Quotes about exhaustion (489 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Edison was by far the most successful and, probably, the last exponent of the purely empirical method of investigation. Everything he achieved was the result of persistent trials and experiments often performed at random but always attesting extraordinary vigor and resource. Starting from a few known elements, he would make their combinations and permutations, tabulate them and run through the whole list, completing test after test with incredible rapidity until he obtained a clue. His mind was dominated by one idea, to leave no stone unturned, to exhaust every possibility.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

Idea , Success

“If you hate, then you have been defeated.
Do not allow anyone to diminish you.
Do not fall down to their level that you allow them to lower yourself enough to hate them.
It is exhausting to hate so much…not to mention toxic.
It has caused a prodigious amount of problems that negatively affect you, however it has never solved anything yet.
Do not squander a second of your time to even allow that person to occupy even a tiny part of your mind at all.
Often we hate that which we fear the most.
Let it flow out of you.
Then see how much lighter you feel in your mind, body and soul.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Soul , Personality , Problem , Hate

“Accustom yourself to look first to the dreadful consequences of failure; then fix your eye on the glorious prize which is before you; and when your strength begins to fail, and your spirits are well nigh exhausted, let the animating view rekindle your resolution, and call forth in renewed vigour the fainting energies of your soul.”

William Wilberforce (1759–1833) English politician

Soul , Failure , Animals

“One day I went alone to the river to enjoy myself as usual. When I was a short distance from the masonry, however, I was horrified to observe that the water had risen and was carrying me along swiftly.… The pressure against my chest was great and I was barely able to keep my head above the surface.… Slowly and gradually I became exhausted and unable to withstand the strain longer. Just as I was about to let go, to be dashed against the rocks below, I saw in a flash of light a familiar diagram illustrating the hydraulic principle that the pressure of a fluid in motion is proportionate to the area exposed and automatically I turned on my left side. As if by magic, the pressure was reduced.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

My Inventions (1919)

Light , Water

“One basic principle must be the absolute rule for the S. S. men. We must be honest, decent, loyal, and comradely to members of our own blood and nobody else. What happens to a Russian and a Czech does not interest me in the least. What the nations can offer in the way of good blood of our type we will take, if necessary by kidnapping their children and raising them here with us. Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture: otherwise it is of no interest to me. Whether ten thousand Russian females fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as the anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished. We shall never be tough and heartless where it is not necessary, that is clear. We, Germans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these human animals. But it is a crime against our blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them. When somebody comes up to me and says: 'I cannot dig the anti-tank ditch with women and children, it is inhuman, for it would kill them,' then I have to say: 'You are the murderer of your own blood, because if the anti-tank ditch is not dug German soldiers will die, and they are the sons of German mothers. They are our own blood….”

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945) Nazi officer, Commander of the SS

Our concern, our duty, is our people and our blood. We can be indifferent to everything else. I wish the S.S. to adopt this attitude towards the problem of all foreign, non-Germanic peoples, especially Russians....
The Posen speech to SS officers (6 October 1943)
1940s

Death , Women , Men , Children

“And just as he who, with exhausted breath,
having escaped from the sea to shore,
turns to the perilous waters and gazes.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto I, lines 22–24 (tr. Mandelbaum).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Water , Sea

“Where the army is, prices are high; when prices rise the wealth of the people is exhausted.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter II · Waging War

People , Wealth

“A day of worry is more exhausting than a day of work.”

John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury (1834–1913) British banker, Liberal politician, philanthropist, scientist and polymath

“Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Graduation , Fear , Learning

“WANG XI Opponents cannot exhaust you.”

Sun Tzu book The Art of War

The Art of War: Complete Texts and Commentaries

“Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”

George Orwell Why I Write

"Why I Write," Gangrel (Summer 1946)

Pain , Books , Understanding

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”

George Orwell book Politics and the English Language

Source: Politics and the English Language (1946)

“Trying to do the Lord's work in your own strength is the most confusing, exhausting, and tedious of all work. But when you are filled with the Holy Spirit, then the ministry of Jesus just flows out of you.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

“To worry is to become accessible, unwittingly accessible. And once you worry you cling to anything out of desperation; and once you cling you are bound to get exhausted or to exhaust whoever or whatever you are clinging to.”

Carlos Castaneda book Journey to Ixtlan

Source: Journey to Ixtlan

“Only those are happy who never think or, rather, who only think about life's bare necessities, and to think about such things means not to think at all. True thinking resembles a demon who muddies the spring of life or a sickness which corrupts its roots. To think all the time, to raise questions, to doubt your own destiny, to feel the weariness of living, to be worn out to the point of exhaustion by thoughts and life, to leave behind you, as symbols of your life's drama, a trail of smoke and blood — all this means you are so unhappy that reflection and thinking appear as a curse causing a violent revulsion in you.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

On the Heights of Despair (1934)

Life , Feeling , Spring , Question

“Dear rulers … I maintain that the civil authorities are under obligation to compel the people to send their children to school. … If the government can compel such citizens as are fit for military service to bear spear and rifle, to mount ramparts, and perform other martial duties in time of war, how much more has it a right to compel the people to send their children to school, because in this case we are warring with the devil, whose object it is secretly to exhaust our cities and principalities of their strong men.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

letter to the German rulers (1524), as quoted in The History of Compulsory Education in New England, John William Perrin, 1896

Men , War , Children , People

“It is the great beauty of our science, chemistry, that advancement in it, whether in a degree great or small, instead of exhausting the subjects of research, opens the doors to further and more abundant knowledge, overflowing with beauty and utility.”

Michael Faraday (1791–1867) English scientist

Experimental Researches in Electricity, Vol. 2 (1834) p. 257 http://books.google.com/books?id=XuITAAAAQAAJ&vq=257&pg=PA257

Beauty , Knowledge , Science

“The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

T. H. White book The Book of Merlyn

The Book of Merlyn (1977)

Depressing , Love , Lie , World

“One artist sees himself as the creator of an independent spiritual world; he hoists onto his shoulders the task of creating this world, of peopling it and of bearing the all-embracing responsibility for it; but he crumples beneath it, for a mortal genius is not capable of bearing such a burden. Just as man in general, having declared himself the centre of existence, has not succeeded in creating a balanced spiritual system. And if misfortune overtakes him, he casts the blame upon the age-long disharmony of the world, upon the complexity of today's ruptured soul, or upon the stupidity of the public.
Another artist, recognizing a higher power above, gladly works as a humble apprentice beneath God's heaven; then, however, his responsbility for everything that is written or drawn, for the souls which perceive his work, is more exacting than ever. But, in return, it is not he who has created this world, not he who directs it, there is no doubt as to its foundations; the artist has merely to be more keenly aware than others of the harmony of the world, of the beauty and ugliness of the human contribution to it, and to communicate this acutely to his fellow-men. And in misfortune, and even at the depths of existence — in destitution, in prison, in sickness — his sense of stable harmony never deserts him.
But all the irrationality of art, its dazzling turns, its unpredictable discoveries, its shattering influence on human beings — they are too full of magic to be exhausted by this artist's vision of the world, by his artistic conception or by the work of his unworthy fingers.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Nobel lecture (1970)

Men , God , People , Age

“The meaning of the living words that come out of the experiences of great hearts can never be exhausted by any one system of logical interpretation. They have to be endlessly explained by the commentaries of individual lives, and they gain an added mystery in each new revelation.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Preface
Sādhanā : The Realisation of Life http://www.spiritualbee.com/spiritual-book-by-tagore/ (1916)
Context: The meaning of the living words that come out of the experiences of great hearts can never be exhausted by any one system of logical interpretation. They have to be endlessly explained by the commentaries of individual lives, and they gain an added mystery in each new revelation. To me the verses of the Upanishads and the teachings of Buddha have ever been things of the spirit, and therefore endowed with boundless vital growth; and I have used them, both in my own life and in my preaching, as being instinct with individual meaning for me, as for others, and awaiting for their confirmation, my own special testimony, which must have its value because of its individuality.

Heart

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred, and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find — this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years, as a result of dictatorship.
But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.”

George Orwell book Politics and the English Language

Politics and the English Language (1946)

Bad luck , People , Suffering , Knowledge

“A small man can be just as exhausted as a great man.”

Arthur Miller book Death of a Salesman

Linda
Source: Death of a Salesman (1949)

“Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.”

Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness

Source: The Conquest of Happiness

Indecision

“Having made the decision, do not revise it unless some new fact comes to your knowledge. Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.”

Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness

Source: The Conquest of Happiness

Knowledge , Decision , Indecision

“I feel occasionally my skull will crack, fatigue is continuous - I only go from less exhausted to more exhausted & back again.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Feeling

“Learning never exhausts the mind.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Learning

“If I have exhausted the justifications, I have reached bedrock and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do."”

Ludwig Wittgenstein book Philosophical Investigations

§ 217
Source: Philosophical Investigations (1953)

“We do not fear being called meticulous, inclining as we do to the view that only the exhaustive can be truly interesting.”

Thomas Mann book The Magic Mountain

Source: The Magic Mountain

Fear

“Now, through my own infirmity I recover what he was to me: my opposite. Being naturally truthful, he did not see the point of these exaggerations, and was borne on by a natural sense of the fitting, was indeed a great master of the art of living so that he seems to have lived long, and to have spread calm round him, indifference one might almost say, certainly to his own advancement, save that he had also great compassion. […] We have no ceremonies, only private dirges and no conclusions, only violent sensations, each separate. Nothing that has been said meets our case. […] After a long lifetime, loosely, in a moment of revelation, I may lay hands on it, but now the idea breaks in my hand. Ideas break a thousand times for once that they globe themselves entire. […] I am yawning. I am glutted with sensations. I am exhausted with the strain and the long, long time — twenty-five minutes, half an hour — that I have held myself alone outside the machine.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Bernard on Percival, section V
The Waves (1931)

Truth , Art , Idea , Nature

“I was long ago undeceived that protesting
could bring redress. But whoever suffers
is bound to complain if the pain is great.
So I did! But the cry that could offer
relief is itself feeble and exhausted,
and it is not through weeping that pain abates.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Já me desenganei que de queixar-me
não se alcança remédio; mas, quem pena,
forçado lhe é gritar, se a dor é grande.
Gritarei; mas é débil e pequena
a voz para poder desabafar-me,
porque nem com gritar a dor se abrande.
"Vinde cá, meu tão certo secretário", trans. by Landeg White in The Collected Lyric Poems of Luis de Camoes (2016), p. 297
Lyric poetry, Hymns (canções)

Pain , Suffering , Cry

“Rarely do we arrive at the summit of truth without running into extremes; we have frequently to exhaust the part of error, and even of folly, before we work our way up to the noble goal of tranquil wisdom.”

Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805) German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright

Prefatory Remarks
The Philosophical Letters

Wisdom , Truth , Way , Error

“The past was real. The present, all about me, was unreal, unnatural, repellent. I saw the big ships lying in the stream… the home of hardship and hopelessness; the boats passing to and fro; the cries of the sailors at the capstan or falls; the peopled beach; the large hide houses, with their gangs of men; and the Kanakas interspersed everywhere. All, all were gone! Not a vestige to mark where one hide house stood. The oven, too, was gone. I searched for its site, and found, where I thought it should be, a few broken bricks and bits of mortar. I alone was left of all, and how strangely was I here! What changes to me! Where were they all? Why should I care for them — poor Kanakas and sailors, the refuse of civilization, the outlaws and the beachcombers of the Pacific! Time and death seemed to transfigure them. Doubtless nearly all were dead; but how had they died, and where? In hospitals, in fever climes, in dens of vice, or falling from the mast, or dropping exhausted from the wreck "When for a moment, like a drop of rain/He sinks into thy depths with bubbling groan/Without a grave, unknelled, uncoffined, and unknown." The lighthearted boys are now hardened middle-aged men, if the seas, rocks, fevers, and the deadlier enemies that beset a sailor's life on shore have spared them; and the then strong men have bowed themselves, and the earth or sea has covered them. How softening is the effect of time! It touches us through the affections. I almost feel as if I were lamenting the passing away of something loved and dear — the boats, the Kanakas, the hides, my old shipmates! Death, change, distance, lend them a character which makes them quite another thing.”

Richard Henry Dana Jr. (1815–1882) United States author and lawyer

Twenty-Four Years After (1869)

Love , Life , Death , Men

“An era can be said to end when its basic illusions are exhausted.”

Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States

"The Year it Came Apart" http://books.google.com/books?id=MekCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA30, New York magazine, Vol. 8, No. 1 (30 December 1974 – 6 January 1975), p. 30

“Gustav Aschenbach was the writer who spoke for all those who work on the brink of exhaustion, who labor and are heavy-laden, who are worn out already but still stand upright, all those moralists of achievement who are slight of stature and scanty of resources, but who yet, by some ecstasy of the will and by wise husbandry, manage at least for a time to force their work into a semblance of greatness.”

Thomas Mann book Death in Venice

Source: Death in Venice (1912), Ch. 2, as translated by David Luke

Time

“When the tongue or the pen is let loose in a phrenzy of passion, it is the man, and not the subject, that becomes exhausted.”

Thomas Paine book Rights of Man

Part 1.3 Rights of Man
1790s, Rights of Man, Part I (1791)

Passion

“Most men are scantily nourished on a modicum of happiness and a number of empty thoughts which life lays on their plates. They are kept in the road of life through stern necessity by elemental duties which they cannot avoid.
Again and again their will-to-live becomes, as it were, intoxicated: spring sunshine, opening flowers, moving clouds, waving fields of grain — all affect it. The manifold will-to-live, which is known to us in the splendid phenomena in which it clothes itself, grasps at their personal wills. They would fain join their shouts to the mighty symphony which is proceeding all around them. The world seem beauteous…but the intoxication passes. Dreadful discords only allow them to hear a confused noise, as before, where they had thought to catch the strains of glorious music. The beauty of nature is obscured by the suffering which they discover in every direction. And now they see again that they are driven about like shipwrecked persons on the waste of ocean, only that the boat is at one moment lifted high on the crest of the waves and a moment later sinks deep into the trough; and that now sunshine and now darkening clouds lie on the surface of the water.
And now they would fain persuade themselves that land lies on the horizon toward which they are driven. Their will-to-live befools their intellect so that it makes efforts to see the world as it would like to see it. It forces this intellect to show them a map which lends support to their hope of land. Once again they essay to reach the shore, until finally their arms sink exhausted for the last time and their eyes rove desperately from wave to wave. …
Thus it is with the will-to-live when it is unreflective.
But is there no way out of this dilemma? Must we either drift aimlessly through lack of reflection or sink in pessimism as the result of reflection? No. We must indeed attempt the limitless ocean, but we may set our sails and steer a determined course.”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: The Spiritual Life (1947), p. 256

Life , Men , Lie , World

“In agony unknown He bleeds away His life; in terrible throes He exhausts His soul. "Eloi! Eloi! lama sabachthani?" And then see! they pierce His side, and forthwith runneth out blood and water! This is the shedding of blood, the terrible pouring out of blood, without which, for you and the whole human race, there is no remission.”

Charles Spurgeon (1834–1892) British preacher, author, pastor and evangelist

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 73.

Life , Soul , Water

“Our nuclear power plants have undergone exhaustive study, and have been declared safe for any number of extreme contingencies. But when we see a crisis like the one in Japan, we have a responsibility to learn from this event, and to draw from those lessons to ensure the safety and security of our people.
That’s why I’ve asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to do a comprehensive review of the safety of our domestic nuclear plants in light of the natural disaster that unfolded in Japan.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, Address on the natural and nuclear energy disasters in Japan (March 2011)

People , Nature , Study , Light

“You know how fussy and particular I am in painting. I am ever removing the paint and repainting the spot until I am completely exhausted.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Source: posthumous, Movements in art since 1945, p. 15: (in Gorky Memorial Exhibition, Schwabacher pp. 12)

Painting

“Evidence exhausts the truth.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

as quoted in Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde, ed. Charles Juliet, First Dalkey Archive edition, 2009, London and Champaign pp. 60-61
posthumous quotes

Truth

“There is a thing inherent and natural,
Which existed before heaven and earth.
Motionless and fathomless,
It stands alone and never changes;
It pervades everywhere and never becomes exhausted.
It may be regarded as the Mother of the Universe.
I do not know its name. If I am forced to give it a name, I call it Tao, and I name it as supreme.”

Laozi book Tao Te Ching

Source: Tao Te Ching, Ch. 25, as translated by Ch'u Ta-Kao (1904)

Nature , Universe , Change

“You are pooped and demoralized. Why wouldn't you be? Of course it is exhausting, having to reason all the time in a universe which wasn't meant to be reasonable.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Breakfast of Champions

Breakfast of Champions (1973)

Universe , Time

“In scientific subjects, the natural remedy for dogmatism has been found in research. By temperament and training, the research worker is the antithesis of the pundit. What he is actively and constantly aware of is his ignorance, not his knowledge; the insufficiency of his concepts, of the terms and phrases in which he tries to excogitate his problems: not their final and exhaustive sufficiency. He is, therefore, usually only a good teacher for the few who wish to use their mind as a workshop, rather than a warehouse.”

Ronald Fisher (1890–1962) English statistician, evolutionary biologist, geneticist, and eugenicist

Eugenics, academic and practical. Eugenics Review, 27, 95-100, 1935.
The original has ‘to store it as’ inserted before the final words ‘a warehouse’, likely a mistake left from an earlier draft.
1930s

Nature , Knowledge , Problem , Teachers

“He remembered the dissolute adventures in which his senses, his nervous system and his mind had indulged; he saw himself corroded by irony and intellect, laid waste and paralyzed by insight, almost exhausted by the fevers and chills of creation, helplessly and contritely tossed to and fro between gross extremes, between saintly austerity and lust — oversophisticated and impoverished, worn out by cold, rare artificial ecstasies, lost, ravaged, racked and sick — and he sobbed with remorse and nostalgia.”

Thomas Mann book Tonio Kröger

Source: Tonio Kröger (1903), Ch. 8, as translated by David Luke

Sense , Nostalgia

“Her Majesty's new Ministers proceeded in their career like a body of men under the influence of some deleterious drug. Not satiated with the spoilation and anarchy of Ireland, they began to attack every institution and every interest, every class and calling in the country…As time advanced it was not difficult to perceive that extravagance was being substituted for energy by the Government. The unnatural stimulus was subsiding. Their paroxysms ended in prostration. Some took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated between a menace and a sigh. As I sat opposite the Treasury Bench the Ministers reminded me of one of those marine landscapes not very unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest. But the situation is still dangerous. There are occasional earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumbling of the sea.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Attacking William Gladstone's Liberal Government
Source: Speech to the Conservatives of Manchester (3 April 1872), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), pp. 530-531.

Men , Time , Sea , Country

“The steam-engine having furnished us with a means of converting heat into a motive power, and our thoughts being thereby led to regard a certain quantity of work as an equivalent for the amount of heat expended in its production, the idea of establishing theoretically some fixed relation between a quantity of heat and the quantity of work which it can possibly produce, from which relation conclusions regarding the nature of heat itself might be deduced, naturally presents itself. Already, indeed, have many successful efforts been made with this view; I believe, however, that they have not exhausted the subject, but that, on the contrary, it merits the continued attention of physicists… The most important investigation in connexion with this subject is that of S. Carnot.”

Rudolf Clausius (1822–1888) German mathematical physicist

First Memoir. On the Moving Force of Heat and the Laws which may be Deduced Therefrom
The Mechanical Theory of Heat (1867)

Motivation , Idea , Nature , Effort

“e achievement and maintenance of the dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible without a party which is strong by reason of its solidarity and iron discipline. But iron discipline in the Party is inconceivable without unity of will, without complete and absolute unity of action on the part of all members of the Party. This does not mean, of course, that the possibility of conflicts of opinion within the Party is thereby precluded. On the contrary, iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes criticism and conflict of opinion within the Party. Least of all does it mean that discipline must be "blind." On the contrary, iron discipline does not preclude but presupposes conscious and voluntary submission, for only conscious discipline can be truly iron discipline. But after a conflict of opinion has been closed, after criticism has been exhausted and a decision has been arrived at, unity of will and unity of action of all Party members are the necessary conditions without which neither Party unity nor iron discipline in the Party is conceivable.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Source: The Foundations of Leninism, Ch.8

Decision , Strong , Parting

“A field becomes exhausted by constant tillage.”
Continua messe senescit ager.

Ovid book Ars amatoria

Book III, line 82
Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love)

“For a warrior, to be inaccessible means that he touches the world around him sparingly. And above all, he deliberately avoids exhausting himself and others. He doesn’t use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing, especially the people he loves.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Carlos Castaneda, The Wheel of Time: The Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts about Life, Death and the Universe
Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=aqz4lHgxNNYC&lpg=PP1&dq=castaneda%20wheel%20of%20time&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=%22inaccessible%20means%20that%20he%20touches%22&f=false

Love , People , World

“I learnt to see philosophical systems in the context of the social milieu which produced them. I therefore learnt to look for social contention in philosophical systems. It is of course possible to see the history of philosophy in diverse ways, each way of seeing it being in fact an illumination of the type of problem dealt with in this branch of human thought. It is possible, for instance, to look upon philosophy as a series of abstract systems. When philosophy is so seen, even moral philosophers, with regrettable coyness, say that their preoccupation has nothing to do with life. They say that their concern is not to name moral principles or to improve anybody's character, but narrowly to elucidate the meaning of terms used in ethical discourse, and to determine the status of moral principles and ru1es, as regards the obligation which they impose upon us. When philosophy is regarded in the light of a series of abstract systems, it can be said to concern itself with two fundamental questions: first, the question 'what there is'; second, the question how 'what there is' may be explained. The answer to the first question has a number of aspects. It lays down a minimum number of general under which every item in the world can and must be brought. It does this without naming the items themselves, without furnishing us with an inventory, a roll-call of the items, the objects in the world. It specifies, not particu1ar objects, but the basic types of object. The answer further implies a certain reductionism; for in naming only a few basic types as exhausting all objects in the world, it brings object directly under one of the basic types.”

Kwame Nkrumah (1909–1972) Pan Africanist and First Prime Minister and President of Ghana

Source: Consciencism (1964), Philosophy In Retrospect, pp. 5-6.

Life , World , Way , History

“I say that there are two systems of policy to apply to the management of what is commonly called the Eastern question, but which resolves itself into the geographical question, namely, the possession of that site which commands the empire of the world—the city of Constantinople. There is that school of opinions which I call British opinions, advocated by the noble Lord the Leader of this House (Lord J. Russell) and the noble Lord the Secretary of State for the Home Department (Viscount Palmerston), who believe in the vitality of Turkey, that it may remain an independent and even a progressive country, and form a powerful and sufficient barrier against the encroachment of Russia. There is the other school, which I call the school of Russian polities, that believes that Turkey is exhausted; that all we can do is, by gradually enfranchising the Christian population, to prevent, when its fall takes place, perfect anarchy, and contemplates the possibility of Russia occupying the Bosphorus.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1854/mar/31/war-with-russia-the-queens-message in the House of Commons (21 March 1854).
1850s

World , School , Home , Question

“Not one of these nobly equipped young men has escaped the restless, exhausting, confusing, debilitating crisis of education. … He feels that he cannot guide himself, cannot help himself—and then he dives hopelessly into the world of everyday life and daily routine, he is immersed in the most trivial activity possible, and his limbs grow weak and weary.”

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

Anti-Education (1872)

Life , Men , World , Education

“Well then, I will tell you. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I myself have founded great empires; but upon what did these creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded His empire upon love, and to this very day millions will die for Him. I think I understand something of human nature; and I tell you, all these were men, and I am a man: none else is like Him; Jesus Christ was more than a man. I have inspired multitudes with such an enthusiastic devotion that they would have died for me but to do this it was necessary that I should be visibly present with the electric influence of my looks, my words, of my voice. When I saw men and spoke to them, I lighted up the flame of self-devotion in their hearts. Christ alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of man toward the unseen, that it becomes insensible to the barriers of time and space. Across a chasm of eighteen hundred years, Jesus Christ makes a demand which is beyond all others difficult to satisfy; He asks for that which a philosopher may often seek in vain at the hands of his friends, or a father of his children, or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his brother. He asks for the human heart; He will have it entirely to Himself. He demands it unconditionally; and forthwith His demand is granted. Wonderful! In defiance of time and space, the soul of man, with all its powers and faculties, becomes an annexation to the empire of Christ. All who sincerely believe in Him, experience that remarkable, supernatural love toward Him. This phenomenon is unaccountable; it is altogether beyond the scope of man's creative powers. Time, the great destroyer, is powerless to extinguish this sacred flame; time can neither exhaust its strength nor put a limit to its range. This is it, which strikes me most; I have often thought of it. This it is which proves to me quite convincingly the Divinity of Jesus Christ.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

In a statement about Jesus Christ. While exiled on the rock of St. Helena, Napoleon called Count Montholon to his side and asked him, "Can you tell me who Jesus Christ was?" Upon the Count declining to respond Napoleon countered. Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods http://books.google.com/books?id=jSI9HnMHdPsC&pg=PA149&lpg=PA149&dq=napoleon+jesus+among+gods&source=bl&ots=CdsDSjamnm&sig=K3l7Ek972r7pyEFT681lbf3PVSQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nBqhUf3RL4au9AS37ICwCQ&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA, p. 149, in Henry Parry Liddon (1868) The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; Eight Lectures. New edition. https://books.google.com/books?id=IcINAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA148&dq#v=onepage&q&f=false pp. 147-148, and in Henry Parry Liddon (1869) The Divinity of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; Eight Lectures. Fourth edition. https://ia800203.us.archive.org/15/items/divinityofourlord00libbrich/divinityofourlord00libbrich.pdf pp. 147-148.
Attributed

Love , Men , Children , Soul

“Yes, but water decomposed into its primitive elements… and decomposed doubtless, by electricity, which will then have become a powerful and manageable force, for all great discoveries, by some inexplicable law, appear to agree and become complete at the same time. Yes, my friends, I believe that water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable. Some day the coalrooms of steamers and the tenders of locomotives will, instead of coal, be stored with these two condensed gases, which will burn in the furnaces with enormous calorific power. There is, therefore, nothing to fear. As long as the earth is inhabited it will supply the wants of its inhabitants, and there will be no want of either light or heat as long as the productions of the vegetable, mineral or animal kingdoms do not fail us. I believe, then, that when the deposits of coal are exhausted we shall heat and warm ourselves with water. Water will be the coal of the future!”

Jules Verne book The Mysterious Island

Part II, ch. XI
The Mysterious Island (1874)

Fear , Law , Light , Water

“Long-protracted suffering is apt to exhaust not only the invalid, but the compassion of others; violent emotions cannot be prolonged endlessly.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Suffering

“The lust for power, which of all human vices was found in its most concentrated form in the Roman people as a whole, first established its victory in a few powerful individuals, and then crushed the rest of an exhausted country beneath the yoke of slavery.

For when can that lust for power in arrogant hearts come to rest until, after passing from one office to another, it arrives at sovereignty? Now there would be no occasion for this continuous progress if ambition were not all-powerful; and the essential context for ambition is a people corrupted by greed and sensuality.”
<p>Ipsa libido dominandi, quae inter alia uitia generis humani meracior inerat uniuerso populo Romano, postea quam in paucis potentioribus uicit, obtritos fatigatosque ceteros etiam iugo seruitutis oppressit.</p><p>Nam quando illa quiesceret in superbissimis mentibus, donec continuatis honoribus ad potestatem regiam perueniret? Honorum porro continuandorum facultas non esset, nisi ambitio praeualeret. Minime autem praeualeret ambitio, nisi in populo auaritia luxuriaque corrupto.</p>

Aurelius Augustinus book The City of God

as translated by H. Bettenson (1972), Book 1, Chapter 31, p. 42
The City of God (early 400s)

People , Victory , Heart , Country

“Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore.”

Kurt Vonnegut book Palm Sunday

"Palm Sunday", a sermon delivered at St. Clement's Church, New York City (ndg), originally published in The Nation as "Hypocrites You Always Have With You" (ndg)
Palm Sunday (1981)
Context: Jokes can be noble. Laughs are exactly as honorable as tears. Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion, to the futility of thinking and striving anymore. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward — and since I can start thinking and striving again that much sooner.

Thinking , Tear , Laughter

“My whole past life I live again in memory, and, involuntarily, I ask myself: 'why have I lived - for what purpose was I born?'… A purpose there must have been, and, surely, mine was an exalted destiny, because I feel that within my soul are powers immeasurable… But I was not able to discover that destiny, I allowed myself to be carried away by the allurements of passions, inane and ignoble. From their crucible I issued hard and cold as iron, but gone for ever was the glow of noble aspirations - the fairest flower of life. And, from that time forth, how often have I not played the part of an axe in the hands of fate! Like an implement of punishment, I have fallen upon the head of doomed victims, often without malice, always without pity… To none has my love brought happiness, because I have never sacrificed anything for the sake of those I have loved: for myself alone I have loved - for my own pleasure. I have only satisfied the strange craving of my heart, greedily draining their feelings, their tenderness, their joys, their sufferings - and I have never been able to sate myself. I am like one who, spent with hunger, falls asleep in exhaustion and sees before him sumptuous viands and sparkling wines; he devours with rapture the aerial gifts of the imagination, and his pains seem somewhat assuaged. Let him but awake: the vision vanishes - twofold hunger and despair remain!
And tomorrow, it may be, I shall die!… And there will not be left on earth one being who has understood me completely. Some will consider me worse, others, better, than I have been in reality… Some will say: 'he was a good fellow'; others: 'a villain.”

Mikhail Lermontov book A Hero of Our Time

And both epithets will be false. After all this, is life worth the trouble? And yet we live - out of curiosity! We expect something new... How absurd, and yet how vexatious!
A Hero of Our Time (1840; rev. 1841)

Love , Life , Hunger , Pain

“To waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Seventh State of the Union (3 December 1907)
1900s

Children , Nature

“Admitting to where you are feels simultaneously like pain and like relief. The energy required to resist where you are is exhausting. Admitting to where you are feels like letting yourself float downstream after swimming upstream against river rapids for years.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Pain , Feeling

“He who talks more is sooner exhausted.”

Laozi (-604) semi-legendary Chinese figure, attributed to the 6th century, regarded as the author of the Tao Te Ching and fou…

“We’re trying to do the same thing and we’ve come a long way. But it gets exhausting having to do this every day, every week. Our male counterparts have not had to fight as much – so sometimes you feel a little exhausted always having to prove yourself and show your worth.”

Alex Morgan (1989) American soccer player

"Alex Morgan: ‘If Fifa start respecting the women’s game more, others will follow’" https://www.theguardian.com/football/2017/jan/16/alex-morgan-us-soccer-football-fifa-lyon-women-equality (Janaury 17, 2017)

Fight , Way , Feeling

“Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later on, it is ominous.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Life , Youth , Sadness , Feeling

“It's delicious to have people adore you, but it's exhausting, too. Particularly when your own feelings don't match theirs.”

Tasha Alexander (1969) American writer

Source: A Fatal Waltz

People , Feeling

“When the mind is exhausted of images, it invents its own.”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

Source: Earth House Hold

“I want to explain how exhausted I am. Even in my dreams. How I wake up tired. How I’m being drowned by some kind of black wave.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel (1967–2020) American author and journalist

Dreams

“Burnout is nature's way of telling you, you've been going through the motions your soul has departed; you're a zombie, a member of the walking dead, a sleepwalker. False optimism is like administrating stimulants to an exhausted nervous system.”

Sam Keen (1931) author, professor, and philosopher

Source: Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man

Way , Soul , Optimism , Nature

“We're a nation of exhausted and over-stressed adults raising over-scheduled children.”

Brené Brown (1965) US writer and professor

Children

“Why do you lie" I ask her.
"To block the truth."
Fair enough.
Naomi goes on. "Where did we get it in our heads that we need truth all the time? Sometimes lies are nice, you know? You don't have to know the truth all the time. It's too exhausting.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Truth , Lie , Time

“Although she was giddy with exhaustion, sleep was a lover who refused to be touched….”

Janet Fitch (1955) American writer

Source: Paint it Black

Lovers , Sleep

“It's exhausting, the energy it takes to unknow a truth.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Doomed

Source: Doomed

Truth

“It was like being given a maths problem when your brain's exhausted, and you know there's some far-off solution, but you can't work up the energy even to give it a go. Something in me just gave up.”

Kazuo Ishiguro book Never Let Me Go

Source: Never Let Me Go

Problem

“I was exhausted. Fighting to save the universe will do that.”

D.J. MacHale (1955) American television director and producer

Universe , Fight

“I, for one, am exhausted. I’ve been threatened, beaten, bitten and killed, and that was just in the last hour. (Jericho)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Warrior

“It can be exhausting eating a meal cooked by a man. With a woman, it's, Ho hum, pass the beans. A guy, you have to act like he just built the Taj Mahal.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Queen of Everything

Guy , Cooking

“Self-esteem can be so exhausting. I want to cut my hair, change my clothes, erase the pimple from the near-tip of my nose, and strengthen my upper-arm definition, all in the next hour.”

David Levithan Boy Meets Boy

Source: Boy Meets Boy

Change , Clothes

“If a person studies too much and exhausts his reflective powers, he will be confused, and will not be able to apprehend even that which had been within the power of his apprehension. For the powers of the body are all alike in this respect.”

Maimónides (1138–1204) rabbi, physician, philosopher

Study , Personality

“Exhaust the little moment.
Soon it dies.
And be it gash or gold it will not come
Again in this identical guise.”

Gwendolyn Brooks book Annie Allen

Source: "exhaust the little moment" from Annie Allen (1949)

“A drowning man cannot be saved until he is utterly exhausted and ceases to make the slightest effort to save himself.”

Watchman Nee book The Normal Christian Life

Source: The Normal Christian Life

Effort

“I let it go. It's like swimming against the current. It exhausts you. After a while, whoever you are, you just have to let go, and the river brings you home.”

Joanne Harris book Five Quarters of the Orange

Source: Five Quarters of the Orange

Moving On , Home

“The silence wasn't uncomfortable or hostile but exhausted--the quiet of people who have a great deal to think about but not a hell of a lot to say.”

Stephen King book Doctor Sleep

Source: Doctor Sleep

Hostility , People , Hell , Thinking

“Be authentic. Don't try to be someone you aren't. You'll hate yourself for it & the effort to maintain the facade will exhaust you. BE REAL! Many won't like the real you but that's better than having people adore the person that isn't you at all”

Larry Winget (1952) American motivational speaker

Hate , People , Effort , Personality

“Women do not become exhausted, they only exhaust others.”

Robert Jordan Lord of Chaos

Ogier saying
(15 October 1994)
Source: Lord of Chaos

Women

“Some people are trapped by the belief that love comes in finite quantities, and that our kind of love exhausts the supply upon which they need to draw. I do not accept competitive models of love, only additive ones.”

Andrew Solomon book Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

Source: Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity

Love , People , Drawing

“Being wrong about important things is exhausting.”

John Irving book The Cider House Rules

Source: The Cider House Rules

“Sometimes I get too exhausted
to even feel bad”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Feeling

“To be someone's best friend requires a minimum investment of time. More than that, though, it takes emotional energy. Caring about someone deeply is exhausting.”

Malcolm Gladwell (1963) journalist and science writer

Source: The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference

Time

“The visible exhausts me. I am dissolved in shadow.”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

“At first, being with Sebastian was like being in the middle of the best dream I'd ever had - but now it mostly feels exhausting. I'm up one minute and down the next; questioning what I say and do. Even questioning my sanity.”

Candace Bushnell book The Carrie Diaries

Source: The Carrie Diaries

Dreams , Feeling , Question

“Literature is not exhaustible, for the sufficient and simple reason that a single book is not. A book is not an isolated entity: it is a narration, an axis of innumerable narrations. One literature differs from another, either before or after it, not so much because of the text as for the manner in which it is read.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Other Inquisitions

"Note on (toward) Bernard Shaw"
Variant translation: A book is not an autonomous entity: it is a relation, an axis of innumerable relations. One literature differs from another, be it earlier or later, not because of the texts but because of the way they are read: if I could read any page from the present time — this one, for instance — as it will be read in the year 2000, I would know what the literature of the year 2000 would be like.
Other Inquisitions (1952)

Books , Literature , Reading

“I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

Wise

“I am stronger than depression and I am braver than loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

love , Cute , Romantic , For Her

“Wold domination is exhausting and cliche. People ought to just focus on being individual responsible citizens of the earth instead of assholes.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist

People

“I don't want any more of this try, try again stuff. I just want out. I’ve had it. I am so tired. I am twenty and I am already exhausted.”

Elizabeth Wurtzel book Prozac Nation

Source: Prozac Nation

“They always call depression the blues, but I would have been happy to waken to a periwinkle outlook. Depression to me is urine yellow, washed out, exhausted miles of weak piss.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

Depressing , Happiness

“Kincaid, evidently exhausted himself, drew a gun, took the safety off, placed it on his chest, and went to sleep too.

"It's cute," I whispered to Murphy. "He has a teddy Glock.”

Jim Butcher Small Favor

Source: Small Favor

Sleep

“Americans Will Always Do the Right Thing — After Exhausting All the Alternatives.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

This is a modification of a March 1967 quote by Israeli politician Abba Eban who said, "Men and nations behave wisely when they have exhausted all other resources." Eban used various versions of this quote over the years. In 1979 he said, "My experience teaches me this: Men and nations do act wisely when they have exhausted all the other possibilities." http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/11/exhaust-alternatives/
In a 1970 Congressional hearing, a version of the quote first referenced Americans. It was attributed to an unnamed Irishman. "And indeed, we often know how to do things by the philosophy that was expounded by another Irishman I know. He said that you can depend on Americans to do the right thing when they have exhausted every other possibility." http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/11/exhaust-alternatives/
The earliest known attribution of the quote to Churchill occurred in 1980. http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/11/11/exhaust-alternatives/
Misattributed

“The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Source: Gift from the Sea

Life

“News of Daniel's disappearance does not alarm me as it might have done a week ago. Given recent events, very little alarms me as it might have done a week ago. I feel as if my supply of alarm has been exhausted, at least temporarily.”

Patricia C. Wrede (1953) author

Source: The Mislaid Magician: or Ten Years After

Feeling

“I am exhausted by trying to get along with the Lord.”

Louise Rennison (1951–2016) British writer

Source: Away Laughing on a Fast Camel