Desperate Quotes (page 5)
Here's what we're not taught [about the Declaration and Constitution]: Those words at the time they were written were blazingly, electrifyingly subversive. If you understand them truly now, they still are. You are not taught - and it is a disgrace that you aren't - that these men and women were radicals for liberty; that they had a vision of equality that was a slap in the face of what the rest of their world understood to be the unchanging, God-given order of nations; and that they were...
Naomi Wolf
Part of me loves and respects men so desperately, and part of me thinks they are so embarrassingly incompetent at life and in love. You have to teach them the very basics of emotional literacy. You have to teach them how to be there for you, and part of me feels tender toward them and gentle, and part of me is so afraid of them, afraid of any more violation.
Anne Lamott
I don't think you will ever be able to understand what it is like - the utter loneliness, the feeling of desperation - to be abandoned in a deep well in the middle of the desert at the edge of the world, overcome by intense pain in total darkness. I went so far as to regret that the Mongolian noncom had not simply shot me and got it over with. If I had been killed that way, at least they would have been aware of my death. If I died here, however, it would be truly a lonely death, a death of...
Haruki Murakami
One day he trapped a large raven, whose wings he painted red, the breast green, and the tail blue. When a flock of ravens appeared over our hut, Lekh freed the painted bird. As soon as it joined the flock a desperate battle began. The changeling was attacked from all sides. Black, red, green, blue feathers began to drop at our feet. The ravens ran amuck in the skies, and suddenly the painted raven plummeted to the freshly-plowed soil. It was still alive, opening its beak and vainly trying to...
Jerzy Kosinski
...those impious epicures, libertines, atheists, hypocrites, infidels, worldly, secure, impenitent, unthankful, and carnal-minded men, that attribute all to natural causes, that will acknowledge no supreme power; that have cauterized consciences, or live in a reprobate sense; or such desperate persons as are too distrustful of his mercies.
Robert Burton
Are you one of those people who says on a first date, 'I'm really not in a hurry to meet somebody, I figure if it happens, it happens'? Because those are the most desperate people of all. I'm just saying this so that if you are this person, you aren't hiding it from anybody. There is no shame in being hungry for another person. There is no shame in wanting very much to share your life with somebody.
Augusten Burroughs
The nonbelievers need the believers. They are desperate to have someone believe." "As belief shrinks from the world, people find it more necessary than ever that someone believe...Those who have abandoned belief must still believe in us. They are sure that they are right not to believe but they know belief must not fade completely. Hell is when no one believes.
Don DeLillo
Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death?
No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no.
One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?"
Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild...
Isaac Asimov
Grownups know things, said Piggy. They ain't afraid of the dark. They'd meet and have tea and discuss. Then things 'ud be alright---They wouldn't set fire to the island. Or lose---They'd build a ship---The three boys stood in the darkness, striving unsuccessfully to convey the majesty of adult life. They wouldn't quarrel---Or break my specs---Or talk about a beast---If only they could get a message to us, cried Ralph desperately. If only they could send us something grownup. . . a sign or...
William Golding