quotations about despair
Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair.
IRVIN D. YALOM
When Nietzsche Wept
In my heaven of despair
Lies the ocean of impurity
A ship made of angel's hair
Set sails on the morning tide
COVENANT
"Shipwreck", Dreams of Cryotank
Consider how the desperate fight;
Despair strikes wild, but often fatal too--
And in the mad encounter wins success.
WILLIAM HAVARD
Regulus
The Disappointment of Manhood succeeds to the delusion of Youth: let us hope that the heritage of Old Age is not Despair.
BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Vivian Grey
Real despair only seized us later. Afterwards. As we emerged from the nightmare and began to search for meaning.
ELIE WIESEL
"Hope, Despair, and Memory", Nobel Lecture, December 11, 1986
Despair wasn't a guest, you didn't play its favorite music, find it a comfortable chair. Despair was the enemy.
JANET FINCH
White Oleander
Sadness, despair
Sometimes the things I cherish,
Sometimes that's all I've got,
And that's enough
NAPALM DEATH
"Contemptuous", Utopia Banished
Despair leadeth damnation in chains.
ST. BERNARD
attributed, Antiquity: Or, The Wise Instructor
Though thou drewest a sword at thy friend, yet despair not: for there may be a returning to favour.
BIBLE
Ecclesiastes 22:21
Let despair be known
as my ebb-tide; but let prayer
have its springs, too, brimming,
disarming him; discovering somewhere
among his fissures deposits of mercy
where trust may take root and grow.
R. S. THOMAS
"Tidal", Mass for Hard Times
There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
Despair speaks evenly, in a quiet voice.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
Tehanu
Despair came knocking
At my door
And I let her in
For a while
She sat on the couch
In the end, smoking
She said nothing
DANIEL JOHNSTON
"Despair Came Knocking", Continued Story
Thus repuls'd, our final hope
Is flat despair.
JOHN MILTON
Paradise Lost
Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Fellowship of the Ring
Despair doubles our strength.
ENGLISH PROVERB
What burning agony of the soul, what direful convulsions of the brain attend despair, when every hope seems gone, and when every throb of the heart is a death-stroke; when the fibre of every nerve is charged with piercing, searching, and writhing tortures, and the intensity of life is upon us; here it is where the unfaltering energy of great minds fails not, but boldly wrestles with it.
ACTON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle.
VLADIMIR LENIN
"L. N. Tolstoy and the Modern Labour Movement", Nash Put, November 28, 1910
There's only one great evil in the world today. Despair.
EVELYN WAUGH
Vile Bodies
Despair gives courage to a coward.
ENGLISH PROVERB