Despair Quotes - Page 32

• Is despair wrong? Isn’t it the natural condition of life after a certain age? … After a number of events, what is there left but repetition and diminishment? Who wants to go on living? The eccentric, the religious, the artistic (sometimes); those with a false sense of their own worth. Soft cheeses collapse; firm cheeses endurate. Both go mouldy.

  Julian Barnes

  Religious, Numbers, Age

  Julian Barnes (1985). “Flaubert's parrot”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

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• There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of a change anywhere. The cancer of our time is eating us away. Our heroes have killed themselves, or are killing themselves.

  Henry Miller

  Cancer, Hero, Eating

  Henry Miller, John Calder (1985). “A Henry Miller reader”, Riverrun Pr

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• Palestinian and Israeli leaders finally recover the Road Map to Peace, only to discover that, while they were looking for it, the Lug Nuts of Mutual Interest came off the Front Left Wheel of Accommodation, causing the Sport Utility Vehicle of Progress to crash into the Ditch of Despair.

  Dave Barry

  Sports, Nuts, Mutual Interest

  Dave Barry (2007). “Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far)”, p.98, Penguin

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• One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.

  Charles Simic

  Writing, Touching, Yearning

  Charles Simic (2013). “The Monster Loves His Labyrinth”, p.67, Copper Canyon Press

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• It is at despair at not being able to be noble and beautiful by natural means that we have made up our faces so strangely.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Beautiful, Mean, Noble

  Charles Baudelaire (1986). “La Fanfarlo”

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• I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Years, Silence, Sorrow

  Erich Maria Remarque (2013). “All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel”, p.194, Random House

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• The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty -- it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.

  Mother Teresa

  Love, Peace, Loneliness

  Mother Teresa (1995). “A Simple Path-Open Market”

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• From the girl who sat before me now...surged a fresh and physical life force. She was like a small animal that has popped into the world with the coming of spring. Her eyes moved like an independent organism with joy, laughter, anger, amazement, and despair. I hadn't seen a face so vivid and expressive in ages, and I enjoyed watching it live and move.

  Haruki Murakami

  Girl, Laughter, Spring

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• We mourn the blossoms of May because they are to whither; but we know that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revolution of that solemn circle which never stops - which teaches us in our height of hope, ever to be sober, and in our depth of desolation, never to despair.

  William Peter Blatty

  Life, Revenge, Circles

  "The Exorcist". Book by William Peter Blatty, 1971.

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• Yet I think the demon's target is not the possessed; it is us . . . the observers . . . every person in this house. And I think---I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial; as ultimately vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy.

  William Peter Blatty

  Thinking, House, Humanity

  William Peter Blatty (2015). “If There Were Demons Then Perhaps There Were Angels: William Peter Blatty’s Own Story of the Exorcist”, p.10, Macmillan

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• How rarely do our emotions meet the object they seem to deserve? How hopelessly we signal; how dark the sky; how big the waves. We are all lost at sea, washed between hope and despair, hailing something that may never come to rescue us.

  Julian Barnes

  Dark, Sea, Sky

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• know that without night there is no day; without lies, no truth;without despair,no hope. Beware above all of hate, but call to its opposite too. For all things have an opposite and, if you choose it, with will and care, you may turn one thing into its reflection.

  David Clement-Davies

  Hate, Lying, Reflection

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• Despair and die. The ghosts

  William Shakespeare

  Ghost, Dies

  William Shakespeare (1833). “The spirit of the plays of Shakspeare: exhibited in a series of outline plates illustrative of the story of each play”

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• Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: The horror! The horror!

  Joseph Conrad

  Struggle, Pride, Expression

  Heart of Darkness ch. 3 (1902)

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• I've always been bad. Probably I shall be bad again, punished again. But the worse I am, the more I need God. I can't shut myself out from His mercy. ... Or it may be a private bargain between me and God, that if I give up this one thing I want so much, however bad I am, He won't quite despair of me in the end.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Giving Up, Needs, May

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• The music enchanted the air. It was like the south wind, like a warm night, like swelling sails beneath the stars, completely and utterly unreal... It made everything spacious and colourful, the dark stream of life seemed pulsing in it; there were no burdens any more, no limits; there existed only glory and melody and love, so that one simply could not realize that, at the same time as this music was, outside there ruled poverty and torment and despair.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Stars, Dark, Night

  Erich Maria Remarque (1937). “Three Comrades”

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• You should not allow yourself the luxuries of discouragement of despair. Bounce back immediately, and welcome the adversity because it produces harder thinking and harder drive to get to the objective.

  Ralph Nader

  Adversity, Thinking, Luxury

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• They hate kings, they hate priests, they hate soldiers, they hate sailors. They distrust men of science, they denounce the middle classes, they despair of working men, but they adore humanity. Only they always speak of humanity as if it were a curious foreign nation. They are dividing themselves more and more from men to exalt the strange race of mankind. They are ceasing to be human in the effort to be humane.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Kings, Hate, Men

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• Thank God genuine video phones hadn't been invented. I hadn't even grabbed a towel. Ford Prefect would despair of me.

  C.E. Murphy

  Phones, Thank God, Video

  C.E. Murphy (2006). “Thunderbird Falls”, p.304, LUNA

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• The shoddy work of despair, the pointless work of pride, equally betray Creation. They are wastes of life.

  Wendell Berry

  Pride, Waste, Creation

  Wendell Berry (2010). “What Are People For?: Essays”, p.10, Counterpoint Press

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• I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us, I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision.

  Carl Sandburg

  Night, Men, America

  Interview with Frederick Van Ryn, This Week Magazine, p. 11, January 04, 1953.

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• Do not despair, my friend. Today is theirs, but the future is ours

  Rodman Philbrick

  Today, My Friends

  Rodman Philbrick (2013). “The Last Book in the Universe”, p.223, Scholastic Inc.

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• Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.

  Isak Dinesen

  Writing, Littles, Without Hope

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• It's funny how despair can soon become an old companion

  Jacqueline Carey

  Companion

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• And when the hourglass has run out, the hourglass of temporality, when the noise of secular life has grown silent and its restless or ineffectual activism has come to an end, when everything around you is still, as it is in eternity, then eternity asks you and every individual in these millions and millions about only one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Running, Noise, Silent

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