Bleak Quotes

• Look round and round upon this bare bleak plain, and see even here, upon a winter's day, how beautiful the shadows are! Alas! It is the nature of their kind to be so. The loveliest things in life... are but shadows; and they come and go, and change and fade away, as rapidly as these.

  Charles Dickens

  Beautiful, Nature, Winter

  Charles Dickens (1867). “The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit”, p.125

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• Nothing is as bleak as the future, except the past.

  Arthur Golden

  Past

  Arthur Golden (2008). “Memoirs Of A Geisha”, p.345, Random House

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• If we were logical, the future would be bleak, indeed. But we are more than logical. We are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope, and we can work.

  Jacques Yves Cousteau

  Faith, Hope, Future

  "Cousteau country: scuba diving in Papua New Guinea" by Kevin Rushby, www.theguardian.com. July 29, 2017.

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• He had come to know quite thoroughly the world in which he lived. His outlook was bleak and materialistic. The world as he saw it was a fierce and brutal world, a world without warmth, a world in which caresses and affection and the bright sweetness of spirit did not exist.

  Jack London

  World, Saws, Spirit

  Jack London (2011). “Call of The Wild, White Fang”, p.271, Bantam Classics

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• The universe, he observed, makes rather an indifferent parent, I am afraid.

  Charles Dickens

  Parent, Words Of Wisdom, Religion

  Charles Dickens (1852). “Bleak House”, p.101

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• We live in a pretty bleak time. I feel that in the air. Everything is uncertain. Everything feels like its on the precipice of some major transformation, whether we like it or not.

  Sean Lennon

  Air, Transformation, Uncertain

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• That’s what’s so gorgeous about humanity. It doesn’t matter how bleak our daily lives are, we still fight for the light. I think that’s our divinity. We lean into love, even in the most hideous circumstances. We manage to hope.

  Mary Karr

  Fighting, Thinking, Light

  "Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir No". Interviewed with Amanda Fortini, www.theparisreview.org. Winter 2009.

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• Phone calls like ours only happen when you've spent several years hurting and being hurt, until every work you utter or hear becomes coded and loaded, as complicated and full of subtext as a bleak and brilliant play.

  Nick Hornby

  Hurt, Phones, Years

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• In the bleak midwinter Frosty wind made moan, Earth stood hard as iron, Water like a stone; Snow had fallen, Snow on snow, Snow on snow, In the bleak midwinter, Long ago.

  Christina Rossetti

  Nature, Travel, Winter

  'Mid-Winter'

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• It's a tough job to tell a story when the audience already knows the ending, and the ending is bleak.

  Walter Jon Williams

  Jobs, Stories, Tough

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• We are human beings, and we have faith, and we have hope

  Jacques Yves Cousteau

  Hope, Have Faith, Logical

  "Cousteau country: scuba diving in Papua New Guinea" by Kevin Rushby, www.theguardian.com. July 29, 2017.

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• Dead, your Majesty. Dead, my lords and gentlemen. Dead, Right Reverends and Wrong Reverends of every order. Dead, men and women, born with Heavenly compassion in your hearts. And dying thus around us every day.

  Charles Dickens

  Heart, Men, Compassion

  'Bleak House' (1853) ch. 47 (on the death of Jo)

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• I think that I'm serious, but I don't think that I'm inordinately bleak.

  Ann Beattie

  Thinking, Serious

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• I try to give people hope. Even though life is bleak, there's hope out there.

  Danielle Steel

  People, Giving, Trying

  "Lonely heart". Interview with Karen Angel, www.theage.com.au. March 19, 2006.

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• To retrieve the past is no great effort, when the events to be recalled are so firmly imprinted on the mind. It is existence in the present, the bleak wreckage and residue of what has gone before, that is so burdensome.

  K. W. Jeter

  Past, Effort, Mind

  K W Jeter (2011). “Infernal Devices”, p.49, Duncan Baird Publishers

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• I keep trying to forget, but I must remember. And gather the scattered continents of a self, once whole. Before they plant flags and boundary my destiny. Push down the watered mountains that blemish this soiled soul before the valleys of my conscience get the best of me. I'll need a passport just to simply reach the rest of me. A vaccination for a lesser god's bleak history.

  Saul Williams

  Destiny, Self, Soul

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• Rebellion without truth is like spring in a bleak, arid desert.

  Khalil Gibran

  Truth, Spring, Uprising

  "The Vision". Book by Kahlil Gibran, October 1, 1994.

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• My prayer today is to not be negative about anything for one day. It is so easy to be disappointed, critical, cynical. Nothing is easier than to be a negative person. It takes effort to be hopeful and positive. People will say that you have to have a reason to be positive - what reason do the poor or lonely have to be positive? If we all waited for perfect conditions in our life before we felt hopeful, we would have very few days in life to celebrate. Perfection is rare. Hope means no matter how bleak, all things can and do change in the blink of an eye.

  Caroline Myss

  Lonely, Prayer, Eye

  FaceBook post by Caroline Myss from Apr 21, 2014

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• I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free. Mankind will surely not deny to Harold Skimpole what it concedes to the butterflies.

  Charles Dickens

  Freedom, Butterfly, Deny

  Bleak House ch. 6 (1853)

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• We really feel happier when things look bleak. Hope is endurance. Hope is holding on and going on and trusting in the Lord.

  Michael Novak

  Endurance, Looks, Holding On

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• My sister Emily loved the moors. Flowers brighter than the rose bloomed in the blackest of the heath for her; out of a sullen hollow in a livid hillside her mind could make an Eden. She found in the bleak solitude many and dear delights; and not the least and best-loved was – liberty.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Flower, Eden, Rose

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• I dont walk around chuckling all the time. My outlook is very bleak. Its worse than bleak, its apocalyptic.

  Mark Leyner

  Outlook, Apocalyptic, Walks

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• Family life was wonderful. The streets were bleak. The playgrounds were bleak. But home was always warm. My mother and father had a great relationship. I always felt 'safe' there.

  Robert Cormier

  Family, Mother, Father

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• Until I started doing standup, there were some very bleak days.

  Larry David

  "Angry Middle-Aged Man". Interview with James Kaplan, www.newyorker.com. January 19, 2004.

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• Your attitude is like a box of crayons that color your world. Constantly color your picture gray, and your picture will always be bleak. Try adding some bright colors to the picture by including humor, and your picture begins to lighten up.

  Allen Klein

  Attitude, Positive Thinking, Positivity

  "Soul Rays: Discover the Vibratory Frequency of Your Soul". Book by Candia L Sanders, p. 125, 2013.

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