George Eliot Quotes

I'm able to do nothing.

The worst pain a man can have is to know much and be impotent to act.

For death is not the worst, but when one wants to die and is not able even to have that.

If I had the use of my body, I would throw it out the window.

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

I'm beyond the point of thinking I'm powerful enough to solve my own problems.

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

I hate being helpless, and I hate having to ask people to do things for me.

There is nothing harder for me than to sit at the sideline, not being able to be productive.

It’s all about control. Control is illusory. No matter what university you go to, no matter what degree you hold, if your goal is to become master of your own destiny, you have more to learn. Parkinson’s is a perfect metaphor for lack of control. Every unwanted movement in my hand or arm, every twitch that I cannot anticipate or arrest, is a reminder that even in the domain of my own being, I am not calling the shots. I tried to exert control by drinking myself to a place of indifference, which just exacerbated the sense of miserable hopelessness.

Helplessness is such a rotten feeling. There's nothing you can do about it. Being helpless is like being paralyzed. It's sickness. The cure calls for a monumental effort to stand up and start walking somewhere, anywhere. But that takes some doing.

It is an appalling thing to feel all one possesses drain away.

What is a firm hand to me, of what use to me is this astonishing power if I cannot change the order of things, if I cannot make the sun set in the east, that suffering diminish and that beings no longer die?

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.

Ham smiled. "Cett's going to be furious." Elend shrugged. "He's a paraplegic. What's he going to do? Bite us?

I say to myself that I mustn't let myself be cut off in there, and yet the moment I enter my bag is taken out of my hand, I'm pushed in, shepherded, nursed and above all cut off, alone. Whitehall envelops me.

Imagine how frustrating it is, being completely locked up and watching your family leave, your wife and children, and not being able to do anything about it.

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...

The sense of paralysis proceeds not so much out of the mammoth size of the problem but out of the puniness of the purpose.

You can't take responsibility for everything. You can't have that kind of control. At some point, it's all out of our hands.

They say that life's a game, & then they take the board away.

I cannot describe to you the despairing sensation of trying to do something for a man who seems incapable or unwilling to do anything further for himself.

I'm no good at anything. Not men. Not social skills. Not work. Nothing.

I literally cannot even. I can't even. I am unable to even. I have lost my ability to even. I am so unable to even.

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.