Despair Quotes - Page 15

• The greatest poverty is not to live
  In a physical world, to feel that one's desire
  Is too difficult to tell from despair.

  Wallace Stevens

  Desire, World, Poverty

  Wallace Stevens (1959). “Poems”

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• We live a pleasant life shopping at the Food Shoppe . . . taking the kids to the Weinery-Beanery, . . . and eating bran flakes . .. and then, with no warning, we wake up one morning stricken with middle age, full of loneliness, dumb, in pain. Our work is useless, our vocation is lost, and nobody cares about us at all. This is not bearable. In despair, we go do something spectacularly dumb, like run away with Amber the cocktail waitress, and suddenly all the women in our life look at us with unmitigated disgust.

  Garrison Keillor

  Running, Morning, Pain

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• Adolescence hits boys harder than it does girls. Girls bleed a little and their breasts pop out, big deal, but adolescence lands on a guy with both feet. . . . Your body is engulfed by chemicals of rage and despair, you pound, you shriek, you batter your head against the trees. You come away wounded, feeling that life is unknowable, can never be understood, only endured and sometimes cheated.

  Garrison Keillor

  Girl, Boys, Feet

  Garrison Keillor (1994). “The Book of Guys: Stories”, Penguin Group USA

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• Fruitless striving breeds less despair than inaction.

  Mason Cooley

  Action, Strive, Inaction

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• Hope, and hopelessness, persist despite the facts.

  Mason Cooley

  Hope, Facts, Persist

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• Hope and despair ignore one another's cries.

  Mason Cooley

  Hope, Cry, Hope And Despair

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• The modernist writers found despair inspirational.

  Mason Cooley

  Found, Modernism

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• I am alive again, now that I can no longer stand to live.

  Albert Camus

  Life, Alive, Futility

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• Nihilism is not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to negate.

  Albert Camus

  Nihilism, Desire, Negation

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt”, p.57, Vintage

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• What would it mean to live
  in a city whose people were changing
  each other's despair into hope?--
  You yourself must change it.

  Adrienne Rich

  Hope, Mean, Cities

  Adrienne Rich (1993). “Your Native Land, Your Life”, p.36, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Life is a tragedy filled with suffering and despair and yet some people do manage to avoid jury duty.

  Woody Allen

  People, Suffering, Tragedy

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• ... in love, barriers cannot be destroyed from the outside by the one to whom the cause despair, no matter what he does; and it isonly when he is no longer concerned with them that, suddenly, as a result of work coming from elsewhere, accomplished within the one who did not love him, these barriers, formerly attacked without success, fall futilely.

  Marcel Proust

  Love, Fall, Causes

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• And I have seen long fingers that would stare
  With fiery eyes, and then the eyes would crawl
  Deftly across the counterpane and fall
  Soundless, with a wink of mild despair.

  Allen Tate

  Twilight, Fall, Eye

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.193, Macmillan

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• One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all.

  Gertrude Stein

  War, Thinking, Young Generation

  Gertrude Stein (1945). “Wars I have seen”

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• Never do what a specialist can do better. Discover your own specialty. Do not despair if your specialty appears to be more delicate, a lesser thing. Make up in finesse what you lose in force.

  Jean Cocteau

  Over You, Finesse, Force

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• Robin [Williams] was a world treasure. As we mourn his tragic death, we must remember him for the great waves of laughter that he was able to illicit from us, how his humor and insights - though they came from a place of pain and uncertainty - connected us and reminded us of how flawed and fragile...how human we are. How we are capable of moments of inspired transcendence and others of unspeakable despair.

  Glenn Close

  Leadership, Wisdom, Pain

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• The various forms of despair at the various stations on the road.

  Franz Kafka

  Travel, Form, Various

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

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• Common sense should tell us that reading is the ultimate weapon--destroying ignorance, poverty and despair before they can destroyus. A nation that doesn't read much doesn't know much. And a nation that doesn't know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box and the voting booth...The challenge, therefore, is to convince future generations of children that carrying a book is more rewarding than carrying guns.

  Jim Trelease

  Children, Book, Reading

  Jim Trelease (2001). “The Read-aloud Handbook”, Alloybooks

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• Until the day when, your endurance gone, in this world for you without arms, you catch up in yours the first mangy cur you meet, carry it for the time needed for it to love it and you it, then throw it away.

  Samuel Beckett

  Love, Loneliness, Endurance

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable”, p.8, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The man of regular life and rational mind never despairs.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Men, Worry, Mind

  Charlotte Bronte (2009). “The Professor: Easyread Super Large 24pt Edition”, p.88, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• There are few of us, if any, who don't walk the refiner's fire of adversity and despair, sometimes known to others but for many quietly hidden and privately endured. Most of the heartache, pain, and suffering we would not choose today. But we did choose. We chose when we could see the complete plan. We chose when we had a clear vision of the Savior's rescue of us. And if our faith and understanding were as clear today as it was when we first made that choice, I believe we would choose again.

  Richard C. Edgley

  Pain, Believe, Heart

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• Sun, I come to see you for the last time.

  Jean Racine

  Death, Suicide, Lasts

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• Parents offer an open womb. More than anyone else in your life, mothers, and sometimes fathers, can kiss it, and make it well whentheir grown children need to regress and repair. More than anyone else in your life, mothers, and sometimes fathers, can catch you when you start to fall. When you are in disgrace, defeat, and despair, home may be the safest place to hide.

  Frank Pittman

  Mother, Children, Father

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• This is the first time in history that a war has involved the whole world, and also it may last many years more; this thought is soul-shattering for all of us as human beings. It is horrible to think that the crimes committed by this one man Hitler have these many years been destroying the lives of hundreds of thousands and millions, and one would despair entirely were it not certain that the majority, the innumerable majority which opposes him openly or secretly, will succeed in wiping out once and for all him and his.

  Stefan Zweig

  Life, War, Men

  Stefan Zweig, Friderike Maria Burger Winternitz Zweig, Henry G. Alsberg (1954). “Stefan and Friderike Zweig: their correspondence, 1912-1942”

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• I am not fooling myself with dreams of immortality, know how relative all literature is, don't have any faith in mankind, derive enjoyment from too few things. Sometimes these crises give birth to something worth while, sometimes they simply plunge one deeper into depression, but, of course, it is all part of the same thing.

  Stefan Zweig

  Depression, Dream, Giving

  Stefan Zweig, Friderike Maria Burger Winternitz Zweig (1954). “Stefan and Friderike Zweig: their correspondence, 1912-1942”

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