Despair Quotes - Page 38

• Despair... It hides away propagates, expands, and finally explodes

  Hiroya Oku

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• When Levin thought what he was and what he was living for, he could find no answer to the questions and was reduced to despair; but when he left off questioning himself about it, it seemed as though he knew both what he was and what he was living for, acting and living resolutely and without hesitation.

  Leo Tolstoy

  Acting, Answers, Questioning

  Leo Tolstoy (2009). “Anna Karenina: Easyread Edition”, p.460, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• In this world, perfection is an illusion. Reagrdless of all those who utter the contrary, this is the reality. Obviously mediocre fools will forever lust for perfection and seek it out. However, what meaning is there in perfection? None. Not a bit. ...After perfection there exists nothing higher. Not even room for creation which means there is no room for wisdom or talent either. Understand? To scientists like ourselves, perfection is despair. - Kurotsuchi Mayuri (Bleach 306)

  Tite Kubo

  Mean, Reality, Perfection

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• When you're an addict, you can go without feeling anything except drunk or stoned or hungry. Still, when you compare this to other feelings, to sadness, anger, fear, worry, despair, and depression, well, an addiction no longer looks so bad. It looks like a very viable option.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Sadness, Drunk, Worry

  "Choke". Book by Chuck Palahniuk, May 22, 2001.

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• When he awoke it was dawn. Or something like dawn. The light was watery, dim and incomparably sad. Vast, grey, gloomy hills rose up all around them and in between the hills there was a wide expanse of black bog. Stephen had never seen a landscape so calculated to reduce the onlooker to utter despair in an instant. "This is one of your kingdoms, I suppose, sir?" he said. "My kingdoms?" exclaimed the gentleman in surprize. "Oh, no! This is Scotland!

  Susanna Clarke

  Light, Scotland, Rose

  Susanna Clarke, Portia Rosenberg (2005). “Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell”, p.604, A&C Black

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• I am writing this book because we're all going to die - In the loneliness of my own life, my father dead, my brother dead, my mother faraway, my sister and my wife far away, nothing here but my own tragic hands that once were guarded by a world, a sweet attention, that now are left to guide and disappear their own way into the common dark of all our deaths, sleeping in me raw bed, alone and stupid: with just this one pride and consolation: my broke heart in the general despair and opened up inwards to the Lord, I made a supplication in this dream

  Jack Kerouac

  Mother, Dream, Sweet

  Jack Kerouac (1972). “Visions of Cody”, London : André Deutsch

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• I-just want you. I want you so bad, all the time. I know I shouldn't, I know I can't, I know it's wrong... but even when you're pissing me off, when you're reminding me of pain and despair and torture-it's there, the wanting. I'm tired of fighting it. I fight so many things, all the time, every day. I don't want to fight this. Not anymore.

  Cate Tiernan

  Pain, Tired, Fighting

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• You try as a parent. You love beyond reason. You fight beyond endurance. You hope beyond despair. You never think, until the very last moment, that it still might not be enough.

  Lisa Gardner

  Fighting, Parenting, Thinking

  Lisa Gardner (2010). “Live to Tell: A Detective D. D. Warren Novel”, p.87, Bantam

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• When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse.

  Paul Hawken

  Optimistic, Odds, Order

  "Paul Hawken: programming a new operating system for civilization" by James Epstein-Reeves and Ellen Weinreb, www.theguardian.com. September 23, 2013.

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• I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace.

  Hermann Hesse

  Depression, Suicide, Children

  Hermann Hesse (2015). “Siddhartha: An Indian Tale”, p.73, Om Books International

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• She suffers as a miser. She must be miserly with her pleasures, as well. I wonder if sometimes she doesn't wish she were free of this monotonous sorrow, of these mutterings which start as soon as she stops singing, if she doesn't wish to suffer once and for all, to drown herself in despair. In any case, it would be impossible for her: she is bound.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Singing, Suffering, Sorrow

  Jean-Paul Sartre, Lloyd Alexander (1964). “Nausea”, p.11, New Directions Publishing

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• When suddenly you seem to lose all you thought you had gained, do not despair. You must expect setbacks and regressions. Don't say to yourself "All is lost. I have to start all over again." This is not true. What you have gained you have gained....When you return to the the road, you return to the place where you left it, not to where you started.

  Henri Nouwen

  Regression, Return, Lost

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• I must choose between despair and Energy──I choose the latter.

  John Keats

  Energy, Latter

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• I yearn for the darkness. I pray for death. Real death. If I thought that in death I would meet the people I've known in life I don't know what I'd do. That would be the ultimate horror. The ultimate despair. If I had to meet my mother again and start all of that all over, only this time without the prospect of death to look forward to? Well. That would be the final nightmare. Kafka on wheels.

  Cormac McCarthy

  Mother, Real, People

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• Three weeks ago, he’d seen hail fall from the sky, only to be followed minutes later by a spectacular rainbow that seemed to frame the azalea bushes. The colors, so vivid they seemed almost alive, made him think that nature sometimes sends us signs, that it’s important to remember that joy can always follow despair. But a moment later, the rainbow had vanished and the hail returned, and he realized that joy was sometimes only an illusion.

  Nicholas Sparks

  Fall, Thinking, Azaleas

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• Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding, and to fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side.

  Hermann Hesse

  Children, Justice, Understanding

  Hermann Hesse (2013). “The Journey to the East: A Novel”, p.106, Macmillan

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• It’s the leftover humans. The survivors. They’re the ones I can’t stand to look at, although on many occasions I still fail. I deliberately seek out the colors to keep my mind off them, but now and then, I witness the ones who are left behind, crumbling among the jigsaw puzzle of realization, despair, and surprises. They have punctured hearts. They have beaten lungs. Which in turn brings me to the subject I am telling you about tonight, or today, or whatever the hour and color. It’s the story of one of those perpetual survivors –an expert at being left behind.

  Markus Zusak

  Heart, Jigsaw Puzzles, Color

  "The Book Thief". Book by Markus Zusak, 2007.

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• There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.....the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and Hope.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Love, Life, Men

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• A world without hope, but no despair

  Henry Miller

  World, Without Hope

  Henry Miller (1977). “Tropic of Cancer”

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• I feel like a goddess, jailed in her Olympus. Little wonder how the gods toyed with humans. Toyed with women, to watch them squirm, pollinate the seeds of despair; toyed with men, to satiate their Seven Deadly Sins.

  Ellen Hopkins

  Men, Olympus, Littles

  Ellen Hopkins (2013). “Glass”, p.476, Simon and Schuster

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• Being a cheerful hobbit, he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed. (Of Sam)

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Long, Cheerful, Needed

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Lord of the Rings: One Volume”, p.436, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• If fate is a shape-shifter, then loves is too. It can be, anyway, in its most dangerous form. It´s your best day and then your worst. It´s your most hope and then you most despair. Lightness, darkness, it can swing between extremes at lightning speed- a boat upon the water on the most dangerous day, and then the clouds crawl in and the sky turns black and the sea rages and the boat is lost.

  Deb Caletti

  Fate, Love Is, Clouds

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• I cannot believe this is the end. Nor can I believe that death is more than the blindness of those living. And if this is only the consolation of a heart in its necessity, or that easy faith born of despair, it does not matter, since it gives us courage somehow to face the mornings. Which is as much as the heart can ask at times.

  Josephine Winslow Johnson

  Morning, Believe, Heart

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• There was both love and despair in his voice. He was truly handicapped when it came to emotions, and falling in love hadn't changed that.

  J.R. Ward

  Falling In Love, Voice, Emotion

  J.R. Ward (2011). “Lover Unleashed: A Novel of the Black Dagger Brotherhood”, p.141, Penguin

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• A smile flickered across Coral’s face. “Have you ever noticed that once you have had a taste of certain sweets—raspberry trifle is my own despair—it is quite impossible not to think, not to want, not to crave until you have taken another bite?” “Lord Swartingham is not a raspberry trifle.” “No, more of a dark chocolate mousse, I should think,” Coral murmured. “And,” Anna continued as if she hadn’t heard the interruption, “I don’t need another bite, uh,night of him.

  Elizabeth Hoyt

  Sweet, Taken, Dark

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