Despair Quotes
Two loves I have, of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman coloured ill.
William Shakespeare
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depths of some devine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.
Alfred Lord Tennyson
The soul does not give itself up to despair until it has exhausted all illusions.
Victor Hugo
This book, conceived in sorrow, composed in grief, and constructed at the brink of despair, contains my mind's best thoughts, and my soul's triumph over the powers of darkness.
Isaac Mayer Wise
Banish (the onion) from the kitchen and the pleasure flies with it. Its presence lends color and enchantment to the most modest dish; its absence reduces the rarest delicacy to hopeless insipidity, and dinner to despair.
Elizabeth Robins Pennell
Yeah, you know, I performed occasionally. I was in such despair because I just - if I didn't have my music to connect with, I couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be doing. There was never a 'B' plan here; it was just this. So it took me a long time to find my way.
Melissa Manchester
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.
Robin Gibb
Bee Gees
Whenever our sins press hard against us, whenever Satan would drive us to despair, we must hold up this shield, that God does not want us to be overwhelmed in everlasting destruction, for He has ordained His Son to be the salvation of the world.
John Calvin
Every emotion, from despair all of the way up to ecstasy; from complete Connection to who-you-really-are, all the way to pinching yourself off pretty severely, all of those emotions are about your perception of freedom, or your perception of bondage—every one of them.
Esther Hicks
Desire is endless and unappeasable, is most intense where most forbidden, and is never far from despair.
Allen Wheelis
If, every day, I dare to remember that I am here on loan, that this house, this hillside, these minutes are all leased to me, not given, I will never despair.
Erica Jong
Despair makes victims sometimes victors.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
Doubt is thought's despair; despair is personality's doubt. . . . Doubt and despair . . . belong to completely different spheres; different sides of the soul are set in motion. . . . Despair is an expression of the total personality, doubt only of thought.
Soren Kierkegaard
Jesus is the God whom we can approach without pride and before whom we can humble ourselves without despair.
Blaise Pascal
The storm ate up September’s cry of despair, delighted at its mischief, as all storms are.
Catherynne M. Valente
Optimism is a matter optics, of seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see. Hope, on the other hand, is a Christian virtue. It is the unblinking acknowledgment of all that militates against hope, and the unrelenting refusal to despair. We have not the right to despair, and, finally, we have not the reason to despair
Richard John Neuhaus
In idleness there is a perpetual despair.
Thomas Carlyle
There is no greater folly in the world than for a man to despair.
Miguel de Cervantes
The ever increasing intensity of despair depends upon the degree of consciousness or is proportionate to this increase: the greater the degree of consciousness, the more intensive the despair. This is everywhere apparent, most clearly in despair at its maximum and minimum. The devil's despair is the most intensive despair, for the devil is sheer spirit and hence unqualified consciousness and transparency; there is no obscurity in the devil that could serve as a mitigating excuse. Therefore, his despair is the most absolute defiance. . . .
Soren Kierkegaard
Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.
Blaise Pascal
He first selected the smallest one...and then bowed his head as though he were saying grace. Opening his mouth very wide, he struggled for a moment, after which all was over. I shall never forget the comic look of despair he cast upon the other five over-occupied shells. I asked him how he felt. 'Profoundly grateful,' he said, 'as if I had swallowed a small baby.'
William Makepeace Thackeray
If he could learn to love another, and earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time. As the years passed, he fell into despair and lost all hope. For who could ever learn to love a beast?
Walt Disney
