Popular quotes about Despair! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
Hope is a terrible thing, she said. Is it? Yes, it keep you living in another place, a place which doesn't exist. For some people it's better than where they are. For many it's a relief. From life, she said. A relief from life? Is that living? Some people don't have a choice. No and that's awful for them. Hope is better than misery, he said. Or despair. Hope belongs in the same box as despair. Hope is not so bad, he said. At least despair has truth to it.
Susan MinotSo long as we have failed to eliminate any of the causes of human despair, we do not have the right to try to eliminate those means by which man tries to cleanse himself of despair.
Antonin ArtaudI treated despair in terms of hierarchy: if there was a more important pain in the world, it meant my own was negated. I thought I simply had to accept the fact that I was ugly, and that to feel despair about it was simply wrong.
Lucy GrealyTo him whom contemplates a trait of natural beauty, no harm nor despair can come. The doctrines of despair, spiritual or political servitude, were never taught by those who shared the serenity of Nature. For each phase of Nature, though not invisible, is yet not too distinct or obtrusive. It is there to be found when we look for it, but not too demanding of our attention.
Henry David ThoreauI don't despair about the cultural scene in Australia because there isn't one to despair about.
Robert HelpmannLove was undoubtedly one of the things capable of changing a person's whole life from one moment to the next. But there's the other side of the coin, the second thing that could make a human being take a totally different course from 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.
Paulo CoelhoMelancholy and sadness are the start of doubt... doubt is the beginning of despair; despair is the cruel beginning of the differing degrees of wickedness.
Isidore Ducasse LautreamontAll that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing as they must if they believe they can do nothing. There is nothing worse because the council of despair is declaration of irresponsibility; it is Pilate washing his hands.
Edmund BurkeNothing is unimportant to a man plunged in despair. He is as credulous as a criminal sentenced to death who listens to a lunatic raving to him about how he can escape through the keyhole.
Honore de BalzacWhen a man gets to despair he knows that all his thinking will never get him out. He will only get out by the sheer creative effort of God. Consequently he is in the right attitude to receive from God that which he cannot gain for himself.
Oswald ChambersSome people are attracted to sickness, to the kind of madness where sparks fly off the head, to the incoherence of despair, masked by nervous energy, which winds up looking like bewildered joy.
Luke Davies...You find a way, somehow to get through the most horrible things, things you think would kill you. You find a way and you move through the days, one by one, in shock, in despair, but you move. The days pass, one after the other, and you go along with them - occasionally stunned, and not entirely relieved, to find that you are still alive.
Michelle RichmondDespair leads to boredom, electronic games, computer hacking, poetry and other bad habits.
Edward AbbeyIn an all-out nuclear war, more destructive power than in all of World War II would be unleashed every second during the long afternoon it would take for all the missiles and bombs to fall. A World War II every second-more people killed in the first few hours than all the wars of history put together. The survivors, if any, would live in despair amid the poisoned ruins of a civilization that had committed suicide.
Jimmy CarterThank God genuine video phones hadn't been invented. I hadn't even grabbed a towel. Ford Prefect would despair of me.
C.E. MurphyA smile flickered across Coralโs face. โHave you ever noticed that once you have had a taste of certain sweetsโraspberry trifle is my own despairโit is quite impossible not to think, not to want, not to crave until you have taken another bite?โ โLord Swartingham is not a raspberry trifle.โ โNo, more of a dark chocolate mousse, I should think,โ Coral murmured. โAnd,โ Anna continued as if she hadnโt heard the interruption, โI donโt need another bite, uh,night of him.
Elizabeth HoytWords have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions.
Sigmund FreudIt would be easy to descend into despair, not only about the state of journalism, but the future of American democracy. But giving up is not an option. There is too much at stake.
Laurie GarrettI know what happiness and what despair are, and I never make a jest of such feelings. Take it, then, but in exchange โ
Alexandre DumasI feel that women of my kind are a profound mistake. There have been few women poets of distinction, and, if we count only the suicides of Sappho, Lawrence Hope and Charlotte Mew, their despair rate has been very high.
Anna WickhamAfter observing mutations in fruit flies for many years, Professes Goldschmidt fell into despair. The changes, he lamented, were so hopelessly micro [insignificant] that if a thousand mutations were combined in one specimen, there would still be no new species.
Norman Macbeth... bringing up daughters for nothing but marriage, mingles poison in the cup of domestic life, is traitorous to the virtue of both sexes, for neither suffers alone--is adverse to the happiness, to the development of conscience and to religion, and introduces to the dwellings of wretchedness and despair. The result of this degradation is pride, intemperance, licentiousness--nay, every vice, misery, and degradation.
Harriot Kezia HuntThe challenge throughout has been to tell what I view as the truth about racism without causing disabling despair.
Derrick Bell...and my loneliness, always my loneliness - that airless bubble of despair that is slowing stifling me.
Tabitha SuzumaAlways walking along despite the dangers and adversities, despite the injustices and horrors, trusting in God so as not to despair of men and events.
Tariq RamadanI don't panic. The same thing applies to me as to everybody else, so I'm given to euphoria and despair. And I would say that I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes.
George SorosA lot of people go straight from denial to despair without pausing in the middle and doing something about it.
Al GoreHis fair landlady was in despair. She would most willingly have made M. d'Artagnan her husband--such a handsome man, and such a fierce mustache!
Alexandre DumasMagic enables man to carry out with confidence his important tasks, to maintain his poise and his mental integrity in fits of anger, in the throes of hate, of unrequited love, of despair and anxiety. The function of magic is to ritualize man's optimism, to enhance his faith in the victory of hope over fear. Magic expresses the greater value for man of confidence over doubt, of steadfastness over vacillation, of optimism over pessimism.
Bronislaw MalinowskiFight against yourself, recover yourself to decency, to modesty, to freedom. And, in the first place, condemn your actions; but when you have condemned them, do not despair of yourself. For both ruin and recovery are from within.
EpictetusThere are times when you are in despair, because in order not to betray who you are, you don't compromise, you don't make movies that would be very lucrative or prestigious or easily understood. And yet I stay attached to the most uncanny premises. It's never been easy.
Guillermo del ToroIt was a white-collar crime.โ Illium gave her an odd look. โIn the human world, such crimes are lightly punished, though they harm hundreds, leading some to choose death out of despair, while the man who beats a single person is considered the worse criminal.
Nalini SinghThere is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no need for silence, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That is how civilizations heal.
Toni MorrisonTo desire Him to be merciful to us is to acknowledge Him as God. To seek His pity when we deserve no pity is to ask Him to be just with a justice so holy that it knows no evil and shows mercy to everyone who does not fly from Him in despair.
Thomas MertonGod went out of me as if the sea dried up like sandpaper, as if the sun became a latrine. God went out of my fingers. They became stone. My body became a side of mutton and despair roamed the slaughterhouse.
Anne SextonThe celebrity thing, I mean, Lindsay Lohan - what's she for? I look at that and throw my hands up in despair.
Bruce DickinsonPoetry has its uses for despair. It can carve a shape in which a pain can seem to be; it can give oneโs loss a form and dimension so that it might be loss and not simply a hopeless haunting. It can do these things for one person, or it can do them for an entire culture. But poetry is for psychological, spiritual, or emotional pain. For physical pain it is, like everything but drugs, useless.
Christian WimanI think it's realistic to have hope. One can be a perverse idealist and say the easiest thing: 'I despair. The world's no good.' That's a perverse idealist. It's practical to hope, because the hope is for us to survive as a human species. That's very realistic.
Studs TerkelThe Imagination merely enables us to wander into the darkness of the unknown where, by the dim light of the knowledge we carry, we may glimpse something that seems of interest. But when we bring it out and examine it more closely it usually proves to be only trash whose glitter had caught our attention. Imagination is at once the source of all hope and inspiration but also of frustration. To forget this is to court despair.
William Ian Beardmore BeveridgeDespair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation.
Graham Greene