Despair famous quotes
07-19-2025
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An eternity of wishing to speak directly to my Creator - I thought in despair - and this is how He finally contacts me? Through AOL Instant Messenger?
-- A.M. Jenkins -
When they are assailed by despair, young people should let universal concerns into their lives.
-- Abbe Pierre -
There are some vile and contemptible men who, allowing themselves to be conquered by misfortune, seek a refuge in death.
-- Agathon -
You have to know your own truth and stick to it. And never despair. Never give up. There's always hope.
-- Aidan Chambers -
Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.
-- Alain de Botton -
The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.
-- Alain de Botton -
It is necessary to fall in love... if only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway.
-- Albert Camus -
...the habit of despair is worse than despair itself.
-- Albert Camus -
He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.
-- Albert Camus -
I am alive again, now that I can no longer stand to live.
-- Albert Camus -
Nihilism is not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to negate.
-- Albert Camus -
He who hopes for spring with upturned eye never sees so small a thing as Draba. He who despairs of spring with downcast eye steps on it, unknowing. He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance.
-- Aldo Leopold -
I suppose I'm interested in sorrow, which is very different from depression or despair. Sorrow is continuous with the world; it allows for creativity.
-- Aleksandar Hemon -
Despair is the central part of the psychopathology. For the handmaiden of gossip is treachery:
-- Alexander Cockburn -
I don't feel despair because I am able to make the films I want to make, and that gives me hope.
-- Alexander Payne -
Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss.
-- Alexandre Dumas -
I know what happiness and what despair are, and I never make a jest of such feelings. Take it, then, but in exchange —
-- Alexandre Dumas -
In his larger forms, Schubert is a wanderer. He likes to move at the edge of the precipice, and does so with the assurance of a sleepwalker. To wander is the Romantic condition; one yields to it enraptured, or is driven and plagued by the terror of finding no escape. More often than not, happiness is but the surface of despair.
-- Alfred Brendel -
A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom.
-- Alfred de Vigny -
I must lose myself in action, lest I wither in despair.
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson -
It becomes no man to nurse despair, but, in the teeth of clenched antagonisms, to follow up the worthiest till he die.
-- Alfred the Great -
Despair the twin-born of devotion.
-- Algernon Charles Swinburne -
Optimism is the last resort of those in deep despair. There can't be any optimists in heaven.
-- Alice Thomas Ellis -
If the law does not lead us to Christ and redemption, it will lead us to despair.
-- Alistair Begg -
Desire is endless and unappeasable, is most intense where most forbidden, and is never far from despair.
-- Allen Wheelis -
I have nothing against people having work done, it is when I hear tale of girls of 16 queuing up to get bigger breasts, that is when I despair.
-- Amanda Burton -
If the charter of your liberties entails death and despair for untold multitudes, then it is nothing but a license for slaughter.
-- Amitav Ghosh -
We all had our miseries. But to despair was to wish back for something already lost. Or to prolong what was already unbearable. -Suyuan
-- Amy Tan -
My love is of a birth as rare As 'tis, for object, strange and high; It was begotten by Despair Upon Impossibility.
-- Andrew Marvell -
Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at what we lose, and depression is the mechanism of that despair.
-- Andrew Solomon -
Depression is the flaw in love. There's no such thing as love without the anticipation of loss. And that specter of despair can be the engine of intimacy.
-- Andrew Solomon -
The denial of our duty to act in this case is a denial of our right to act; and if we have no right to act, then may we well be termed the white slaves of the North, for like our brethren in bonds, we must seal our lips in silence and despair.
-- Angelina Grimke -
Writing has freed me from the despair of living.
-- Anita Brookner -
Time is fluid, so the moments where everything feels perfect pass in a wink, and those where you're on your knees in despair drag on like the death of a thousand cuts.
-- Ann Aguirre -
I have often been downcast, but never in despair;
-- Anne Frank -
The reason 'help' is such a great prayer is that God is the gift of desperation. When you're in despair, you're teachable.
-- Anne Lamott -
The prince is never going to come. Everyone knows that; and maybe sleeping beauty's dead.
-- Anne Rice -
I can't eat. I can never eat when I'm in the depths of despair.
-- Anne Shirley -
The pleasures of the world are deceitful; they promise more than they give. They trouble us in seeking them, they do not satisfy us when possessing them, and they make us despair in losing them.
-- Anne-Therese de Marguenat de Courcelles -
On 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 Loyd -
My despair is less despair than boredom and loneliness.
-- Anthony Swofford -
Cries of despair, misery, sobbing grief are a kind of wealth.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery -
This is a mighty wonder: in the discharge from the lungs alone, which is not particularly dangerous, the patients do not despair of themselves, even although near the last. Concerning Tuberculosis.
-- Aretaeus of Cappadocia -
Humor is... despair refusing to take itself seriously.
-- Arland Ussher -
Nature intended you to be the fountain-spring of cheerfulness and social life, and not the mountain of despair and melancholy.
-- Arthur Helps -
When you get to know me, I don't despair - I just get up, clean up, and start again.
-- Avi Arad -
Most writers spend their lives standing a little apart from the crowd, watching and listening and hoping to catch that tiny hint of despair, that sliver of malice, that makes them think, 'Aha, here is the story.'
-- Ayelet Waldman -
Something doing every minute' may be a gesture of despair-or the height of a battle against boredom.
-- B. F. Skinner -
To the extent that I had come to understand that despair does not necessarily result in annihilation, that one can go on as usual in spite of it, I had become hardened. Was this what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities? I didn't like it, but it made it easier to go on.
-- Banana Yoshimoto -
Men, however, shouldn't despair. They are excellent at identifying and imitating animal sounds, which would have been a significant advantage for the ancient hunter. Sadly, that's not quite as much use today.
-- Barbara Pease -
Hope is essential to any political struggle for radical change when the overall social climate promotes disillusionment and despair.
-- Bell Hooks -
Isolation and loneliness are central causes of depression and despair.
-- Bell Hooks -
Art has to offer something other than stylized despair.
-- Ben Lerner -
Don't despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.
-- Ben Okri -
Twilight makes us pensive; Aurora is the goddess of activity; despair curses at midnight; hope blesses at noon.
-- Benjamin Disraeli -
Industry pays debts, while despair increases them.
-- Benjamin Franklin -
Boast is always a cry of despair, except in the young it is a cry of hope.
-- Bernard Berenson -
Any philosophy worth taking seriously would have to be built upon a firm foundation of unyielding despair.
-- Bertrand Russell -
I'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 Bailey -
The fact that God has prohibited despair gives misfortune the right to hope all things, and leaves hope free to dare all things.
-- Bill Vaughan -
Only a soul full of despair can ever attain serenity and, to be in despair, you must have loved a good deal and still love the world.
-- Blaise Cendrars -
The piano is always true to me. In times of despair, happiness, and joy, its mood is always my own.
-- Bradley Joseph -
Take action. You can either be a passive victim of circumstance or you can be the active hero of your own life. Action is the antidote to apathy and cynicism and despair. You will inevitably make mistakes but at the end of your days, you will be remembered for your gallop, not for your stumble.
-- Bradley Whitford -
Strength means honoring your entire range of emotion, even your despair and heartbreak.
-- Brenda Shaughnessy -
The celebrity thing, I mean, Lindsay Lohan - what's she for? I look at that and throw my hands up in despair.
-- Bruce Dickinson -
How could one comfort a disturbed person? He is already assailed with doubts about his faith. He would have to despair with such a doctrine. Rather one must seek to convince him that the Savior is there for him, has already forgiven him, and has already accepted him. As soon as one makes faith even in the least a requirement for justification, one takes from such a person all the comfort of the Gospel.
-- C. F. W. Walther -
Faith in Christ is the only thing to save you from despair.
-- C. S. Lewis -
We need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.
-- C. S. Lewis -
Discontent and disorder were signs of energy and hope, not of despair.
-- C. V. Wedgwood -
Thank God genuine video phones hadn't been invented. I hadn't even grabbed a towel. Ford Prefect would despair of me.
-- C.E. Murphy -
She (the First Lady, entering the room with her gravely wounded husband) would admit fear but not despair.
-- Candice Millard -
If the time comes when our culture tires of the endless homicidal feuds, despairs of the use of force and war as a means of bringing peace, becomes discontent with the half-lives that its members are living - only then will our culture seriously look for alternatives.
-- Carl Rogers -
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 -
This can't last. This misery can't last. I must remember that and try to control myself. Nothing lasts really. Neither happiness nor despair. Not even life lasts very long
-- Celia Johnson -
Despair itself if it goes on long enough, can become a kind of sanctuary in which one settles down and feels at ease.
-- Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve -
It is at despair at not being able to be noble and beautiful by natural means that we have made up our faces so strangely.
-- Charles Baudelaire -
It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
-- Charles Baudelaire -
Il faut travailler sinon par go u" t, au moins par de sespoir, puisque, tout bien ve rifie , travailler est moins ennuyeux que s'amuser. We should work: if not by preference, at least out of despair. All things considered, work is less boring than amusement.
-- Charles Baudelaire -
There is prodigious strength in sorrow and despair.
-- Charles Dickens -
I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair.
-- Charles Lamb -
One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.
-- Charles Simic -
Great thoughts of your sin alone will drive you to despair; but great thoughts of Christ will pilot you into the haven of peace.
-- Charles Spurgeon -
Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.
-- Charlie Chaplin -
Optimism....is neither weak nor naive. It can be tough and pure and earned just as clearly as any brooding existential despair.
-- Charlie Pierce -
It always surprised him when he thought of it later that he did not sink under the load of despair.
-- Chinua Achebe -
Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith.
-- Christopher Fry -
The moment of near despair is quite often the moment that precedes courage.
-- Christopher Hitchens -
Oh, we are but soft and squishy bags of mortality rolling in a bin of sharp circumstance, leaking life until we collapse, flaccid, into our own despair..
-- Christopher Moore -
If you start in the pit of despair with these profane, awful things, even a glimmer of hope or awareness is going to occur that's much brighter coming from this dark, awful beginning.
-- Chuck Palahniuk -
A lot of interviewers are looking for the dark side. They want to know about the depths of your despair and fear.
-- Clare Balding -
We are turning our prisons into living tombs, inhabited by doomed men living in everlasting blank despair.
-- Clarence Darrow -
I let a good many mistakes show through when fixing my sensations. It will always be the same and this is what makes me despair.
-- Claude Monet -
I'm getting so slow at my work it makes me despair, but... I'm increasingly obsessed by the need to render what I experience, and I'm praying that I'll have a few more good years left to me...
-- Claude Monet -
Humor is not the opposite of seriousness. Humor is the opposite of despair.
-- Conrad Hyers -
No matter what, we always have the power to choose hope over despair, engagement over apathy, kindness over indifference, love over hate.
-- Cory Booker
