Despair Quotes - Page 25

• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• the storm thunders at my heart; I find it difficult to believe in the existence of anything except the clouds which limit my horizon.

  Therese of Lisieux

  Believe, Heart, Clouds

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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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• 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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• Impatience turns an ague into a fever, a fever to the plague, fear into despair, anger into rage, loss into madness, and sorrow to amazement.

  Jeremy Taylor

  Loss, Sorrow, Fever

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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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• 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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• It is perfectly reasonable to despair of a world where the Nobel Committee gives the Peace Prize to a man running a war.

  Martin Firrell

  Running, War, Men

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

  Hadewijch

  Giving, Vain

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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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• 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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