Dreary Quotes - Page 5

• This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A's, but I knew that's what marriage was like, because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard's mother did from morning till night, and she was the wife of a university professor and had been a private school teacher herself.

  Sylvia Plath

  Marriage, Girl, Mother

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.45, Hamilton Books

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• On rolls the stream with a perpetual sigh;
  The rocks moan wildly as it passes by;
  Hyssop and wormwood border all the strand,
  And not a flower adorns the dreary land.

  William C. Bryant

  Flower, Rocks, Land

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• Who does not recall school at least in part as endless dreary hours of boredom punctuated by moments of high anxiety?

  Daniel Goleman

  School, Boredom, Anxiety

  Daniel Goleman (2012). “Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ”, p.157, Bantam

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• If, as an actor, you allow yourself to be cocooned from the boring pin-pricks of day-to-day existence - like standing in a queue at the butcher's or any of the other dreary little events that we all have in our daily lives - you begin to lose your lifeline to what people are. And if you lose that, you eventually lose the ability to act.

  Glenda Jackson

  People, Actors, Littles

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• Why are poets so apt to choose their mates, not for any similarity of poetic endowment, but for qualities which might make the happiness of the rudest handicraftsman as well as that of the ideal craftsman of the spirit? Because, probably, at his highest elevation, the poet needs no human intercourse; but he finds it dreary to descend, and be a stranger.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Quality, Needs, Might

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (2015). “The Complete Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne: Novels, Short Stories, Poems, Essays, Letters and Memoirs (Illustrated): The Scarlet Letter with its Adaptation, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, Tanglewood Tales, Birthmark, Ghost of Doctor Harris… (Including Biographies and Literary Criticism)”, p.457, e-artnow

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• When a sudden ray of sun or a moonbeam falls on a dreary street, it makes no difference what it illumines-a broken bottle on the ground, a fading flower in a field, or the flaxen blonde hair of a child's head. The object is transformed and the viewer is transfixed. Celebrate that moment of beauty and take it with you in your memory. It is God's gift to you.

  Luci Swindoll

  Beauty, Children, Memories

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• During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was - but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Country, Book, Autumn

  Edgar Allan Poe (1927). “Tales by Edgar Allan Poe”, p.128, Dimitrios Spyridon Chytiris

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• The cruelest foe is a masked benefactor. The wars which make history so dreary have served the cause of truth and virtue.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  War, Causes, Virtue

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2762, Delphi Classics

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• The profession of shaman has many advantages. It offers high status with a safe livelihood free of work in the dreary, sweaty sense. In most societies it offers legal privileges and immunities not granted to other men. But it is hard to see how a man who has been given a mandate from on High to spread tidings of joy to all mankind can be seriously interested in taking up a collection to pay his salary; it causes one to suspect that the shaman is on the moral level of any other con man. But it is a lovely work if you can stomach it.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Men, Joy, Lovely

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.325, Penguin

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• Male religion entombs women in sepulchres of silence in order to chant its own eternal and dreary dirge to a past that never was.

  Mary Daly

  Past, Order, Silence

  Mary Daly (2015). “Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation”, p.150, Beacon Press

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• People sinking into self-pity and depression are dreary, but they can't get out of it by themselves. So every now and then, just sit there and listen, and listen, and listen. You're paying your membership dues in the human race.

  Barbara Walters

  Compassion, Race, Self

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• Love is the only real patriation, and without one's dear one sits in a dreary and boring exile.

  Sylvia Townsend Warner

  Real, Love Is, Dear Ones

  Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland, Susanna Pinney (1998). “I'll stand by you: selected letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and Valentine Ackland : with narrative by Sylvia Townsend Warner”, Random House (UK)

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• From the respect paid to property flow, as from a poisoned fountain, most of the evils and vices which render this world such a dreary scene to the contemplative mind.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Evil, Mind, World

  Mary Wollstonecraft, Philip Barnard, Stephen Shapiro (2013). “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman: Abridged with Related Texts”, p.60, Hackett Publishing

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• Desolate--Life is so dreary and desolate--
  Women and men in the crowd meet and mingle,
  Yet with itself every soul standeth single,
  Deep out of sympathy moaning its moan--
  Holding and having its brief exultation--
  Making its lonesome and low lamentation--
  Fighting its terrible conflicts alone.

  Alice Cary

  Fighting, Men, Soul

  Alice Cary, Phoebe Cary, Mary Clemmer (1876). “The Poetical Works of Alice and Phoebe Cary”, p.180

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• A dreary censorship, and self-censorship, has been imposed on books by the centralization of the book industry.

  Erica Jong

  Book, Self, Censorship

  Erica Jong (1994). “The Devil at Large: Erica Jong on Henry Miller”, p.36, Grove Press

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• You are not an encapsulated bag of skin dragging around a dreary little ego. You are an evolutionary wonder, a trillion cells singing together in a vast chorale, an organism – environment, a symbiosis of cell and soul.

  Jean Houston

  Cells, Ego, Soul

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• The moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside; the boding cry of the tree-toad, that harbinger of storm; the dreary hooting of the screechowl.

  Washington Irving

  Tree, Storm, Toads

  Washington Irving (2009). “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories: Or, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.”, p.11, Modern Library

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• O Earth, so full of dreary noises!
  O men, with wailing in your voices!
  O delved gold, the wader's heap!
  O strife, O curse, that o'er it fall!
  God makes a silence through you all,
  And "giveth His beloved, sleep.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Death, Fall, Sleep

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• I actually prefer getting into roles that are the polar opposite of me; that's why I've done so many dark and dreary things.

  Lauren Lee Smith

  Dark, Opposites, Roles

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• I drink out of desperation. Life is too dreary to endure. The misery, loneliness, crampedness - they're heartbreaking.[...] What feelings do you suppose a man has when he realizes that he will never know happiness or glory as long as he lives? Hard work. All that amounts to is food for the wild beasts of hunger.

  Osamu Dazai

  Loneliness, Hard Work, Men

  Osamu Dazai (1968). “The Setting Sun”, p.150, New Directions Publishing

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• Perfection. Excellence. What a passionate lover. But once having tasted the lips of excellence, once having given oneself to its perfection, how dreary and burdensome and filled with anomie are the remainder of one's waking hours trapped in the shackled lock-step of the merely ordinary, the barely acceptable, the just okay and not a stroke better.

  Harlan Ellison

  Perfection, Excellence, Waking

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• It was just a terribly stressful situation and dreary. A few months after [Eva Braun] suicide attempt, [Adolf] Hitler moved us both to the apartment, it was in the summer.

  Gretl Braun

  Summer, Suicide, Stressful Situations

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• A word about 'plain English.' The phrase certainly shouldn't connote drab and dreary language. Actually, plain English is typically quite interesting to read. It's robust and direct-the opposite of gaudy, pretentious language. You achieve plain English when you use the simplest, most straightforward way of expressing an idea. You can still choose interesting words. But you'll avoid fancy ones that have everyday replacements meaning precisely the same thing.

  Bryan A. Garner

  Opposites, Ideas, Interesting

  Bryan A. Garner (2013). “Legal Writing in Plain English, Second Edition: A Text with Exercises”, p.14, University of Chicago Press

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• The bottom is a monotonous, dreary, unprofitable place for any person. That is why I have taken the time to describe how lowly beginnings may be circumvented by proper planning.

  Napoleon Hill

  Taken, May, Planning

  Napoleon Hill (2007). “The Prosperity Bible: The Greatest Writings of All Time on the Secrets to Wealth and Prosperity”, p.81, Penguin

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• God of our life, there are days when the burdens we carry chafe our shoulders and weigh us down; when the road seems dreary and endless, the skies gray and threatening; when our lives have no music in them, and our hearts are lonely, and our souls have lost their courage. Flood the path with light, run our eyes to where the skies are full of promise; tune our hearts to brave music; give us the sense of comradeship with heroes and saints of every age; and so quicken our spirits that we may be able to encourage the souls of all who journey with us on the road of life, to your honor and glory.

  Saint Augustine

  Running, Lonely, Hero

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