Quotes about despair

Robert Vanleeuwen -

We carry on not by letting go of the worries that burden us but by staying true to our hearts & the meaning that surrounds us.

Stephen Fry -

When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you, that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be, and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose, there is this word despair which is a very awful thing to feel.

Michael Franti -

I went to Iraq because I wanted to see what one year of occupation had done to Iraqi society, and I went to the West Bank and Gaza Strip because I wanted to see what three generations of occupation had done to Palestinian society. I found a lot more hopelessness and despair in Palestine.

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah -

Away from the goalFar away I stand from my home.A home unknownWhere my heart and spirit must goThy guidance oh LordThy guidance oh lordEternal eternity I beseech that You will lead me to the goalAway from victoryfar away I stand from victoryVictory unknown thy spirit divine I knowthat You may lead me where I must goThy guidance oh LordThy guidance oh lordVictorious victory I beseech that You will lead me to a victorious victoryAway from the troubles of lifefar away from the troubles my delightth

Ernest Agyemang Yeboah -

Away from the goalFar away I stand from my home.A home unknownWhere my heart and spirit must go.Thy guidance oh LordThy guidance oh lordEternal eternity I beseech that you will lead me to the goalAway from victoryfar away I stand from victoryVictory unknown thy spirit divine I knowthat you may lead me where I must goThy guidance oh LordThy guidance oh lordVictorious victory I beseech that you will lead me to a victorious victoryAway from the troubles of lifefar away from the troubles my delightt

Robin Gibb -

As the plane got closer to Miami, I had this terrible feeling he was dying. Maybe he was telling me that he was going. I felt anger, panic, despair and helplessness.

Marie Curie -

I tried out various experiments described in treatises on physics and chemistry, and the results were sometimes unexpected. At times, I would be encouraged by a little unhoped-for success; at others, I would be in the deepest despair because of accidents and failures resulting from my inexperience.

Jose Bergamin -

The novel is born of disillusionment; the poem, of despair.

Debasish Mridha -

Be not in despair let those tears of sadness grow into flowers.

Richelle E. Goodrich - Making Wishes

Discouragement is like a scorpion in your shoe it takes courage to toss it out so you can move on.

Lailah Gifty Akita - Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind

We have the keys to open the Heavens door Bible reading and prayer.

Lailah Gifty Akita - Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind

Hold on to hope and positive thoughts strength for thy soul.

Lailah Gifty Akita - Think Great: Be Great!

The effects of overworkingYou forget which day it is.You think fast than what you write.

Roy T. Bennett - The Light in the Heart

Do not let arrogance go to your head and despair to your heart do not let compliments go to your head and criticisms to your heart do not let success go to your head and failure to your heart.

Richelle E. Goodrich - Making Wishes

Powerlessness is an excruciating pain it is torture insurmountable.

Anne Brontë - The Bronte Sisters: Selected Poems

Long have I dwelt forgotten hereIn pining woe and dull despairThis place of solitude and gloomMust be my dungeon and my tomb.

Anne Rice - The Vampire Lestat

The prince is never going to come. Everyone knows that and maybe sleeping beauty's dead.

Brandon Sanderson - Elantris

The look of disbelief that ran across the boy's face was somehow more disturbing than the despair it had replaced. This creature had given up hope long ago he probably begged out of habit rather than expectation.

Sara Baume - A Line Made by Walking

My only chance is to pretend it's a day like any other to keep the despair only as great as on all the others.

Mehmet Murat ildan -

Tragedy is a disaster but desperation after that tragedy is a much greater disaster!

Joseph Roth - The Tale of the 1002nd Night

But the sound of despair is never pleasant it sounds suspiciously like lying.

Brownell Landrum - A Chorus of Voices: DUET stories Volume III - Adult Version

Despair is a cruel companion. It robs you of everything especially the choices that still lie within your control.

Lailah Gifty Akita - Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind

Work while you can. But avoid overwork depletion of energy.

Ellen J. Barrier -

The greatest discovery is to find a hero within oneself that will choose life over death and fight for hope through despair to possess the will to live.

Mehmet Murat ildan -

Do not consider despair as a thick and high wall standing on your way it is just a darkness and you can still walk in the darkness till you reach the light!

John Geddes -

you are a ring tone on the phone I didn’t answer

Siobhan Davis - True Calling

It seems like I have lived a lifetime in just one day.

John Geddes - A Familiar Rain

...How terrible, those dreams before sleep were—the worse kind, mixing hope with despair...

Wayne Gerard Trotman -

The pessimist may call the optimist a fool; but who is more foolish, the happy individual who expects more happiness or the one who fills his life with bitterness and has only more despair to look forward to?

Marty Rubin -

Some stories end in despair, some begin there

H.P. Lovecraft - The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath

No death, no doom, no anguish can arouse the surpassing despair which flows from a loss of ide

Rudyard Kipling -

We have done with Hope and Honour, we are lost to Love and Truth,We are dropping down the ladder rung by rung,And the measure of our torment is the measure of our youth.God help us, for we knew the worst too young!from "Gentleman Rankers

John Keats - Letters of John Keats

I must choose between despair and Energy──I choose the latter.

Toba Beta - Master of Stupidity

If you can cope the pride when winning,then you can confront despair when lose.

Lailah Gifty Akita - Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind

The opportunities far outweigh the disappointments.

Lailah Gifty Akita - Think Great: Be Great!

Be greatly encouraged!

Jon Kabat-Zinn - There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

We must be willing to encounter darkness and despair when they come up and face them, over and over again if need be, without running away or numbing ourselves in the thousands of ways we conjure up to avoid the unavoidable.

Colum McCann - Let the Great World Spin

A good novel can be a doorstop to despair.

Richelle E. Goodrich - The Two Sisters

Despair is not for the living but for those unable to rise and continue; they are the only souls with a right to it. It is an end where breath and strength and will have vanished, leaving no way to persevere. To sink into the abyss that is despair is to suffer an existence far worse than death; therefore, cling to its enemy, our ally—hope. For life goes on, and we must not live in despair. We must not.

Richelle E. Goodrich - Dandelions: The Disappearance of Annabelle Fancher

Though it pained me, I gave in. Why was it that I repeatedly succumbed to the first whisper of a promised maybe? How did the enticer, hope, always find my heart unguarded? There was no such thing as hope. Not for me. Why was it so hard to accept that?

Roman Payne - The Basement Trains

I sat up in the strange bed fearing it had been a dream, afraid I would never see her again. Not because I wanted anything from her, only her presence. The disappearance of the presence of beauty is the most despairing of events on this time-wheel of ours that rolls onward towards death.

Sara Keddar -

And then I realized that the close people to my heart, are actually the ones who hurt me the most.

Joseph Pearce -

Although secular fundamentalist “progressives” might believe in a future “golden age,” such an age does not exist. The future that they herald is merely one of gathering gloom and ever darkening clouds. This fate has ever been so for those who proclaim their “Pride.” They have nothing to expect in the future but their fall.As for the Christian, he has nothing to fear but his falling into the pride of despair. If he avoids becoming despondent and retains his humility, he will receive the gift of

Laini Taylor - Days of Blood & Starlight

In one of his darker moments, the irony started him laughing and he couldn't stop, and the sounds that came from him, before finally tapering into sobs, were so far from mirth they might have been the forced inversion of laughter-like a soul pulled inside out to reveal its rawest meats.

Ashly Lorenzana -

I don't think I've ever dared to write down what I see in the ruins of me, or tell in any detail the scars and all their secrets.

Lolah Runda - Hikari Okami: Kitsune Series

Trust is an illusion meant to wrap one in a false sense of belief, in that moment of realization will despair ultimately set in.

Paulo Coelho - Eleven Minutes

Love was undoubtedly one of the things capable of changing a person's whole life, from one moment to the next. But there was the other side of the coin, the second thing that could make a human being take a totally different course from the one he or she had planned; and that was called despair. Yes, perhaps love really could transform someone, but despair did the job more quickly.

Warren G. Bennis - On Becoming a Leader

The opposite of hope is despair, and when we despair, it is because we feel there are no choices.

Friedrich Schiller -

Revenge is barren of itself: it is the dreadful food it feeds on; its delight is murder, and its end is despair.

Christopher Fry -

Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith.

Rollo May -

Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

Thomas Fuller -

Despair gives courage to a coward.

Benjamin Banneker -

Presumption should never make us neglect that which appears easy to us, nor despair make us lose courage at the sight of difficulties.

Joseph Addison -

I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair.

Sam Brownback -

Every human - especially the most vulnerable, the unborn, the infirm, those ravaged by age and those desperate in despair - should be protected in law, loved, and told repeatedly of their incredible beauty and worth.

Cesar Chavez -

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.

Pierre Corneille -

Oh rage! Oh despair! Oh age, my enemy!

Matthew Arnold -

Sad Patience, too near neighbour to despair.

Edmund Burke -

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

Elie Wiesel -

Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.

Nikki Rosen - In The Eye Of Deception: A True Story

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil...who put darkness for light and light for darkness...who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight." Issiah 5:20,21

J.R. Ward - Lover Awakened

Phury knelt beside him and stroked his face. "I've only ever had you to live for. If you die I have nothing.I'm utterly lost. And you are needed here." Zsadist tried to reach out, but couldn't lift his arms as Phury stood up. "God, Z, I keep thinking this tragedy of ours is going to be over. But it just keeps going, doesn't it?" Zsadist blacked out to the sound of his twin's boots heading from the room.

Lailah Gifty Akita - Pearls of Wisdom: Great mind

Never lose hope.Never lose faith.

Kilroy J. Oldster - Dead Toad Scrolls

A person whom lives by faith is not bound to feel hopelessness or the agony of infinite despair.

Angelus Silesius - Selections from The Cherubinic Wanderer

Could one that's damned stand in high Heaven, even thereHe'd feel within himself all Hell and Hell's despair.

E.A.A. Wilson - Ascension Denied

In a world where people are too languid to make something of themselves out of effort, I sell them hope. What they do with it is up to them. Invariably they drink it and then hurl it down a gutter, but that’s their choice and their freedom. I won’t judge them.

Primo Levi - If This Is a Man / The Truce

This is hell. Today, in our times, hell must be like this. A huge, empty room: we are tired, standing on our feet, with a tap which drips while we cannot drink the water, and we wait for something which will certainly be terrible, and nothing happens and nothing continues to happen.

Yann Martel - Life of Pi

Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression.

William P. Barker -

The news that gives you a future with hope, in spite of your despair over the past, is realizing that Jesus has prayed for you and is praying for you now.

Jamie Schoffman - Not All Out of Love

I can still hear the screams. They wake me in the night. Terrible, gut wrenching, painful screams; screams that can only come from the deepest and darkest recesses of the mind. These were not screams of pain. These were screams of years of sorrow and despair. These were screams that made your skin crawl. These were the worst screams I have ever heard. I cannot get them out of my head. Perhaps, they will be with me forever. I shouldn't be so lucky.

Voltaire -

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

Rabindranath Tagore - The Hungry Stones and Other Stories

To thee, to thee, my fire! Thou hast been burning in my heart all these futile years. If my life were a piece of gold it would come out of its trial brighter, but it is a trodden turf of grass, and nothing remains of it but this handful of ashes.

Aimée Dostoyevsky - The Emigrant

Life—life—how cruel it is! Nothing but tears and sorrow and despair! Not a moment of happiness! Not a moment of joy.

Lettie B. Cowman -

Sorrow is God's plowshare that turns up and subsoils the depths of the soul, that it may yield richer harvests. If we had never fallen, or were in a glorified state, then the strong torrents of Divine joy would be the normal force to open up all our souls' capacities; but in a fallen world, sorrow, with despair taken out of it, is the chosen power to reveal ourselves to ourselves. Hence it is sorrow that makes us think deeply, long, and soberly.

George Eliot - The Mill on the Floss

There is something sustaining in the very agitation that accompanies the first shocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an excitement which is transient strength. It is in the slow, changed life that follows--in the time when sorrow has become stale, and has no longer an emotive intensity that counteracts its pain--in the time when day follows day in dull unexpectant sameness, and trial is a dreary routine--it is then that despair threatens; it is then that the

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - Frankenstein

Sometimes I could cope with the sullen despair that overwhelmed me: but sometimes the whirlwind passions of my soul drove me to seek, by bodily exercise and by change of place, some relief from my intolerable sensations. It was during an access of this kind that I suddenly left my home, and bending my steps towards the near Alpine valleys, sought in the magnificence, the eternity of such scenes, to forget myself and my ephemeral, because human, sorrows.

Scott Snyder - Vol. 2

Times moves differently down here in the dark. With no sunlight or shadows. No weather at all. There's no future, no right now. Nothing but your memory to keep you company. But they keep me so angry and weak. I can barely think straight. How long have I been locked up...wuuks? months? I don't even konow how I got to this place. There are times I don't even know who I am anymore.

Cynthia Ozick - The Shawl

It seemed to Rosa Lublin that the whole peninsula of Florida was weighted down with regret. Everyone had left behind a real life. Here they had nothing. They were all scarecrows, blown about under the murdering sunball with empty ribcages.

Charles Hamilton Sorley - Marlborough and Other Poems

When You See Millions of the Mouthless Dead"When you see millions of the mouthless deadAcross your dreams in pale battalions go,Say not soft things as other men have said,That you'll remember. For you need not so.Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they knowIt is not curses heaped on each gashed head?Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.Say only this, "They are dead." Then add thereto,"Yet many a better one has died before."Then, scanning

Lailah Gifty Akita -

If you response to every demand, you will be in despair.

Stephen Crane -

The injured captain, lying in the bow, was at this time buried in that profound dejection and indifference which comes, temporarily at least, toeven the bravest and most enduring when, willy nilly, the firm fails, the army loses, the ship goes down.

Paul Tillich - Vol 1

Christianity sees in the picture of Jesus as the Christ a human life in which all forms of anxiety are present but in which all forms of despair are absent.

Emil M. Cioran - On the Heights of Despair

Despair is the state in which anxiety and restlessness are immanent to existence. Nobody in despair suffers from “problems”, but from his own inner torment and fire. It’s a pity that nothing can be solved in this world. Yet there never was and here never will be anyone who would commit suicide for this reason. So much for the power that intellectual anxiety has over the total anxiety of our being! That is why I prefer the dramatic life, consumed by inner fires and tortured by destiny, to the int

Rohinton Mistry - A Fine Balance

the secret of survival was to balance hope and despair

J.K. Rowling - The Casual Vacancy

Krystal flung herself violently off the chair, away from her mother. She was surprised to feel warm liquid flowing down her cheeks, and thought confusedly of blood, but it was tears, only tears, clear and shining on her fingertips when she wiped them away.

Josef Pieper - Leisure: The Basis Of Culture

The vacancy left by absence of worship is filled by mere killing of time and by boredom, which is directly related to inability to enjoy leisure; for one can only be bored if the spiritual power to be leisurely has been lost. There is an entry in Baudelaire... "One must work, if not from taste then at least from despair. For, to reduce everything to a single truth: work is less boring than pleasure.

Charles Bukowski -

my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.

Elif Shafak - The Forty Rules of Love

Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful!

Groucho Marx - The Groucho Letters

The only real laughter comes from despair.

J.R.R. Tolkien - The Return of the King

The whole thing is quite hopeless, so it's no good worrying about tomorrow. It probably won't come.

Jhonen Vásquez - Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut

Sometimes...you can cry until there's nothing wet in you. You can scream and curse to where your throat rebels and ruptures. You can pray, all you want, to whatever god you think will listen. And, still it makes no difference. It goes on, with no sign as to when it might release you. And you know that if it ever did relent...it would not be because it cared.

Mervyn Peake - Titus Groan

And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears- the wind howls. Why must you mimic them?

Khaled Hosseini - A Thousand Splendid Suns

Then I think of all the tricks, all the minutes all the hours and days and weeks and months and years waiting for me. All of it without them. And I can't breathe then, like someone's stepping on my heart, Laila. So weak I just want to collapse somewhere.

Elizabeth Scott - Living Dead Girl

the thing is you can get used to anything you think you cant you want to die but you dont you cant you just are

William Goldman - The Princess Bride

The tears that kept Buttercup company the remainder of the day were not at all like those that had blinded her into the tree trunk. Those were noisy and hot; they pulsed. These were silent and steady and all they did was remind her that she wasn’t good enough. She was seventeen, and every male she’d ever known had crumbled at her feet and it meant nothing. The one time it really mattered, she wasn’t good enough.

Janet Fitch - White Oleander

I wanted to tell her not to entertain despair like this. Despaire wasn't a guest, you didn't play its favorite music, find it a comfortable chair. Despair was the enemy."-white oleander

Cormac McCarthy - The Road

He lay listening to the water drip in the woods. Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone.

Walker Percy - The Moviegoer

What is the nature of the search? you ask. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

Søren Kierkegaard - The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

Whether you are man or woman, rich or poor, dependent or free, happy or unhappy; whether you bore in your elevation the splendour of the crown or in humble obscurity only the toil and heat of the day; whether your name will be remembered for as long as the world lasts, and so will have been remembered as long as it lasted, or you are without a name and run namelessly with the numberless multitude; whether the glory that surrounded you surpassed all human description, or the severest and most ign