Despair Quotes
-
Our life is always deeper than we know, is always more divine than it seems, and hence we are able to survive degradations and despairs which otherwise must engulf us.
William James
-
know that without night there is no day; without lies, no truth;without despair,no hope. Beware above all of hate, but call to its opposite too. For all things have an opposite and, if you choose it, with will and care, you may turn one thing into its reflection.
David Clement-Davies
-
Now conscience wakes despair That slumber'd,-wakes the bitter memory Of what he was, what is, and what must be Worse.
John Milton
-
When our days become dreary with low hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
-
If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?
Soren Kierkegaard
-
Two criminals were crucified with Christ. One was saved; do not despair. One was not; do not presume.
Saint Augustine
-
There are moments of despair that come sometimes, when night sets in and a white fog presses against the windows. Then our house changes its shape, rears up and becomes a place of despair. Then fear and rage run simply--and the thought of Death as a friend. This is the simplest of thoughts, that Death must come when we call, although he is a god.
Stevie Smith
-
When clever people ask me where I get a poem, I despair.
Robert Frost
-
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
-
The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our own virtues.
William Shakespeare
-
You have a bigger view, of something bigger than you, and you have to view that and take that in mind. At times you feel like despair rises up over hope, then other times you feel hopeful again.
Annie Lennox
Eurythmics
-
When it’s still—when it’s the cellar of a house, or a ring of mushrooms in a forest or a gun emplacement outside Offenburg—it’s called one of two things. If it remains static and unchanging then we call it a despair. If it seeks to extend its influence then it is a malignancy. Or as the Director puts it—a despair will suck you in, but a malignancy is coming to get you.
Ben Aaronovitch
-
Perhaps the critics are right: this generation may not produce literature equal to that of any past generation-who cares? The writer will be dead before anyone can judge him-but he must go on writing, reflecting disorder, defeat, despair, should that be all he sees at the moment, but ever searching for the elusive love, joy, and hope-qualities which, as in the act of life itself, are best when they have to be struggled for, and are not commonly come by with much ease, either by a critic's formula or by a critic's yearning.
William Styron
-
I write, and I feel how the correct and precise use of words is sometimes like a remedy to an illness. Like a contraption for purifying the air, I breathe in and exhale the murkiness and manipulations of linguistic scoundrels and language rapists of all shades and colors. I write and I feel how the tenderness and intimacy I maintain with language, with its different layers, its eroticism and humor and soul, give me back the person I used to be, me, before my self became nationalized and confiscated by the conflict, by governments and armies, by despair and tragedy.
David Grossman
-
The spiritual differs from the religious in being able to endure isolation. The rank of a spiritual person is proportionate to his strength for enduring isolation, whereas we religious people are constantly in need of 'the others,' the herd. We religious folks die, or despair, if we are not reassured by being in the assembly, of the same opinion as the congregation, and so on. But the Christianity of the New Testament is precisely related to the isolation of the spiritual man.
Soren Kierkegaard
-
Despair is deep. An abyss that swallows dreams. A wall at the world's end. Behind it I await death. Because all our work has come to this.
Catherine Fisher