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
Sadness, despair
Sometimes the things I cherish,
Sometimes that's all I've got,
And that's enough
NAPALM DEATH
"Contemptuous", Utopia Banished
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
Desperation is energized despair.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Hours
Consider how the desperate fight;
Despair strikes wild, but often fatal too--
And in the mad encounter wins success.
WILLIAM HAVARD
Regulus
In the belly of Leviathan ... one can either despair and perish, or be cheerful and persevere.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Thomas
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
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 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
Though thou drewest a sword at thy friend, yet despair not: for there may be a returning to favour.
BIBLE
Ecclesiastes 22:21
He that despairs, limits an infinite power to a finite apprehension, and measures Providence by his own little, contracted model.
ROBERT SOUTH
Twelve Sermons
Despair ... is like froward children, who, when you take away one of their playthings, throw the rest into the fire for madness; it grows angry with itself, turns its own executioner, and revenges its misfortunes on its own head.
PIERRE CHARRON
Of Wisdom
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
There's only one great evil in the world today. Despair.
EVELYN WAUGH
Vile Bodies
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
Despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Fellowship of the Ring
He who despaireth of the end, shall never attain unto it; and he who seeth not the pit, shall perish therein.
ROBERT DODSLEY
The Economy of Human Life
Despair leadeth damnation in chains.
ST. BERNARD
attributed, Antiquity: Or, The Wise Instructor
There is something sustaining in the very agitation that accompanies the first shocks of trouble, just as an acute pain is often a stimulus, and produces an excitement which is transient strength. It is in the slow, changed life that follows--in the time when sorrow has become stale, and has no longer an emotive intensity that counteracts its pain--in the time when day follows day in dull unexpectant sameness, and trial is a dreary routine--it is then that despair threatens; it is then that the peremptory hunger of the soul is felt, and eye and ear are strained after some unlearned secret of our existence, which shall give to endurance the nature of satisfaction.
GEORGE ELIOT
The Mill on the Floss