Top 1200 Despair Quotes & Sayings

To create something beautiful about despair or out of a feeling of despair is for me the most hopeful life affirming thing a person can do

The opposite of hope is despair, and when we despair, it is because we feel there are no choices.

Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true.

I shall despair when I despair of myself, of God and humanity.

Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair.

It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me.

...the habit of despair is worse than despair itself.

If there's more that you can do, then do it. If there's not more that you can do, then be content with what you're doing. But if there is despair, the despair can only be that you can do more. Because when you're doing as much as you can do, you will not feel despair. Because despair is the gap between what you could be doing and what you are doing.

There's a kind of despair about whether art can really do anything, but you have to incorporate that despair into the way you work. I try to soak my work in my sense of futility and fury.

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.

I despair at the rise of modern violence. I truly give in to despair at times, that deep, futureless pit of despair.... I watch the American slaughterhouse, the casual attacks on popes, presidents, and uncounted others, and I wonder if there are many more out there with the Ability or if butchery has simply become the modern way of life.

I wanted to tell her not to entertain despair like this. Despaire wasn't a guest, you didn't play its favorite music, find it a comfortable chair. Despair was the enemy." -white oleander

I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure. I think there is a contradiction in an art of total despair, because the very fact that the art is made seems to contradict despair.

“You 're not eating anything,” said Marilla sharply, eying her as if it were a serious shortcoming. Anne sighed. “I can 't. I'm in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you are in the depths of despair?”

Despair is good. Despair can be the nadir of one life and the starting point of an ascent into another, better one.

Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair. If one truly responds to man and his future, ie , concernedly and "responsibly." one can respond only by faith or by despair. Rational faith as well as rational despair are based on the most thorough, critical knowledge of all the factors that are relevant for the survival of man.

Men without hope, resigned to despair and oppression, do not make revolutions. It is when expectation replaces submission, when despair is touched with the awareness of possibility, that the forces of human desire and the passion for justice are unloosed.

Many people on our planet right now despair; they think we’ve reached a point where we’ve discovered most of the things. I’m going tell you right now: Please don’t despair.

Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

Be not in despair, the way is very difficult, like walking on the edge of a razor; yet despair not, arise, awake, and find the ideal, the goal.

Poverty breeds despair. We know this. Despair breeds violence. We know this. In turbulent times, isn't it cheaper, and smarter, to make friends out of potential enemies than to defend yourself against them later?

Despair ... is the only cure for illusion. Without despair we cannot transfer our allegiance to reality - it's a kind of mourning period for our fantasies. Some people do not survive this despair, but no major change within a person can occur without it.

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!

Doubt is thought's despair; despair is personality's doubt. . . . Doubt and despair . . . belong to completely different spheres; different sides of the soul are set in motion. . . . Despair is an expression of the total personality, doubt only of thought.

An individual in despair despairs over something. . . . In despairing over something, he really despair[s] over himself, and now he wants to get rid of himself. Consequently, to despair over something is still not despair proper. . . . To despair over oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself-this is the formula for all despair.

Only a soul full of despair can ever attain serenity and, to be in despair, you must have loved a good deal and still love the world.

It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to negate.

Melancholy and sadness are the start of doubt... doubt is the beginning of despair; despair is the cruel beginning of the differing degrees of wickedness.

Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.

[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

The most common despair is...not choosing, or willing, to be oneself...[but] the deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than oneself.

Thank God for beautiful songs about feeling despair when you yourself are in despair. They really get us through.

As for despair, it comes about when I have been a fool and hate myself and despair of my personality. I am prone to gloom, but not depression as such.

Many people on our planet right now despair; they think we've reached a point where we've discovered most of the things. I'm going tell you right now: Please don't despair.

Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair.

Sin is: before God, or with the conception of God, in despair not to will to be oneself, or in despair to will to be oneself. Thus sin is intensified weakness or intensified defiance: sin is the intensification of despair. The emphasis is on before God, or with a conception of God; it is the conception of God that makes sin dialectically, ethically, and religiously what lawyers call 'aggravated' despair.

To those who despair of everything reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case it must be the same passion that lay at the root of the despair, namely humiliation and hatred.

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.

It's one thing to be discouraged. It's another thing to have despair. Despair is when you think there's just no end to this [suffering]. There's no solution for this. Despair is when you think that your suffering has no purpose, and your suffering has no end.

Christianity has a hunter's instinct for finding out all those who by one means or another may be driven to despair -although only a part of mankind is capable of such despair. Christianity lies in wait for such as those and pursues them

We cannot do without it, and yet we disgrace and vilify the same. It may be compared to a cage, the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair to get out.

The ever increasing intensity of despair depends upon the degree of consciousness or is proportionate to this increase: the greater the degree of consciousness, the more intensive the despair. This is everywhere apparent, most clearly in despair at its maximum and minimum. The devil's despair is the most intensive despair, for the devil is sheer spirit and hence unqualified consciousness and transparency; there is no obscurity in the devil that could serve as a mitigating excuse. Therefore, his despair is the most absolute defiance. . . .

What is courage? This courage will not be the opposite of despair. We shall often be faced with despair, as indeed every sensitive person has been during the last several decades in this country. Hence Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Camus and Sartre have proclaimed that courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

You're not eating anything," said Marilla sharply, eying her as if it were a serious shortcoming. Anne sighed. I can't. I'm in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you are in the depths of despair?" I've never been in the depths of despair, so I can't say," responded Marilla. Weren't you? Well, did you ever try to IMAGINE you were in the depths of despair?" No, I didn't." Then I don't think you can understand what it's like. It's very uncomfortable a feeling indeed.

My despair is less despair than boredom and loneliness.

Writing and the hope of writing pulls me back from the edges of despair. I believe insanity and despair are at times one and the same.

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.

To live is to wrestle with despair, yet never allow despair to have the last word.

I can wax boringly about the role of comedy in mitigating pain. For so many comedians, comedy comes out of personal despair. I'm not a very despairing person myself, but I do fear despair and the death of loved ones.

I'm a student of history and know that civilizations get lost - they are born and die - and so I recognize the tender mortality of our civilization. I'm not saying I'm separate from the despair of that, but I'm not controlled by the despair of that.

It's not the despair, Laura. I can take the despair. It's the hope I can't stand.

I would say to my soul, O my soul, this is not the place of despair; this is not the time to despair in. As long as mine eyes can find a promise in the Bible, as long as there is a moment left me of breath or life in this world, so long will I wait or look for mercy, so long will I fight against unbelief and despair.

I treated despair in terms of hierarchy: if there was a more important pain in the world, it meant my own was negated. I thought I simply had to accept the fact that I was ugly, and that to feel despair about it was simply wrong.

Compared with the person who is conscious of his despair, the despairing individual who is ignorant of his despair is simply a negativity further away from the truth and deliverance. . . . Yet ignorance is so far from breaking the despair or changing despair to nondespairing that it can in fact be the most dangerous form of despair. . . . An individual is furthest from being conscious of himself as spirit when he is ignorant of being in despair. But precisely this-not to be conscious of oneself as spirit-is despair, which is spiritlessness. . . .

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

I don't despair about the cultural scene in Australia because there isn't one to despair about.

Despair is not a particularly respectable condition and yet despair and delight alternate like systole and diastole in my heart.

So long as we have failed to eliminate any of the causes of human despair, we do not have the right to try to eliminate those means by which man tries to cleanse himself of despair.