Felix Adler Quotes

I've come to the conclusion that it's not really possible to help others.

Because I can't hit bottom, I can't be saved.

We drift down time, clutching at straws. But what good's a brick to a drowning man?

hope is like a piece of string when you’re drowning; it just isn’t enough to get you out by itself.

Powerlessness frustrates; absolute powerlessness frustrates absolutely. Absolute frustration is a dangerous emotion to run a world with.

If there's something I hate the most, it's feeling helpless, powerless.

But you might as well bid a man struggling in the water, rest within arm's length of the shore! I must reach it first, and then I'll rest.

Drowning men, it is said, cling to wisps of straw.

For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril;--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.

As she watched all of this, Liesel was certain that these were the poorest souls alive. That's what she wrote about them . . . Some looked appealingly at those who had come to observe their humiliation, this prelude to their deaths. Others pleaded for someone, anyone to step forward and catch them in their arms. No one did.

Choke me in the shallow water before I get too deep.

Nobody wanted your dance, Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your floundering Drowning life and your effort to save yourself, Treading water, dancing the dark turmoil, Looking for something to give.

What can we give a child when there is nothing left?

It was like trying to bail out an ocean of water with a teaspoon.

There's no point in comforting words, in telling her she'll be all right. She's no fool. Her hand reaches out and I clutch it like a lifeline. As if it's me who's dying instead of Rue.

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.

The man in ecstasy and the man drowning: both raise their arms.

I feel helpless, hopeless, too low to call out, too weak to think. Impotent tears dribble down.

I have spent my life falling. Not the kind that Tiny's talking about. He's talking about love. I'm talking about life. In my kind of falling, there's no landing. There's only hitting the ground. Hard. Dead, or wanting to be dead. So the whole time you're falling, it's the worst feeling in the world. Because you feel you have no control over it. Because you know how it ends.

We just feel like we don't have the means, To rise above and beat it. So we keep waiting, Waiting on the world to change...

I made no more protests. What was the use of struggling against fate

In this world, who can do a thing, will not; And who would do it, cannot, I perceive: Yet the will's somewhat — somewhat, too, the power — And thus we half-men struggle.

"I just don't know," I said, my voice sounding bumby, not like mine, "how do you help someone who doesn't want your help. What do you do when you can't do anything?"

I'm losing control."-Brittany Mamacita, I've already lost it."-Alex

She gave me this look – she might have been watching from a lifeboat as the ship went down. Or maybe it was the other way around.