Popular quotes about Despair! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 44
If there's more that you can do, then do it. If there's not more that you can do, then be content with what you're doing. But if there is despair, the despair can only be that you can do more. Because when you're doing as much as you can do, you will not feel despair. Because despair is the gap between what you could be doing and what you are doing.
Stefan MolyneuxIt is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.
J. R. R. TolkienIf clearness about things produces a fundamental despair, a fundamental despair in turn produces a remarkable clearness or even playfulness about ordinary matters.
George SantayanaHe thought that it was loneliness which he was trying to escape and not himself. But the street ran on: catlike, one place was the same as another to him. But in none of them could he be quiet. But the street ran on in its moods and phases, always empty: he might have seen himself as in numberless avatars, in silence, doomed with motion, driven by the courage of flagged and spurred despair; by the despair of courage whose opportunities had to be flagged and spurred.
William FaulknerWe cannot do without it, and yet we disgrace and vilify the same. It may be compared to a cage, the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair to get out.
Michel de MontaigneThe very act of writing assumes, to begin with, that someone cares to hear what you have to say. It assumes that people share, that people can be reached, that people can be touched and even in some cases changed. So many of the things in our world lead us to despair. It seems to me that the final symptom of despair is silence, and that storytelling is one of the sustaining arts; itโs one of the affirming arts. A writer may have a certain pessimism in his outlook, but the very act of being a writer seems to me to be an optimistic act.
Tobias WolffThe most common despair is...not choosing, or willing, to be oneself...[but] the deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than oneself.
Soren KierkegaardWhat moments of despair that life would ever be made precious to me by the consciousness that I lived to some good purpose! It was that sort of despair that sucked away the sap of half the hours which might have been filled by energetic youthful activity: and the same demon tries to get hold of me again whenever an old work is dismissed and a new one is being meditated.
George EliotOnce poverty is gone, we'll need to build museums to display its horrors to future generations. They'll wonder why poverty continued so long in human society - how a few people could live in luxury while billions dwelt in misery, deprivation and despair.
Muhammad YunusThe difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
Alain de BottonWar is hell, but that's not the half of it, because war is also mystery and terror and adventure and courage and discovery and holiness and pity and despair and longing and love. War is nasty; war is fun. War is thrilling; war is drudgery. War makes you a man; war makes you dead.
Tim O'BrienWhen 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 ChambersMarriage can be compared to a cage: birds outside it despair to enter, and birds within, to escape.
Michel de MontaigneI'm English, and as such I crave disappointment. That's why I buy Kinder Surprise. Horrible chocolate; nasty little toy: a double-whammy of disillusionment! Sometimes I eat the toy out of sheer despair.
Bill BaileyTruly great people emit a light that warms the hearts of those around them. When that light has been put out, a heavy shadow of despair descends.
Banana YoshimotoSubordination to morality can be slavish or vain or self- interested or resigned or gloomily enthusiastic or thoughtless or an act of despair, just as subordination to a prince can be: in itself it is nothing moral.
Friedrich NietzscheLove- what is love? A great and aching heart; Wrung hands; and silence; and a long despair
Robert Louis StevensonOne leaf left on a branch and not a sound of sadness or despair. One leaf left on a branch and no unhappiness. One leaf left all by itself in the air and it does not speak of loneliness or death. One leaf and it spends itself in swaying mildly in the breeze.
David Ignatow[Contemporary writer] could be a kind of [Samuel] Beckett who would not be felt to be totally committed to despair.
Jean-Paul SartreWe should learn to be patient with ourselves. Recognizing our strengths and our weaknesses, we should strive to use good judgment in all of our choices and decisions, make good use of every opportunity, and do our best in every task we undertake. We should not be unduly discouraged nor in despair at any time when we are doing the best we can. Rather, we should be satisfied with our progress even though it may come slowly at times.
Joseph B. WirthlinWhen he awoke it was dawn. Or something like dawn. The light was watery, dim and incomparably sad. Vast, grey, gloomy hills rose up all around them and in between the hills there was a wide expanse of black bog. Stephen had never seen a landscape so calculated to reduce the onlooker to utter despair in an instant. "This is one of your kingdoms, I suppose, sir?" he said. "My kingdoms?" exclaimed the gentleman in surprize. "Oh, no! This is Scotland!
Susanna ClarkeThe one who confidently looks forward to an eternal reward for his efforts in mortality is constantly sustained through his deepest trials. When he is disappointed in love, he does not commit suicide. When loved ones die, he doesnโt despair; when he loses a coveted contest, he doesnโt falter; when war and destruction dissipate his future, he doesnโt sink into a depression. He lives above his world and never loses sight of the goal of his salvation.
Harold B. LeeOn one level my sense of despair had been dispelled by therapy, yet on another it had not been replaced by either the desire for a future or the concept of one. I felt more aware of who I was, but that in itself-dominated as it was by sensations of fragmentation and isolation-filled me with no great hope, and in many ways only fuelled an appetite for destruction.
Anthony LoydThere are few of us, if any, who don't walk the refiner's fire of adversity and despair, sometimes known to others but for many quietly hidden and privately endured.
Richard C. EdgleyI-just want you. I want you so bad, all the time. I know I shouldn't, I know I can't, I know it's wrong... but even when you're pissing me off, when you're reminding me of pain and despair and torture-it's there, the wanting. I'm tired of fighting it. I fight so many things, all the time, every day. I don't want to fight this. Not anymore.
Cate TiernanThe look of disbelief that ran across the boy's face was somehow more disturbing than the despair it had replaced. This creature had given up hope long ago; he probably begged out of habit rather than expectation.
Brandon SandersonO star-eyed Science, hast thou wander'd there, To waft us home the message of despair?
Thomas CampbellTo a man utterly without a sense of belonging, mere life is all that matters. It is the only reality in an eternity of nothingness, and he clings to it with shameless despair.
Eric HofferI am afraid of falling into hopeless despair, over my wasted life, and I am still not sure how it happened.
Margaret AtwoodIf you try to get 1% better each day at your health, at your relationships and the way you treat people, at your creativity, and at turning despair into gratitude, then that 1% compounds into an amazing person. Do that 1%. Take one action. Even if the actions is for one minute. The 1/1/1 strategy.
James AltucherThe artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.
Woody AllenAppetite, with an opinion of attaining, is called hope; the same, without such opinion, despair.
Thomas HobbesInstead of a Dark Lord, you would have a queen, not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love me and despair!
J. R. R. TolkienAnd 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. TolkienTo 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 MertonDespair came over her, as it will when nobody around has any sexual relevance to you.
Thomas PynchonNo matter how ruined man and his world may seem to be, and no matter how terrible man's despair may become, as long as he continues to be a man his very humanity continues to tell him that life has a meaning.
Thomas MertonWhen I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall... think of it, always.
Mahatma GandhiIf you weaken, I'll be strong. If you get lost, I'll be your way home. If you despair, I'll bring you joy. I will love you until the end of time.
Karen Marie MoningThe music enchanted the air. It was like the south wind, like a warm night, like swelling sails beneath the stars, completely and utterly unreal... It made everything spacious and colourful, the dark stream of life seemed pulsing in it; there were no burdens any more, no limits; there existed only glory and melody and love, so that one simply could not realize that, at the same time as this music was, outside there ruled poverty and torment and despair.
Erich Maria RemarqueNo matter what, we always have the power to choose hope over despair, engagement over apathy, kindness over indifference, love over hate.
Cory BookerThe 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 Beveridge