Despair Quotes - Page 34

• I enjoyed the innocence of unhappiness and of helplessness; could I blame myself for a sin which attracted me, which flooded me with pleasure precisely to the extent it brought me to despair?

  Georges Bataille

  Innocence, Blame, Sin

  Georges Bataille (1972). “My mother”, Jonathan Cape

  26 Copy quote

  Show source

• Our destiny and ultimate fate depend upon our daily decisions. . . .Tomorrow's joy or tomorrow's despair has its roots in decisions we make today. . . . Those who stand at the threshold of life always waiting for the right time to change are like the man who stands at the bank of a river waiting for the water to pass so he can cross on dry land.

  Joseph B. Wirthlin

  Fate, Destiny, Men

  9 Copy quote

• As long as the heart beats, as long as body and soul keep together, I cannot admit that any creature endowed with a will has need to despair of life.

  Jules Verne

  Heart, Long, Soul

  Jules Verne, Jules VERNE (2016). “A Journey To The Centre Of The Earth / Voyage au centre de la terre (Bilingual Edition: English - French / Édition bilingue: anglais - français)”, p.181, Jules Verne

  29 Copy quote

  Show source

• This world in which we live needs beauty in order not to sink into despair. Beauty, like truth, brings joy to the human heart, and is that precious fruit which resists the erosion of time, which unites generations and enables them to be one in admiration. And all this through the work of your hands . . . Remember that you are the custodians of beauty in the world.

  Pope Benedict XVI

  Heart, Hands, Order

  7 Copy quote

• Meaning is malleable: take it out, you get nihilism and despair. Put it in, you get sacredness and something most special.

  Dean Ornish

  Special, Nihilism, Sacredness

  6 Copy quote

• I often don't say things out loud, even when I should. I contain and compartmentalize to a disturbing degree: In my belly-basement are hundreds of bottles of rage, despair, fear, but you'd never guess from looking at me.

  Gillian Flynn

  Degrees, Bottles, Rage

  Gillian Flynn (2014). “The Complete Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl, Dark Places, Sharp Objects”, p.49, Broadway Books

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Women, as well as men, in all ages and in all places, have danced on the earth, danced the life dance, danced joy, danced grief, danced despair, and danced hope. Literally and metaphorically, by their very lives.

  Margaret Laurence

  Grief, Men, Joy

  Margaret Laurence (1989). “Dance on the earth: a memoir”, McClelland and Stewart

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Despair makes priests and friars.

  Martin Luther

  Friars, Priests

  6 Copy quote

• It is necessary to understand that Black Power is a cry of disappointment. The Black Power slogan did not spring full grown from the head of some philosophical Zeus. It was born from the wounds of despair and disappointment. It is a cry of daily hurt and persistent pain.

  Martin Luther

  Hurt, Pain, Disappointment

  25 Copy quote

• The powers know that the people at large are like children whose despair, sorrow, and tears can be turned into joy with a little toy. ... An army and navy represents the people's toys.

  Emma Goldman

  Children, Army, People

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism and Other Essays”, p.90, Sheba Blake Publishing

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• The proletarians, driven to despair, will seize the torch which Stephens has preached to them; the vengeance of the people will come down with a wrath of which the rage of 1795 gives no true idea. The war of the poor against the rich will be the bloodiest ever waged.

  Friedrich Engels

  War, Wrath, Ideas

  44 Copy quote

• There are many out there who plead and pray for help. There are those who are discouraged, those who are beset by poor health and challenges of life which leave them in despair. I’ve always believed in the truth of the words, ‘God’s sweetest blessings always go by hands that serve him here below.’ Let us have ready hands, clean hands, and willing hands, that we may participate in providing what our Heavenly Father would have others receive from Him.

  Thomas S. Monson

  Father, Blessing, Hands

  26 Copy quote

• The passage of time has not altered the capacity of the Redeemer to change men’s lives. As he said to the dead Lazarus, so he says to you and me: “come forth.” Come forth from the despair of doubt. Come forth from the sorrow of sin. Come forth from the death of disbelief. Come forth to a newness of life. Come forth.

  Thomas S. Monson

  Men, Doubt, Sorrow

  35 Copy quote

• Despair can be like an iron band constricting the heart.

  Jürgen Moltmann

  Heart, Iron, Band

  9 Copy quote

• The turn from this end [despair] to a new beginning came from three things. A blooming cherry tree, the unexpected kindness of Scottish workers and their families, and the Bible.

  Jürgen Moltmann

  Kindness, New Beginnings, Tree

  8 Copy quote

• Behind the mask of indifference is bottomless misery and behind apparent callousness, despair.

  John Bowlby

  Misery, Indifference, Mask

  John Bowlby (1946). “Forty-four Juvenile Thieves: Their Characters and Home-life : [With Bibl.].”

  123 Copy quote

  Show source

• All my humor is based upon destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I’d be standing on the breadline right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.

  Lenny Bruce

  World, Disease, Violence

  The Essential Lenny Bruce, ed. John Cohen, epigram (1967)

  56 Copy quote

  Show source

• A bleak, black book, it engenders awe and despair. I have read it in its entirety 4 1/2 times, each time finding its resonance and beauty so great as to demand another reading. As I read, I found myself devastated by the thoroughness of the book's annihilating sensibility and revived by the beauty of its language, the complexity of its design, the melancholy, horror and stoic sympathy in its rendering of what we used to call the human condition.

  Michael Silverblatt

  Reading, Book, Design

  6 Copy quote

• When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.

  Dmitri Shostakovich

  Music, Believe, Mean

  "Testimony". Book edited by Solomon Volkov, transl. by Antonina W. Bouis, New York: Limelight, P. 175, 2004.

  93 Copy quote

  Show source

• So to be sick unto death is, not to be able to die-yet not as though there were hope of life; no, the hopelessness in this case is that even the last hope, death, is not available. When death is the greatest danger, one hopes for life; but when one becomes acquainted with an even more dreadful danger, one hopes for death. So when the danger is so great that death has become one's hope, despair is the disconsolateness of not being able to die.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Life, Hope, Sick

  Soren Kierkegaard (2013). “Sickness Unto Death”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• To despair over one's sins indicates that sin has become or wants to be internally consistent. It wants nothing to do with the good, does not want to be so weak as to listen occasionally to other talk. No, it insists on listening only to itself, on having dealings only with itself; it closes itself up within itself, indeed, locks itself inside one more inclosure, and protects itself against every attack or pursuit by the good by despairing over sin.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Listening, Doe, Locks

  10 Copy quote

• Of course I constantly despair at my own incapacity, at the impossibility of ever accomplishing anything, of painting a valid, true picture or even knowing what such a thing ought to look like. But then I always have the hope that, if I persevere, it might one day happen. And this hope is nurtured every time something appears, a scattered, partial, initial hint of something which reminds me of what I long for, or which conveys a hint of it – although often enough I have been fooled by a momentary glimpse that then vanishes, leaving behind only the usual thing.

  Gerhard Richter

  Knowing, Long, Leaving

  Gerhard Richter, Dietmar Elger, Hans-Ulrich Obrist (2009). “Gerhard Richter: writings 1961-2007”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Shakespeare was an intellectual ocean, whose waves touched all the shores of thought; within which were all the tides and waves of destiny and will; over which swept all the storms of fate, ambition and revenge; upon which fell the gloom and darkness of despair and death and all the sunlight of content and love, and within which was the inverted sky lit with the eternal stars -- an intellectual ocean -- toward which all rivers ran, and from which now the isles and continents of thought receive their dew and rain.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Stars, Revenge, Rain

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.616, Library of Alexandria

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• The Christian religion, [Pascal] claims, teaches two truths: that there is a God who men are capable of knowing, and that there is an element of corruption in men that renders them unworthy of God. Knowledge of God without knowledge of man's wretchedness begets pride, and knowledge of man's wretchedness without knowledge of God begets despair, but knowledge of Jesus Christ furnishes man knowledge of both simultaneously.

  William Lane Craig

  Christian, Jesus, Pride

  76 Copy quote

• Walden is the only book I own, although there are some others unclaimed on my shelves. Every man, I think, reads one book in his life, and this is mine. It is not the best book I ever encountered, perhaps, but it is for me the handiest, and I keep it about me in much the same way one carries a handkerchief - for relief in moments of defluxion or despair.

  E. B. White

  Book, Men, Thinking

  "In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers".

  6 Copy quote

  Show source