“Beautiful women, as experienced men know,
Are but darkness wrapped in dazzling light aglow.
A life of friv'lous youth and worried age,
Its futile course to futile death will flow.”
A Young Soul
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Al-Mutanabbi 13
Arabic poet from the Abbasid era 915–965Related quotes

“If the meaning of life is futility, human longevity loses its luster.”
Google It: Total Information Awareness, 2016

Yukio Mishima on Hagakure : The Samurai Ethic and Modern Japan (1977) as translated by Kathryn Sparling, p. 105; Mishima's commentary on the sayings of Yamamoto Tsunetomo.

“While it is foolish to deny the dark around us, it is futile to exaggerate it.”
Prologue (p. 8)
Nifft the Lean (1982)

“I felt age within me. Distance.
The futility of wandering. Torpor.”
"Lot's Wife"
Poems New and Collected (1998), A Large Number (1976)
Context: I felt age within me. Distance.
The futility of wandering. Torpor.
I looked back setting my bundle down.
I looked back not knowing where to set my foot.
Serpents appeared on my path,
spiders, field mice, baby vultures.
They were neither good nor evil now — every living thing
was simply creeping or hopping along in the mass panic.
“maybe death
isn't darkness, after all,
but so much light
wrapping itself around us”
Source: Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays

Death’s Door (p. 229)
Short fiction, Belladonna Nights and Other Stories (2021)

“Futility is the defining characteristic of life. Pain is proof of existence”
Thomas Covenant

“Life is futile unless it be directed towards a definite goal.”
Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman (1927)