James L. Petigru Quotes

There is nothing you can do about it but sit back and watch.

Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war.

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.

It's not always easy to stand aside and be unable to do anything except record the sufferings around one.

Bad things are not the worst things that can happen to us. Nothing is the worst thing that can happen to us!

I don't believe in expending energy on something you can't do anything about. If there was some easy way of fixing things, I'd probably do it.

No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing.

The most common reason we stumble into the delusion of powerlessness is that we're afraid of what other people would do or say or feel if we were to act as we wanted.

I'm able to do nothing.

It's never fun to sit and watch, especially when you think you could be impacting the game.

Don't imagine that a word you say is going to make a blind bit of difference.

Only being able to watch is the hardest thing for any footballer.

I cannot bear to live where there is so much injustice and I cannot do something about it. What kind of a torturous life is that?

That speaking the words, even if true, had little power to change the inevitable or even make him feel much better.

Must helpless man, in ignorance sedate, roll darkly down the torrent of his fate.

what's life good fer anyhow? The minute you crawl into the world for no good reason of yer own, it's got you licked four ways from the ace.

I can’t fight the sun. I can only watch helplessly as it drags me into a day that I’ve been dreading for months. Katniss Everdeen

She knows herself to be at the mercy of events, and she knows by now that events have no mercy.

Being an adult means accepting those situations where no action is possible.

Men are able to assist fortune but not to thwart her. They can weave her designs, but they cannot destroy them.

For some reason focusing on destruction and mortality is more poetically exciting to me than hope and love.

He didnt know what was defeating him, but he sensed it was something he could not cope with, something that was far beyond his power to control or even at this point in time comprehend.

he looked to her like an absurd twentieth-century Hamlet, an indecisive figure so mesmerized by onrushing tragedy that he was helpless to divert its course or alter it in any way.

And were your back as broad as heaven, and your purse full of gold, and did your compassion reach from here to hell itself, there is nothing you can do.

But I remember seeing a mess of leaves suddenly go skittering in the wind and into the creek, then floating rapidly down the creek towards the sea, making me feel a nameless horror even then of 'Oh my God, we're all being swept away to sea no matter what we know or say or do