Futile Efforts Quotes

• As people spin faster and faster in the pursuit of merely personal happiness, they become exhausted in the futile effort of chasing themselves.

  Andrew Delbanco

  Happiness, Happy, People

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• Man has made remarkable strides in conquering outer space, but how futile have been his efforts in conquering inner space- the space in our hearts and minds of men.

  Thomas S. Monson

  Heart, Men, Space

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• No thinking being lives who, at some luminous point of his life of thought, has not felt himself lost amid the surges of futile efforts at understanding, or believing, that anything exists greater than his own soul.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Believe, Thinking, Effort

  Edgar Allan Poe (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe (Illustrated)”, p.1343, Delphi Classics

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• The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile.

  Alan Watts

  People, Effort, Ego

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• To relinquish the futile effort to control change is one of the strengthening forces of true detachment & thus true love.

  Sharon Salzberg

  Effort, Meditation, Detachment

  Sharon Salzberg (2008). “Lovingkindness”, p.72, Shambhala Publications

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• I’ve seen all I need to. I’m going to go drink now in a futile effort to wipe away the memory of this debacle.

  Richelle Mead

  Memories, Effort, Needs

  Richelle Mead (2011). “Succubus Revealed”, p.113, Kensington Books

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• I sat on a toilet watching the water run thinking what an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home and then expend vast quantities of time and money in a largely futile effort to recapture the comforts you wouldn’t have lost if you hadn’t left home in the first place.

  Bill Bryson

  Running, Travel, Home

  "Neither Here Nor There". Book by Bill Bryson, 2012.

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• As a matter of selective necessity, man is an agent. He is, in his own apprehension, a centre of unfolding impulsive activity-'teleological activity.' He is an agent seeking in every act the accomplishment of some concrete, objective, impersonal end. By force of being such an agent, he is possessed of a taste for effective work, and a distaste for futile effort.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Men, Effort, Agents

  Thorstein Veblen (2016). “THORSTEIN VEBLEN Ultimate Collection: 8 Books & 50+ Business Essays and Articles in Warfare and Economics: The Theory of the Leisure Class, The Theory of Business Enterprise, The Higher Learning In America, Panem et Circenses, The Vested Interests and the Common Man, The Use of Loan Credit in Business…”, p.16, e-artnow

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