The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

The true philosopher is a man who says "All right," and goes to sleep in his armchair.

What do we any of us have but our illusions? And what do we ask of others but that we be allowed to keep them?

We are all resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to.

Some of these guys will go on walking long after the laws of biochemistry and handicapping have gone by the boards. There was a guy last year that crawled for two miles at four miles an hour after both of his feet cramped up at the same time, you remember reading about that? Look at Olson, he's worn out but he keeps going. That goddam Barkovitch is running on high-octane hate and he just keeps going and he's as fresh as a daisy. I don't think I can do that. I'm not tired -not really tired- yet. But I will be." The scar stood out on the side of his haggard face as he looked ahead into the darkness "And I think... when I get tired enough... I think I'll just sit down

La verdad, es que en el fondo soy un fatalista. Si a uno le llega la hora, da lo mismo un Boeing que la puntual maceta que se derrumba sobre uno desde un séptimo piso

He saw it for the first time: on the day he died he would be wearing unmatching socks, there would be unanswered e-mails, and in the hovel he called home there would still be shirts missing cuff buttons, a malfunctioning light in the hall, and unpaid bills, uncleared attics, dead flies, friends waiting for a reply and lovers he had not owned up to.

Common man's patience will bring him more happiness than common man's power.

Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhereThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;The best lack all conviction, while the worstAre full of passionate intensity.

I have produced no children of my own and my husband is dead," she replied, an acid tone in her voice. "Thus I am more to be pitied than revered. I am expected to give up the shop to my nephew, who will then be able to afford to bring a very good wife from Pakistan. In exchange, I will be given houseroom and no doubt, the honor of taking care of several small children of other family members."The Major was silent. He was at once appalled and also reluctant to hear any more. This was why people usually talked about the weather.

So one must be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox...

The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.

A person could stop a specific thing, but they couldn’t stop change in general. Rivers can’t run backward. Yet, he felt there must be an alternative, neither willfulness nor resignation. He couldn’t put words to it. All he knew was, neither of them had changed their minds and neither of them could find anything more to say.

All history is one continuous pestilence. There is no truth and there is no illusion. There is nowhere to appeal and nowhere to go.

Resignation is what kills people. Once they've rejected resignation, humans gain the privilege of making humanity their footpath.

What do you mean, 'Angle of Repose?' she asked me when I dreamed we were talking about Grandmother's life, and I said it was the angle at which a man or woman finally lies down. I suppose it is; and yet ... I thought when I began, and still think, that there was another angle in all those years when she was growing old and older and very old, and Grandfather was matching her year for year, a separate line that did not intersect with hers. They were vertical people, they lived by pride, and it is only by the ocular illusion of perspective that they can be said to have met. But he had not been dead two months when she lay down and died too, and that may indicate that at that absolute vanishing point they did intersect. They had intersected for years, for more than he especially would ever admit.

To know there is a better story for your life and to choose something other is like choosing to die.

Ashtadukht slumped and let thenightingale’s song flood her brain. She knew that empty tone, that defeatedoutlook; she knew it intimately. Even now, it burned in her as limply as asnuffed flame. Passion burned with unchecked verve, devoured its fuel, andsputtered out. Despair required no upkeep; it heaped barely-glowing coals inthe back of your mind and fuelled itself.

I made the mistake of using my earned sick time at the W. M. Keck Observatory for essential surgery. When I returned to work the management team demanded my resignation numerous times, citing my essential surgery as a reason. The W. M. Keck Observatory taught me that using earned sick time in the USA may put your future employment at significant risk.

Resignation requires will, and will requires decision, and decision requires belief, and belief requires that there is something to believe in!

Just as the earth that bears the man who tills and digs it, to bear those who speak ill of them, is a quality of the highest respect.

One way to be sure you are not making the wrong decision, is to lookvertically upwards

For too long I have played on the stage of lucidity, and I have lost. Now I need to accustom my eyes to the falling darkness. I need to contemplate the natural slumber of all things, which the light calls forth, yet also causes to tire. Life must begin in darkness. Its powers of germination lie hidden. Every day has its night, every light has its shadow.I cannot be asked to accept these shadows gladly. It is enough that I accept them.

There was something in her eyes that made me trust her. Maybe it was because they held the same cynicism, the same world-weariness I saw in my own every morning when I looked at myself in the mirror.

My life has become a dismal sigh fettered by pangs of grief and anguished weeping.

I took a heavenly ride through our silenceI knew the moment had arrivedFor killing the past and coming back to life".

As her fate, she accepted the world of ice, shining, shimmering, dead; she resigned herself to the triumph of glaciers and the death of the world.

So many amazing opportunities arise when a chapter of our life ends. When we resign from a job that we weren't happy in, or even get fired, it's actually a blessing because a better experience is waiting to happen. It's all about perspective.

Have to wait my turn.Have to follow the rules.Have to smile like I agree.Have toHave toHave toHave toChoose him.

If {Death} comes for you?” he said. “Would you be so sanguine then?” She laughed and the pensiveness was gone. “No indeed. I will curse the stars and go down fighting. But it will still have been a wonderful thing, to cross the mist.

What an unilateral life, when from the material of a renunciation, we must fashion something we love.

I mean that I discovered there's a difference between acceptance and reignation - one is positive, the other is negative. Acceptance opens the door of hope wide, while resignation slams it shut. One says God is good and loves us, and the other says He is harsh and doesn't care. Abraham chose to 'accept' God's will, knowing full well that God loved him and not only wanted the best for him, but knew exactly what that 'best' would be. Neither is easy when it means relinquishing the desires of our heart, but 'acceptance' promises that God will bless our obedience with a greater good. 'Resignation,' however, can sever our relationship with God, which leaves us on our own, resulting in darkness and despair.

Careers increasingly come with a reboot button, and companies that realize this early possess a competitive talent advantage

I think it is a duty I owe to my profession and to my sex to show that a woman has a right to the practice of her profession and cannot be condemned to abandon it merely because she marries. I cannot conceive how women's colleges, inviting and encouraging women to enter professions can be justly founded or maintained denying such a prin

All right, then, I'll go to hell.

She could, she thinks, have entered a different life. She could have had a life as potent and dangerous as literature itself.

Darkness enveloped us again, and for the first time in years, I welcomed it.

Despair? I don't despair. I have never once in my life despaired anything. I make a point not to go further than resignation.

Even if the powers destroy us," he said, "who are we, to condemn them? As well might a fleeting word judge the speaker that forms it. Perhaps they use us for their own high ends, use our strength and our weakness, our joy and our pain, in some theme inconceivable to us, and excellent." But I protested, "What theme could justify such waste, such futility? And how can we help judging; and how otherwise can we judge than by the light of our own hearts, by which we judge ourselves? It would be base to praise the Star Maker, knowing that he was too insensitive to care about the fate of his worlds." Bvalltu was silent in his mind for a moment. Then he looked up, searching among the smoke-clouds for a daytime star. And then he said to me in his mind, "If he saved all the worlds, but tormented just one man, would you forgive him? Or if he was a little harsh only to one stupid child? What has our pain to do with it, or our failure? Star Maker! It is a good word, though we can have no notion of its meaning. Oh, Star Maker, even if you destroy me, I must praise you. Even if you torture my dearest. Even if you torment and waste all your lovely worlds, the little figments of your imagination, yet I must praise you. For if you do so, it must be right. In me it would be wrong, but in you it must be right.

All over the place, from the popular culture to the propaganda system, there is constant pressure to make people feel that they are helpless, that the only role they can have is to ratify decisions and to consume.

But she knew, though very vaguely, that she was crying, because hope hurts terribly when it breaks through the resignation in which you have lived for days.

Stay passed out, that's the right dope. There ain't any cool willow trees- except you grow your own in a bottle.

What give all that is tragic, whatever its form, the characteristic of the sublime, is the first inkling of the knowledge that the world and life can give no satisfaction, and are not worth our investment in them. The tragic spirit consists in this. Accordingly it leads to resignation.

I've made peace with myself.Good for you. That's the hardest war of all to win.Didn't say I won. Just stopped fighting.

There is something deeply attractive, at least to quite a lot of people, about squalor, misery, and vice. They are regarded as more authentic, and certainly more exciting, than cleanliness, happiness, and virtue.

I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do.

Welcome death quoth the rat when the trap fell.

A wise man cares not for what he cannot have.

That's best Which God sends. 'Twas His will: it is mine.

Job feels the rod Yet blesses God.