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1 " One salutary development in recent ethical theorizing is the widespread recognition that no short argument will serve to eliminate any of the major metaethical positions. Such theories have to weave together views in semantics, epistemology, moral psychology and metaphysics. The comprehensive, holistic character of much recent theorizing suggests the futility of fastening on just a single sort of argument to refute a developed version of realism or antirealism. No one any longer thinks that ethical naturalism can be undermined in a single stroke by the open question argument, or that appeal to the descriptive semantics of moral discourse is sufficient to refute noncognitivism. "
2 " Like everything else, we know the futility of money only when we have more than enough of it. "
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3 " We go to partake of death. And it is in these moments, before the blades are unsheated, before blood wets the ground and screams fill the air, that the futility descends upon us all. Without our armor, we would all weep. "
― Steven Erikson , Deadhouse Gates (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #2)
4 " And here, according to Trout, was the reason human beings could not reject ideas because they were bad: " Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enmity. " The ideas Earthlings held didn't matter for hundreds of thousands of years, since they couldn't do much about them anyway. Ideas might as well be badges as anything." They even had a saying about the futility of ideas: 'If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.' " And then Earthlings discovered tools. Suddenly agreeing with friends could be a form of suicide or worse. But agreements went on, not for the sake of common sense or decency or self-preservation, but for friendliness." Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead. And even when they built computers to do some thinking for them, they designed them not so much for wisdom as for friendliness. So they were doomed. Homicidal beggars could ride. "
5 " Unless, of course, there's no such thing as chance;...in which case, we should either-optimistically-get up and cheer, because if everything is planned in advance, then we all have a meaning and are spared the terror of knowing ourselves to be random, without a why; or else, of course, we might-as pessimists-give up right here and now, understanding the futility of thought decision action, since nothing we think makes any difference anyway, things will be as they will. Where, then, is optimism? In fate or in chaos? "
― Salman Rushdie , Midnight's Children
6 " While Leonidas was preparing to make his stand, a Persian envoy arrived. The envoy explained to Leonidas the futility of trying to resist the advance of the Great King's army and demanded that the Greeks lay down their arms and submit to the might of Persia. Leonidas laconically told Xerxes, " Come and get them. "
7 " This past year - if you'd have tried, you'd have seen even more clearly the futility of trying to change the world without the efforts of everybody else on Earth. You saw and smelled and drank the evidence of six billion disasters that can only be mended by six billion people. || A thousands years ago this wouldn't have been the case. If human beings had suddenly vanished a thousand years ago, the planet would have healed overnight with no damage. Maybe a few lumps where the pyramids sand. One hundred years ago - or even fifty years ago - the world would have healed itself just fine in the absence of people. But not now. We crossed the line. the only thing that can keep the planet turning smoothly now is human free will forged into effort. Nothing else. That's why the world has seemed so large in the past few years, and time so screwy. It's because Earth is now totally ours. "
― Douglas Coupland , Girlfriend in a Coma
8 " Married life had taught him the futility of arguing with a female in a dark-brown mood. "
― Isaac Asimov , Foundation and Empire (Foundation #2)
9 " Married life had taught Toran the futility of arguing with a female in dark-brown mood. He shrugged, and left her. "
10 " The University Student who accessed JoyI once asked several university students at a mindfulness workshop why they were so stressed. Below is a conversation I had with a young student:“Why do you get yourself so stressed out?” “Because I have so much work to do in order to pass my masters degree”, replied the student.“Is the degree important to you?”“Of course it’s important. If I pass, I’ll have the chance to work for a law firm and eventually become a junior partner”.“Why do you want to become a junior partner?”“So that I can work my way up the ladder, have more influence and earn a lot of money”. “Why do you want to have a lot of influence and earn a lot of money?” I asked.“If I have a lot of money and influence, I will have enough financial muscle to provide everything for my future wife and children.” “Do you have your own family yet?” “Not at the moment. I’m single but I want to prepare myself”, the student replied. “So, why do you want a partner and children?” “Because, I’ll feel complete and satisfied”, the student replied. “Do you mean that you will feel happier if you have all of these things?”“Yeah, that’s it! I want to be happy and feel good about myself. I want happiness”. “Why don’t you just decide to be happy right now rather than spending most of your time desperately hoping to find happiness in something that hasn’t happened yet? You can still create your own reality and meet your dream partner but you can start to feel happy now before you meet her”.This conversation helped the student to see the futility of booking appointments in the future to be happy, when he could consciously make that choice in the present moment and also that he would have a much better chance of attracting his dream career and partner if he was vibrating joy in the present moment. The wonderful realization of mindful living is that we do not need an excuse to be happy and serene. Being joyful comes as a result of being mindful. Nothing more is required from us apart from honouring the nowness of life. What a startling revelation!! "
― Christopher Dines , Mindfulness Meditation: Bringing Mindfulness into Everyday Life
11 " Let me here remind you that the essence of dramatic tragedy is not unhappiness. It resides in the solemnity of the remorseless working of things. This inevitableness of destiny can only be illustrated in terms of human life by incidents which in fact involve unhappiness. For it is by them that the futility of escape can be made evident in the drama. This remorseless inevitableness is what pervades scientific thought. The laws of physics are the decrees of fate. "
― Alfred North Whitehead
12 " What we perceive as dejection over the futility of life is sometimes greed, which the monastic tradition perceives as rooted in a fear of being vulnerable in a future old age, so that one hoards possessions in the present. But most often our depression is unexpressed anger, and it manifests itself as the sloth of disobedience, a refusal to keep up the daily practices that would keep us in good relationship to God and to each other. For when people allow anger to build up inside, they begin to perform daily tasks resentfully, focusing on the others as the source of their troubles. Instead of looking inward to find the true reason for their sadness - with me , it is usually a fear of losing an illusory control - they direct it outward, barreling through the world, impatient and even brutal with those they encounter, especially those who are closest to them. "
― Kathleen Norris , The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and Women's Work
13 " When we forgive, our emotions evolve and reveal the futility of carrying the baggage of anger, antipathy, hostility and hatred. We emerge out of those dark corridors of fear, angst and insecurity. "
― Balroop Singh
14 " It is humor's job to laugh at the futility oft engendered by the improbable "
15 " We are children, perhaps, at the very moment when we know that it is as children that God loves us - not because we have deserved his love and not in spite of our undeserving; not because we try and not because we recognize the futility of our trying; but simply because he has chosen to love us. We are children because he is our father; and all of our efforts, fruitful and fruitless, to do good, to speak truth, to understand, are the efforts of children who, for all their precocity, are children still in that before we loved him, he loved us, as children, through Jesus Christ our lord. "
― Frederick Buechner , The Magnificent Defeat
16 " Perhaps the greatest charm of tramp-life is the absence of monotony. In Hobo Land the face of life is protean—an ever changing phantasmagoria, where the impossible happens and the unexpected jumps out of the bushes at every turn of the road. The hobo never knows what is going to happen the next moment; hence, he lives only in the present moment. He has learned the futility of telic endeavor, and knows the delight of drifting along with the whimsicalities of Chance "
― Jack London , The Road
17 " Here you can easily understand the futility of ambitions and achievements, futility of success and failures, futility of wealth and possessions. "
― Girdhar Joshi , Some Mistakes Have No Pardon
18 " She had very much looked forward to a word in private with him. But she forgot, as she usually did, the silence that always came between them in these latter years, whenever they found themselves alone.The queer sensation in her chest, however, was all too familiar, that mix of pleasure and pain, never one without the other.She could have done without those feelings. She would have happily gone her entire life never experiencing the pangs of longing and the futility of regret. He made her human—or as human as she was capable of being. And being human was possibly her least favorite aspect of life. "
― Sherry Thomas , A Study in Scarlet Women (Lady Sherlock, #1)
19 " And thus, as a closer and still closer intimacy admitted me more unreservedly into recesses if his spirit, the more bitterly did I perceive the futility of all attempt at cheering a mind from which darkness, as if an inherent positive quality, poured forth upon all objects of the moral and physical universe in one unceasing radiation of gloom. "
― Edgar Allan Poe
20 " ...knew the futility of agonizing over why things had transpired as they had. What could have happened, did. "
― Raymond E. Feist , King of Foxes (Conclave of Shadows, #2)