Hopelessly Quotes

The British suffer from a most unfortunate superiority complex - unjustified even under Victoria and most certainly hopelessly out-of-date today. ~ George Mikes

The woman I was seems hopelessly naive. I envy her. ~ Lisa Unger

His months of teaching experience were now a lost age of youth and innocence. He could no longer sit in his office at Fort McNair, look out over the elm trees and the golf course, and encompass the world within "neat, geometric patterns" that fit within equally precise lectures. Policy planning was a very different responsibility, but explaining just how was "like trying to describe the mysteries of love to a person who has never experienced it."

There was, however, an analogy that might help. "I have a largish farm in Pennsylvania."...it had 235 acres, on each of which things were happening. Weekends, in theory, were days of rest. But farms defied theory:

Here a bridge is collapsing. No sooner do you start to repair it than a neighbor comes to complain about a hedge row which you haven't kept up half a mile away on the other side of the farm. At that very moment your daughter arrives to tell you that someone left the gate to the hog pasture open and the hogs are out. On the way to the hog pasture, you discover that the beagle hound is happily liquidating one of the children's pet kittens. In burying the kitten you look up and notice a whole section of the barn roof has been blown off and needs instant repair. Somebody shouts from the bathroom window that the pump has stopped working, and there's no water in the house. At that moment, a truck arrives with five tons of stone for the lane. And as you stand there hopelessly, wondering which of these crises ~ John Lewis Gaddis

Friend, you're HOPELESSLY hooked! ~ Oliver James

A man who sits hopelessly needs hope to get up more than he needs legs. ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

Maybe I'll hurt you," I whisper as my eyes search his. "I'm broken Tucker. I'm hopelessly broken inside, and I'm not sure there are enough pieces in me to put back together. But when I'm with you, I feel like maybe I can actually be whole. ~ Denise Grover Swank

Miss Darracott, an intelligent girl, now perceived that in harboring for as much as an instant the notion of marrying a man who fell so lamentably short of the ideal lover she was an irreclaimable ninnyhammer. Ideal lovers might differ in certain respects, but in whatever mold they were cast, not one of them was so unhandsome as to make it extremely difficult for one not to giggle at their utterances. This hopelessly overgrown and unromantic idiot must be given a firm set-down. ~ Georgette Heyer

I used to fall hard when I was younger, and it occupies a lot of journals and redundant preoccupation and analysis. It is a state in which you are in an overheated fervor of production - of mental production - where you're analyzing everything that happened. And what they said! And how they looked! Did that touch mean something, or not? Everything is sort of endowed with meaning, but you're also hopelessly boring and out of the world. ~ Todd Haynes

I can't count the times I have lagged seemingly hopelessly far behind, and nobody except myself thinks I can win. But I have pulled myself in from desperate [situations]. When you are behind there are two strategies - counter-attack or all men to the defences. I'm good at finding the right balance between those. ~ Magnus Carlsen

She was remembering what it was like when you broke up with someone. Conversations became so hopelessly tangled. You had to be polite and precise. You couldn't safely criticize anymore, because you didn't have the right. You'd lost your immunity. ~ Liane Moriarty

The whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principles, persons, and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact. ~ George Santayana

I don't know what people find or like in me, I'm hopelessly commonplace! Current appreciation of my work is a bit highbrow, I've always considered myself a popular artist. ~ Maxfield Parrish

Where one is hopelessly undecided as to what to say, there (as Confucius would have said, if they had given him the opportunity) silence is golden. ~ Lewis Carroll

These flies were half the size of my fist. They came at you and stuck to you with a single-minded purpose you had to admire. We were hopelessly outnumbered, but we still slapped and kicked and karate-chopped ourselves until we reached an uneasy truce. ~ Terri Cheney

I was hopelessly looking for the sky in the abyss
But it turned out that it is in your eyes ~ Marina Matiss

It is present in moments of rejoicing, when all the things around us are transfigured and seem to be there for the first time ... The question is upon us in boredom, when we are equally removed from despair and joy, and everything about us seems so hopelessly commonplace that we no longer care whether anything is or is not. ~ Jim Holt

There was something unfair about a system in which a little kid was brought into a courtroom and surrounded by lawyers arguing and sniping at each other under the scornful eye of a judge, the referee, and somehow in the midst of this barrage of laws and code sections and motions and legal talk the kid was supposed to know what was happening to him. It was hopelessly unfair. ~ John Grisham

I am hopelessly in love with her. Who else can see this but you? ~ Krista Ritchie

I'm still a bit of a romantic and an idealist and hopelessly naive. ~ Brit Marling

I miss you terribly. You see, you always talk about getting cure of our romance, and I did my best to help! But now you have me definitely and hopelessly 'contaminated' to the extent that I am sick at heart. Strangeley, I do not want to be cured! I love you completely. ~ Leslie Maitland

I hope he (Babe Ruth) lives to hit one-hundred homers in a season. I wish him all the luck in the world. He has everybody else, including myself, hopelessly outclassed. ~ Home Run Baker

Forgiveness. The ability to forgive oneself. Stop here for a few breaths and think about this because it is the key to making art, and very possibly the key to finding any semblance of happiness in life. Every time I have set out to translate the book (or story, or hopelessly long essay) that exists in such brilliant detail on the big screen of my limbic system onto a piece of paper (which, let's face it, was once a towering tree crowned with leaves and a home to birds). I grieve for my own lack of talent and intelligence. Every. Single. Time. Were I smarter, more gifted, I could pin down a closer facsimile of the wonders I see. I believe, more than anything, that this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself. ~ Ann Patchett

In too many households prayer is neglected. Parents feel that they have no time for morning and evening worship. They cannot spare a few moments to be spent in thanksgiving to God for his abundant mercies - for the blessed sunshine and the showers of rain, which cause vegetation to flourish, and for the guardianship of holy angels. They have no time to offer prayer for divine help and guidance and for the abiding presence of Jesus in the household. They go forth to labor as the ox or the horse goes, without one thought of God or heaven. They have souls so precious that rather than permit them to be hopelessly lost, the Son of God gave his life to ransom them; but they have little more [144] appreciation of his great goodness than have the beasts that perish. ~ Ellen G. White

This is the gospel. The just and loving Creator of the universe has looked upon hopelessly sinful people and sent His Son, God in the flesh, to bear His wrath against sin on the cross and to show His power over sin in the resurrection so that all who trust in Him will be reconciled to God forever. ~ David Platt

Sitting next to Olivia Newton-John, I was like, 'Do not sing one song from Grease.' That's all I was telling my brain at all times: 'Do not sing Hopelessly Devoted. Don't do it.' ~ Caroline Rhea

History is strewn with ideas that were intuitive and made sense at the time, but were also hopelessly wrong. ~ Steven Novella

Brain tumor survivors,don't become hopelessly discouraged if you are experiencing deficits. You are in a war and you are bound to have a few battle wounds. ~ Rachel Grady

Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

He touched me. He… he whispered things in my ear, things I never would've expected to affect me the way they did. I feel like I lose control when I'm near him. I'm like a leaf fluttering in the wind - when he zigs, I zag. He talks and I jump. He walks and I turn into a blithering idiot. I admit it, I'm clumsy, but when I find myself near him…" He didn't have the courage to finish the sentence. With a sudden lump in his throat, he added: "I don't want to hope, and I certainly don't want to delude myself. Damn it, the thought of deluding myself terrifies me!"
"I think I know what your problem is."
"And what would that be?"
He sat up, offering a sly smile. "You're hopelessly in love with him. ~ Valentina C. Brin

True individualists are always at odds with the universe. Set adrift by their peculiar tastes and interests, they spend their lives searching for kindred spirits and a compatible mate. They are hopelessly out of step with the business world and its trivial urgencies. Their priorities are not the priorities of their neighbors. They are unique; therefore they are alone. ~ Rick Bayan

People of the world, the time for decision is short. It is measured in a few years. The choice is ours as to whether or not we will pay the price of peace. If we are not willing to pay it, all that we hold dear will be consumed in the flame of war. The darkness in our world today is due to the disintegration of things which are contrary to God's laws. Let us never say hopelessly this is the darkness before a storm; rather let us say with faith this is the darkness before the dawn of the golden age of peace, which we cannot now even imagine. For this, let us hope and work and pray. ~ Peace Pilgrim

When we face…temptations in our time, we must declare, as young Nephi did in his, '[I will] give place no more for the enemy of my soul.' [2 Nephi 4:28]
We can reject the evil one. If we want it dearly and deeply enough, that enemy can and will be rebuked by the redeeming power of the Lord Jesus Christ. Furthermore, I promise you that the light of His everlasting gospel can and will again shine brightly where you feared life had gone hopelessly, helplessly dark. ~ Jeffrey R. Holland

It's an interesting thing that we have not copyrighted our ideas about liberty or tried to charge others to use them, or even to credit us when they do so. We've given these ideas away freely. To what end? We have not calculated the benefit to ourselves much. Some have said that we do what we do for purely selfish or mercenary reasons, that we fought in Iraq, for example, because of our oil interests. Such views are not only deeply cynical but also fail to account for much else that we do. Are we being self-serving in what we've done in Africa to combat AIDS? Are we being self-serving in sending ships and supplies to disaster areas around the world? Unless we are hopelessly bound by cynicism, we have to acknowledge that the United States has been remarkably and consistently generous in sharing what it has, whether material things or ideas. ~ Eric Metaxas

The West regards marriage as consisting in all that lies beyond the legal tie, while in India it is thought of as a bond thrown by society round two people to unite them together for all eternity. Those two must wed each other, whether they will or not, in life after life. Each acquires half of the merit of the other. And if one seems in this life to have fallen hopelessly behind, it is for the other only to wait and beat time, till he or she catches up again! ~ Swami Vivekananda

It's like being home again, when they bring in the hopelessly mangled person from the mine explosion, or the woman in her third day of labor, or the famished child struggling against pneumonia and my mother and Prim, they wear that same look on their faces. Now is the times to run away tho the woods, to hide in the trees until the patient is long gone and in another part of the Seam the hammers make the coffin. But I'm held here both by the hovercraft walls and the same force that holds the loved ones of the dying. How often I've seen them, ringed around our kitchen table and I thought, Why don't they leave? Why do they stay to watch?
And now I know. It's because you have no choice. ~ Suzanne Collins

They were too hopelessly alienated in their inner life ever to have that contest which is an effort towards agreement. ~ George Eliot

The pain is stronger than ever. I've seen bit of lost Paradises and I know I'll be hopelessly tryng tu return even if it hurts. The deeper I swing into the regions of nothingness the further I'm thrown back into myself, each time more and more frightening depths below me, until my very being becomes dizzy. There are brief glimpses of clear sky, like falling out of a tree, so I have some idea where I'm going, but there is still too much clarity and straight order of things, I am getting always the same number somehow. So I vomit out broken bits of words and sintaxes of the countries I've passed through, broken limbs, slaughtered houses, geographies. My heart is poisoned, my brain left in shreds of horror and sadness. I've never let you down, world, but you did lousy things to me.
(from "As I was moving ahead occasionally I saw brief glimpses of beauty", 2000) ~ Jonas Mekas

We continue to adhere to a common-sense view of risk - how much we can lose and the probability of losing it. While this perspective may seem over simplisticor even hopelessly outdated, we believe it provides a vital clarity about the true risks in investing. ~ Seth Klarman

If a chain is only as strong as its weakest link, then a family is more like a rope. We're lots of fragile little strands, and we survive by becoming hopelessly intertwined with each other. ~ Brian K. Vaughan

I feel sorry for anyone that thinks they have a chance. I am hopelessly and completely in love with you. ~ Jamie McGuire

It's funny; I'm in some ways hopelessly masculine, but I don't fish, I don't hunt, I'm not that into sports. I can't fix a car. I think it's my point of view and the way I see the world. ~ Corey Stoll

Lowe has broken from the Christianity of his parents, a faith that now seems hopelessly out of date. The meek shall no longer inherit the earth; the go-getters will get it and everything that goes with it. The Christ who went among the poor, the sick, the downtrodden, among lepers and prostitutes, really had no marketing savvy. He has been transfigured into a latter-day entrepreneur, the greatest superstar sales person of all time, who built a multinational outfit from scratch. ~ Eric Schlosser

A theory of the middle class: that it is not to be determined by its financial situation but rather by its relation to government. That is, one could shade down from an actual ruling or governing class to a class hopelessly out of relation to government, thinking of government as beyond its control, of itself as wholly controlled by government. Somewhere in between and In gradations is the group that has the sense that gov't exists for it, and shapes its consciousness accordingly. ~ Lionel Trilling

During a large disaster, like Hurricane Katrina, warnings get hopelessly jumbled. The truth is that, for warnings to work, it's not enough for them to be delivered. They must also overcome that human tendency to pause; they must trigger a series of effective actions, mobilizing the informal networks that we depend on in a crisis. ~ Gary Wolf

As an artist she finds Dick's work hopelessly naive, yet she is a lover of certain kinds of bad art, art which offers a transparency into the hopes and desires of the person who made it. Bad art makes the viewer much more active. (Years later Chris would realise that her fondness for bad art is exactly like Jane Eyre's attraction to Rochester, a mean horse-faced junkie: bad characters invite invention. ~ Chris Kraus

Now comes the picture of mass defeat, the most awesome spectacle of the war. It is in the bent bodies of old women who poke among ruins seeking some miserable object that will link their lives with the old days. It is in the shamed darting eyes of the defeated. It is in the faces of the little boys who regard our triumphant columns with fear and fascination. And above all it is in the thousands of beaten, dusty soldiers who stream along the roads towards the stockades. Their feet clump wearily, mechanically, hopelessly on the still endless road of war. They move as haggard, gray masses, in which the individual had neither life nor meaning. It is impossible to see in these men the quality that made them stand up and fight like demons out of hell a few shorts months ago. ~ Audie Murphy

Ordinary experience, from waking second to second, is in fact highly synthetic (in the sense of combinative or constructive), and made of a complexity of strands, past memories and present perceptions, times and places, private and public history, hopelessly beyond science's powers to analyse. It is quintessentially 'wild' ... unphilosophical, irrational uncontrollable, incalculable. ~ John Fowles

The unconscious is not a demoniacal monster, but a natural entity which, as far as moral sense, aesthetic taste, and intellectual judgement go, is completely neutral. It only becomes dangerous when our conscious attitude to it is hopelessly wrong. To the degree that we repress it, its danger increases. But the moment the patient begins to assimilate contents that were previously unconscious, its danger diminishes. The dissociation of personality, the anxious division of the day-time and the night-time sides of the psyche, cease with progressive assimilation. ~ C. G. Jung

I'd rather be at Wragby, where I can go about and be still, and not stare at anything or do any performing of any sort. This tourist performance of enjoying oneself is too hopelessly humiliating: it's such a failure. ~ D.H. Lawrence

They stopped at one of these half-tank houses ... where they were greeted by a young girl, who herself seemed like no more than a child.
- We have come to enquire after Absalom ... Have you heard nothing from him?
Nothing, she said.
When will he return? he asked.
I do not know, she said.
Will he ever return? he asked, indifferently, carelessly.
I do not know she said. She said it tonelessly, hopelessly, as one who is used to waiting, to desertion. She said it as one who expects nothing from her seventy years upon the earth. No rebellion will come out of her, no demands, no fierceness. Nothing will come out of her at all save the children of men who will use her, leave her, forget her. ~ Alan Paton

Whether we "spiritualize" our life or "secularize" our religion, whether we invite men to a spiritual banquet or simply join them at the secular one, the real life of the world, for which we are told God gave his only begotten Son, remains hopelessly beyond our religious grasp. ~ Alexander Schmemann

I find the aesthetics of the 20th century hopelessly barren. ~ Twyla Tharp

What is your name?" he asked softly.
She winced, knowing what was to come, "Calpurnia." She closed her eyes again, embarrassed by the extravagant name- a name with which no one but a hopelessly romantic mother with an unhealthy obsession with Shakespeare would have considered saddling a child.
"Calpurnia." He tested the name on his tongue. "As in, Caesar's wife?"
The blush flared higher as she nodded.
He smiled. "I must make it a point to better acquaint myself with your parents. That is a bold name, to be sure."
"It's a horrible name."
"Nonsense. Calpurnia was Empress of Rome- strong and beautiful and smarter than the men who surrounded her. She saw the future, stood strong in the face of her husband's assassination. She is a marvelous namesake. ~ Sarah MacLean

For instance, if you woke up in the middle of the night and saw a masked woman trying to crawl through your bedroom window, you might call your mother or father to help you push her back out. If you found yourself hopelessly lost in the middle of a strange city, you might ask the police to give you a ride home. And if you were an author locked in an Italian restaurant that was slowly filling up with water, you might call upon your acquaintances in the locksmith, pasta, and sponge business to come and rescue you. ~ Lemony Snicket

As I finished my rice, I sketched out the plot of a pornographic adventure film called The Massage Room. Sirien, a young girl from northern Thailand, falls hopelessly in love with Bob, an American student who winds up in the massage parlor by accident, dragged there by his buddies after a fatefully boozy evening. Bob doesn't touch her, he's happy just to look at her with his lovely, pale-blue eyes and tell her about his hometown - in North Carolina, or somewhere like that. They see each other several more times, whenever Sirien isn't working, but, sadly, Bob must leave to finish his senior year at Yale. Ellipsis. Sirien waits expectantly while continuing to satisfy the needs of her numerous clients. Though pure at heart, she fervently jerks off and sucks paunchy, mustached Frenchmen (supporting role for Gerard Jugnot), corpulent, bald Germans (supporting role for some German actor). Finally, Bob returns and tries to free her from her hell - but the Chinese mafia doesn't see things in quite the same light. Bob persuades the American ambassador and the president of some humanitarian organization opposed to the exploitation of young girls to intervene (supporting role for Jane Fonda). What with the Chinese mafia (hint at the Triads) and the collusion of Thai generals (political angle, appeal to democratic values), there would be a lot of fight scenes and chase sequences through the streets of Bangkok. At the end of the day, Bob carries her off. But in the penultimate scene, Siri ~ Michel Houellebecq

Marc had grown up, gotten away from the partying lifestyle that made him feel as if his mere presence was a gift to those around him and knew himself for what he'd truly been back then. A fool. Hopelessly in love with a friend who'd never wanted more from him than he'd already given. This weekend, Marc hoped to change that. ~ Sara Winters

When I was a teenager I felt like we were always being stereotyped as being really intense and dramatic and passionate and hopelessly romantic and excitable, now in retrospect I think I need to let you know those things are amazing. I hope you never lose those things. ~ Taylor Swift

You don't even need a computer plugged into the back of your head to be hopelessly dependent on the system. ~ Russell Eric Dobda

The language of freedom-fighting was so co-opted by the baby boomers in order to express their now-hopelessly compromised ideologies that no other generation could emulate it without a smirk. This has created an apathetic generation in the West, with young people no longer distinguishing between the old order and the new. ~ Romola Garai

Fear would never allow him anything so hopelessly silly as hope. Still, fear would keep him alive. It was the only sane emotion in an insane world. ~ Michael R. Fletcher

Fairy tales give it to us straight. They tell us something profound and essential - that the woods are real, and dark, and full of wolves. That we will, at times, find ourselves hopelessly lost in them. But these tales also tell us that we are all that we need, that we have all we need - guts, smarts, and maybe a pocketful of breadcrumbs - to find our way home. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

shy but handsome fellow is sitting at a club, sipping a cocktail, and sees a beautiful woman seated alone at the bar. After an hour of screwing up his courage he finally heads over to her and asks tentatively, "Um, hi. Would you mind if I chatted with you for a while?" She responds by yelling, at the top of her lungs, "No, I won't sleep with you tonight!" Everyone in the bar turns in unison and stares at them. Naturally, the poor guy is hopelessly ~ Various

We rushed into renewable energy without any thought. The schemes are largely hopelessly inefficient and unpleasant. I personally can't stand windmills at any price. ~ James Lovelock

Library terror - that feeling of being hopelessly overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of available books ... ~ Owen Barfield

How many vampires do you think have the stamina for immortality? They have the most dismal notions of immortality to begin with. For in becoming immortal they want all the forms of their life to be fixed as they are and incorruptible: carriages made in the same dependable fashion, clothing of the cut which suited their prime, men attired and speaking in the manner they have always understood and valued. When, in fact, all things change except the vampire himself; everything except the vampire is subject to constant corruption and distortion. Soon, with an inflexible mind, and often even with the most flexible mind, this immortality becomes a penitential sentence in a madhouse of figures and forms that are hopelessly unintelligible and without value. ~ Anne Rice

If alpha [the fine-structure constant] were bigger than it really is, we should not be able to distinguish matter from ether [the vacuum, nothingness], and our task to disentangle the natural laws would be hopelessly difficult. The fact however that alpha has just its value 1/137 is certainly no chance but itself a law of nature. It is clear that the explanation of this number must be the central problem of natural philosophy. ~ Max Born

The difference is as basic as between a professional football player and a rabid fan. One is a performer in a harsh, unique corner of reality; the other is a cultist, a passive worshiper, and occasionally a sloppy emulator of a style that fascinates him because it is so hopelessly remote from the reality he wakes up to every morning. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Sometimes I wonder about depression, is it the fear of life or the fear of death?"

"Depression is the fear of senses and thoughts, only the prolonged passion can beat it, be it.. passion for life, life after death, or anything else which is something.. in particular!"

"But depression is not a fear, it gives you courage to end your life or to live hopelessly."

"Ending one's life is the easiest way to end a battle. Going with the flow is not an achievement, though. But leading a life with all of its fortunes, aspirations, ambitions, defeats, losses, and misfortunes is the real courage.. Only because you are eligible to live, you are granted the grace of life… You have it, you can manage it; that's the secret people refuse to believe. ~ Noha Alaa El-Din

When applied to software, Sturgeon's Law is hopelessly optimistic. ~ Alberto Savinio

I'm hopelessly in love with him. ~ Rainbow Rowell

Images surround us; cavorting broadcast in the minds of others, we wear the motley tailored by their bad digestions, the shame and failure, plague pandemics and private indecencies, unpaid bills, and animal ecstasies remembered in hospital beds, our worst deeds and best intentions will not stay still, scolding, mocking, or merely chattering they assail each other, shocked at recognition. Sometimes simplicity serves, though even the static image of Saint John Baptist received prenatal attentions (six months along, leaping for joy in his mother's womb when she met Mary who had conceived the day before): once delivered he stands steady in a camel's hair loincloth at a ford in the river, morose, ascetic on locusts and honey, molesting passers-by, upbraiding the flesh on those who wear it with pleasure. And the Nazarene whom he baptized? Three years pass, in a humility past understanding: and then death, disappointed? unsuspecting? and the body left on earth, the one which was to rule the twelve tribes of Israel, and on earth, left crying out - My God, why dost thou shame me? Hopelessly ascendent in resurrection, the image is pegged on the wind by an epileptic tentmaker, his strong hands stretch the canvas of faith into a gaudy caravanserai, shelter for travelers wearied of the burning sand, lured by forgetfulness striped crimson and gold, triple-tiered, visible from afar, redolent of the east, and level and wide the sun crashes the fist of reality into that desert where the truth ~ William Gaddis

Love is only known by him who hopelessly persists in love. ~ Friedrich Schiller

They lived before the Christian age began. They paid no reverence, as was due to God. And in this number I myself am one. 40 For such deficiencies, no other crime, we all are lost yet only suffer harm through living in desire, but hopelessly. ~ Dante Alighieri

You might be surprised to know how many successful writers produced hopelessly incompetent first books. They were not wasting their time. They were learning their trade. ~ Anonymous

That somehow, this insufferable girl would become the one person I am forever, hopelessly, madly drawn to against my will and possibly even my better judgment. ~ Rachel E. Carter

I do not like the killers, and the killing bravely and well crap. I do not like the bully boys, the Teddy Roosevelt's, the Hemingways, the Ruarks. They are merely slightly more sophisticated versions of the New Jersey file clerks who swarm into the Adirondacks in the fall, in red cap, beard stubble and taut hero's grin, talking out of the side of their mouths, exuding fumes of bourbon, come to slay the ferocious white-tailed deer. It is the search for balls. A man should have one chance to bring something down. He should have his shot at something, a shining running something, and see it come a-tumbling down, all mucus and steaming blood stench and gouted excrement, the eyes going dull during the final muscle spasms. And if he is, in all parts and purposes, a man, he will file that away as a part of his process of growth and life and eventual death. And if he is perpetually, hopelessly a boy, he will lust to go do it again, with a bigger beast. ~ John D. MacDonald

Life without hope is hopelessly difficult but at the end hope can so easily make fools of us all. ~ Henry Marsh

I can't help its being gay. I have been a full-time fag for the past five years, I realized the other day. Everyone I know is gay, everything I do is gay, all my fantasies are gay, I am what Gus called those people we used to see in the discos, bars, baths, all the time - remember? Those people we used to see EVERYWHERE, every time we went out, so that you wanted to call the police and have them arrested? - I am a doomed queen.
I would LIKE to be a happily married attorney with a house in the suburbs, 2.6 kids, and a station wagon, in which we would drive every summer to see the Grand Canyon, but I'm not! I am completely, hopelessly gay! ~ Andrew Holleran

FORTRAN, the infantile disorder, by now nearly 20 years old, is hopelessly inadequate for whatever computer application you have in mind today: it is now too clumsy, too risky, and too expensive to use. ~ Edsger Dijkstra

If acorns start growing into theologians, or if women begin turning into pillars of salt, then we may wish to hypothesize about a supernatural influence. But until such time as nature becomes hopelessly unintelligible and unpredictable, we need look no further than nature itself for explanations. ~ George H. Smith

I feel as though I should say something profound, or enact some rite, or trade something to make it official. I want to transfer some trinket which would allow me to say that she's my girl, some kind of currency that proves to people that she likes me back. Something that would permit me to think about her all the time without feeling guilty or helpless or hopelessly far away. I guess I'm just so excited, I want to cage this thing like a tiny red bird so if can't fly away, so it stays the same, so it's still there the next time. For keeps, like a coin in your pocket. Like a peach pit from Mad Jack Lionel's tree. Like scribbled words in a locked suitcase. A bright balloon to tie to your bedpost. And you want to hug it close, hold it, but not so tight it bursts. ~ Craig Silvey

The body, then, is one's animal fate that has to be struggled against in some ways. At the same time, it offers experiences and sensations, concrete pleasure that the inner symbolic world lacks. No wonder man is impaled on the horns of sexual problems, why Freud saw that sex was so prominent in human life-especially in the neurotic conflicts of his patients. Sex is an inevitable component of man's confusion over the meaning of his life, a meaning split hopelessly into two realms-symbols (freedom) and body (fate). No wonder, too, that most of us never abandon entirely the early attempts of the child to use the body and its appendages as a fortress or a machine to magically coerce the world. We try to get metaphysical answers out of the body that the body-as a material thing-cannot possibly give. We try to answer the transcendent mystery of creation by experiences in one, partial, physical product of that creation. This is why the mystique of sex is so widely practiced-say, in traditional France-and at the same time is so disillusioning. It is comfortingly infantile in its indulgence and its pleasure, yet so self-defeating of real awareness and growth, if the person is using it to try to answer metaphysical questions. It then becomes a lie about reality, a screen against full consciousness. If the adult reduces the problem of life to the area of sexuality, he repeats the fetishization of the child who focuses the problem of the mother upon her genitals. Sex then becomes a scree ~ Ernest Becker

We ask the education system to expiate the sins of the rest of the society and then condemn it as hopelessly broken when it doesn't prove up to the task. ~ Christopher L. Hayes

But for me, if we're talking about romance, cassettes wipe the floor with MP3s. This has nothing to do with superstition, or nostalgia. MP3s buzz straight to your brain. That's part of what I love about them. But the rhythm of the mix tape is the rhythm of romance, the analog hum of a physical connection between two sloppy human bodies. The cassette is full of tape hiss and room tone; it's full of wasted space, unnecessary noise. Compared to the go-go-go rhythm of an MP3, mix tapes are hopelessly inefficient. You go back to a cassette the way a detective sits and pours drinks for the elderly motel clerk who tells stories about the old days
you know you might be somewhat bored, but there might be a clue in there somewhere. And if there isn't, what the hell? It's not a bad time. You know you will waste time. You plan on it. ~ Rob Sheffield

Okay, good." He leaned down and kissed my cheek, almost as an afterthought. I had no idea what possessed him to do that - honestly I didn't think he had it in him. His bravery didn't last long, though. Once he realized what he'd done, his face became a mask of terr. "Oh shit! I'm sorry! I wasn't thinking-"

I laughed. The look in the poor guy's eyes... I couldn't help it. "Relax, Svobo. It's just a peck on the cheek. It's nothing to get worked up about."

"R-Right. Yeah."

I put my hand on the nape of his neck, pulled his head to mine, and kissed him full on the lips. A good, long kiss with no ambiguity. When we disengaged, he looked hopelessly confused.
"Now, that," I said. "That you can get worked up about. ~ Andy Weir

March 28, 2012
The dreams won't subside. I don't just have them at night anymore but during the day as well. Erotic flashes of her lips, her breasts, her thighs.
My imagination does not rest. I yearn to know what she feels like, what she tastes like. My dreams make me long for more.
This woman is a virus. Every cell in my body has been infected by her. I try to remain civil, normal when I'm in her presence but she'll lick her lips or play with the top of her collar and suddenly memories of my dreams will come flooding back.
This woman is a virus that has dominated every part of my being. She attacks my lungs, squeezing the breath out of me until I'm hopelessly gasping for air.
This isn't a want. This isn't a need. This is an ache. I ache with wanting. I ache with need. I ache until the pain finally leaves me feeling numb. I long for that numbness. It's the only time I feel like…I don't feel.
I try to run away, to keep my distance but this woman is a virus. She's in my blood. Her smile stops my feet from moving. The only time she allows me to breathe freely is when I inhale her perfume. I feel myself losing control.
These dreams, this ache is slowly driving me insane.
This woman is a virus and she's eating me alive. ~ Jacqueline Francis - The Journal

I have never written on any subject unless I believed that the authorities on it were hopelessly wrong. ~ Samuel Butler

Reality is hopelessly inaccurate. ~ Douglas Adams

Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions? ~ Camille Paglia

In the shadows moving behind the whispering leaves, in a place seen through a glass darkly, Jared was there. She had been able to reach him across an ocean: she had to believe she could find him now.

"You don't understand," Ash said hopelessly.

"I understand this," Kami returned. "Think of where he is, conjure it up, bring it closer. Open a door for me, or I swear to God I will break through a wall." ~ Sarah Rees Brennan

Peter was lost. More than lost, really. Spectacularly, hopelessly, "tell the search party not to get their hopes up" lost. If there was a contest for getting lost being held at that moment, Peter wouldn't win because he wouldn't be able to find it. That's how lost he was. ~ Mark Hill

Also, people who did drugs were boring. Hopelessly, relentlessly boring. Drugs made them either too slow or too fast, and mostly they talked about drugs. ~ Cassandra Clare

Curiously, the righteous Pharisees had little historical impact, save for a brief time in a remote corner of the Roman Empire. But Jesus' disciples - an ornery, undependable, and hopelessly flawed group of men - became drunk with the power of a gospel that offered free forgiveness to the worst sinners and traitors. Those men managed to change the world. ~ Philip Yancey

He loved a lifeless thing and he was utterly and hopelessly wretched. ~ Ovid

The soap-box orators talked in the bitter cold at Marble Arch with their mackintoshes turned up around their Adam's apples, and all down the road the cad cars waited for the right easy girls, and the cheap prostitutes sat hopelessly in the shadows, and the blackmailers kept an eye open on the grass where the deeds of darkness were quietly and unsatisfactorily accomplished. ~ Graham Greene

River with no border
the forgetful hand of man

Gather harvest from the fallow land

Take all memory from it
to speak of lonely travellers
who hopelessly took orders

From armies lined within them
marching over fields and valleys

As though they were a river
not a woman nor a man
not a place for which to answer
but a cold and shapeless
journey from the sea ~ Tamara Rendell

The state, then, is by no means a power forced on society from outside; neither is it the "realization of the ethical idea," "the image and the realization of reason," as Hegel maintains. It is simply a product of society at a certain stage of evolution. It is the confession that this society has become hopelessly divided against itself, has entangled itself in irreconcilable contradictions which it is powerless to banish. In ~ Friedrich Engels

Questions about form seem as hopelessly inadequate as questions about content. ~ Robert Smithson

He was so heartrendingly perfect he took my breath away. I wondered how I could have been so lucky to have met him, much less have him sacrifice so much of his time for me. There isn't anything I wouldn't do for him. I think I fell for him the first moment I laid eyes on him, but over the weeks my feelings had grown and grown. I had to admit that I was in love- deeply, endlessly, hopelessly, head over heels in love. ~ Derrolyn Anderson

Next time I'll try getting captured. Just to keep things interesting." He tossed Mal a rifle. "Shall we?"
"I can't tell who's who!" I protested.
"We're the side that's hopelessly outnumbered. ~ Leigh Bardugo