Despair Quotes - Page 31

• Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again, come, come.

  Rumi

  Inspirational, Positive, Spiritual

  "Sunbeams: A Book of Quotations". Book edited by Sy Safransky, p. 67, 1990.

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• Goals incapable of attainment have driven many a man to despair, but despair is easier to get to than that -- one need merely look out of the window, for example.

  Donald Barthelme

  Men, Goal, Example

  Donald Barthelme (2008). “Flying to America: 45 More Stories”, p.144, Counterpoint Press

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• she was consumed by 3 simple things: drink, despair, loneliness; and 2 more: youth and beauty

  Charles Bukowski

  Loneliness, Simple, Youth

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• ... the human body is much stronger than we think. It seems to laugh at the cobwebs of despair that the heart weaves before our eyes in order to blind us to our fate. The body walks and goes on walking.

  Consuelo de Saint-Exupéry

  Heart, Eye, Fate

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• The finest thing under the sun and moon is the human soul. I marvel at the small miracles of kindness that pass between humans, I marvel at the growth of conscience, at the persistence of reason in the face of all superstition or despair. I marvel at human endurance.

  Anne Rice

  Kindness, Persistence, Moon

  Anne Rice (1999). “Pandora”, Arrow/Children's (a Division of Random House Group)

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• He who despairs is wrong.

  Victor Hugo

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• An ad that pretends to be art is - at absolute best - like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair.

  David Foster Wallace

  Lonely, Art, Confused

  "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again". Essay by David Foster Wallace, February 1, 1997.

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• The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Way, Kind, Refuse

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.78, Macmillan

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• Six billion of us walking the planet, six billion smaller worlds on the bigger one. Shoe salesmen and short-order cooks who look boring from the outside - some have weirder lives than you. Six billion stories, every one an epic, full of tragedy and triumph, good and evil, despair and hope. You and me - we aren't so special, bro.

  Dean Koontz

  Epic, Order, Shoes

  Dean Koontz (2007). “Fear Nothing: A Novel”, p.205, Bantam

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• The dove descending breaks the air With flame of incandescent terror Of which the tongues declare The one discharge from sin and error. The only hope, or else despair Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre- To be redeemed from fire by fire. Who then devised the torment? Love. Love is the unfamiliar Name Behind the hands that wove The intolerable shirt of flame Which human power cannot remove. We only live, only suspire Consumed by either fire or fire.

  T. S. Eliot

  Lying, Love Is, Fire

  Four Quartets "Little Gidding" pt. 4 (1942)

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• My despair is less despair than boredom and loneliness.

  Anthony Swofford

  Loneliness, Boredom

  Anthony Swofford (2008). “Jarhead: A Solder's Story of Modern War”, p.75, Simon and Schuster

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• An eternity of wishing to speak directly to my Creator - I thought in despair - and this is how He finally contacts me? Through AOL Instant Messenger?

  A.M. Jenkins

  Wish, Messengers, Speak

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• If you want something you can have it, but only if you want everything that goes with it, including all the hard work and the despair, and only if you're willing to risk failure.

  Philip Pullman

  Hard Work, Want Something, Risk

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• When I was a child, when I was an adolescent, books saved me from despair: that convinced me that culture was the highest of values[...].

  Simone de Beauvoir

  Children, Book, Culture

  Simone de Beauvoir (1971). “The woman destroyed”

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• It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait.

  Erica Jong

  Play, Waiting, Fit

  Erica Jong (2013). “Fear of Flying: 40th Anniversary Edition”, p.387, Open Road Media

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• Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.

  Sylvia Plath

  Life, Feminism, Littles

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.25, Anchor

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• Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depths of some devine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Heart, Mean, Eye

  'The Princess' (1847) pt. 4, l. 21, song (added 1850)

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• Have you ever felt despair? Absolute hopelessness? Have you ever stood in the darkness and known, deep in your heart, in your spirit, that it was never, ever going to get better? That something had been lost, forever, and that it wasn't coming back?

  Jim Butcher

  Heart, Forever, Darkness

  Jim Butcher (2010). “The Dresden Files Collection 1-6”, p.256, Penguin

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• Out of love for mankind, and out of despair at my embarrassing situation, seeing that I had accomplished nothing and was unable to make anything easier than it had already been made, and moved by a genuine interest in those who make everything easy, I conceived it as my task to create difficulties everywhere.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Tasks, Easy, Embarrassing

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• She wondered that hope was so much harder then despair.

  Patricia Briggs

  Depression, Harder

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• I loved her enough to forget myself, my self pitying despairs, and be content that something she thought happy was going to happen.

  Truman Capote

  Self, Forget, Enough

  Truman Capote (2012). “Breakfast at Tiffany's”, p.87, Vintage

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• If he could learn to love another, and earn her love in return by the time the last petal fell, then the spell would be broken. If not, he would be doomed to remain a beast for all time. As the years passed, he fell into despair and lost all hope. For who could ever learn to love a beast? -Beauty & the Beast

  Walt Disney

  Years, Broken, Would Be

  "Beauty and the Beast", 1991.

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• The bible says no man can take your joy. That means no person can make you live with a negative attitude. No circumstance, no adversity can force you to live in despair. As Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of wheelchair-bound President Franklin D. Roosevelt, often said, ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

  Joel Osteen

  Attitude, Mean, Adversity

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• The palace started as a single vaulted room and grew in proportion to my despair. It began as an exercise to keep my mind from its melancholy, then it became a dream and a necessity. . . . I built a temple in my head. . . . Its hallways were as lofty as a cathedral, and the arch of each window as supple as a bow. Its corridors were the passages of my own brain.

  Lisa St. Aubin de Terán

  Dream, Exercise, Mind

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• Does anything in nature despair except man? An animal with a foot caught in a trap does not seem to despair. It is too busy trying to survive. It is all closed in, to a kind of still, intense waiting. Is this a key? Keep busy with survival. Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.

  May Sarton

  Letting Go, Nature, Pain

  May Sarton (2017). “The Journals of May Sarton Volume One: Journal of a Solitude, Plant Dreaming Deep, and Recovering”, p.31, Open Road Media

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