Despair Quotes - Page 17

• For usually people resist as long as they can to dismiss the fool they harbor in their bosom, they resist to confess a major mistake or to admit a truth that makes them despair.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Mistake, Long, People

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• What's the greatest enemy of Christianity to-day? Frozen meat. In the past only members of the upper classes were thoroughly sceptical, despairing, negative. Why? Among other reasons, because they were the only people who could afford to eat too much meat. Now there's cheap Canterbury lamb and Argentine chilled beef. Even the poor can afford to poison themselves into complete scepticism and despair.

  Aldous Huxley

  Past, Class, People

  Aldous Huxley (1955). “The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley”

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• If we cannot sing of faith and triumph, we will sing our despair. We will be that kind of bird. There are day owls, and there arenight owls, and each is beautiful and even musical while about its business.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Beautiful, Faith, Bird

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.177, Jazzybee Verlag

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• What means the fact--which is so common, so universal--that some soul that has lost all hope for itself can inspire in another listening soul an infinite confidence in it, even while it is expressing its despair?

  Henry David Thoreau

  Hope, Communication, Mean

  Henry David Thoreau (2014). “Familiar Letters (Annotated Edition)”, p.40, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Still let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to wear
  Year after year in gloom, and desolate despair;
  A messenger of Hope comes every night to me,
  And offers for short life, eternal liberty.

  Emily Bronte

  Hope, Short Life, Night

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2014). “Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell”, p.109, The Floating Press

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• Pale brows, still hands and dim hair,
  I had a beautiful friend
  And dreamed that the old despair
  Would end in love in the end.

  William Butler Yeats

  Beautiful, Hope, Hands

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.48, Wordsworth Editions

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• Maybe the bride-bed brings despair,
  For each an imagined image brings
  And finds a real image there...

  William Butler Yeats

  Marriage, Real, Bed

  William Butler Yeats (1931). “Later Poems”, p.132, Library of Alexandria

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• He who is ready to despair in solitary peril, plucks up a heart in the presence of another. In a plurality of comrades is much countenance and consolation.

  Herman Melville

  Courage, Heart, Pluck

  Herman Melville (1849). “Mardi: And a Voyage Thither”, p.132

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• I have written a wicked book, and feel spotless as the lamb. Ineffable socialities are in me. I would sit down and dine with you and all the gods in old Rome's Pantheon. It is a strange feeling--no hopefulness is in it, no despair. Content--that is it; and irresponsibility; but without licentious inclination.

  Herman Melville

  Book, Rome, Feelings

  Herman Melville (2001). “Tales, Poems, and Other Writings”

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• the windy sky
  
  Cries out a literate despair.

  Wallace Stevens

  Sky, Cry, Windy

  Wallace Stevens (2011). “Selected Poems”, p.87, Knopf

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• The greatest poverty is not to live
  In a physical world, to feel that one's desire
  Is too difficult to tell from despair.

  Wallace Stevens

  Desire, World, Poverty

  Wallace Stevens (1959). “Poems”

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• Adolescence hits boys harder than it does girls. Girls bleed a little and their breasts pop out, big deal, but adolescence lands on a guy with both feet. . . . Your body is engulfed by chemicals of rage and despair, you pound, you shriek, you batter your head against the trees. You come away wounded, feeling that life is unknowable, can never be understood, only endured and sometimes cheated.

  Garrison Keillor

  Girl, Boys, Feet

  Garrison Keillor (1994). “The Book of Guys: Stories”, Penguin Group USA

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• Fruitless striving breeds less despair than inaction.

  Mason Cooley

  Action, Strive, Inaction

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• Hope and despair ignore one another's cries.

  Mason Cooley

  Hope, Cry, Hope And Despair

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• The modernist writers found despair inspirational.

  Mason Cooley

  Found, Modernism

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• Life is a tragedy filled with suffering and despair and yet some people do manage to avoid jury duty.

  Woody Allen

  People, Suffering, Tragedy

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• ... in love, barriers cannot be destroyed from the outside by the one to whom the cause despair, no matter what he does; and it isonly when he is no longer concerned with them that, suddenly, as a result of work coming from elsewhere, accomplished within the one who did not love him, these barriers, formerly attacked without success, fall futilely.

  Marcel Proust

  Love, Fall, Causes

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• And I have seen long fingers that would stare
  With fiery eyes, and then the eyes would crawl
  Deftly across the counterpane and fall
  Soundless, with a wink of mild despair.

  Allen Tate

  Twilight, Fall, Eye

  Allen Tate (2014). “Collected Poems, 1919-1976”, p.193, Macmillan

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• One of the things that is most striking about the young generation is that they never talk about their own futures, there are no futures for this generation, not any of them and so naturally they never think of them. It is very striking, they do not live in the present they just live, as well as they can, and they do not plan. It is extraordinary that whole populations have no projects for a future, none at all.

  Gertrude Stein

  War, Thinking, Young Generation

  Gertrude Stein (1945). “Wars I have seen”

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• Robin [Williams] was a world treasure. As we mourn his tragic death, we must remember him for the great waves of laughter that he was able to illicit from us, how his humor and insights - though they came from a place of pain and uncertainty - connected us and reminded us of how flawed and fragile...how human we are. How we are capable of moments of inspired transcendence and others of unspeakable despair.

  Glenn Close

  Leadership, Wisdom, Pain

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• The various forms of despair at the various stations on the road.

  Franz Kafka

  Travel, Form, Various

  Franz Kafka (1991). “The Blue Octavo Notebooks”

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• Common sense should tell us that reading is the ultimate weapon--destroying ignorance, poverty and despair before they can destroyus. A nation that doesn't read much doesn't know much. And a nation that doesn't know much is more likely to make poor choices in the home, the marketplace, the jury box and the voting booth...The challenge, therefore, is to convince future generations of children that carrying a book is more rewarding than carrying guns.

  Jim Trelease

  Children, Book, Reading

  Jim Trelease (2001). “The Read-aloud Handbook”, Alloybooks

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• Until the day when, your endurance gone, in this world for you without arms, you catch up in yours the first mangy cur you meet, carry it for the time needed for it to love it and you it, then throw it away.

  Samuel Beckett

  Love, Loneliness, Endurance

  Samuel Beckett (2009). “Three Novels: Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable”, p.8, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Sun, I come to see you for the last time.

  Jean Racine

  Death, Suicide, Lasts

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• Parents offer an open womb. More than anyone else in your life, mothers, and sometimes fathers, can kiss it, and make it well whentheir grown children need to regress and repair. More than anyone else in your life, mothers, and sometimes fathers, can catch you when you start to fall. When you are in disgrace, defeat, and despair, home may be the safest place to hide.

  Frank Pittman

  Mother, Children, Father

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