Doldrums Quotes

I wonder where I am," said Milo in a very worried tone.
"You're ... in ... the ... Dol ... drums," wailed a voice that sounded far away. He looked around quickly to see who had spoken. No one was there, and it was as quiet and still as one
could imagine.
"Yes ... the ... Dol ... drums," yawned another voice, but still he saw no one.
"WHAT ARE THE DOLDRUMS?" he cried loudly, and tried very hard to see who would answer this time.
"The Doldrums, my young friend, are where nothing ever happens and nothing ever changes. ~ Norton Juster

And I know that there are black boys and black girls out there lost in a Bermuda triangle of the mind or stranded in the doldrums of America, some of them treading and some of them drowning, never feeling and never forgetting. The most precious thing I had then is the most precious thing I have now - my own curiosity. That is the thing I knew, even in the classroom, they could not take from me. That is the thing that buoyed me and eventually plucked me from the sea. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Such beauty, he thought, was too perfect to have come about by mere chance. That day in the center of the Pacific was, to him, a gift crafted deliberately, compassionately, for him and Phil. Joyful and grateful in the midst of slow dying, the two men bathed in that day until sunset brought is, and their time in the doldrums, to an end. ~ Laura Hillenbrand

As a matter of policy, increasing taxes on the most economically productive group, which already generates 60 percent of the nation's federal revenues, during a sustained period of economic doldrums is a wretched idea. ~ John Podhoretz

I remember I had lunch with John Travolta when he was in the doldrums. I mean, he was, as they say, box office poison. He said to me something so great. He said, "I wasn't that good, and I'm not this bad. ~ Rob Reiner

Political biography is in the doldrums. No one wants to read 800 pages or so of cradle-to-grave dead politics, especially if it's familiar stuff and has all been written about before. ~ Jane Ridley

Doldrums, n.
The proper verb for depression is sink. ~ David Levithan

In the governments, as we've witnessed in the past, they had to hide. Because there's a lot of concentration on the friends-and-family club ... We're not about that. That's not the government of the future of the State of New York. What's gonna pull this state out of the doldrums that it's in right now is an honest and open government. ~ Carl Paladino

When I joined in 1990, as they say in the sport of sailing, Puma was in the doldrums. It was a difficult time, and Puma had gone to sleep. ~ Jochen Zeitz

If I were flying, I would travel to a perfect place. A place with frosted cakes and beautiful flowers and excellent trees to climb and absolutely no doldrums. ~ Kyo Maclear

There was one of those sunsets beginning - the kind we've been having for months. Buildings and telephone poles were punched black against a watercolour sky into which fresh colour kept washing and spreading, higher and higher. We've never seen so high before; every day the colours go up and up to a hectic lilac, and from that, at last, comes the night. People carry their drinks outside not so much to look at the light, as to be in it. It's everywhere, surrounding faces and hair as it does the trees. It comes from a volcanic eruption on the other side of the world, from particles of dust that have risen to the upper atmosphere. Some people think it's from atomic tests; but it's said that, in Africa, we are safe from atomic fallout from the Northern Hemisphere because of the doldrums, an area where the elements lie becalmed and can carry no pollution. ~ Nadine Gordimer

Just because you're grown up and then some doesn't mean settling into the doldrums of predictability. Surprise people. Surprise yourself. (281) ~ Victoria Moran

You have to be the right type for calm waters. For some, dead calm is inner peace, for others it's the doldrums. ~ Daniel Glattauer

If an economy in the doldrums could drift indefinitely, the price of government inaction might be graver by far than the consequences of bold unorthodoxy. ~ Robert Heilbroner

One last characteristic of the memoir that is important to recognize is one which also applies to essays, and which Georg Lukacs described as "the process of judging." This may seem problematic to some, since...we connect it with 'judgmental,' often used nowadays as a derogatory word. But the kind of judgment necessary to the good personal essay, or to the memoir, is not that nasty tendency to oversimplify and dismiss other people out of hand but rather the willingness to form and express complex opinions, both positive and negative.

If the charm of memoir is that we, the readers, see the author struggling to understand her past, then we must also see the author trying out opinions she may later shoot down, only to try out others as she takes a position about the meaning of her story. The memoirist need not necessarily know what she thinks about her subject but she must be trying to find out; she may never arrive at a definitive verdict, but she must be willing to share her intellectual and emotional quest for answers. Without this attempt to make a judgment, the voice lacks interest, the stories, becalmed in the doldrums of neutrality, become neither fiction nor memoir, and the reader loses respect for the writer who claims the privilege of being the hero in her own story without meeting her responsibility to pursue meaning. Self revelation without analysis or understanding becomes merely an embarrassment to both reader and writer. ~ Judith Barrington

Sometimes I have experienced God in extraordinary ways - in dramatic surprises or soul-expanding insights or unexplainable mystical encounters. More often, I have felt God's reality in the simple encouragement of a friend, in the gentle inspiration of a sermon, or in the familiar ritual of the Eucharist and I'd be less than honest if I didn't also say that at times, I've found myself in the spiritual doldrums, cast adrift, wondering if the wind would ever blow again. ~ Brian D. McLaren

I will count my blessings when I am in the doldrums, count to ten when I am quarrelsome, and count on my friends when I need a laugh. ~ Gina Barreca

It seems not to matter that we are at the brink of a war that may spread beyond Afghanistan and Iraq to Iran and Georgia and then where? To Syria? To North Korea? To China? That we in America are in economic doldrums and are seeing small businesses fold and houses reclaimed by banks and a smouldering panic that is palpable everywhere. ~ Richard Schiff

Oh, Neverfell, you're just not made for undercover work. You can't lie, my dear, and I can. Leave Madame Appeline and the Doldrums to me. Stay here and keep your head down. ~ Frances Hardinge

Begin ... where you are, NOT where you want to be. Begin stuck in the doldrums of your false story
if that is where you are. Begin there because, in truth, there is no other place to start from. Tell yourself that you are going to listen for the sound of your own voice
and remind yourself when you forget. And you will forget, over and over again. ~ Florence Falk

The best time to write is when your life is in the toilet. Writing offers an escape from your problems, so if you force yourself to write when you're in the doldrums, it will have the perverse effect of cheering you up. At the very least, it allows you to inflict your pain on your characters, which has the dual effect of giving them more depth while relieving your own tension. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

And yet, I do believe there is ultimately meaning in the chaos, and also in the doldrums. What I resist is not the truth but when people put a pretty bow on scary things instead of saying, 'This is a nightmare. I hate everything. I'm going to go hide in the garage.' ~ Anne Lamott

But for me, dinner at a fine restaurant was the ultimate luxury. It was the very height of civilization. For what was civilization but the intellect's ascendancy out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags and haute cuisine)? So removed from daily life was the whole experience that when all was rotten to the core, a fine dinner could revive the spirits. If and when I had twenty dollars left to my name, I was going to invest it right here in an elegant hour that couldn't be hocked. ~ Amor Towles

If you surround yourself with the good and righteous, they can only raise you up. If you surround yourself with the others, they will drag you down into the doldrums of mediocrity, and they will keep you there, but only as long as you permit it. ~ Mark Glamack

I often wonder if my imagination is one of God's choicest gifts bestowed upon me to deliberately break me free from the frequent doldrums of my humanity. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

The awful, ironic, glorious fix for the writing doldrums is to write the next page. ~ Kay Kenyon

I think there's a lot of, unfortunately, unfunny ventriloquists out there, so they've got a bad rap. It came after Edgar Bergen because everybody had a little cheeky boy dummy like Charlie McCarthy, and everybody decided to become a ventriloquist because Bergen had popularized it. He brought it back from the doldrums of vaudeville. ~ Jeff Dunham

In trench warfare five things are important: firewood, food, tobacco, candles, and the enemy. In winter on the Zaragoza front they were important in that order, with the enemy a bad last ~ George Orwell

I was in the doldrums for a while after my athletics career ended in 1992. I spent six to eight hours a day training, for 18 years, and it took a long time to get over the regret that I wasn't competing in major championships any more. All I ever wanted to be was the best. But I find new projects and I keep things in perspective. ~ Daley Thompson

February is always a bad month for TV sports. Football is gone, basketball is plodding along in the annual midseason doldrums, and baseball is not even mentioned. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Begin, then, where you are, not where you want to be. Begin stuck in the doldrums of your false story - if that is where you are. Begin there because, in truth, there is no other place to start from. Tell ~ Florence Falk

I am a sailor, you're my first mate
We signed on together, we coupled our fate
Hauled up our anchor, determined not to fail
For the heart's treasure, together we set sail
With no maps to guide us, we steered our own course
Rode out the storms when the winds were gale force
Sat out the doldrums in patience and hope
Working together, we learned how to cope.
Life is an ocean and love it a boat
In troubled waters it keeps us afloat
When we started the voyage there was just me and you
Now gathered round us we have our own crew
Together we're in this relationship
We built it with care to last the whole trip
Our true destination's not marked on any chart
We're navigating the shores of the heart ~ John McDermott

Manchester City have been in the doldrums for a while, they came up and went straight back down again. ~ Alan Hansen

I don't know anybody who walks through life all the time in the doldrums, constantly serious and morose. But that's become what we generalize as drama. ~ Matt Bomer