31 Quotes Tagged: frustration

Our frustration is greater when we have much and want more than when we have nothing and want some. We are less dissatisfied when we lack many things than when we seem to lack but one thing.

As long as Nelson was socked into baseball statistics or that guitar or even the rock records that threaded their sound through all the fibers of the house, his occupation of the room down the hall was no more uncomfortable than the persistence of Rabbit's own childhood in an annex of his brain; but when the stuff with hormones and girls and cars and beers began, Harry wanted out of fatherhood.

If your success is not amazing to your critics, it disturbs, infuriates, and frustrates them, and if they're not careful; may go hang themselves and go to hell.

He had been haunted his whole life by a mild
case of claustrophobia — the vestige of a childhood incident he had never quite overcome.
Langdon’s aversion to closed spaces was by no means debilitating, but it had always frustrated him.
It manifested itself in subtle ways. He avoided enclosed sports like racquetball or squash, and he had
gladly paid a small fortune for his airy, high-ceilinged Victorian home even though economical faculty
housing was readily available. Langdon had often suspected his attraction to the art world as a young
boy sprang from his love of museums’ wide open spaces.

If you were coming in the Fall,
I'd brush the Summer by
With half a smile and half a spurn,
As Housewives do a Fly.

If I could see you in a year,
I'd wind the months in balls — And put them each in separate Drawers,
For fear the numbers fuse — If only Centuries, delayed,
I'd count them on my Hand,
Subtracting, till my fingers dropped
Into Van Diemen's land.

If certain, when this life was out,
That yours and mine should be,
I ’d toss it yonder like a rind,
And taste eternity.

But, now, uncertain of the length
Of this, that is between,
It goads me, like the Goblin Bee,
That will not state — its sting.

I hate parties.
And a wedding is the biggest party of all.
All the guests arrived and Orpheus is taking a shower.
He's always taking a shower when the guests arrive so he doesn't have to greet them.
Then I have to greet them.

A wedding is for daughters and fathers. The mothers all dress up, trying to look like young women. But a wedding is for a father and daughter. They stop being married to each other on that day.

I always thought there would be more interesting people at my wedding.

I can't beat you, I can't join you.

Death is more merciful than hope itself! There is nothing surprising in this, for death is divinely appointed, while hope is the creation of human folly. Both end in frustration. Am I destined to lead a life of endless frustration?
-(The Beginning and the End)

Did you seriously just stamp your foot? I thought girls only did that on TV.

"One Friday, after a particularly shattering day at the office, in which my code reviews had all come back red with snotty comments, and my manager, Peter, had gently inquired about the pace of my refactoring ("perhaps not sufficiently turbo-charged"), I arrived home in a swirl of angst, with petulance and self-recrimination locked in ritual combat to determine which would ruin my night. On the phone with Beoreg, I ordered my food with a rattling sigh, and when his brother arrived at my door, he carried something different: a more compact tub containing a fiery red broth and not one but two slabs of bread for dipping. "Secret spicy," he whispered. The soup was so hot it burned the frustration out of my, and I went to bed feeling like a fresh plate, scalded and scraped clean."

You can't just pick up a gun and become a gunfighter, or go off and explore for a new world, or pull a sword out of a stone, or rescue a damsel in distress, or — so we play games and we read books because the world isn't the world we thought we were supposed to get, the world we thought we'd been promised by somebody. Because things didn't turn out the way they were supposed to. So we go someplace else.

MOTHER IS WATER

I wish I could
Shower your head with flowers
And anoint your feet with my tears,
For I know I have caused you
So much heartache, frustration and despair –
Throughout my youthful years.
I wish I could give you
The remainder of my life
To add to yours,
Or simply erase
The lines on your face,
And mend all that has been torn.
For next to God,
You are the fire
That has given light
To the flame in each of my eyes.
You are the fountain
That nourished my growth,
And from your chalice –
Gave me life.
Without the wetness of your love,
The fragrance of your water,
Or the trickling sounds of
Your voice,
I shall always feel
thirsty.

Am I ever angry or frustrated? I only feel angry sometimes when I see waste, when things that we waste are what people need, things that would save them from dying. Frustrated? No, never.

"The Scholars
"Bald heads forgetful of their sins,
Old, learned, respectable bald heads
Edit and annotate the lines
That young men, tossing on their beds,
Rhymed out in love’s despair
To flatter beauty’s ignorant ear.

They’ll cough in the ink to the world’s end;
Wear out the carpet with their shoes
Earning respect; have no strange friend;
If they have sinned nobody knows.
Lord, what would they say
Should their Catullus walk that way?

Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.