Floundering Quotes

The decision as to when to quit, as to when one is merely floundering around and causing other people trouble, has to be made frequently in a lifetime. In youth we are taught the rather simple rule never to quit, because we are presumably following programmes made by people wiser than ourselves. My own conclusion is that when one has embarked on a course that grows increasingly doubtful and one feels the vital forces beginning to be used up, it is best to ask advice if decent advice is in range... ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

While they were floundering / I was pondering / 'No more wandering through the dark tunnels of grim determination / For no; it is time to grow in a thousand folded folds, for which we need an infinite fuel! ~ Nathan Coppedge

I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea. ~ H.G.Wells

When she was eighteen years old she had almost drowned in the Kennebec River, not because of the pummeling current, but because she couldn't come up with a casual phrase with which to call for rescue. "Help!" was such a cliche. By the time she was willing to scream, she had no breath left, and it was just blind luck that somebody saw her gasping and floundering and pulled her to shore. "Why didn't you say something?" they wanted to know, and she said, "I'm not a screamer." "Jesus," said one of them, "couldn't you have made an exception this one time?" "Apparently not," she said. ~ Jincy Willett

Printing demands a humility of mind, for the lack of which many of the fine arts are even now floundering in self-conscious and maudlin experiments. ~ Beatrice Warde

The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation, Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln's Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery. Never can there come fog too thick, never can there come mud and mire too deep, to assort with the groping and floundering condition which this High Court of Chancery, most pestilent of hoary sinners, holds this day in the sight of heaven and earth. On ~ Charles Dickens

If Adam were honest with himself, which he rarely was, he'd come to terms with the fact that beyond his work and the view, he was floundering a bit. His plan had been to take the insurance money, leave his old life behind, and start completely over somewhere new. A place where memories didn't lurk around every corner.
He hadn't figured on the memories coming along with him. ~ Kirsten Fullmer

The music industry went through such a strange stretch in 1977, especially in this country, with the whole punk rock thing coming about. Punk was rebellious-and justified in that response-but it had very little to do with music, and so it created a highly-charged but frighteningly floundering atmosphere that I found very, very disheartening. Musical quality for me has always been an important part of rock'n'roll-and winning recognition for that has long been an uphill battle all the way. Punk seemed like rock'n'roll utterly without the music. ~ Steve Winwood

And right in among those sharks was Queequeg; who often pushed them aside with his floundering feet. A thing altogether incredible were it not that attracted by such prey as a dead whale, the otherwise miscellaneously carnivorous shark will seldom touch a ~ Herman Melville

It wasn't that I was playing for a mediocre football team or that I'd had to uproot my life. I'd do it again in a skinny minute for Ella. It was that Ella was floundering and I had no fucking idea how to fix it. She was breaking my damn heart. ~ Amie Knight

Revelation is a pastor's letter to his floundering flock, an urgent telegram bearing a brilliant battle plan for a people at war. ~ Billy Graham

Fucking family. Feeble and forlorn and floundering and foolish and frustrating and functional and sad, sad. Fucking family. Fiend or foe. ~ Rick Moody

You know the type - the ones who steal your heart and leave you floundering helplessly without it for half a decade, shoving other things into the gap where it used to be, but finding that they don't bloody fit ~ Jessica Thompson

Like recognized like. And while we had both been lost and floundering on our own, when we were together it felt like we were exactly where we were supposed to be. ~ Jay Crownover

I cannot think of the deep sea without shuddering at the nameless things that may at this very moment be crawling and floundering on its slimy bed, ~ H.P. Lovecraft

With the rise of cable, network is clearly floundering because the characters on cable are far more fascinating than they are on network. Network television is trying to figure it out. Network television really relies on story rather than character, and cable relies on character. ~ Dylan McDermott

Really, one of us ought to have the courage to call the experiment off and shoulder the responsibility for the decision, but the majority reckons that that kind of courage would be a sign of cowardice, and the first step in a retreat. They think it would mean an undignified surrender for mankind as if there was any dignity in floundering and drowning in what we don't understand and never will. ~ Stanislaw Lem

Tinkie's on the list."
"That's ridiculous. She and Enzo were only flirting."
"And Oscar showed his ass and then was seen floundering in the bayou where a blow-up sex doll, complete with a death threat, later showed up in front of an entire town." ...
"Even though they don't have a body, Pret is thinking Enzo's disappearance may prove to be a homicide. ~ Carolyn Haines

Private equity firms aren't necessarily evil by definition. There are many stories of successful turnarounds fueled by private equity, often involving multiple floundering businesses that are rolled into a single entity, eliminating duplicative overhead. ~ Matt Taibbi

I am not of the opinion that one can ever lack the power to express perfectly what one wants to write or say. Observations on the weakness of language, and comparisons between the limitations of words and the infinity of feelings, are quite fallacious. The infinite feeling continues to be as infinite in words as it was in the heart. What is clear within is bound to become so in words as well. This is why one need never worry about language, but at sight of words may often worry about oneself. After all, who knows within himself how things really are with him? This tempestuous or floundering or morasslike inner self is what we really are, but by the secret process by which words are forced out of us, our self-knowledge is brought to light, and though it may still be veiled, yet it is there before us, wonderful or terrible to behold. ~ Franz Kafka

It was as if an embankment had been swept away and I (Neel ) were floundering in a flood , trying not to drown in my grief. ~ Amitav Ghosh

I'll be right back," she says, and as soon as she disappears into the next room, I feel like someone has yanked my social crutch out from under my arm. I'm floundering. All I can think about is Emery coming back so I can have someone to hide behind. ~ Akemi Dawn Bowman

And there's the rub. He figures he has worked long and hard, and suffered much to become the asshole he is by now, and, since these solutions work for him after a lifetime of floundering grief, he is not about to change. He doesn't feel misunderstood, so much as non-understood. ~ Steve Goldman

Beautiful prose is a floundering fish if it doesn't have a story to swim in. ~ Kevin Ansbro

With drooping heads and tremulous tails, they mashed their way through the thick mud, floundering and stumbling between whiles, as if they were falling to pieces at the larger joints. As often as the driver rested them and brought them to a stand, with a wary "Wo-ho! so-ho- then!" the near leader violently shook his head and everything upon it - like an unusually emphatic horse, denying that the coach could be got up the hill. Whenever the leader made this rattle, the passenger started, as a nervous passenger might, and was disturbed in mind. ~ Charles Dickens

You flounder through life, struggling desperately so you won't drown, even though you would float if you'd just relax. ~ Natsuki Takaya

Are you gonna put your shirt back on?" she blurted out.
Chase froze, looking over his shoulder at her with the most maddening smile. "Why? Is this bothering you?"
"I just ... " Andie sputtered, floundering through her response. "I mean, what if we get pulled over or something?"
"If we get pulled over, this could only work in your favor," he said, running his hands over his chest.
Andie tried to stifle a laugh. "My God, you're insufferable. ~ Priscilla Glenn

But here's the thing Ona. Howard wrote that song for you.' Quinn had never been more sure of anything. 'I think he wrote all his songs for you, Ona, for young and lovely you.'
'Now you're talking foolish.'
'He wrote them for you, and you refused them because he didn't know how to give them to you.' How could he, living his shadow of a life, floundering in the sludge of grief and failure?
'Have you been drinking?'
'Listen to me,' he said. 'You 're the glittering girl with the cherry-wood hair. You're the angel's breath and sunlight.'
'Oh, for heaven's sake.' She sat up crossly, her tufted hair seeming to quiver. 'Quinn Porter,' she said, 'I never took you for a romantic.'
'Howard Stanhope loved you,' he declared. 'I thought you should know.'
'Well, all right.'
'I thought you should know, Ona.'
'Thank you.'
'People should know these things ~ Monica Wood

The collective psyche denies the present ego and, directly through this denial, creates anew. The floundering ego-particle, inundated with new, more richly adorned images, begins to re-emerge. We see this most beautifully in artistic productions. ~ Sabina Spielrein

We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll. We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity. ~ Patti Smith

Though the Floundering Fathers didn't intend it, we now see that representative government quickly turns into the dictatorship of the proletariat. If you doubt this, I congratulate you on not having a television. ~ Fred Reed

The day is committed to error and floundering; success and achievement are matters of long range. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

After graduation, I was floundering in L.A., doing stand-up comedy and working in a shoe store in the Valley. ~ Kevin Spacey

My first novel, 'In the Drink,' begun when I was 29 and floundering and published when I was 36 and married, was about a 29-year-old woman whose life was even more screwed up than my own had been. ~ Kate Christensen

She's not great at communicating day-to-day, but when we finally do get into arguments, she has a laser-guided missile system that cuts right through my bullshit, and suddenly, I'm the one left floundering, searching for the right words. ~ David W. Wright

It must be hard for humans, forever floundering through inconvenient geography. Humans are always lost. It's a basic characteristic. It explains a lot about them. ~ Terry Pratchett