Best 1597 quotes in «despair quotes» category

Boast is always a cry of despair, except in the young it is a cry of hope.

But however close we sometimes seem to that dark and final abyss, let no man of peace and freedom despair. For he does not stand alone.

But he who dies in despair has lived his whole life in vain.

But human beings fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place our lives in a larger setting, that revealed an underlying pattern, and gave us a sense that, against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value.

But it's precisely in this cold, loathsome half-despair, half-belief, in this deliberate burying of yourself underground for forty years out of sheer pain, in this assiduously constructed, and yet somewhat dubious hopelessness, in all this poision of unfulfilled desires turned inward, this fever of vacillations, of resolutions adopted for eternity, and of repentances a moment later that you find the very essence of that strange, sharp pleasure.

But it's also the beginning of another level of liberation for her]Eleanor Roosevelt], because when she returns to New York, she gets very involved in a new level of politics. She meets Esther Lape and Elizabeth Read, and becomes very involved in the women's movement, and then in the peace movement. And ironically, the years of her greatest despair become also the years of her great liberation.

But something occurred to me as I sped through that dirty shroud of fog, something Vonnegut has been trying to explain to the rest of us for most of his life. And that is this: Despair is a form of hope. It is an acknowledgment of the distance between ourselves and our appointed happiness. At certain moments, it is reason enough to live.

But the truth, he knows, is otherwise. His pleasure in living has been snuffed out. Like a leaf on a stream, like a puffball on a breeze, he has begun to float towards his end. He sees it quite clearly, and it fills him with (the word will not go away) despair. The blood of life is leaving his body and despair is taking its place, despair that is like a gas, odourless, tasteless, without nourishment. You breathe it in, your limbs relax, you cease to care, even at the moment when the steel touches your throat.

But Valentine, why despair, why always paint the future in such sombre hues?" Maximilien asked. "Because, my friend, I judge it by the past.

But when I found out that Jamey Rodemeyer had made an It Gets Better video only months before taking his own life, I felt indescribable despair.

By your grace, I will not despair. I believe that I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.

Can calm despair and wild unrest Be tenants of a single breast, Or sorrow such a changeling be?

Can it be that I have overlooked something, that there is something which I have failed to understand? Is it not possible that this state of despair is common to everyone?

Chill penury weighs down the heart itself; and though it sometimes be endured with calmness, it is but the calmness of despair.

Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.

Consider, if you will, the morning boner. What a metaphor of hope and renewal! How can anyone give way to despair when one’s groin greets each day with such a gala spectacle of physical optimism?

Christianity is the worst of the regressions that mankind can ever have undergone, and it's the Jew who, thanks to this diabolic invention, has thrown him back fifteen centuries. The only thing that would be still worse would be victory for the Jew through Bolshevism. If Bolshevism triumphed, mankind would lose the gift of laughter and joy. It would become merely a shapeless mass, doomed to grayness and despair.

Considering the unforeseen events of this world, we should be taught that no human condition should inspire men with absolute despair.

Coming out of the trance of denial is painful. But crises offer us opportunities to rethink our lives. The best thing about despair is that it wakes us up. We can see the world more clearly and open to new possibilities...And we can find new joy in the ordinary.

Conservatism is pessimistic, with a negative tendency - which we mostly resist - towards despair. Liberals are optimists, with a negative tendency, rarely resisted, towards utopianism.

[Contemporary writer] could be a kind of [Samuel] Beckett who would not be felt to be totally committed to despair.

Conversion is a work above man's power... Never think you can convert yourself. If ever you would be savingly converted, you must despair of doing it in your own strength. It is a resurrection from the dead, a new creation, a work of absolute omnipotence... Conversion is a supernatural work.

Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail.

Courage is as often the outcome of despair as of hope; in the one case we have nothing to lose, in the other everything to gain.

Cries of despair, misery, sobbing grief are a kind of wealth.

Creators understand that their emotions are not necessarily a sign of the circumstances. They understand that in desperate circumstances they may experience joy, and in jubilant circumstances they may feel regret. They know that any emotion will change. But because emotions are not the centerpiece of their lives, they do not pander to them. They create what they create, not in reaction to their emotions but independent of them. On days filled with the depths of despair, they can create. On days filled with the heights of joy, they can create.

Daytime sleep is a cursed slumber from which one wakes in despair.

Despair and die. The ghosts

Despair breeds fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism. A world of truly shared abundance would be a safer world.

Despair is a cavern beneath our feet and we teeter on its very brink.

Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.

Despair is as hollow and deceptive as hope!

Despair is not a particularly respectable condition and yet despair and delight alternate like systole and diastole in my heart.

Despair ... is the only cure for illusion. Without despair we cannot transfer our allegiance to reality - it's a kind of mourning period for our fantasies. Some people do not survive this despair, but no major change within a person can occur without it.

Despair is your friend in show business. I don't believe you can act if happiness is your lot. It's the ups that keep you living and the downs that mete out talent.

Despair often breeds disease.

Despair and bitterness are not the only songs in the world

Despair came over her, as it will when nobody around has any sexual relevance to you.

Despair gives the shocking ease to the mind that a mortification gives to the body.

Despair is a great incentive to honorable death.

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.

Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.

Despair is the greatest of our errors.

Despair kinda smells like burnt hair. Sounds great, but smells lousy. Now fear... fear you can taste! Let's see, fear kinda tastes like... like peaches, peaches covered with fresh bone marrow

Despair puts the last touch not only to our misery but also to our weakness.

Despair snuffs the sun from the firmament.

Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed.

Despair makes priests and friars.

Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.

Discouragement is simply the despair of wounded self-love.