Despair Quotes - Page 12

• It is not hope but despair that gives us the measure of our ambitions. We may yield secretly to beautiful poems of hope but grief looms start and stripped of all veils.

  Honore de Balzac

  Beautiful, Grief, Ambition

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• A woman in the depths of despair proves so persuasive that she wrenches the forgiveness lurking deep in the heart of her lover. This is all the more true when that woman is young, pretty, and so decollete as to emerge from the neck of her gown in the costume of Eve.

  Honore de Balzac

  Heart, Costumes, Necks

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• Nothing is unimportant to a man plunged in despair. He is as credulous as a criminal sentenced to death who listens to a lunatic raving to him about how he can escape through the keyhole.

  Honore de Balzac

  Men, Criminals, Keyholes

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• Despair is sometimes the great energizer of the mind, though sometimes its flowering may be sterile.

  Taylor Caldwell

  Mind, May, Sometimes

  TAYLOR CALDWELL “THE SIDE OF INNOCENCE”

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• Faith reinvigorates the will, enriches the affections, and awakens a sense of creativeness. Active faith knows no fear, and it is a safeguard to me against cynicism and despair.

  Helen Keller

  Faith, No Fear, Affection

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• The signs that presage growth, so similar, it seems to me, to those in early adolescence: discontent, restlessness, doubt, despair, longing, are interpreted falsely as signs of decay. In youth one does not as often misinterpret the signs; one accepts them, quite rightly, as growing pains. One takes them seriously, listens to them, follows where they lead. ... But in the middle age, because of the false assumption that it is a period of decline, one interprets these life-signs, paradoxically, as signs of approaching death.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Pain, Doubt, Growth

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• We are turning our prisons into living tombs, inhabited by doomed men living in everlasting blank despair.

  Clarence Darrow

  Men, Prison, Blank

  Clarence Darrow (2015). “The Story of My Life”, p.90, Lulu.com

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• There is yet a silent agony in which the mind appears to disdain all external help, and broods over its distresses with gloomy reserve. This is the most dangerous state of mind; accidents or friendships may lessen the louder kinds of grief, but all remedies for this must be had from within, and there despair too often finds the most deadly enemy.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Grief, Agony, Mind

  Oliver Goldsmith (1854). “The Works of Oliver Goldsmith”, p.342

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• There is nothing so insupportable to man as to be in entire repose, without passion, occupation, amusement, or application. Then it is that he feels his own nothingness, isolation, insignificance, dependent nature, powerless, emptiness. Immediately there issue from his soul ennui, sadness, chagrin, vexation, despair.

  Blaise Pascal

  Sadness, Passion, Men

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• If thy faith have no doubts, thou has just cause to doubt thy faith; and if thy doubts have no hope, thou hast just reason to fear despair; when therefore thy doubts shall exercise thy faith, keep thy hopes firm to qualify thy doubts; so shall thy faith be secured from doubts; so shall thy doubts be preserved from despair.

  Francis Quarles

  Faith, Exercise, Doubt

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• So use prosperity, that adversity may not abuse thee: if in the one, security admits no fears, in the other, despair will afford no hopes; he that in prosperity can foretell a danger can in adversity foresee deliverance.

  Francis Quarles

  Adversity, Abuse, May

  Francis Quarles (1844). “Enchiridion Institutions, Essays and Maxims, political, moral & divine. Divided into four centuries. By Francis Quarles”, p.43

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• I despair of ever receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most exalted performances of genius which I felt in childhood from pieces which my present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible.

  Edmund Burke

  Childhood, Romance, Genius

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• For me, prayer means launching out of the heart towards God; it means lifting up one's eyes, quite simply, to heaven, a cry of grateful love, from the crest of joy or the trough of despair; it's a vast, supernatural force which opens out my heart, and binds me close to Jesus.

  Therese of Lisieux

  Jesus, Prayer, Grateful

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• I feel that women of my kind are a profound mistake. There have been few women poets of distinction, and, if we count only the suicides of Sappho, Lawrence Hope and Charlotte Mew, their despair rate has been very high.

  Anna Wickham

  Suicide, Mistake, Profound

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• we are so little, so ignorant, so feeble an infant race crawling on a planet between immensities we haven't even begun to understand, that really we have no grounds for either congratulation or despair.

  Winifred Holtby

  Congratulations, Race, Ignorant

  Winifred Holtby (1937). “Pavements at Anderby: tales of "South riding" and other regions by Winifred Holtby”

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• Punishment is not prevention. History offers cold comfort to those who think grievance and despair can be subdued by force.

  Robert Kennedy

  Thinking, Punishment, Comfort

  Robert F. Kennedy (1967). “To seek a newer world”

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• 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.

  Bell Hooks

  Believe, Writing, Insanity

  bell hooks (2013). “remembered rapture: the writer at work”, p.8, Macmillan

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• My pessimism (which, by the way, is far from absolute) originated with my despair in the lack of perfection to be found in human nature. I was attempting in my successive books to show the inevitable handicap of the human condition.

  Stanislaw Lem

  Book, Perfection, Way

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• This thing called love was a total mystery to me, but the vagaries of passion and despair that accompanied each devotion kept my life in high drama.

  Jane Alexander

  Drama, Passion, Mystery

  Jane Alexander (2007). “Command Performance: An Actress in the Theater of Politics”, p.5, Da Capo Press

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• Two ideas militate against our consciously contributing to a better world. The idea that we can do everything or the conclusion that we can do nothing to make this globe a better place to live are both temptations of the most insidious form. One leads to arrogance; the other to despair.

  Joan D. Chittister

  Ideas, Two, Temptation

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• I am but a generation removed from poverty and despair. Where would I be today if there had never been an America? What kind of lives or future would my children have if this was not a land of opportunity?

  Marco Rubio

  Children, Opportunity, America

  Marco Rubio’s speech on poverty, hotair.com. January 8, 2014.

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• Despair breeds fundamentalism, fanaticism, and terrorism. A world of truly shared abundance would be a safer world.

  Starhawk

  Would Be, World, Terrorism

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• Through poverty, godhunger, the family debacle, I kept a sense of worth. I could limn and paint like no-one else in this human-wounded land: I was worth the while of living. Now my skill is dead. I should be.

  Keri Hulme

  Artist, Land, Skills

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• Where another person sees problems, a leader sees possibilities. ... Leaders must have the courage to follow their vision, to believe in the invisible, to work for something that's still only a possibility, while others often wring their hands in despair.

  Diane Dreher

  Believe, Hands, Leader

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• The piano is always true to me. In times of despair, happiness, and joy, its mood is always my own.

  Bradley Joseph

  Piano, Joy, Mood

  Album liner on "Grand Piano (Narada Anniversary Collection)", 1997.

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