Soul Crushing Quotes

[For men] to feel their souls withering within them, unthanked, to find their whole being sunk into an unrecognized abyss, to be counted off into a heap of mechanism numbered with its wheels, and weighed with its hammer strokes - this, nature bade not, - this, God blesses not, - this, humanity for no long time is able to endure.

It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.

Intimidation is an unusual animal: it's a lot about body language and understanding the human psyche. Knowing that usually a direct stare will crush most human souls, and that's just the basic gist of it... The soul-crushing stare, the fatherly disappointment, mixed with a little bit of hate and rage - you're on your way.

If words could break souls, my words just broke his in two.

Hope is the most sensitive part of a poor wretch's soul; whoever raises it only to torment him is behaving like the executioners in Hell who, they say, incessantly renew old wounds and concentrate their attention on that area of it that is already lacerated.

In depression . . . faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come - - not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute . . . It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.

No one will ever know what 'In Cold Blood' took out of me. It scraped me right down to the marrow of my bones. It nearly killed me. I think, in a way, it did kill me.

I found I could extinguish all human hope from my soul.

I don't deal well with being told what to wear and sit on a mark. It just feels like my soul is being ripped out.

[Finishing schools] are nicely adapted machines for experimenting on the question, "Into how little space a human being can be crushed?" I have seen some souls so compressed that they would have fitted into a small thimble, and found room to move . . .

The people who believe that their soul is being crushed by playing a particular role need to take a vacation or check into the looney bin for awhile.

If I had the day off and knew everyone else was voting, I wouldn't miss it. It would become a routine part of my responsibility as a citizen - like paying taxes, only less soul crushing.

But if it's tolerable mediocrity, and you're like, 'Well, you know it could be worse. At least I'm getting paid.' Then you wind up in a job that is slowly killing your soul and you're allowing that to happen. Comfort can be a very, very dangerous thing.

Taking responsibility takes all the joy out of life, and drains a man to dust.

I did roles that I hated, and there were roles that were detrimental to my acting ability. There were roles that I was always doing that were always the comic relief... it was destroying my soul.

Dogma? Faith? These are the right and left pillars of every soul-crushing theology. Theosophists have no dogmas, exact no blind faith.

I have met so many of my idols - like Ray Charles, Brian Setzer - all these cats that are legendary musicians. If they had said to me, 'Hey man, I'm busy,' it would have crushed my soul.

I have been told that I misrepresent being a Christian. And that has been soul-crushing.

There's certainly harder things in the world and the country to do than being an actor, but it's a particularly emotionally humiliating thing to do, that you don't really anticipate when you choose to do it. You don't really think that it's going to be quite so soul-crushing at times.

I just asked myself, what piece of that man's soul did he just chew off and swallow to get next week's assignment? You know, just to live, just to work as an artist, or to feed the family?

I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.

It's grueling never knowing if the audience is going to think you're funny. It's soul-destroying when they don't laugh.

We've pitched and even begun development on a number of fantasy worlds that have never seen the light of day. All of those worlds... It's soul-crushing to see them sputter out, one by one. Lost. Like tears. In rain.

Political correctness never rears its ugly head independently. It always shows up as a series of actions designed, to this observer, to crush the souls of those blessed with common sense.

Some people could say, "I'd like something that's super dramatic and miserable and made me cry and made me sad forever" but that's not my taste.