64 Quotes About Futility

What is the point of all this? One day you’ll die, and nothing you do will matter. All these things won’t mean anything when you’re dead. Nothing will be left for you to hold, nothing to remember you by. This will be your life, and it will go on without you Read more

But if there is a meaning to this life, what is it? If all the pain, all the struggle, all the loss means something, then what is it?

Life ... is a tale Told by an idiot, full...
1
Life ... is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. William Shakespeare
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Each of us is aware he's a material being, subject to the laws of physiology and physics, and that the strength of all our emotions combined cannot counteract those laws. It can only hate them. The eternal belief of lovers and poets in the power of love which is more enduring that death, the finis vitae sed non amoris that has pursued us through the centuries is a lie. But this lie is not ridiculous, it's simply futile. To be a clock on the other hand, measuring the passage of time, one that is smashed and rebuilt over and again, one in whose mechanism despair and love are set in motion by the watchmaker along with the first movements of the cogs. To know one is a repeater of suffering felt ever more deeply as it becomes increasingly comical through a multiple repetitions. To replay human existence - fine. But to replay it in the way a drunk replays a corny tune pushing coins over and over into the jukebox? . Unknown
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Even at that time the hope of leaving behind messages in bottles on the flood of barbarism bursting on Europe was an amiable illusion: the desperate letters stuck in the mud of the spirit of rejuvenesence and were worked up by a band of Noble Human-Beings and other riff-raff into highly artistic but inexpensive wall-adornments. Only since then has progress in communications really got into its stride. Who, in the end, is to take it amiss if even the freest of free spirits no longer write for an imaginary posterity, more trusting, if possible, than even their contemporaries, but only for the dead God? . Theodor W. Adorno
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Healey’s First Law Of Holes: When in one, stop digging. Denis Healey
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Ah! how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He gathers it up like water, but like water it runs between his fingers, and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew, behold a generation of fools call out, 'See, he is a wise man! ' Is it not so? H. Rider Haggard
You can bail water 24/7, and no matter how good...
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You can bail water 24/7, and no matter how good you are at not sinking, you still have a hole in your boat. Kelli Jae Baeli
Indeed if fish had fish-lore and Wise-fish, it is probable...
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Indeed if fish had fish-lore and Wise-fish, it is probable that the business of anglers would be very little hindered. J.r.r. Tolkien
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So I loathed all the fruit of my effort, for which I worked so hard on earth, because I must leave it behind in the hands of my successor. Who knows if he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will be master over all the fruit of my labor for which I worked so wisely on earth! This also is futile! What does a man acquire from all his labor and from the anxiety that accompanies his toil on earth? For all day long his work produces pain and frustration, and even at night his mind cannot relax! This also is futile! There is nothing better for people than to eat and drink, and to find enjoyment in their work. Solomon
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For many, the search for Jesus is initiated from experiencing an event in life so powerful, it awakens the dragons of faith; from pain so deep, it calls on the hidden fears of the soul in an effort to survive. For others it means a serious personal life survey that ultimately forces the confrontation with the futility, anesthetics, and despair in their lives. W. Scott Lineberry
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Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away to be forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of several; for Time eats up the works of man. H. Rider Haggard
It is vain futility to analyze the algebra of time.
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It is vain futility to analyze the algebra of time. Dejan Stojanovic
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It is futile to spend time telling stories about the fleetness of each day. Dejan Stojanovic
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Superficially my war was a comfortable exercise in futility carried out in a grand Scottish hotel amongst the bridge players and swillers of easy-come-by whisky. My chest got me out of active service and into guilt, as I wrote two, or is it three of the novels for which I am now acclaimed. Patrick White
If you have built castles in the air, your work...
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If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them. Henry David Thoreau
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Felix had gone to live in a lotus land of his imagination. Where what is desired is dreamed of as already happened, where obstacles dissolve under the weight of desire, and where reality has vanished entirely. Iain Pears
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(He) mourned mankind, and the blindness of men, who thought that the Kosmos had rules and limits that would shelter them from their own freedom. There were no shelters. There were no final purposes. Futility, and freedom, were Absolute Bruce Sterling
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To embrace the message of Christmas is to throw off my hedonistic rebellion and bow before the chafing reality that I can't save myself, and in that very act to be suddenly taken aback in that I've stumbled upon the very freedom I've longed for in the very place I'd least expected it. Craig D. Lounsbrough
It's futile to point the finger of condemnation and say,...
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It's futile to point the finger of condemnation and say, "Men... this" or "Women... that". Truth is, we are all guilty and innocent of many of life's trials. T.F. Hodge
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We humans are like squirrels who spend all summer gathering and hoarding nuts and when winter comes can't remember where they are. Marty Rubin
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There is only one sure means in life, " Deasey said, "of ensuring that you are not ground into paste by disappointment, futility, and disillusion. And that is always to ensure, to the utmost of your ability, that you are doing it solely for the money. Michael Chabon
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All suffer and none should have to. But why not? If suffering makes life seem more real or more abstract, both circumstances are infinitely more bearable than the disturbing reality of mundane work-to-live-then-die-bored life. Moonshine Noire
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There is certainly no hope left of getting away. And it isn't even terrible; it's possibly funny, if even that. It's embarrassing. That's all. A little embarrassing to realize that I no longer control my life, that the major decisions have already been made, long before I was conscious that any change was occurring. Philip K. Dick
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If life is nothing more than a journey to death, autumn makes sense but spring does not. Craig D. Lounsbrough
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I saw only the reality of his destiny, which he had knownhow to follow with unfaltering footsteps, that life begun in humblesurroundings, rich in generous enthusiasms, in friendship, love, war--inall the exalted elements of romance. Joseph Conrad
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Talking about one's feelings defeats the purpose of having those feelings. Once you try to put the human experience into words, it becomes little more than a spectator sport. Everything must have a cause, and a name. Every random thought must have a root in something else. Derek Landy
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.. .our whispered words, faintly in the darkness, dissolvingwithin the trees–then, fleeting words of consolationwould not suffice if feigned, and flippant wordsconfessed reluctance–our wordswere meaningless uttered on the wind.. . John Daniel Thieme
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I was almost a wife but lost the man. I was almost recognisable as a friend. And then I wasn't. The nights when I flicked off the bedside lamp and found myself in the heedless, lonely dark. The times I thought, with a horrified twist, that none of this was a gift. Suzanne got the redemption that followed a conviction .. I got the snuffed-out story of the bystander, a fugitive without a crime, half hoping and half terrified that no one was ever coming for me. . Emma Cline
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Leon was weary of loving without any result; moreover he was beginning to feel that depression caused by the repetition of the same kind of life, when no interest inspires and no hope sustains it. He was so bored with Yonville and its inhabitants, that the sight of certain persons, of certain houses, irritated him beyond endurance; and the chemist, good fellow though he was, was becoming absolutely unbearable to him. Yet the prospect of a new condition of life frightened as much as it seduced him. Gustave Flaubert
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There are the girls we love, the men we look up to, the tenderness, the friendships, the opportunities, the pleasures! But the fact remains that you must touch your reward with clean hands, lest it turn to dead leaves, to thorns, in your grasp. Joseph Conrad
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We spend our lives learning many things, only to discover (again and again) that most of what we've learned is either wrong or irrelevant. A big part of our mind can handle this; a smaller, deeper part cannot. And it's that smaller part that matters more, because that part of our mind is who we really are (whether we like it or not). Chuck Klosterman
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My Sadness is Deeper than YoursMy sadness is deeper than yours. My interior life is richer than yours. I am more interesting than you. I don’t care about anybody else’s problems. They are not as serious as mine. Nobody knows the weight I carry, the trouble I’ve seen. There are worlds in my head that nobody has access to: fortunately for them, fortunately for me. I have seen things that you will never see, and I have feelings that you are incapable of feeling, that you would never allow yourself to feel, because you lack the capacity and the curiosity. Once you felt the hint of such a feeling, you would stamp it out. I am a martyr to futility and I don’t expect to be shut down by a pretender. Mothballs are an aphrodisiac to me, beauty depresses me. You could never hope to fathom the depth of my feelings, deeper than death. I look down upon you all from my lofty height of lowliness. The fullness of your satisfaction lacks the cadaverous purity of my pain. Don’t talk to me about failure. You don’t know the meaning of the word. When it comes to failure, you’re strictly an amateur. Bush league stuff. I’m ten times the failure you’ll ever be. I have more to complain about than you, and regrets: more than a few, too many to mention. I am a fully-qualified failure, I have proven it over and over again. My credentials are impeccable, my resume flawless. I have worked hard to put myself in a position of unassailable wretchedness, and I demand to be respected for it. I expect to be rewarded for a struggle that produced nothing. I want the neglect, the lack of acknowledgment. And I want the bitterness that comes with it too. John Tottenham
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Here you can easily understand the futility of ambitions and achievements, futility of success and failures, futility of wealth and possessions. Girdhar Joshi
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Women are often belittled for trying to resurrect these men and bring them back to life and to love. They are in a world that would be even more alienated and violent if caring women did not do the work of teaching men who have lost touch with themselves how to love again. This labor of love is futile only when the men in question refuse to awaken, refuse growth. At this point it is a gesture of self-love for women to break their commitment and move on. . Bell Hooks
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...futility is being sorry while doing nothing to remove the cause ... John Geddes
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Wise men have interpreted dreams, and the gods have laughed. H.P. Lovecraft
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But other hordes would come, and other false prophets. Our feeble efforts to ameliorate man’s lot would be but vaguely continued by our successors; the seeds of error and of ruin contained even in what is good would, on the contrary, increase to monstrous proportions in the course of centuries. A world wearied of us would seek other masters; what had seemed to us wise would be pointless for them, what we had found beautiful they would abominate. Like the initiate to Mithraism the human race has need, perhaps, of a periodical bloodbath and descent into the grave. I could see the return of barbaric codes, of implacable gods, of unquestioned despotism of savage chieftains, a world broken up into enemy states and eternally prey to insecurity. Other sentinels menaced by arrows would patrol the walls of future cities; the stupid, cruel, and obscene game would go on, and the human species in growing older would doubtless add new refinements of horror. Our epoch, the faults and limitations of which I knew better than anyone else would perhaps be considered one day, by contrast, as one of the golden ages of man. . Marguerite Yourcenar
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Prayers without action is activity in futility. Sunday Adelaja
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The time you absolutely have to get off your ass and act is when action seems futile Marty Rubin
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Joy, joy, joy! Past ages crowd on thee, but each one remembers, And the future is dark, and the present is spread, Like a pillow of thorns for thy slumberless head. Percy Bysshe Shelley
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Hate is only misdirected energy: it gets you nowhere. Marty Rubin
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Don't be carried away by beauty, for the faeces also stays in the rectum of ravishing faces, and their private life is not beautiful as their public life...fear beauty! Michael Bassey Johnson
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It is a human characteristic, which has been richly exploited in every era, that while hope of survival is still alive in a man, while he still believes his troubles will have a favorable outcome, and while he still has the chance to unmask treason or to save someone else by sacrificing himself, he continues to cling to the pitiful remnants of comfort and remains silent and submissive. When he has been taken and destroyed, when he has nothing more to lose, and is, in consequence, ready and eager for heroic action, his belated rage can only spend itself against the stone walls of solitary confinement. Or the breath of the death sentence makes him indifferent to earthly affairs. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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After we’re feasted down to white sticks and it’s all covered in lions and trees and whatever the monkeys become prod the ground with a toe, staring down with glittering eyes at the guts of a wristwatch. After the bonfires and sun worship and they grow brains and can x-ray the ground. They can figure all this out, file it away. List my name with an asterisk after it, a footnote at the bottom phrasing my presence here in short, dull terminology. . Eric Sennevoight
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Oceans recede and coastlines wither and crack. Nations lapse; others soon swagger in their places. Mountains crumble to dust, rains vanish into the sea, winds return whence they came, and every city men build has but a jumble of bones for its foundation. What is your need to me? I am the Watcher in the Dark. J. Aleksandr Wootton
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One might be led to question whether the scientists acted wisely in presenting the statesmen of the world with this appalling problem. Actually there was no choice. Once basic knowledge is acquired, any attempt at preventing its fruition would be as futile as hoping to stop the earth from revolving around the sun. Enrico Fermi
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You can't argue with insanity. You can stare at it, gaping and incredulous, but arguing with it is futile. Richelle E. Goodrich
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It does not matter what kind of self-destruction you choose — as if the protagonists in Furmani — Sokolov let say conscious of inevitability of their ontological and eschatological destiny, which they by no means want to change, but they accept it with joy of their own and peculiar optimism. Someone buries herself/himself in the library, and someone in a suburban tavern — they would say — the result is the same. The starting point is always that of futility, and the ultimate goal is destruction, which leads to self-destruction of all that restrains them from the total immersion in their own suffering and the pain of their own existence. Unknown
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What do you expect? This place is one big anti-climax. Michel Faber
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Dabbling in the sandbox gives Rabbit a small headache. Over at the pavilion the rubber thump of Roofball and the click of checkers call to his memory, and the forgotten smell of that narrow plastic ribbon you braid bracelets and whistlechains out of and of glue and of the sweat on the handles on athletic equipment is blown down by a breeze laced with children's murmuring. He feels the truth: the thing that has left his life has left irrevocably; no search would recover it. No flight would reach it. It was here, beneath the town, in these smells and these voices, forever behind him. The fullness ends when we give Nature her ransom, when we make children for her. Then she is through with us, and we become, first inside, and then outside, junk. Flower stalks. John Updike
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American consumers benefit from disparity & exploitation. I benefit from disparity & exploitation & so does my family. there is no way to be a consumer in this country without causing pain" --casey gray - author of Discount - & my New HERO Casey Gray
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    In a thousand years or ten thousand, no one would remember my nation. It, too, would share in oblivion and prove to not matter, to never have mattered.     The same for my species, and the earth, the universe, and God. When the last star winks out, none of it will have mattered - and it ten billion years, I will still be nothing - and equal to God.     That was the first stage in my enlightenment: to understand that nothing matters. Hence, everything is equal. . Rory Miller
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He had come to that moment in his age when there occurred to him, with increasing intensity, a question of such overwhelming simplicity that he had no means to face it. He found himself wondering if his life were worth the living; if it had ever been. It was a question, he suspected, that came to all men at one time or another; he wondered if it came to them with such impersonal force as it came to him. The question brought with it a sadness, but it was a general sadness which (he thought) had little to do with himself or with his particular fate; he was not even sure that the question sprang from the most immediate and obvious causes, from what his own life had become. It came, he believed, from the accretion of his years, from the density of accident and circumstance, and from what he had come to understand of them. 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
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But the secrets of such a book are not perpetual. Once they are known, they become relegated to a lesser sphere, which is that of the knower. Having lost the prestige they once enjoyed, these former secrets now function as tools in the excavation of still deeper ones which, in turn, will suffer the same corrosive fate. And this is the fate of all the secrets of the universe. Eventually the seeker of a recondite knowledge may conclude–either through insight or sheer exhaustion–that this ruthless process is never-ending, that the mortification of one mystery after another has no terminus beyond that of the seeker's own extinction. And how many still remain susceptible to the search? How many pursue it to the end of their days with undying hope of some ultimate revelation? Better not to think in precise terms just how few the faithful are. Thomas Ligotti
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I’m curious about everyone, hungry for everything, greedy for all ideas. My awareness that not everything can be seen, not everything read and not everything thought torments me like the loss of. .. But I don’t see with fixed attention, I don’t read with great care, and I don’t think with continuity. I’m an ardent and inconsequential dilettante in everything. My soul is too weak to sustain the force of its own enthusiasm. Made out of ruins of the unfinished, I’m definable as a landscape of resignations. Fernando Pessoa
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He was trying hard to continue to exist as himself despite the unlikeliness of everything. Philip Roth
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A Chinese proverb: Outside of sky there is sky, outside of people there are people. It is the idea of infinity and also that there will always be someone better than you. Weike Wang
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The prisoner's recurrent, sporadic dreams of escape were simply that - spurious vagaries dismissed almost as quickly as they blossomed in Schkirt's feverish mind. Stanley Goldyn
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If there really had been a Mercutio, and if there really were a Paradise, Mercutio might be hanging out with teenage Vietnam draftee casualties now, talking about what it felt like to die for other people's vanity and foolishness. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
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.. . Thisis not the same river at my fingertips. There are no paths, no sunken roadsfamiliar in the forest, by which we canretrace our steps, by which we can escapeby which we can reclaim and return, or hear the child’s song running in the timothy .. . John Daniel Thieme
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But how can anyone put a bridle on man's vanity and arrogance? But how can Purity walk the earth without covering her feet with mud? Nikos Kazantzakis
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To forget would mean the things we never knew had never waited to be known, never waitedto be forgotten, had never been; waitingbeneath the long dead starsin time.. . John Daniel Thieme
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What an odd creature you are, Bernard, with your constant fear of death! Do you never have a feeling, as I do, of utter futility? No? Doesn't it occur to you that the sort of life people like us lead is remarkably like death? Unknown
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A whole planet of worlds, and not one of them–not one–has a soul. They wander through their lives separate and alone, unable even to communicate except through grunts and tokens: as if the essence of a sunset or a supernova could ever be contained in some string of phonemes, a few linear scratches of black on white. They've never known communion, can aspire to nothing but dissolution. The paradox of their biology is astonishing, yes; but the scale of their loneliness, the futility of these lives, overwhelms me. . Peter Watts