Despair Quotes
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Optimism is the last resort of those in deep despair. There can't be any optimists in heaven.
Alice Thomas Ellis
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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
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Faith reinvigorates the will, enriches the affections, and awakens a sense of creativeness. Active faith knows no fear, and it is a safeguard to me against cynicism and despair.
Helen Keller
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In motivating people to love and defend the natural world, an ounce of hope is worth a ton of despair.
George Monbiot
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Teach hope to all, despair to none.
Abraham Lincoln
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Compared with the person who is conscious of his despair, the despairing individual who is ignorant of his despair is simply a negativity further away from the truth and deliverance. . . . Yet ignorance is so far from breaking the despair or changing despair to nondespairing that it can in fact be the most dangerous form of despair. . . . An individual is furthest from being conscious of himself as spirit when he is ignorant of being in despair. But precisely this-not to be conscious of oneself as spirit-is despair, which is spiritlessness. . . .
Soren Kierkegaard
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I think most artists create out of despair. The very nature of creation is not a performing glory on the outside, it's a painful, difficult search within.
Louise Berliawsky Nevelson
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How easy it is to wax lyrical over despair, to wallow in it, to enjoy it. This too is kitsch
Karsten Harries
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If sub specie aeternitatis from eternity's point of view there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair.
Thomas Nagel
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The bigness of the world is redemption. Despair compresses you into a small space, and a depression is literally a hollow in the ground. To dig deeper into the self, to go underground, is sometimes necessary, but so is the other route of getting out of yourself, into the larger world, into the openness in which you need not clutch your story and your troubles so tightly to your chest.
Rebecca Solnit
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Maidens, like moths, are ever caught, by glare, And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair.
Lord Byron
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Like strength is felt from hope, and from despair.
Homer
