Despair Quotes - Page 11

• We salvage what we can, what truly matters to us, even at the gates of despair.

  Guy Gavriel Kay

  Matter, Gates, Salvage

  Guy Gavriel Kay (2001). “Summer Tree, The: Book One of the Fionavar Tapestry”, p.126, Penguin

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• That should be your town motto. It's all I ever hear. Like: New Hampshire, Live Free or Die. It should be: Despair, You Need To Leave Now.

  Lee Child

  Needs, Towns, Live Free

  Lee Child (2015). “The Essential Jack Reacher, Volume 1, 7-Book Bundle: Persuader, The Enemy, One Shot, The Hard Way, Bad Luck and Trouble, Nothing to Lose, Gone Tomorrow”, p.1362, Delacorte Press

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• Unhappy people do the oddest, most terrible things, just trying to keep despair at bay. All you have to do is accept them...go around them...take evasive action.

  Geraldine McCaughrean

  People, Unhappy, Trying

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• Hope was an instinct only the reasoning human mind could kill. An animal never knew despair.

  Graham Greene

  Animal, Mind, Instinct

  Graham Greene (1990). “The power and the glory”, Viking Pr

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• The Southern newspapers, with their advertisements of negro sales and personal descriptions of fugitive slaves, supply details of misery that it would be difficult for imagination to exceed. Scorn, derision, insult, menace - the handcuff, the last - the tearing away of children from parents, of husbands from wives - the weary trudging in droves along the common highways, the labor of body, the despair of mind, the sickness of heart - these are the realities which belong to the system, and form the rule, rather that the exception, in the slave's experience.

  Fanny Kemble

  Husband, Children, Heart

  Fanny Kemble (1961). “Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839”, p.6, University of Georgia Press

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• Our greatest indulgence towards a man springs from our despair of him.

  Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

  Spring, Men, Indulgence

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• Twilight makes us pensive; Aurora is the goddess of activity; despair curses at midnight; hope blesses at noon.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Twilight, Midnight, Noon

  Benjamin Disraeli (1853). “The Young Duke ... By B. Disraeli. A New Edition”, p.106

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• To the old, sorrow is sorrow; to the young, it is despair.

  George Eliot

  Sorrow, Young

  George Eliot, John Walter Cross (2010). “George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals”, p.30, Cambridge University Press

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• A son could bear with great complacency, the death of his father, while the loss of his inheritance might drive him to despair.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  Father, Loss, Son

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 462-63, Del. Prin, Chapter XVII, 1922.

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• The brave and bold persist even against fortune; the timid and cowardly rush to despair through fear alone.
  [Lat., Fortes et strenuos etiam contra fortunam insistere, timidos et ignoros ad desperationem formidine properare.]

  Tacitus

  Bravery, Fortune, Forte

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• Patience is the strongest of strong drinks; for it kills the giant despair.

  Douglas William Jerrold

  Patience, Strong, Giants

  Douglas William Jerrold, Blanchard Jerrold (1859). “Specimens of Douglas Jerrold's wit: together with selections, chiefly from his contributions to journals, intended to illustrate his opinions”, p.134

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• A woman in the depths of despair proves so persuasive that she wrenches the forgiveness lurking deep in the heart of her lover. This is all the more true when that woman is young, pretty, and so decollete as to emerge from the neck of her gown in the costume of Eve.

  Honore de Balzac

  Heart, Costumes, Necks

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• It is not hope but despair that gives us the measure of our ambitions. We may yield secretly to beautiful poems of hope but grief looms start and stripped of all veils.

  Honore de Balzac

  Beautiful, Grief, Ambition

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• Nothing is unimportant to a man plunged in despair. He is as credulous as a criminal sentenced to death who listens to a lunatic raving to him about how he can escape through the keyhole.

  Honore de Balzac

  Men, Criminals, Keyholes

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• The Parisan, sauntering the streets idly, is as often a man in despair as a lounger.

  Honore de Balzac

  Men, Sauntering, Streets

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• Poverty palls the most generous spirits; it cows industry, and casts resolution itself into despair.

  Joseph Addison

  Generous Spirit, Cows, Poverty

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• I can't read or sleep. Without hope or youth or money I sit constantly wishing I were dead.

  Zelda Fitzgerald

  Sleep, Wish, Youth

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• Despair is sometimes the great energizer of the mind, though sometimes its flowering may be sterile.

  Taylor Caldwell

  Mind, May, Sometimes

  TAYLOR CALDWELL “THE SIDE OF INNOCENCE”

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• An old body when it is loved becomes a sacred treasure; and sex itself must always, it seems to me, come to us as a sacrament and be so used or it is meaningless. The flesh is suffused by the spirit, and it is forgetting this in the act of love-making that creates cynicism and despair.

  May Sarton

  Sex, Treasure, Body

  May Sarton (2014). “Recovering: A Journal”, p.95, Open Road Media

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• God made both tears and laughter, and both for kind purposes; for as laughter enables mirth and surprise to breathe freely, so tears enable sorrow to vent itself patiently. Tears hinder sorrow from becoming despair and madness.

  Leigh Hunt

  Laughter, Sorrow, Tears

  Leigh Hunt (1853). “The Religion of the Heart: A Manual of Faith and Duty”, p.62

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• Faith reinvigorates the will, enriches the affections, and awakens a sense of creativeness. Active faith knows no fear, and it is a safeguard to me against cynicism and despair.

  Helen Keller

  Faith, No Fear, Affection

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• The signs that presage growth, so similar, it seems to me, to those in early adolescence: discontent, restlessness, doubt, despair, longing, are interpreted falsely as signs of decay. In youth one does not as often misinterpret the signs; one accepts them, quite rightly, as growing pains. One takes them seriously, listens to them, follows where they lead. ... But in the middle age, because of the false assumption that it is a period of decline, one interprets these life-signs, paradoxically, as signs of approaching death.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Pain, Doubt, Growth

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• We are turning our prisons into living tombs, inhabited by doomed men living in everlasting blank despair.

  Clarence Darrow

  Men, Prison, Blank

  Clarence Darrow (2015). “The Story of My Life”, p.90, Lulu.com

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