#simi

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. ↗

— W.B. Yeats

#poems #poetry #resignation #innocence

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#humour #pessimistic #writing #creativity

Abby must have been the one who found the safe house, because Townsend didn't like it. "The building across the street is under construction," he snarled as soon as we'd carried our bags inside. "The elevator has key card access, and I've hacked into the surveillance cameras from every system on the block," Abby argued. "We have a three-hundred-sixty-degree visual." "Excellent." Townsend dropped his bag. "Now the circle can see us from every angle." "Don't mind Agent Townsend, girls," Abby told us. "He's a glass-half-empty kind of spy." "Also known as the good kind," he countered. Abby huffed. ↗

— Ally Carter

#spy #excellence

The only way I can describe the extent of my anxiety is to say that I felt as if I were pregnant with a rock. ↗

— Katharine Graham

#simile #strikes #washington-post #anxiety

Know yourselves- be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye. ↗

— Peter Wessel Zapffe

#existencialism #pessimism #pessimism

Stress level: extreme. It's like she was a jar with the lid screwed on too tight, and inside the jar were pickles, angry pickles, and they were fermenting, and about to explode. ↗

— Fiona Wood

#stress #stress

I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. ↗

— Winston Churchill

#simile #taxation #economics

The very shapes of the trees were like frozen screams. ↗

— Susanna Clarke

#screams #simile #simile

Trying to reason with an addict was like trying to blow out a lightbulb. ↗

— Anne Lamott

#addiction

Pessimism is not good for the soul." "I sold my soul years ago." "To whom?" "The bitch goddess Success. She cut town before paying off. ↗