#futility

How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is. ↗

— Erich Maria Remarque

#war #torture

The cabman looked at the pieces of silver, which, appearing very minute in his big, grimy palm, symbolised the insignificant results which reward the ambitious courage and toil of a mankind whose day is short on this earth of evil. ↗

— Joseph Conrad

#life-is-short #courage

Worry compounds the futility of being trapped on a dead-end street. Thinking opens new avenues. ↗

— Cullen Hightower

#being #compounds #dead-end #dead-end street #futility

Since all life is futility, then the decision to exist must be the most irrational of all. ↗

— Emile M. Cioran

#exist #futility #irrational #life #most

Man makes plans . . . and God laughs. ↗

— Michael Chabon

#futility #humor

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

#futility #wisdom #business

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it without a sense of ironic futility. ↗

— Errol Morris

#condemned #futility #ironic #past #remember

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

#futility #god #writing #communication

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

#cloud-cuckoo-land #desires #dreams #futility #imagination

The difficulty in dealing with a maze or labyrinth lies not so much in navigating the convolutions to find the exit but in not entering the damn thing in the first place. Or, at least not yet again. As a creature of free will, do not be tempted into futility. ↗

— Vera Nazarian

#choices #free-will #futility #labyrinth #inspirational