despair Quotes

“They are too grievous for us to be able to reflect on them at once. If we did that, we should have been destroyed long ago.”

“A twisted dagger of smoke drifted up from the gun barrel. Fallen on one knee he groped for the bullet, sickened as it moved, and fell over as the forest flew upward, and she, making muted noises of triumph and despair, danced on her toes around the stricken hero.”

“O country lost, and gods redeem’d in vain, If still in endless exile we remain!”

“I understood it now, why I had lived so many times. I had to learn a lot of important skills and lessons, so that when the time came I could rescue Ethan, not from the pond but from the sinking despair of his own life.”

“Life was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old yours, the old lusts, the old despairs. That’s why you must walk up the hills do you can ride down.”

“We call upon you to take heart, for we can swear to you that these things pass.”

“I’m not brave any more darling. I’m all broken. They’ve broken me.”

We embrace the spectrum of emotions, from the heights of transcendent joy to the depths of hatred and despair.

“I often don’t say this out loud, even when I should. I contain and compartmentalize to a disturbing degree: In my belly-basement are hundreds of bottles of rage, despair, fear, but you’d never guess from looking at me.”

“Do I want to live? . . . [W]ould you like to live with your soul in the grave?”

“You teach me now how cruel you’ve been—cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort.”

“How can we live without our lives? How will we know it’s us without our past?”

“The greatest enemy is one that has nothing to lose.”

“The rusted embroidery hoops left an unsightly orange ring on the linen that may have damaged my prospects for good.”

“The habit of despair is worse than despair itself.”

“His father sat down on the dirt beside him...He was crying now, crying so hard he could barely breathe. His father pulled Jess over on his lap as if he were Joyce Ann. ‘There. There,” he said, patting his head. ‘Shhh. Shhh.‘”

“Despair has its own calms.”

“When we become aware that we do not have to escape our pains, but that we can mobilize them into a common search for life, those very pains are transformed from expressions of despair into signs of hope.”

“Don’t leave me here alone! It’s your Sam calling. Don’t go where I can’t follow! Wake up, Mr. Frodo! O wake up, Frodo, me dear, me dear. Wake up!”

“Me miserable! which way shall I flie Infinite wrauth, and infinite despaire? Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep Still threatning to devour me opens wide, To which the Hell I suffer seems a Heav’n.”

“I see it all raving before me the endless yakking kitchen mouthings of life, the long dark grave of tomby talks under midnight kitchen bulbs, in fact it fills me with love to realize that life so avid and misunderstood nevertheless reaches out skinny skeleton hand to me and to Billie too -- But you know what I mean. And this is the way it begins.”

“Can calm despair and wild unrest Be tenants of a single breast?”

“Who can listen to a story of loneliness and despair without taking the risk of experiencing similar pains in his own heart and even losing his precious peace of mind?”

″‘My mother had a look on her face that I’ll never forget. It was one of complete despair and horror, for losing Bing, for being so foolish as to think she could use faith to change fate.‘”

″‘When this news was brought to me ...[I] caused my mare Hwin to be saddled and took with me a sharp dagger... And when my father’s house was out of sight and I was come to a green open place in a certain wood where there were no dwellings of men, I dismounted from Hwin my mare and took out the dagger. Then I parted my clothes where I thought the readiest way lay to my heart and I prayed to all the gods that as soon as I was dead I might find myself with my brother. After that I shut my eyes and prepared to drive the dagger into my heart.‘”

“A certain amount of desperation is usually necessary before we’re ready for God.”

My despair is less despair than boredom and loneliness.

“I have been one acquainted with the night.”

“You might think I lost all hope at that point. I did.”

″‘He’s not a human being,’ she retorted; ‘and he has no claim on my charity. I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death, and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts, Ellen: and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.‘”

“I have not broken your heart—you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me that I am strong.”

“I have to remind myself to breathe—almost to remind my heart to beat!”

“In the West, we have been withdrawing from our tradition-, religion- and even nation-centred cultures, partly to decrease the danger of group conflict. But we are increasingly falling prey to the desperation of meaninglessness, and that is no improvement at all.”

“In times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry I cry and when you hurt I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods to tears and despair and make it through the potholed street of life.”

“One who wants fellowship without solitude plunges into the void of words and feelings, and one who seeks solitude without fellowship perishes in the abyss of vanity, self-infatuation, and despair.”

“Mahmoud’s mother broke down in tears, and his father let the life jackets he carried drop to the ground. The smuggler had just told them their boat wasn’t leaving tonight. Again. ‘No boat today. Tomorrow. Tomorrow,’ he’d told Mahmoud’s father.”

“Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness.”

“Nothing created is of any ultimate use without hope. To place your trust in visible things is to live in despair.”

“And now when I look about me upon my people in despair, I feel like crying and I wish and wish my vision could have been given to a man more worthy. I wonder why it came to me, a pitiful old man who can do nothing. Men and women and children I have cured of sickness with the power the vision gave me; but my nation I could not help.”

“The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.”

“Madame Aubain’s despair was boundless. At first she rebelled against God, finding him unjust for having taken her daughter – she who had never done anything bad, and whose conscience was so pure! [. . .] She blamed herself, wished she could join her, cried out in distress in her dreams.”

“The greatest miracle is to be alive. We can put an end to our suffering just by realizing that our suffering is not worth suffering for! How many people kill themselves because of rage or despair? In that moment, they do not see the vast happiness that is available.”

“Four Horsemen–Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration, and Despair.”

“The prince is never going to come. Everyone knows that; and maybe sleeping beauty’s dead.”

“Some of us deliberate; some of us refuse the decision, which is itself a decision; some of us leap giddily into the decision, setting our jaws and closing our eyes, which is the sort of decision of despair. ”

“Some of us deliberate; some of us refuse the decision, which is itself a decision; some of us leap giddily into the decision, setting our jaws and closing our eyes, which is the sort of decision of despair. ”

“Drac and the Gremlin spring before General Min can attack. The General is caught by surprise. With a howl of despair she flees deep into the jungle.”

“Just think of the number of prayers flying up to heaven, right at this very instant. Thousands. Hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands from the Holy Sepulcher alone. And most of them for money, of course. It’s enough to make you despair.”

“Pair-a-Dice was wild jubilation. It wed black despair with fear and the foul taste of failure.”

“Finally, the lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.”

“The lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.”

“The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep.”

“The small seed of despair cracks open and sends experimental tendrils upward to the fragile skin of calm holding him together.”

“Some days you think you can’t go on because the only thing waiting for you is more despair. Some days you don’t want to go on because it’s easier to give up than to get hurt again.”

“Aelin had promised herself, months and months ago, that she would not pretend to be anything but what she was. She had crawled through darkness and blood and despair-she had survived.”

“All she knew was that whatever and whoever climbed out of that abyss of despair and grief would not be the same person who had plummeted in.”

“The theme is connection. We are all things. And we connect to all things. Human to human. Moment to moment. Pain to pleasure. Despair to hope.”