Quiet Desperation Quotes - Page 2

• One solitary God-centered, God-intoxicated man can do more to keep God's love alive and His presence felt in the world than a thousand half-hearted, talkative busy men living frightened, fragmented lives of quiet desperation.

  Robert McNamara

  Faith, Inspiration, Men

  22 Copy quote

• I am interested in the gap between what people say and what they think - the undiscovered world of people's lives. Lives of quiet desperation.

  Richard Eyre

  Live Life, Thinking, People

  "Richard Eyre: 'I don't feel directing has to be a young man's game'". Interview with Kate Kellaway, www.theguardian.com. November 3, 2012.

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The intellect of most men is barren. They neither fertilize or are fertilized. It is the marriage of the soul with nature that makes the intellect fruitful, that gives birth to imagination...without nature-awakened imagination most persons do not really live in the world, they merely pass through it as they live dull lives of quiet desperation.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Gratitude, Men, Dull Life

  4 Copy quote

• Studies of people who report high well-being in their fifties and sixties indicate that they have lived lives that involved personal risks. They are not people whose lives have been calm and predictable. A life under tight control sometimes produces quiet desperation. High well-being is a life that has depth and quality. Risks, losses, problems, and tragedy add pain to a life. That pain becomes a teacher. We learn; the pain gives us no choice.

  Jennifer James

  Teacher, Pain, Loss

  Jennifer James (1986). “Success Is the Quality of Your Journey”, William Morrow Paperbacks

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Any life he'd ever heard of, his own included, was burdened with emotions - love, loss, jobs, jealousy, money, death, pain. But if you were Jewish, always there was this extra one, the added pull at your endurance, the one more thing. There was that line in Thoreau about 'quiet desperation' - that was indeed true of most men. But for some men and women, for some fathers and mothers and children, the world still contrived that one extra test, endless and unrelenting.

  Laura Z. Hobson

  Inspiring, Mother, Jobs

  Laura Z. Hobson (2011). “Gentleman's Agreement”, p.310, Open Road Media

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Somehow it is the male's duty to put the best years of his life into work he doesn't like in order that he may "retire" and enjoy himself as soon as he is too old to do so. This is more than just the system - it is the credo. It is the same thing that prompted Thoreau to say, in 1839: 'The majority of men lead lives of quiet desperation.'

  Sterling Hayden

  Men, Order, Years

  Sterling Hayden (2015). “Wanderer”, p.44, Pickle Partners Publishing

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• On the outside, Oscar simply looked tired, no taller, no fatter, only the skin under his eyes, pouched from years of quiet desperation, had changed. Inside, he was in a world of hurt. He saw black flashes before his eyes. He saw himself falling through the air. He knew what he was turning into. He was turning into the worst kind of human on the planet: an old bitter dork. Saw himself at the Game Room, picking through the miniatures for the rest of his life. He didn't want this future but he couldn't see how it could be avoided, couldn't figure his way out of it. Fukú.

  Junot Diaz

  Hurt, Fall, Tired

  Junot Diaz (2008). “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao”, p.268, Faber & Faber

  5 Copy quote

  Show source