Top 100 Futile Quotes
#1. Try not to worry, for time is a great healer.' Such words were futile.
Catherine Cookson
#2. In the knockout tournaments, it's futile to prepare for a grand finale. You may have worked out many strategies for the final. But you may lose in the first round itself.
Viswanathan Anand
#3. It was futile to whisper because Yasha could hear a tick burp at fifty yards.
Lisa Shearin
#4. Trying to be original is futile. If you have no place to go, stay home and cook.
Walter Darby Bannard
#5. I understand the technique of eccentricity; it would be futile for a man to labor at establishing a reputation for oddity if he were ready at the slightest provocation to revert to normal action.
Rex Stout
#6. When our new armies are ready it seems folly to send them to Flanders, where they will chew barbed wire, or be wasted in futile frontal attacks.
H. H. Asquith
#7. The search for a new personality is futile; what is fruitful is the interest the old personality can take in new activities.
Cesare Pavese
#8. The world is futile when viewed through the persona of the body. The body is not simply the physical body but it's the body of knowledge of this world.
Frederick Lenz
#9. Lovers cannot imagine any opposition, no matter how small, to the beloved. They cannot endure to see the beloved veiled by something that causes Him to be forgotten. Moreover, lovers regard as futile any speech not about the beloved, and any act not related to Him as ingratitude and disloyalty.
Fethullah Gulen
#10. Fasting is futile unless it is accompanied by an incessant longing for self-restraint.
Mahatma Gandhi
#11. The knowledge and experience which produce wisdom can only become a man's individual possession and property by his own free action; and it is as futile to expect these without laborious, painstaking effort, as it is to hope to gather a harvest where the seed has not been sown.
Samuel Smiles
#12. They seemed to grip the tree very lightly. Simon tried this, realized it was futile, and grabbed the tree in a hug so intimate, he wondered if they were now dating.
Cassandra Clare
#13. The most futile thing a man can do is to ponder the alternatives, to stew and fret over the life that might have been lived if circumstances had not pointed his future in a certain direction.
William Styron
#14. He's holding a squirming Jamie in his arms, but her efforts to wiggle out of his grip are futile, because her daddy's strong as fuck.
Elle Kennedy
#15. The attempt to make the consumption of beer criminal is as silly and as futile as if you passed a law to send a man to jail for eating cucumber salad.
Stephen Leacock
#16. I wonder what I would find if I could go back and decipher the layers, if it were possible to delve into my past that way, but realize that, even if it were possible, it would be futile.
S.J. Watson
#17. All things are transitory. All things must pass. Attachments whether to material possessions, to people, to places to name, are futile. Despite your clinging, these things will fade away.
Hari Kunzru
#18. I have no more goals, all I'm gonna do is deal with the days Nature will give me along. I have lost too much strength on futile things until then !
Laure Lacornette
#20. But in exchange for what our imagination leads us to expect and we give ourselves so much futile trouble trying to find, life gives us something which we were very far from imagining.
Marcel Proust
#21. There has been a transition from a nuclear-annihilation scenario to an isolated-terrorist-nuclear-bomb scenario. But we're still locked into a mind-set that nuclear war would be so overwhelming that any kind of preparedness would be futile.
Irwin Redlener
#22. The search for Nirvana, like the search for Utopia or the end of history or the classless society, is ultimately a futile and dangerous one. It involves, if it does not necessitate, the sleep of reason. There is no escape from anxiety and struggle.
Christopher Hitchens
#23. A painting which does not take its inspiration from the heart is nothing more than futile juggling.
Caspar David Friedrich
#24. One may be doing all good and right things, but if they aren't done with good intentions, they are futile. Having right intentions is the most important! Even the prayers are of no use if not done in the right earnest!
Neelam Saxena Chandra
#25. Diaries are very futile. I must be all dream or all deed. It is quite impossible for me to express any of the beauty I feel to half the degree I feel it; and yet it is a great pleasure to seize an impression and lock it up in words: you feel as if you had it safe forever.
Wallace Stevens
#26. O hope, most futile of futilities!
Thine iron summons comes again,
O inevadible Pain!
Francis Thompson
#27. The habit of shutting doors behind us is invaluable to happiness; we must learn to shut life's doors to cut out the futile wind of past mistakes.
Marjorie Holmes
#28. The life of man is a struggle on earth. But without a cross, without a struggle, we get nowhere. The victory will be ours if we continue our efforts courageously, even when at times they appear futile.
Boniface Wimmer
#29. To some extent, I have only lived to have something to outlive. By confiding these futile remembrances to paper, I am conscious of accomplishing the most important act of my life. I was predestined to Memory.
Oscar Milosz
#30. [ ... ] as if the next thing must quickly come along to occupy her, or the abyss might open. What abyss? The abyss that waits for all of us, when all our actions seem futile, when the ability to fill the day seems stalled, and the waiting takes on an edge of dread.
Anita Brookner
#31. All desiring is desiring for the futile. It leads only into frustration.
Rajneesh
#32. The futile and exhausting existence of a purgatory-like law enforcement system
Killer Mike
#33. It is not futile to do what we do. We wake up with energy and we do something. And we make, of course, failures and we make mistakes, but we sometimes get glimpses of what we might do next.
John Cage
#34. It's futile to predict what love will make of you, but sometimes it brings you things you never knew you wanted.
Mohammed Hanif
#35. The Odyssey is the story of motion both purposeful and purposeless, successful and futile. What else is the history of law?
Bernhard Schlink
#36. Happiness, I do not know where to turn to discover you on earth, in the air or the sky; yet I know you exist and are no futile dream.
Rosalia De Castro
#37. In the futile attempts we all make to tidy up our lives and our surroundings, nothing is more difficult than throwing out a book.
Andy Rooney
#38. A most insidious form of fear is that which masquerades as common sense or even wisdom, condemning as foolish, reckless, insignificant or futile the small, daily acts of courage which help to preserve man's self-respect and inherent human dignity.
Aung San Suu Kyi
#39. Suffering is futile, my intelligence told me over and over, but I went on suffering voluntarily.
Henry Miller
#41. We have a fictional "I" that we try to love and protect. We spend most of our life playing this futile game. "What will happen? How will it go? Will I get something out of it?" I, I, I - it's a mind game of illusion, and we are lost in it.
Charlotte Joko Beck
#42. It is futile to wish for a long life, and then to give so little care to living well.
Thomas A Kempis
#43. I just can't dance like no ones watching. I tried but it's futile.
Gary Gulman
#44. The heavy round face was looking at him, the hard look of a man who had also understood, who had seen all the stupidity, who knew, after all, that the gold stars were often mindless decoration, that the army was led not by symbols, but by the fallible egos and blind fantasies of men.
Jeff Shaara
#45. So you see how endlessly futile and fruitless it would be if we wanted to refute their objections every time they obstinately resolved not to think through what they say but merely to speak, just so long as they contradict our arguments in any way they can.
Augustine Of Hippo
#46. I started studying what the nature of a monument is and what a monument should be. And for the World War III memorial I designed a futile, almost terrifying passage that ends nowhere.
Maya Lin
#47. It is futile to try to make the universe add up. But I guess we must go on anyhow.
Philip K. Dick
#48. How futile and even arrogant for us to seek to determine what God is doing in a particular event or circumstance.
Jerry Bridges
#49. Charity is false, futile, and poisonous when offered as a substitute for justice.
Henry George
#50. To busy oneself with what is futile when one can do something useful, to attend to what is simple when one has the mettle to attempt what is difficult, is to strip talent of its dignity.
Jose Marti
#51. The best you can hope for in a relationship is to find
someone whose flaws are the sort you don't mind. It is
futile to look for someone who has no flaws, or someone
who is capable of significant change; that sort of person
exists only in our imaginations.
Scott Adams
#52. How many ways have you thought of already?" "Who can count the number of stars in the sky or grains of sand upon the beach? It's futile.
Richelle Mead
#53. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is?
Eckhart Tolle
#54. The how thinker gets problems solved effectively because he wastes no time with futile ifs but goes right to work on the creative how.
Norman Vincent Peale
#55. Perfection, fortunately, is not the only alternative to mediocrity. A more sensible alternative is excellence. Striving for excellence is stimulating and rewarding; striving for perfection
in practically anything
is both neurotic and futile.
Ed Bliss
#56. Never forget that it is the spirit with which you endow your work that makes it useful or futile.
Adelaide Hasse
#57. Is there any more futile, soul-irradiating experience than standing before the little window on a microwave oven watching the carousel slowly revolve your frozen block of dinner?
Michael Pollan
#58. The only difference between a futile madman and an effective tyrant is power and will.
Sheri S. Tepper
#59. how futile is man's poor, weak imagination by comparison with Nature's incredible genius. And
Edgar Rice Burroughs
#60. Resistance was normal; however, it was generally futile as well. Being
Evan Currie
#61. Yet, advice on what we can do is usually futile - for we will do nothing except applaud the speaker, accept those ideas of his we already agree with, and reject those ideas that run counter to our prejudices.
Sydney J. Harris
#62. The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions - none more so than the most capable.
Theodore Dreiser
#63. Running away has been futile. Wherever I went life would be the same. Resisting my chains only seem to tighten them. Yet all around me women found ways to slip those bonds, to discreetly flout the rules and then return to their so-called captivity before anyone noticed.
Sherry Jones
#64. Piano Man put up a fight but his resistance was futile. Hell hath no fury like a drunken girl at her bachelorette party in the mood to sing.
Vicki Lesage
#65. But a compassion for that which is not and cannot be useful and lovely, is degrading and futile.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#66. Recitation of the Qur'an without contemplation and thought is futile.
Ali Ibn Abi Talib
#67. Genuine faith is living knowledge, exact cognition, direct experience. For many centuries faith and belief have been confused, and now it takes great effort and exertion to make people understand that faith is true knowledge and not futile beliefs.
Samael Aun Weor
#68. To give an answer in advance of a question was futile, and to propound a question in order to supply the answer was also futile. There were difficulties that could best be met by unawareness of their existence.
Margaret Landon
#69. Action without study fatal. Study without action is futile ...
Mary Ritter Beard
#70. Mankind is perpetually the victim of a pointless and futile martydom, fretting life away in fruitless worries though failure to realise what limit is set to acquisition and to the growth of genuine pleasure
Seneca.
#71. All I will say is that there are particular features of the American constitutional system that renders a third party futile - at best.
Todd Gitlin
#72. The world is hard because you may wake up today but not tomorrow. And yet no one will accept "fear of death and a futile existence" as a reasonable excuse to miss work.
The world is hard because you will have to fight for the things you love or worse, fight the things you love.
Iain Thomas
#73. Nothing is more futile than looking for meaning in things that have none.
Marty Rubin
#74. Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life is
that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose.
Joseph Conrad
#75. The ability to analyze others' arguments can also serve as a yardstick for when to withdraw from discussions that will most likely be futile.
Ali Almossawi
#76. The truth was, I loved a man who would never love me. I wasn't enough for him, or he would have stayed. Chasing him was futile. He didn't want to be found. He'd given me what I had come here for: closure. I had my closure, and he had his.
Abbi Glines
#77. Why shouldnt things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? they are so, and we are so, and they and we go together.
George Santayana
#78. Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.
Dale Carnegie
#79. No campaign of the First World War better justifies the poets' view of the conflict as futile and pitiless than Gallipoli.
Saul David
#80. Should is a futile word. It's about what didn't happen. It belongs in a parallel universe. It belongs in another dimension of space.
Margaret Atwood
#81. Good intentions and earnest effort are not enough. Only Jesus can make an otherwise futile life productive.
Charles R. Swindoll
#82. Usually bands with violins - it's this little, poorly amplified looking kind of futile on stage, and that's not the way that my music is put together.
Andrew Bird
#83. I belong to quick, futile moments of intense feeling. Yes, I belong to moments. Not to people.
Virginia Woolf
#84. Are you prepared to have quite
obvious things explained to you, to ask futile questions, to give me
chances of scoring off you, to make brilliant discoveries of your own
two or three days after I have made them myself all that kind of thing?
A.A. Milne
#85. The only lesson to extract from any civil war is that it's pointless and futile and ugly, and that there is nothing glamorous or heroic about it. There are heroes, but the causes are never heroic.
Anthony Minghella
#86. There is, I think, nothing in the world more futile than the attempt to find out how a task should be done when one has not yet decided what the task is.
Alexander Meiklejohn
#87. Whenever the communists are under fire, it [the term "red-baiter"] has served to divert attention from the subject matter to futile discussion of personal motives, the critic's private life and other deliberate tricks of befuddlement.
Eugene Lyons
#88. I keep hoping that as time passes by, we'll regain the ease between us, but part of me knows it's futile. There's no going back.
Suzanne Collins
#89. In fact, we know full well today that it is futile to speak of liberty as long as economic slavery exists.
Pyotr Kropotkin
#90. The emptiness and folly of retaliation are apparent from every example which can be brought forward. Not only Jesus Christ, but the most eminent professors of every sect of philosophy, have reasoned against this futile superstition.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
#91. What's happened recently in Pakistan, India and Kuwait only goes to show that it's futile to imitate Western democracy. They've ended up exactly where they started.
Mohammed Reza Pahlavi
#92. The threads of circumstance that lead to tomorrow are so tenuous that all the fussing and worrying about decisions is futile compared to the pure randomness of existence.
Nick Bantock
#93. I release all feelings of worry and guilt. Throughout life, the two most futile emotions are guilt for what has been done and worry about what might be done.
Wayne Dyer
#94. In my years of global travels, I have seen a world in pain ... Without God's guidance, our response to suffering is a futile attempt to find solutions to conditions that cannot be solved.
Billy Graham
#95. Television is a golden goose that lays scrambled eggs; and it is futile and probably fatal to beat it for not laying caviar. Anyway, more people like scrambled eggs than caviar.
Lee Loevinger
#96. Criticising the other fellow because he's in and you are not seems to me a futile waste of time.
Hartley William Shawcross
#97. My hope is that the Chinese government will come to realise that it is futile to repress free speech, and that contrary to what they believe a regime's strength rests not its suppression of a plurality of opinions and ideas, but in its capacity and willingness to encourage them.
Ma Jian
#98. School has become the world religion of a modernized proletariat, and makes futile promises of salvation to the poor of the technological age.
Ivan Illich
#99. 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
#100. To relinquish the futile effort to control change is one of the strengthening forces of true detachment & thus true love.
Sharon Salzberg
