The thought of a man is futile. But the word of God is flawless.

Complaints of feeling cut off, shut off, out of touch, feeling apart or strange, of things being out of focus or unreal, of not feeling one with people, or of the point having gone out of life, interest flagging, things seeming futile and meaningless, all describe in various ways this state of mind. Patients usually call it 'depression', but it lacks the heavy, black, inner sense of brooding, of anger and of guilt, which are not difficult to discover in classic depression. Depression is really a more extraverted state of mind, which, while the patient is turning his aggression inwards against himself, is part of a struggle not to break out into overt angry and aggressive behaviour. The states described above are rather the 'schizoid states'. They are definitely introverted. Depression is object-relational. The schizoid person has renounced objects, even though he still needs them.

An attempt to study the evolution of living organisms without reference to cytology would be as futile as an account of stellar evolution which ignored spectroscopy.

There’s not much that I can find in places where there is nothing to find. However, to avoid facing God I find myself spending a lot of time in those very places.

Approaching the Start of Civil ExamsPerhaps I was once a young Chinese scholarapproaching the start of civil exams,my mind grown weary and sad from seclusionwith books on syntax and poetic style.All that I knew were the mist-covered mountainsand sweet white blossoms of mountain applesthat grew in the valleys of my province.But I had been gone over six yearsbusy with studies in the Heavenly Cityempty and thin despite my work.I showed my verses to an older poetwho told me a truth I longed to believe:all knowledge is futile and barrenwhich does not open the love of your friends.

In our secular world, we no longer see eternal paradise as a carrot at the end of the stick of life, but try to cram as much as possible into our relatively short time on the planet instead. This is, of course, a futile endeavour, doomed to failure. It is tempting to interpret the modern epidemics of depression and burnout as the individual's response to the unbearable nature of constant acceleration. The decelerating individual - who slows down instead of speeding up, and maybe even stops completely - seems out of place in a culture characterised by manic development, and may be interpreted pathologically (I.E. Diagnosed as clinically depressed).

Meaningless! Meaningless!”says the Teacher.“Utterly meaningless!Everything is meaningless.”What do people gain from all their laborsat which they toil under the sun?Generations come and generations go,but the earth remains forever.The sun rises and the sun sets,and hurries back to where it rises.The wind blows to the southand turns to the north;round and round it goes,ever returning on its course.All streams flow into the sea,yet the sea is never full.To the place the streams come from,there they return again.All things are wearisome,more than one can say.The eye never has enough of seeing,nor the ear its fill of hearing.What has been will be again,what has been done will be done again;there is nothing new under the sun.Is there anything of which one can say,“Look! This is something new”?It was here already, long ago;it was here before our time.No one remembers the former generations,and even those yet to comewill not be rememberedby those who follow them.

It is futile to spend time telling stories about the fleetness of each day.

It's not worth it to build castles on the sand if they get destroyed by the waves of reality.

Try not to worry, for time is a great healer.' Such words were futile.