Despair Quotes - Page 28

• You don't despair about something like the Middle East, you just do the best you can.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Middle East, Do The Best, East

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• If you start in the pit of despair with these profane, awful things, even a glimmer of hope or awareness is going to occur that's much brighter coming from this dark, awful beginning.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Dark, Pits, Awful

  "Interview: Chuck Palahniuk on 'Choke'". Interview with Aaron Hillis, www.ifc.com. September 24.

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• I don't feel despair because I am able to make the films I want to make, and that gives me hope.

  Alexander Payne

  Giving, Want, Able

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• The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

  Walker Percy

  Spiritual, Possibility, Ifs

  Walker Percy (2011). “The Moviegoer”, p.10, Open Road Media

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• I learned a good deal about economics, and about America, from the author of the Reagan tax reforms - the great Jack Kemp. What gave Jack that incredible enthusiasm was his belief in the possibilities of free people, in the power of free enterprise and strong communities to overcome poverty and despair. We need that same optimism right now.

  Paul Ryan

  Strong, America, Optimism

  Republican National Convention VP Nomination Acceptance, delivered 29 August 2012, Tampa, Florida

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• Faith is not a commodity that you either have or don't have enough of, or the right kind of. It's an ongoing process. The opposite of faith is despair.

  Sharon Salzberg

  Opposites, Ongoing, Kind

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• 'The Voice' has lots of singers who fit the 'Idol' mold of young, innocent ingenues with psycho stage moms. But it also has long-suffering adult pros, with a whiff of thirtysomething despair in their voices. That adds an edge of realness.

  Rob Sheffield

  Mom, Idols, Voice

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• Sometimes to go forward you've got to go to the depths of your own personal despair and claw yourself back. From that point, no matter what happens, you know you can do it.

  Gordon Strachan

  Depth, Matter, Sometimes

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• The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Sad, Men, Apathy

  Walden ch. 1 (1854)

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• Most writers spend their lives standing a little apart from the crowd, watching and listening and hoping to catch that tiny hint of despair, that sliver of malice, that makes them think, 'Aha, here is the story.'

  Ayelet Waldman

  Thinking, Listening, Hints

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• To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

  Alice Walker

  Mother, People, Hatred

  Alice Walker (2013). “The Alice Walker Collection: Non-Fiction”, p.132, Hachette UK

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• When too many Americans don't vote or participate, some see apathy and despair. I see disappointment and even outrage. And I believe that out of this frustration can come hope and action.

  Paul Wellstone

  Disappointment, Believe, Frustration

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• Why was I born with such contemporaries?

  Oscar Wilde

  Sarcastic, Book, Beer

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• The euro pleases dispirited people for whom European history is not Chartres and Shakespeare but the Holocaust and the Somme. The euro expresses cultural despair.

  George Will

  People, Holocaust, Please

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• The prince is never going to come. Everyone knows that; and maybe sleeping beauty's dead.

  Anne Rice

  Sleep, Humdrum, Knows

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• In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Memories, Circles, Afterlife

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Lord of the Rings: One Volume”, p.710, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

  Henri Nouwen

  Life, Motivational, Friendship

  "Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life". Book by Henri Nouwen, 1974.

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• There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don't expect you to save the world I do think it's not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness of those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary and remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair and disrespect.

  Nikki Giovanni

  Happiness, Inspiring, Success

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• We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not, or die of despair...death will sweep through all the worlds; it will be the triumph of despair, forever. The universes will all become nothing more than interlocking machines, blind and empty of thought, feeling, life...

  Philip Pullman

  Fate, Forever, Feelings

  "Northern Lights/The Golden Compass". Book by Philip Pullman, 1995.

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• As long as you have life and breath, believe. Believe for those who cannot. Believe even if you have stopped believing. Believe for the sake of the dead, for love, to keep your heart beating, believe. Never give up, never despair, let no mystery confound you into the conclusion that mystery cannot be yours.

  Mark Helprin

  Giving Up, Believe, Heart

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• Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair.

  T. S. Eliot

  Health, Insanity, Doe

  T. S. Eliot (2014). “The Family Reunion”, p.109, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one's head pointed toward the sun, one's feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.

  Nelson Mandela

  Courage, Peace, Moving

  "Long Walk to Freedom". Book by Nelson Mandela, 1995.

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• When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

  Wendell Berry

  Nature, Stars, Children

  Wendell Berry (2012). “New Collected Poems”, p.79, Counterpoint Press

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• Long looking at paintings is equivalent to being dropped into a foreign city, where gradually, out of desire and despair, a few key words, then a little syntax make a clearing in the silence. Art... is a foreign city, and we deceive ourselves when we think it familiar... We have to recognize that the language of art, all art, is not our mother-tongue.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Mother, Art, Thinking

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• (Such a life)engaged gross quantities of hope and despair and set them wildly side by side, like a Third World country of the heart.

  Lorrie Moore

  Country, Heart, World

  Lorrie Moore (2010). “The Collected Stories of Lorrie Moore”, p.134, Faber & Faber

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