Desolation Quotes - Page 5

• It is a time when one’s spirit is subdued and sad, one knows not why; when the past seems a storm-swept desolation, life a vanity and a burden, and the future but a way to death. It is a time when one is filled with vague longings; when one dreams of flight to peaceful islands in the remote solitudes of the sea, or folds his hands and says, What is the use of struggling, and toiling and worrying any more? let us give it all up.

  Mark Twain

  Dream, Struggle, Past

  Mark Twain, General Press (2016). “The Complete Works of Mark Twain: All 13 Novels, Short Stories, Poetry and Essays”, p.1257, GENERAL PRESS

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• I realize full well how hard it must be to go on living alone in a place from which someone has left you, but there is nothing so cruel in this world as the desolation of having nothing to hope for.

  Haruki Murakami

  Goes On, World, Realizing

  FaceBook post by Haruki Murakami from Jun 30, 2011

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• But under it all they were men, penetrating the land of desolation and mockery and silence, puny adventurers bent on colossal adventure, pitting themselves against the might of a world as remote and alien and pulseless as the abysses of space.

  Jack London

  Adventure, Men, Land

  Jack London, JACK LONDON (2015). “White Fang (Arcadia Classics)”, p.20, Jack London

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• The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Angel, Men, Enemy

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (2004). “Frankenstein”, p.265, Collector's Library

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• Thus violent deeds live after men upon the earth, and traces of war and bloodshed will survive in mournful shapes long after those who worked the desolation are but atoms of earth themselves.

  Charles Dickens

  War, Men, Long

  Charles Dickens, Bernard Shaw, Charles Pears, Frederick Barnard (1912*). “Old curiosity shop; coloured reproductions from ... drawing by Fred Barnard”

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• Faith in God is an opening up, a letting go, a deep trust, a free act of love—but sometimes it was so hard to love. Sometimes my heart was sinking so fast with anger, desolation and weariness, I was afraid it would sink to the very bottom of the Pacific and I would not be able to lift it back up.

  Yann Martel

  Letting Go, Heart, Opening Up

  Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.300, Canongate Books

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• It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive. Arrival often brings nothing but a sense of desolation and disappointment.

  Rosamunde Pilcher

  Disappointment, Hopefully, Arrivals

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• I think that if I get into the habit of writing a bit about what happens, or rather doesn't happen, I may lose a little of the sense of isolation and desolation which abides with me. My circumstances allowing of nothing but the ejaculation of one-syllabled reflections, a written monologue by that most interesting being, myself, may have its yet to be discovered consolations.

  Alice James

  Writing, Thinking, Reflection

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• The perpetual mourner -- the grief that can never be healed -- is innocently enough felt to be wearisome by the rest of the world. And my sense of desolation increases. Each day seems a new beginning -- a new acquaintance with grief.

  George Eliot

  Grief, New Beginnings, Each Day

  George Eliot, John Walter Cross (2010). “George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals”, p.348, Cambridge University Press

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• The laws of war, that restrain the exercise of national rapine and murder, are founded on two principles of substantial interest: the knowledge of the permanent benefits which may be obtained by a moderate use of conquest, and a just apprehension lest the desolation which we inflict on the enemy's country may be retaliated on our own. But these considerations of hope and fear are almost unknown in the pastoral state of nations.

  Edward Gibbon

  Country, War, Exercise

  Edward Gibbon (1840). “The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.161

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• There was a frosty rime upon the trees, which, in the faint light of the clouded moon, hung upon the smaller branches like dead garlands. Withered leaves crackled and snapped beneath his feet, as he crept softly on towards the house. The desolation of a winter night sat brooding on the earth, and in the sky. But, the red light came cheerily towards him from the windows; figures passed and repassed there; and the hum and murmur of voices greeted his ear sweetly.

  Charles Dickens

  Nature, Winter, Night

  Charles Dickens (1867). “Charles Dickens's works. Charles Dickens ed. [18 vols. of a 21 vol. set. Wanting A child's history of England; Christmas stories; The mystery of Edwin Drood].”, p.184

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• It is difficult at times to repress the thought that history is about as instructive as an abattoir; that Tacitus was right and that peace is merely the desolation left behind after the decisive operations of merciless power.

  Seamus Heaney

  Operations, Difficult, Left Behind

  Seamus Heaney (2014). “Opened Ground: Selected Poems, 1966-1996”, p.422, Macmillan

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• To those human beings who are of any concern to me, I wish suffering, desolation, sickness, ill treatment, indignities, profound self-contempt, the torture of self-mistrust, and the wretchedness of the vanquished.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Self, Ill Treatment, Profound

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• A vast silence reigned over the land. The land itself was a desolation, lifeless, without movement, so lone and cold that the spirit of it was not even that of sadness. There was a hint in it of laughter, but of laughter more terrible than any sadness-a laughter that was mirthless as the smile of the Sphinx, a laughter cold as the frost and partaking of the grimness of infallibility. It was the masterful and incommunicable wisdom of eternity laughing at the futility of life and the effort of life. It was the Wild, the savage, frozen-hearted Northland Wild.

  Jack London

  Dog, Laughter, Sadness

  Jack London (1992). “The Call of the Wild and White Fang”, p.71, Wordsworth Editions

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• Despite the obvious damage now visible in the entropic desolation of every American home town, Wal-Mart managed to install itself in the pantheon of American Dream icons, along with apple pie, motherhood, and Coca Cola.

  James Howard Kunstler

  Dream, Home, Motherhood

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• All the earth, though it were full of kind hearts, is but a desolation and desert place to a mother when her only child is absent.

  Elizabeth Gaskell

  Mother, Children, Heart

  Elizabeth Gaskell (2010). “The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)”, p.1272, BookCaps Study Guides

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• To possess your soul in patience, with all the skin and some of the flesh burnt off your face and hands, is a job for a boy compared with the pains of a man who has lived pretty long in the exhilarating world that drugs or strong waters seem to create and is trying to live now in the first bald desolation created by knocking them off.

  Charles Edward Montague

  Strong, Jobs, Pain

  Charles Edward Montague (1922). “Disenchantment”

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• A grateful loving heart carries with it, under every parallel of latitude, the warmth and light of the tropics. It plants its Eden in the wilderness and solitary place, and sows with flowers the gray desolation of rock and mosses.

  John Greenleaf Whittier

  Gratitude, Flower, Grateful

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• How many hopes and dreams are trapped within these bones? How many wonders lie never to be discovered? This is what war is. Desolation, despair and loss. There are no victors.

  David Gemmell

  Dream, War, Lying

  David Gemmell (2009). “Dark Moon”, p.182, Random House

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• Men who have worked together to reach the stars are not likely to descend together into the depths of war and desolation.

  Lyndon B. Johnson

  Stars, War, Future

  Johnson, Lyndon B. (1967). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson, 1966”, p.668, Best Books on

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• There is nothing in either savage or civilized history that is more utterly complete, more remorselessly sweeping than the Father of Mercy´s campaign among the Midianites. The official report deals only in masses, all the virgins, all the men, all the babies. all ´creatures that breathe,´ all houses. all cities. It gives you just one vast picture ...as far as the eye can reach, of charred ruins and storm-swept desolation... Would you expect this same conscienceless God, this moral bankrupt, to become a teacher of morals, of gentleness, of meekness, of righteousness, of purity?

  Mark Twain

  Teacher, Baby, Father

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• The first thing I remember about the world and I pray that it may be the last is that I was a stranger in it. This feeling, which everyone has in some degree, and which is, at once, the glory and desolation of homo sapiens , provides the only thread of consistency that I can detect in my life.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Feelings, Consistency, Lasts

  Malcolm Muggeridge, Ian Hunter (2003). “The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge”, p.1, Regent College Publishing

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• Where can one find a profounder desolation than in the poor child who has lost its mother?

  Joyce Cary

  Mother, Children, Poor

  Joyce Cary (1985). “Except the Lord”, p.39, New Directions Publishing

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• The Death of the contemporary forms of social order ought to gladden rather than trouble the soul. Yet what is frightening is that the departing world leaves behind it not an heir, but a pregnant widow. Between the death of the one and the birth of the other, much water will flow by, a long night of chaos and desolation will pass.

  Alexander Herzen

  Night, Order, Long

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• Wisdom was a teapot, pouring from above. Desolation angels, served it up with love.

  Patti Smith

  Religious, Angel, Religion

  Song: 1959

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