Despair Quotes
-
Better be with the dead,
Whom we to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
Than on the torture of the mind to lie
In restless ecstasy.
William Shakespeare
-
Out of love for mankind, and out of despair at my embarrassing situation, seeing that I had accomplished nothing and was unable to make anything easier than it had already been made, and moved by a genuine interest in those who make everything easy, I conceived it as my task to create difficulties everywhere.
Soren Kierkegaard
-
So now, whenever I despair, I no longer expect my end, but some bit of luck, some commonplace little miracle which, like a glittering link, will mend again the necklace of my days.
Sidonie Gabrielle Colette
-
We need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.
C. S. Lewis
-
These evils I deserve, and more . . . . Justly, yet despair not of his final pardon, Whose ear is ever open, and his eye Gracious to re-admit the suppliant.
John Milton
-
Humans cannot reject temptation. When they are plunged into the depths of despair, likened to hell, they will hold on to anything that may help them escape from the situation they are in, even if it's merely a spider's thread, no matter what sort of humans they are.
Yana Toboso
-
Let us not cease to do the utmost, that we may incessantly go forward in the way of the Lord; and let us not despair of the smallness of our accomplishments.
John Calvin
-
So to be sick unto death is, not to be able to die-yet not as though there were hope of life; no, the hopelessness in this case is that even the last hope, death, is not available. When death is the greatest danger, one hopes for life; but when one becomes acquainted with an even more dreadful danger, one hopes for death. So when the danger is so great that death has become one's hope, despair is the disconsolateness of not being able to die.
Soren Kierkegaard
-
Read for yourselves, read for the sake of your inspiration, for the sweet turmoil in your lovely head. But also read against yourselves, read for questioning and impotence, for despair and erudition... and also read those whose darkness or malice or madness or greatness you can't understand because only in this way will you grow, outlive yourself, and become what you are.
Adam Zagajewski
-
And now at last it comes. You will give me the Ring freely! In place of the Dark Lord you will set up a Queen. And I shall not be dark, but beautiful and terrible as the Morning and the Night! Fair as the Sea and the Sun and the Snow upon the Mountain! Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning! Stronger than the foundations of the earth. All shall love me and despair!
J. R. R. Tolkien
-
Maidens, like moths, are ever caught, by glare, And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair.
Lord Byron
-
Trying every day to tell the truth is hard. There are harder things, of course - arguably, living with lies and meaninglessness, living in despair is harder, but it's hardship disguised as luxury and easier perhaps to grow accustomed to, since truth is usually the enemy of custom. There are harder things than writing, being President Obama, for instance, and having to deal with House Republicans, or trying to fix the leak at the Fukushima reactor, these are harder, but writing is hard.
Tony Kushner
-
There is prodigious strength in sorrow and despair.
Charles Dickens
-
Men die in despair, while spirits die in ecstasy.
Honore de Balzac
-
Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed.
Yann Martel
-
When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.
Blaise Pascal
-
Don't let despair mutate your flesh Look at my twisted stumps of thought See the fingers, listen to the voice I am slowly becoming the end of the line.
Henry Rollins
Black Flag
-
There is a lot of suffering and injustice in the world, and there is also a great deal of hope. When you step forward and start speaking about what you see and what you want to change, you can begin living in that hope instead of despair.
Sonita Alizadeh
