's listening. — William J. Clinton

In the end, Charlie Bucket won a chocolate factory. But Willy Wonka had something even better, a family. And one thing was absolutely certain - life had never been sweeter. ~ from the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. — Darren Perman

The monarchy is foremost a business, and it's important to them that the British public continue to finance the excessive luxurious lifestyles of the now quite enormous, wasteful and useless 'royal' family. I find it very sad. — Morrissey

He watched the scene and thought of life; and (as always happened when he thought of life) he became sad. A gentle melancholy took possession of him. He felt how useless it was to struggle against fortune, this being the burden of wisdom which the ages had bequeathed him. — James Joyce

For reasons known to the Lord, some women are required to wait to have children. This delay is not easy for any righteous woman. But the Lord's timetable for each of us does not negate our nature. — Sheri L. Dew

But there was something more precious than his poems; something far away he didn't yet possess and longed for - manliness; he knew that it could only be attained by action and courage; and if courage meant courage to be rejected, rejected by everything, by the beloved woman, by the painter, and even by his own poems - so be it: he wanted to have that courage. And so he said:
"Yes, I know that the revolution has no need for my poems. I regret that, because I like them. But unfortunately my regret is no argument against their useless-ness.
Again there was silence, and then one of the men said: "This is dreadful," and he actually shuddered as if a chill had run down his spine. Jaromil felt the horror his words had produced in everyone there, that they were seeing in him the living disappearance of everything they loved, everything that made life worthwhile.
It was sad but also beautiful: within the space of an instant, Jaromil lost the feeling of being a child. — Milan Kundera

What was he doing with her? How on earth could he love her? But he did. Or, at least, she made him feel sick, sad, and distracted. Perhaps there was another way of describing that unique and useless combination of feelings, but "love" would have to do for now. — Nick Hornby

He walked around all the useless things in the courtyard and touched them with his hands; for some reason, he wished that these would remember him, and love him. But he didn't believe they would. From childhood memories he knew how strange and sad it is after a long absence to see a familiar place again, for these unmoving objects have no memory and do not recognize the stirrings of a stranger's heart. — Andrei Platonov

The American mirror, said the voice, the sad American mirror of wealth and poverty and constant useless metamorphosis, the mirror that sails and whose sails are pain. — Roberto Bolano

If I were surrounded by angels who were purely rational and had no inclinations at all, I couldn't do anything for them. I couldn't make them happy; I couldn't make them sad, I would be entirely useless as a moral agent. — Thomas Pogge

I refuse to finance the mass murder of innocent
civilians ... What is one more life thrown away in this
sad and useless national tragedy? If one death can
atone for anything, in any small way, to say to the
world: I apologize for what we have done to you, I am
ashamed for the mayhem and turmoil caused by my
country. — Malachi Ritscher

Useless Facts About Vodka (How dare you, there's nothing useless about vodka) Vodka does have an expiration date and will most likely go bad after 12 months. Sad but true. No matter, the stuff is usually gone in 12 hours anyways. Until — Daniel Ganninger

That was the trouble now. People felt sad, so they got a pill. Work was hard, so people resigned. Marriages went through rocky patches and people got divorced. It was selfishness, pure and simple. And it was all justified by emotions. I'm unhappy. I'm stressed. I need to feel loved. Just having the emotion was enough justification for whatever people did. And it was useless. Didn't people see that unhappiness came from within? A person could change jobs, but if they were an unhappy type then they would take their unhappiness with them. — Alex Lake

Temperance is essential, if the services of men and women are to be employed to the best and most useful effect according, to the physical capacity and ability of each. Nothing less will assure a total effort. — William Lyon Mackenzie King

Life sometimes offers you a chance, he thought, but when you are too cowardly or too indecisive to seize it life takes the cards away; there is a moment for doing things and entering a possible happiness, and this moment lasts a few days, sometimes a few weeks or even a few months, but it happens once and one time only, and if you want to return to it later it's quite simply impossible. There's no more place for enthusiasm, belief, and faith, and there remains just gentle resignation, a sad and reciprocal pity, the useless but correct sensation that something could have happened, that you just simply showed yourself unworthy of this gift you had been offered. — Michel Houellebecq

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! YOU'VE READ ABOUT IT IN THE NEWSPAPERS! NOW, SHUDDER AS YOU OBSERVE, BEFORE YOUR VERY EYES, THAT MOST RAREAND RAGIC OF NATURE'S MISTAKES!
I GIVE YOU ... THE AVERAGE MAN!
PHYSICALLY UNREMARKABLE , IT HAS INSTEAD A DEFORMED SET OF VALUES.
NOTICE THE HIDEOUSLY BLOATED SENSE OF HUMANITY'S IMPORTANCE. THE CLUB-FOOTED SOCIAL CONSCIENCE AND THE WITHERED OPTIMISM.
IT'S CERTAINLY NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH IS IT?
MOST REPULSIVE OF ALL , ARE ITS FRAIL AND USELESS NOTIONS OF ORDER AND SANITY. IF TOO MUCH WEIGHT IS PLACED UPON THEM ...
... THEY SNAP.
HOW DOES IT LIVE , I HEAR YOU ASK?
HOW DOES THIS POOR, PATHETIC SPECIMEN SURVIVE IN TODAY'S HARSH AND IRRATIONAL WORLD?
THE SAD ANSWER IS 'NOT VERY WELL. — Alan Moore

Money poisons you when you've got it, and starves you when you haven't. — D.H. Lawrence

O Me! O life! ... of the questions of these recurring;
Of the endless trains of the faithless - of cities fill'd with the foolish;
Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)
Of eyes that vainly crave the light - of the objects mean - of the struggle ever renew'd;
Of the poor results of all - of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me;
Of the empty and useless years of the rest - with the rest me intertwined;
The question, O me! so sad, recurring - What good amid these, O me, O life?
Answer.
That you are here - that life exists, and identity;
That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse. — Walt Whitman

Students are often the last to know about change that is occurring in their own school system. — Andy Hargreaves

Sometimes, I am sad and so bitterly lonely and at times, I feel useless, as if I cannot accomplish even the simplest task. — Lynette Ferreira

I loved the idea of a subversive world where mental illness was defined as just another version of normal, and education was how you made your way in the world, not something that began or ended. — Heather Sellers

Christ, it is sad, sad to see on quite a few of these faces - young ones particularly - a glum, defeated look. Why do they feel this way about their lives? Sure, they are underpaid. Sure, they have no great prospects, in the commercial sense. Sure, they can't enjoy the bliss of mingling with corporation executives. But isn't it any consolation to be with students who are still three-quarters alive? Isn't it some tiny satisfaction to be of use, instead of helping to turn out useless consumer goods? Isn't it something to know that you belong to one of the few professions in this country which isn't hopelessly corrupt? — Christopher Isherwood

She wanted to get some personal profit out of things, and she rejected as useless all that did not contribute to the immediate desires of her heart, being of a temperament more sentimental than artistic, looking for emotions, not landscapes. — Gustave Flaubert

The second covered the history of the Bush warrantless eavesdropping program, based on a top secret 2009 internal report from the NSA's inspector general; another detailed the BOUNDLESS INFORMANT program that I had read about on the plane; — Glenn Greenwald

Don't be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there's no poverty to be seen because the poverty's been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don't be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there's no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they'll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces. — Jean-Paul Marat

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information. — Oscar Wilde

Dr. Grant, my dear Dr. Sattler ... Welcome to Jurassic Park. — Michael Crichton

O loving woman, man's fulfillment, sweet,
Completing him not otherwise complete!
How void and useless the sad remnant left
Were he of her, his nobler part, bereft. — Abraham Coles

Reuben nails my fantasies everytime, with iron rods of reality. He asserts that I am going to die, but probably not for a while, and that maybe I should try getting married and having a life first. He is 70 and knows things, which is why I go to him. But it's sad to leave my romantic illusions at the door of this passage. Although false and destructive and useless, they've been tremendous company. — Suzanne Finnamore

I am so unimaginably sorry for doing what I am going to do, but you see I have all these fears. The fears and doubts I have are so real, so are they really as childish and silly as you always say they are. Sometimes, I am sad and so bitterly lonely and at times, I feel useless, as if I cannot accomplish even the simplest task. Do not get me wrong, I do not always feel this way, because we do laugh and we do often have fun together, but always though I still have this lonely, sadness in my chest. If you looked at me, you would never know the turmoil inside of me. — Lynette Ferreira