Despair Quotes - Page 15

• To the old, sorrow is sorrow; to the young, it is despair.

  George Eliot

  Sorrow, Young

  George Eliot, John Walter Cross (2010). “George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals”, p.30, Cambridge University Press

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• The brave and bold persist even against fortune; the timid and cowardly rush to despair through fear alone.
  [Lat., Fortes et strenuos etiam contra fortunam insistere, timidos et ignoros ad desperationem formidine properare.]

  Tacitus

  Bravery, Fortune, Forte

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• Patience is the strongest of strong drinks; for it kills the giant despair.

  Douglas William Jerrold

  Patience, Strong, Giants

  Douglas William Jerrold, Blanchard Jerrold (1859). “Specimens of Douglas Jerrold's wit: together with selections, chiefly from his contributions to journals, intended to illustrate his opinions”, p.134

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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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• The Parisan, sauntering the streets idly, is as often a man in despair as a lounger.

  Honore de Balzac

  Men, Sauntering, Streets

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• Poverty palls the most generous spirits; it cows industry, and casts resolution itself into despair.

  Joseph Addison

  Generous Spirit, Cows, Poverty

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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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• 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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• An old body when it is loved becomes a sacred treasure; and sex itself must always, it seems to me, come to us as a sacrament and be so used or it is meaningless. The flesh is suffused by the spirit, and it is forgetting this in the act of love-making that creates cynicism and despair.

  May Sarton

  Sex, Treasure, Body

  May Sarton (2014). “Recovering: A Journal”, p.95, Open Road Media

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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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• 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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• Writers matter in a society to the extent that we can help that society hear its unvoiced longing, encounter its erased and disregarded selves, break with complacency, numbness, despair.

  Adrienne Rich

  Self, Numbness, Encounters

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• Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.

  Blaise Pascal

  Passion, Heart, Sadness

  Blaise Pascal (2013). “Pascal's Pensees”, p.40, Simon and Schuster

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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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• 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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• It is always difficult to escape from youth; its hopefulness, its optimistic belief in the privileges of desire, its despair, and its sense of outrage and injustice at disappointment, all these spring on a man inflicting indelicate agony when he is no longer prepared.

  Margery Allingham

  Disappointment, Spring, Optimistic

  Margery Allingham (1943). “The Galantrys”

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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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• 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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• For fifty years now, we have tried big government. Yet too many people remain trapped in despair. Now, we must try a new way.

  Marco Rubio

  Government, Years, People

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

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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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