Despair Quotes - Page 29

• To commit herself to becoming "an apostle of Joy" when humanly speaking she might have felt at the brink of despair, was heroic indeed. She could do so because her joy was rooted in the certitude of the ultimate goodness of God's loving plan for her. And though her faith in this truth did not touch her soul with consolation, she ventured to meet the challenges of life with a smile. Her one lever was her blind trust in God.

  Brian Kolodiejchuk

  Loving Life, Joy, Challenges

  Brian Kolodiejchuk, Mother Teresa (2012). “Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light: The revealing private writings of the Nobel Peace Prize winner”, p.171, Random House

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• There is prodigious strength in sorrow and despair.

  Charles Dickens

  Sorrow, Prodigious, Tale Of Two Cities

  "A Tale of Two Cities".

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• Oh, Cathy! Oh, my life! how can I bear it?" was the first sentence he uttered, in a tone that did not seek to disguise his despair. And now he stared at her so earnestly that I thought the very intensity of his gaze would bring tears into his eyes; but they burned with anguish: they did not melt.

  Emily Bronte

  Eye, Tears, Firsts

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2009). “The Bronte Sisters: Three Novels: Jane Eyre; Wuthering Heights; and Agnes Grey (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.480, Penguin

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• ...you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end it’s all a question of balance.

  Rohinton Mistry

  Balance, Use, Stones

  Rohinton Mistry (2010). “A Fine Balance”, p.328, Vintage

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• There is too much bad news to justify complacency. There is too much good news to justify despair.

  Donella Meadows

  News, Too Much, Complacency

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• But what man does out of despair, is not necessarily a key to his character. I have always thought that the real key is in that which he seeks for his enjoyment.

  Ayn Rand

  Real, Character, Men

  Ayn Rand (2016). “Atlas Shrugged”, p.375, Hamilton Books

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• There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest.

  Anais Nin

  Self, Two, Curiosity

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• I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?

  Walker Percy

  Beer, Drink, Crawfish

  Walker Percy, Lewis A. Lawson, Victor A. Kramer (1993). “More Conversations with Walker Percy”, p.64, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• I'm not going to make movies that tell children, "You should despair and run away".

  Hayao Miyazaki

  Running, Children, Should

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

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• The country is in deep trouble. We've forgotten that a rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it. We need the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, the courage to fight for social justice. In many instances we will be stepping out on nothing, and just hoping to land on something. But that's the struggle. To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.

  Cornel West

  Life, Country, Patience

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• He knew one of the women well, and had shared his universe with her. They had seen the same mountains, and the same trees, although each of them had seem them differently. She knew his weaknesses, his moments of hatred, of despair. Yet she was there at his side. They shared the same universe.

  Paulo Coelho

  Love, Relationship, Hatred

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• Literature was not promulgated by a pale and emasculated critical priesthood singing their litanies in empty churches - nor is it a game for the cloistered elect, the tinhorn mendicants of low calorie despair. Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it, and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species. --speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm, December 10, 1962

  John Steinbeck

  Responsibility, Games, Cities

  John Steinbeck (2001). “A Life in Letters”, p.1250, Penguin UK

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• But something occurred to me as I sped through that dirty shroud of fog, something Vonnegut has been trying to explain to the rest of us for most of his life. And that is this: Despair is a form of hope. It is an acknowledgment of the distance between ourselves and our appointed happiness. At certain moments, it is reason enough to live.

  Steve Almond

  Distance, Dirty, Fog

  Steve Almond (2007). “(Not that You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions”, p.33, Random House

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• And I said to myself: That's true, hope needs to be like barbed wire to keep out despair, hope must be a mine field.

  Yehuda Amichai

  Wire, Needs, Fields

  Yehuda Amichai (2006). “Open Closed Open: Poems”, p.84, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs―the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limbs, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate―the little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Children, Artist, Flames

  Vladimir Nabokov (2011). “The Annotated Lolita: Revised and Updated”, p.72, Vintage

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• I often hear people say that they read to escape reality, but I believe that what they’re really doing is reading to find reason for hope, to find strength. While a bad book leaves readers with a sense of hopelessness and despair, a good novel, through stories of values realized, of wrongs righted, can bring to readers a connection to the wonder of life. A good novel shows how life can and ought to be lived. It not only entertains but energizes and uplifts readers.

  Terry Goodkind

  Uplifting, Believe, Book

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• If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the bottom of everything there were only a wild ferment, a power that twisting in dark passions produced everything great or inconsequential; if an unfathomable, insatiable emptiness lay hid beneath everything, what would life be but despair?

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Passion, Dark, Men

  Soren Kierkegaard (2005). “Fear and Trembling”, p.18, Penguin UK

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• Never let me lose the marvel of your statue-like eyes, or the accent the solitary rose of your breath places on my cheek at night. I am afraid of being, on this shore, a branchless trunk, and what I most regret is having no flower, pulp, or clay for the worm of my despair. If you are my hidden treasure, if you are my cross, my dampened pain, if I am a dog, and you alone my master, never let me lose what I have gained, and adorn the branches of your river with leaves of my estranged Autumn.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Dog, Pain, Regret

  Federico García Lorca, “Sonnet Of The Sweet Complaint”

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• To be cheerful when others are in despair, to keep the faith when others falter, to be true even when we feel forsaken—all of these are deeply desired outcomes during the deliberate, divine tutorials which God gives to us—because He loves us. These learning experiences must not be misread as divine indifference. Instead, such tutorials are a part of the divine unfolding.

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Giving, Cheerful, Tutorial

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• ...You find a way, somehow to get through the most horrible things, things you think would kill you. You find a way and you move through the days, one by one, in shock, in despair, but you move. The days pass, one after the other, and you go along with them - occasionally stunned, and not entirely relieved, to find that you are still alive.

  Michelle Richmond

  Moving, Thinking, Alive

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• Just as doubt, despair, and desensitization go together, so do faith, hope, and charity. The latter, however, must be carefully and constantly nurtured, whereas despair, like dandelions, needs so little encouragement to sprout and spread. Despair comes so naturally to the natural man!

  Neal A. Maxwell

  Encouragement, Doubt, Together

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• always either on a peak of happiness or drowning in black waters of despair they loved or they loathed, they lived in a world of superlatives

  Nancy Mitford

  Water, Black, World

  Nancy Mitford (2010). “The Pursuit of Love”, p.13, Vintage

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• The langour of Youth - how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth - all save this come and go with us through life...These things are a part of life itself; but languor - the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse - that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Unique, Zest, Self

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• My plea...is a plea to save the children. Too many of them walk with pain and fear, in loneliness and despair. Children need sunlight...They need kindness and refreshment and affection. Every home, regardless of the cost of the house, can provide an environment of love which will be an environment of salvation.

  Gordon B. Hinckley

  Children, Pain, Kindness

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• We need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.

  C. S. Lewis

  Perfection, Needs, Worst

  C. S. Lewis (2003). “A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C. S. Lewis”, p.139, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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