Despair Quotes - Page 13

• 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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• 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.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Expression, Personality, Soul

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• Russians understand the rhythm of despair.

  Suzanne Massie

  Russia, Rhythm

  Robert Massie; Suzanne Massie (1975). “Journey”

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• To live is often only to have a choice of several despairs.

  Georgette Leblanc

  Choices

  Georgette Leblanc (1932). “Souvenirs: My Life with Maeterlinck”

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• He who lives in despair / takes and gives in vain.

  Hadewijch

  Giving, Vain

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• Despair makes us serve evil as much as good.

  Hadewijch

  Evil

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• The slums are not a place of despair. Its inhabitants are all working towards a better life.

  Vikas Swarup

  Better Life, Slums

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• Trying every day to tell the truth is hard. There are harder things, of course - arguably, living with lies and meaninglessness, living in despair is harder, but it's hardship disguised as luxury and easier perhaps to grow accustomed to, since truth is usually the enemy of custom. There are harder things than writing, being President Obama, for instance, and having to deal with House Republicans, or trying to fix the leak at the Fukushima reactor, these are harder, but writing is hard.

  Tony Kushner

  Lying, Writing, Luxury

  "We Call That Failure Art" by Tony Kushner, www.newyorker.com. October 31, 2013.

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• 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.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Goal, Razors, Way

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “Jnana Yoga: The Yoga of Knowledge”, p.45, editionNEXT.com

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• The boom produces impoverishment. But still more disastrous are its moral ravages. It makes people despondent and dispirited. The more optimistic they were under the illusory prosperity of the boom, the greater is their despair and their feeling of frustration.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Optimistic, Frustration, People

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• Myth was regarded as primary; it was concerned with what was thought to be timeless and constant in our existence. Myth looked back to the origins of life, to the foundations of culture, and to the deepest levels of the human mind. Myth was not concerned with practical matters, but with meaning. Unless we find some significance in our lives, we mortal men and women fall very easily into despair. The mythos of a society provided people with a context that made sense of their day-to-day lives; it directed their attention to the eternal and the universal.

  Karen Armstrong

  Fall, Men, Origin Of Life

  Karen Armstrong (2011). “The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism”, p.14, Ballantine Books

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• I thought I'd reached the bottom a few times, but then I'd realise there was another 30 floors of despair below that.

  Trent Reznor

  Bottom, Realising

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• [...] a morass of despair violence death with a thin layer of glass spread upon the surface where Love, a tiny crab with pincers and rainbow shell, walked delicately ever sideways but getting nowhere, while the sun [...] rose higher in the sky its tassels dropping with flame threatening every moment to melt the precarious highway of glass. And the people: giant pathworks of colour with limbs missing and parts of their mind snipped off to fit them into the outline of the free pattern.

  Janet Frame

  Glasses, Flames, Sky

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• The writing of Topdog was a great gift. I feel the play came to me because I realized that my circumstances, while causing me despair and heartbreak, also held great possibility, if only I could see it.

  Suzan-Lori Parks

  Writing, Play, Possibility

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• Feminists have to question, not just all of Western culture, but the organization of culture itself, and further, even the very organization of nature. Many women give up in despair: if that's how deep it goes they don't want to know.

  Shulamith Firestone

  Giving Up, Organization, Feminist

  SHULAMITH FIRESTONE (1970). “THE DIALECTIC OF SEX: THE CASE FOR FEMINIST REVOLUTION”

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• The history of science alone can keep the physicist from the mad ambitions of dogmatism as well as the despair of pyrrhonian scepticism.

  Pierre Duhem

  Ambition, Mad, Dogmatism

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• Now, I believe in life, and I believe in the joy of human existence, but these things cannot be experienced except as we also face the despair, also face the anxiety that every human being has to face if he lives with any creativity at all.

  Rollo May

  Believe, Creativity, Joy

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• Where the despair of loneliness and poverty haunts every hour, the optimism to embark on new projects cannot find a place to alight on the brains cortex. Poverty itself is an enormous obstacle to an enlightened and enlightening - not to say healthy - old age.

  Sherwin B. Nuland

  Loneliness, Optimism, Healthy

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• For every veteran who goes through a divorce, a wife goes through one, too. For every veteran alone in the basement, there is a wife upstairs, bewildered, isolated and in despair from the dark clouds of war that hangs over family life.

  Karl Marlantes

  War, Divorce, Dark

  Karl Marlantes (2011). “What It Is Like to Go to War”, p.193, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• The reason 'help' is such a great prayer is that God is the gift of desperation. When you're in despair, you're teachable.

  Anne Lamott

  Prayer, Helping, Desperation

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• It is the absence of hope, which equals the despair that is the punishment.

  James Fox

  Punishment, Absence

  James Fox (1996). “Killer on Campus”

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• You are not called to believe in your love to God, but in God's love to you! Do not argue, 'I cannot love God! I have striven to my uttermost to do so, but have failed in all my endeavors, until in despair I have abandoned the thought and relinquished the attempt.' Be it so- no effort of your own can strike a spark of love to God from your heart. Nor does God demand the task at your hands. All that He requires of you is faith in His love, as embodied and expressed in Jesus Christ to poor sinners.

  Octavius Winslow

  Jesus, Believe, Heart

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• Do not despair! Work steadily. Sincerity and love will conquer hate. How many seemingly impossible events are coming to pass in these days! Set your faces steadily towards the Light of the World. Show love to all... Take courage! God never forsakes His children who strive and work and pray! Let your hearts be filled with the strenuous desire that tranquillity and harmony may encircle all this warring world. So will success crown your efforts, and with the universal brotherhood will come the Kingdom of God in peace and goodwill.

  Abdu'l-Bahá

  Children, Hate, Heart

  "Paris Talks". Book by Abdu'l-Bahá ("The Pitiful Causes of War, and the Duty of Everyone to Strive for Peace," October 21, 1911), reference.bahai.org. 1912.

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• One out of three black men are in the criminal justice system in some form. Their despair is beginning to resonate through the entire culture; that is why suburban children want rap music.

  Robert Bly

  Children, Rap, Men

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• Rage and grief are savage companions, but despair is the final undoing.

  M.I.A.

  Grief, Savages, Finals

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