Even if it meant that she had failed, she was glad. And if what she'd wanted had been impossible from the start, still there was a certain lonely comfort in the fact that she'd known it was impossible and had gone ahead and done it anyway.
O speculators about perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you created in the like quest? Go and take your place with the seekers after gold.
Our material eye cannot see that a stupid chauvinism is driving us from one noisy, destructive, futile agitation to another.
It was better, he thought, to fail in attempting exquisite things than to succeed in the department of the utterly contemptible.
There's folks 'ud hold a sieve under the pump and expect to carry away the water.
One might better try to sail the Atlantic in a paper boat, than try to get to heaven on good works.
And the dream that our mind had sketched in haste Shall others continue, but never complete. For none upon earth can achieve his scheme; The best as the worst are futile here: We wake at the self-same point of the dream, All is here begun, and finished elsewhere.
To be enthusiastic about doing much with human nature is a foolish business indeed
The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.
I am the Terrible Trivium, demon of petty tasks and worthless jobs, ogre of wasted effort, and monster of habit.
The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next.
Do not waste this life in vain pursuits.
We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that 'except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it' I firmly believe this; by our partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a by word down to future ages.
Still we live meanly, like ants; though the fable tells us that we were long ago changed into men; like pygmies we fight with cranes; it is error upon error, and clout upon clout, and our best virtue has for its occasion a superfluous and evitable wretchedness. Our life is frittered away by detail.
Now, however, I see the folly of attempting to hitch one's wagon to a star with a harness that does not belong to it.
Plough not the seas, sow not the sands,Leave off your idle pain;Seek other mistress for your minds,Love's service is in vain.
Many men and women spend their lives in unsuccessful attempts to spin the flax God sends them upon a wheel they can never use.
"The fool, dwelling on the bank of the Ganga, digs a well for water!" Such are we! Living in the midst of God - we must go and make images.
Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail.
No tribute is laid on castles in the air.
As for your high towers and monuments, there was a crazy fellow once in this town who undertook to dig through to China, and he got so far that, as he said, he heard the Chinese pots and kettles rattle; but I think that I shall not go out of my way to admire the hole which he made.
Without opium, plans, marriages and journeys appear to me just as foolish as if someone falling out of a window were to hope to make friends with the occupants of the room before which he passes.
He ploughs the waves, sows the sand, and hopes to gather the wind in a net, who places his hopes on the heart of a woman. [It., Ne l'onde solca, e ne l'arena semina, E'l vago vento spera in rete acogliere Chi sue speranze fonda in cor di femina.]
The possessions God allows us to have are intended for our use, not our enjoyment. Trying to squeeze something out of them that was never in them in the first place is a futile endeavor. A cow's udders, gently pressed, will yield sweet milk, nourishing and refreshing. Applying more and more pressure will not produce greater quantities of milk. We lose the good of material things by expecting too much from them. Those who try hardest to please themselves with earthly goods find the least satisfaction in them.
Do we ever get what we really want? Do we ever achieve what our powers have ostensibly equipped us for? No: everything works by contraries.
