Best 268 quotes in «hopelessness quotes» category

If America and the Western world continue in their state of unconscious hopelessness, lack of faith and of fortitude, it is predictable that they will not be able to resist the temptation of the big bang by nuclear weapons, which would end all problems - overpopulation, boredom, and hunger - since it would do away with all life.

If we throw blankets over our children's dreams, we darken their world and extinguish their desire to live.

If we’ve been born once already (which we know we have) why then is it so hard for some to believe that we’ve been born before? The answer to that is nothing other than the information about life one has previously received.

If you are still alive, time is now, reject sin, seek righteousness.

If you cannot reach a state of utter oneness with each other, how do you expect to solve anything? Separate the world will crumble; together the world will thrive.

If you’ll pardon me for making this somewhat prosaic observation – maybe that’s what life is, or ends up being most of the time: a rehearsal for a performance that never eventually materializes.

I have given up on speech with the Rev; there is no use explaining that you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help. My trust, even down in that dark place I carry, is that some person will come running. And then finally the way through grief is grieving.

I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing

Ist es wahr, was der Straßenkehrer gesagt hat? Dass alles Böse mit dem Vergessen einer Sehnsucht beginnt?« »Es beginnt früher«, antwortet der Dschinn. »Es beginnt immer mit einer verlorenen Hoffnung.« Und später, viel später, als der Knabe schon an die Spiele denkt, die er bald spielen wird, murmelt der Dschinn, längst wieder allein und eingeschlossen in seinem Turm aus Eis, noch einmal vor sich hin: »Niemand vermag zu ermessen, wohin es mit einem kommen kann, der die Hoffnung verloren hat …

I held hope in my hands every day. I treated hope like it was a precious stone. I clutched it so tightly that I sometimes felt bruised by it.

i just want to go back to sleep and wake up again hoping this time, the morning is good

I never want a girl to lose all hope that her life can’t completely turn around, even if she feels that she is at the edge, standing on one foot, and ready to say goodbye.

I sometimes wish I could spontaneously combust. Burn until nothing but ash is left, to be washed away by the wind and the rain.

I suppose that's true for everyone in life - when it rains, it pours. Nothing ever just comes one at a time. But I guess sometimes, at least this one time, when it poured, it wasn't a bad thing!

I have no idea what to do, and everything is starting to feel dangerously hopeless. Hopelessness is not an emotion to be indulged. On the heels of hopelessness comes defeat, and even though everything seems pointless and impossible, I still want to win. Underneath my confusion and utter, bone-crushing fatigue, even though I don't know much of anything at all, I still know I want to win.

I have worked with many people over the years who struggled with basically hopeless problems – negative situations that for the most part could not be fixed or changed. In these situations there was always one very powerful thing they could change. They could change their perspective. They could make a fundamental change in how they saw themselves and their lives, and this always made the situation more bearable.

I kept hoping because she couldn’t afford to lose hope. I kept my faith so she wouldn’t lose hers.

In 2008, I was the woman who thought she had the world by the tail: the "perfect life." In 2010, I was the woman without hope who thought she had no life left to live. Which woman am I today? Neither. Both were illusions.

It ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all my life I hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last—into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment! I insist upon that. I have spoken of this because I keep wanting to know for a fact whether other people feel such enjoyment? I will explain; the enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one’s own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into. And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely nothing. Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness, that one is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were any consolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realise that he actually is a scoundrel.

It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it. When I decided to go to Alaska that April, like Chris McCandless, I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic. I thought climbing the Devils Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams. And I lived to tell my tale.

I threw my hands in the air and said show me something. He said, "if you dare come a little closer".

It is ignorance that is at times incomprehensible to the wise; for instance, he may not see 'the positive person' or 'the negative person' in such a black and white way as many people do. A wise man may not understand it because, as a catalyst of wisdom, but not always wise in his own eyes, even he can learn from and give back to fools. To think that an individual has absolutely nothing to offer to the table is counter-intuitively what the wise man considers to be 'the ignorance of hopelessness'.

[I]t takes so little effort and money to get rid of malaria, to bring in clean water, to give people a chance at an education. When you don't have hope, that's when people start to do weird, horrible, violent things. That's at the bottom of it. It's just a question of prioritizing. The funds are there." (The Power of One: Belief.net Interview; July 2005)

it seemed that the pain of their physical illness at times was less than the misery of their poverty ridden existence, the unending wait in the queues and the feeling of hopelessness and abandonment by your own system was enough to rob them of their will power to fight any disease.

It wasn't that she was sad—sadness had very little to do with it, really, considering that most of the time, she felt close to nothing at all. Feeling required nerves, connections, sensory input. The only thing she felt was numb. And tired. Yes, she very frequently felt tired.

I wanted to see Chameleons, Then I saw my friends!

I've read the stories. Teenagers committing suicide because all they can see ahead of them is shame and disgrace. Kids running away from home because they feel like they've list their future. Well, I'm not having that happen to Torin.

It wont be much longer now and then there wont be anything left; we wont even have anything to do left, not even the privilege of walking backward slowly for a reason, for the sake of honor and what’s left of pride. Not God; evidently we have done without Him for four years, only He just didn’t think to notify us; and not only not shoes and clothing but not even any need for them, and not only no land nor any way to make food, but no need for the food since we have learned to live without that too; and so if you dont have God and you dont need food and clothes and shelter, there isn’t anything for honor and pride to climb on and hold to and flourish. And if you haven’t got honor and pride, then nothing matters. Only there is something in you that doesn’t care about honor and pride yet that lives, that even walks backward for a whole year just to live; that probably even when this is over and there is not even defeat left, will still decline to sit still in the sun and die, but will be out in the woods, moving and seeking where just will and endurance could not move it, grabbing for roots and such – the old mindless sentient undreaming meat that doesn’t even know any difference between despair and victory.

I wanted the world to sit back and listen up, and let me explain to it that when someone is sad and hopeless, the last thing they need to feel is that they are the only ones in the world with that feeling. So, if you feel sorry for someone, don’t pretend to be happy. Don’t pretend to care only about their problems. People aren’t stupid. Not all of us, anyway.

Living in musty shadows and dismal, oppressive silence, Thérèse could see her whole life stretching out before her totally void, bringing night after night the same cold bed and morning after morning the same empty day.

I wish I could help him. I wish I could help the dozens of other Sufferers - all the victims of wounds, maulings, burns, diseases, incipient malnutrition, and melancholic despair - aboard this entrapped ship and her sister ship. I wish I could help myself, for already I am showing the early signs of Nostalgia and Debility. But there is little that I - or any surgeon in the Year of Our Lord 1848 - can do. God help us all.

My hope is that tomorrow will be fine, but, if tomorrow doesn't go well, I shall still hope to be fine tomorrow!

Magically, hopelessness gives rise to profound hope.

Most times and in most circumstances, what hinders real progress is never anything big, but the small things we least regard that impede real thinking and action for progress!

My fate is like those envelopes – sealed and tossed aside.

My last chance had vanished into itself like a snail coiling up into his shell. Insidiously I had lost my grip, and now this was it. I thought all this without much emotion. I really didn't care anymore. I couldn't hang on anymore. I didn't have the guts to kill myself, but I didn't want it to continue. I walked a couple of blocks, empty, listless, and wished I could cry. ...The diabolic hope, the purposeful pulsing of blood, the flight into coherence allowed for some rationalizing an afterlife. A new theology was evolving, one that had a faith-in-death clause. It was evolved when I kicked a dead waterbug on the pavement. It was dried out, hollowed, emptied, like some kind of shell. Maybe, I thought, its body is a shell, maybe all bodies are shells. We hatch and die. Our spirit or something like that is the yoke: it lives the real life, the true life. It wasn't comforting.

Nobody is going to notice Billie. People like us are invisible.

Nada retrata tanto la desesperanza como decir: así transcurrieron días, meses, años. Indefensos, delegamos en la sucesión fatal del tiempo, que es idéntica para todos, el avance de una corrupción que allana toda resistencia y sólo nos afecta a nosotros, recortándose contra el fondo del tiempo como una silueta a contraluz sobre una pantalla quieta. ¿Era el transcurso de los días lo que yo padecía, o más bien el privilegio de ser contemporáneo de mi propia degradación, el testigo de la evidencias que con el correr de las horas iban apartándome de lo humano? Que fueran sólo días no me consolaba; la crueldad vuelve irrisoria cualquier medida de tiempo. Así, pues, transcurrieron días, y a cada minuto sentía adelgazarse la diferencia que había entre mi cuerpo y su herida. El espacio, la ciudad, las distancias se desfiguraban a mi alrededor, se contraían en nudos álgidos y terminaban volatilizándose en el aire como si nunca hubieran sido otra cosa que ilusiones. Es probable que eso sea el Infierno: ese aire que sobrevive, intacto, a la desaparición de todas las cosas, y que envuelve como una esfera diáfana el espectáculo del derrumbe personal. Cada día que pasaba mi sufrimiento dividía el mundo por alguno de sus componentes. Un día eran las calles, otro el cielo, después eran los rostros, la luz, el idioma, y así seguido. El transcurso del tiempo no era más que esa obstinada voluntad de dividir; el resultado, como es previsible, iba decreciendo progresivamente. ¿Llegaría alguna vez a cero? Esa esperanza fue la última en abandonarme. El mundo, en efecto, es infinitamente divisible; tiende a cero, pero la cifra ínfima a la que esas divisiones lo acercan refleja menos un decrecimiento que una depuración, como si del otro lado de tanta resta no acechara el vacío sino la falta absoluta de estilo: el infierno desnudo.

Negativity, like mass, can neither be created nor destroyed—it exists in everything.

Never be defined by what has happened to you in the past, it was just a life lesson, not a life sentence. ~ Donald Pillai

Nonviolence is kindling light of love into the dark places and budding trust from the threshold of hopelessness.

No matter what happens, as long as you think positively, hopelessness can never touch you!

No sunset winks, but surely be followed by the sunrise! - Try to remember this on your moments of despair.

No sé, si uno se ríe verdaderamente con ganas, parece como si de pronto se te reacomodaran las vísceras, como si de pronto hubiera razones para el ptimismo, como si todo esto tuviera un sentido. Uno tendría que automedicarse la risa como un tratamiento de profilaxis sicológica, pero el problema, como te imaginarás, es que no abundan los motivos de risa.

Nothing is more excruciating than hopelessly longing for lost love.

Nothing changes, love. Ever. Hope is a fickle vixen sent to torment us with discontent. And I am done with her, and her empty promises, and wishes unfulfilled.

….Nothing was inevitable. She had not chosen this way. It was her fate. It had been decided since before time began. It had been decided before she began. Nothing could be done. There was no point in trying. It was way too late. The inevitability of nothing was totally supreme, overriding everything. No way out. No way through. She could only accept the unacceptable. She could only endure the unendurable. Nothing was wrong! Nothing was wrong and the wrongness of this awesome nothing seeped from her. Some people, only a few, saw it. Some people, only a few felt it. Some people, only a few, recognised it and in recognising it for what it was, raged against it. Through the nothingness, these few reached out for her. She could not reach back. Through the nothingness, these few fought for her. She could not fight back for herself. Through the nothingness, these few cared for her. She could not care back for herself. Through the nothingness, these few spoke out for her, shattering the frozen silence over and over again. She could not speak out for herself…. “ *I hope this may give some comfort to people who need it. There are good, caring people (whether outside or within yourself, if need be) and you do deserve to be cared for and supported as much as anyone else does." From “Nothing”, one of the short stories in “Fight! Rabbit! Fight!

Oh, I am unhappy… I can't work, I shan't work. Enough, enough! I have already been at work for a long while, and my brain has dried up, and I've grown thinner, plainer, older, and there is no relief of any sort, and time goes and it seems all the while as if I am going away from the real, the beautiful life, farther and farther away, down some precipice. I'm in despair and I can't understand how it is that I am still alive, that I haven't killed myself… … Still, I am sorry that my youth has gone

One of the greatest dangers of great dreams in your youth is waking up to despair as an adult.

Once upon a long ago time I was a girl with hopeful halos in my eyes—not unlike you—not a typical beauty but beautiful nonetheless, as all young girls tend to be in their prime, even if they don’t tend to know it.