Despair Quotes - Page 33

• When young lips have drunk deep of the bitter waters of hate, suspicion and despair, all the love in the world will not wholly take away that knowledge. Though it may turn darkened eyes for a while to the light, and teach faith where no faith was.

  Rudyard Kipling

  Hate, Eye, Light

  Rudyard Kipling (2015). “Stories and Poems”, p.113, OUP Oxford

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• Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. Years wrinkle the skin, but giving up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair - these are the long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust. You are as young as your faith and as old as your doubts; as young as you self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

  James E. Faust

  Giving Up, Self Confidence, Numbers

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• It's in despair that you find the sharpest pleasures, particularly when you are most acutely aware of the hopelessness of your position.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Hopelessness, Pleasure, Position

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• But it's precisely in this cold, loathsome half-despair, half-belief, in this deliberate burying of yourself underground for forty years out of sheer pain, in this assiduously constructed, and yet somewhat dubious hopelessness, in all this poision of unfulfilled desires turned inward, this fever of vacillations, of resolutions adopted for eternity, and of repentances a moment later that you find the very essence of that strange, sharp pleasure.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Pain, Years, Essence

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• A man's concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Mean, Men, Disease

  Viktor E. Frankl (2006). “Man's Search for Meaning”, p.104, Beacon Press

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• What makes a hero? Courage, strength, morality, withstanding adversity? Are these the traits that truly show and create a hero? Is the light truly the source of darkness or vice versa? Is the soul a source of hope or despair? Who are these so called heroes and where do they come from? Are their origins in obscurity or in plain sight?

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Hero, Adversity, Light

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

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• To write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write [...] so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs; to write [...] so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain, and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged to live on. If there is good to be said, the writer should say it. If there is bad to be said, he should say it in a way that reflects the truth that, though we see the evil, we choose to continue among the living. The true artist [...] gets his sense of worth and honor from his conviction that art is powerful--

  John Gardner

  Suicide, Art, Pain

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• Once poverty is gone, we'll need to build museums to display its horrors to future generations. They'll wonder why poverty continued so long in human society - how a few people could live in luxury while billions dwelt in misery, deprivation and despair.

  Muhammad Yunus

  Business, Museums, Luxury

  Muhammad Yunus (2007). “Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism”, p.223, PublicAffairs

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• Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost

  Thomas Merton

  Wisdom, Self, Order

  Thomas Merton (1972). “New Seeds of Contemplation”, p.180, New Directions Publishing

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• Everyone struggles against despair, but it always wins in the end. It has to. It's the thing that lets us say goodbye.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Goodbye, Struggle, Winning

  Jeffrey Eugenides (2003). “Middlesex”, p.524, A&C Black

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• Truly great people emit a light that warms the hearts of those around them. When that light has been put out, a heavy shadow of despair descends.

  Banana Yoshimoto

  Heart, Light, People

  Banana Yoshimoto, Megan Backus (1979). “Three Plays”, p.55, Grove Press

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• Optimism is a matter optics, of seeing what you want to see and not seeing what you don't want to see. Hope, on the other hand, is a Christian virtue. It is the unblinking acknowledgment of all that militates against hope, and the unrelenting refusal to despair. We have not the right to despair, and, finally, we have not the reason to despair

  Richard John Neuhaus

  Christian, Hands, Optimism

  Richard John Neuhaus (2001). “The Best of "The Public Square".: Book two”, p.9, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing

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• War is not heroic. War is not exhilarating. War is full of despair. It is dark. It is dreadful. It is a thing of sorrow and gloom. That is why people fear war. That is why people choose to avoid it. ~Izuru Kira

  Tite Kubo

  War, Dark, People

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• There are women named Faith, Hope, Joy, and Prudence. Why not Despair, Guilt, Rage, and Grief? It seems only right. 'Tom, I'd like you to meet the girl of my dreams, Tragedy.' These days, Trajedi.

  George Carlin

  Girl, Dream, Grief

  George Carlin (1998). “Brain Droppings”, Hyperion

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• To hope for nothing, to expect nothing, to demand nothing. This is analytical despair.

  James Hillman

  Demand, Expect Nothing

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• Vain are the beliefs and teachings that make man miserable, and false is the goodness that leads him into sorrow and despair, for it is man's purpose to be happy on this earth and lead the way to felicity and preach its gospel wherever he goes. He who does not see the kingdom of heaven in this life will never see it in the coming life. We came not into this life by exile, but we came as innocent creatures of God, to learn how to worship the holy and eternal spirit and seek the hidden secrets within ourselves from the beauty of life.

  Khalil Gibran

  Life, Teaching, Men

  "Spirits Rebellious". Book by Kahlil Gibran. Chapter "Khalil The Heretic", part 3, 1908.

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• I took to writing at an early age to escape from meaninglessness, uselessness, unimportance, insignificance, poverty, enslavement, ill health, despair, madness, and all manner of other unattractive, natural and inevitable things.

  William Saroyan

  Writing, Ill Health, Age

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• The most common form of despair is not being who you are.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Common, Spirituality, Authenticity

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• Nothing fires the warrior’s heart more with courage than to find himself and his comrades at the point of annihilation, at the brink of being routed and overrun, and then to dredge not merely from one’s own bowels or guts but from one’s discipline and training the presence of mind not to panic, not to yield to the possession of despair, but instead to complete those homely acts of order which Dienekes had ever declared the supreme accomplishment of the warrior: to perform the commonplace under far-from-commonplace conditions.

  Steven Pressfield

  Heart, Warrior, Fire

  Steven Pressfield (1999). “Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae”, Bantam

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• But the truth, he knows, is otherwise. His pleasure in living has been snuffed out. Like a leaf on a stream, like a puffball on a breeze, he has begun to float towards his end. He sees it quite clearly, and it fills him with (the word will not go away) despair. The blood of life is leaving his body and despair is taking its place, despair that is like a gas, odourless, tasteless, without nourishment. You breathe it in, your limbs relax, you cease to care, even at the moment when the steel touches your throat.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Blood, Leaving, Going Away

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• In that one slight motion, I see the end of hope, beginning of destruction of everything I hold dear in the world. I can't guess what form my punishment will take, how wide the net will be cast, but when it is finished there most likely be nothing left. So you would think that at this moment, I would be in utter despair.

  Suzanne Collins

  Thinking, Punishment, Would Be

  Suzanne Collins (2011). “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire”, p.64, Scholastic

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• The entire range of human experience is present in a church choir, including, but not restricted to jealousy, revenge, horror, pride, incompetence (the tenors have never been on the right note in the entire history of church choirs, and the basses have never been on the right page), wrath, lust and existential despair.

  Connie Willis

  Revenge, Pride, Wrath

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• When writing goes painfully, when it’s hideously difficult, and one feels real despair (ah, the despair, silly as it is, is real!)–then naturally one ought to continue with the work; it would be cowardly to retreat. But when writing goes smoothly–why then one certainly should keep on working, since it would be stupid to stop. Consequently one is always writing or should be writing.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Real, Stupid, Silly

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• I have learned two lessons in my life: first, there are no sufficient literary, psychological, or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second, just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

  Elie Wiesel

  Encouragement, Two, Historical

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• There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Running, Men, Endurance

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2011). “Why We Can't Wait”, p.60, Beacon Press

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