Desperation Quotes - Page 2

• Killing yourself is a major commitment, it takes a kind of courage. Most people just lead lives of cowardly desperation. It's kinda half suicide where you just dull yourself with substances.

  Robert Crumb

  Suicide, Commitment, People

  "'When I was four, I knew I was weird'". Interview with Simon Hattenstone, www.theguardian.com. March 7, 2005.

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• One solitary God-centered, God-intoxicated man can do more to keep God's love alive and His presence felt in the world than a thousand half-hearted, talkative busy men living frightened, fragmented lives of quiet desperation.

  Robert McNamara

  Faith, Inspiration, Men

  22 Copy quote

• Every age yearns for a more beautiful world. The deeper the desperation and the depression about the confusing present, the more intense that yearning.

  Johan Huizinga

  Depression, Beautiful, Confusing

  29 Copy quote

• Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed.

  Yann Martel

  Expression, Light, Despair

  Yann Martel (2007). “Life of Pi (Illustrated): Deluxe Illustrated Edition”, p.218, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think most of the things I published have been published out of desperation, not because they were perfected.

  M. H. Abrams

  Thinking, Has Beens

  "An Interview with M. H. Abrams by Sharon Hamilton". People's Education, March 10, 2007.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• You might perhaps like to see the few canvases I was able to save from the bailiffs and the rest, since I thought you might be so good as to help me a little, as I am in quite a desperate state, and the worst is that I can no longer even work.

  Claude Monet

  Littles, Might, Able

  Claude Monet (2014). “Monet by Himself: Paintings, Drawings, Pastels, Letters”, Chartwell

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Art is always to a large extent about need, despair and hopelessness.

  Gerhard Richter

  Art, Despair, Needs

  8 Copy quote

• Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.

  George C. Marshall

  Country, Hunger Poverty, Political

  The Marshall Plan, delivered 5 June 1947 at Harvard University

  93 Copy quote

  Show source

• Finding permanent and universal causes for misfortune is the practice of despair.

  Martin Seligman

  Practice, Despair, Causes

  Martin Seligman (2011). “Authentic Happiness”, p.86, Nicholas Brealey Publishing

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• Despair is not a particularly respectable condition and yet despair and delight alternate like systole and diastole in my heart.

  Stephanie Mills

  Heart, Despair, Delight

  Stephanie Mills (2003). “Epicurean Simplicity”, p.205, Island Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• My interest in desperation lies only in that sometimes I find myself having become desperate. Very seldom do I start out that way. I can see of course that, in the abstract, thinking and all activity is rather desperate.

  Willem de Kooning

  Lying, Thinking, Way

  Willem De Kooning (1979). “Willem de Kooning: Pittsburgh International Series, October 26, 1979-January 6, 1980, Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute”

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I have always used the world of make-believe with a certain desperation.

  Ruth Benedict

  Believe, World, Used

  Ruth Benedict (2011). “An Anthropologist at Work”, p.140, Transaction Publishers

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• I like movies about longing and desperation, and dark and light things, stories about people struggling to raise children, and to have relationships and be intimate with each other.

  Laura Dern

  Children, Struggle, Dark

  8 Copy quote

• My hunger and desperation, being an actor, an out of work actor - my memory of that is as fresh as an open wound.

  Griffin Dunne

  Memories, Actors, Hunger

  "Griffin Dunne is 'Famous'". Interview with Anthony Kaufman, www.indiewire.com. August 21, 2001.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• If we were really tough on crime, we'd try to save our children from the desperation and deprivation that leave them primed for a life of crime.

  Carrie P. Meek

  Children, Trying, Tough

  10 Copy quote

• Lottery tickets are a surtax on desperation.

  Douglas Coupland

  Tickets, Lottery Ticket, Lottery

  8 Copy quote

• Now people want what the movie was about, which is violent comedy. And that's really what The Aristocrats is based on - what will a family do out of desperation.

  Bob Saget

  People, Aristocracy, Want

  "Bob Saget talks dirty about The Aristocrats". MovieWeb Interview, movieweb.com. July 25, 2005.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Niger is not an isolated island of desperation. It lies within a sea of problems across Africa - particularly the 'forgotten emergencies' in poor countries or regions with little strategic or material appeal.

  Desmond Tutu

  Country, Lying, Islands

  66 Copy quote

• If I were a Roman Catholic, I should turn a heretic, in sheer desperation, because I would rather go to heaven than go to purgatory.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Heaven, Catholic, Should

  Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1873). “The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit: Sermons Preached and Revised”, p.57

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think we're a kind of desperation. We're sort of a maddening luxury. The basic and essential human is the woman, and all that we're doing is trying to brighten up the place. That's why all the birds who belong to our sex have prettier feathers - because males have got to try and justify their existence.

  Orson Welles

  Sex, Thinking, Luxury

  9 Copy quote

• Marriage is a series of desperate arguments people feel passionately about.

  Katharine Hepburn

  Marriage, People, Argument

  18 Copy quote

• If one is desperate for love, I suggest looking at one's friends and family and see if love is all around. If not, get a new set of friends, a new family.

  Jasmine Guy

  Love, Family, Desperate

  37 Copy quote

• In the short stories - if I can make a very lumpy contrast - in the short stories I feel like the lives of the people have a kind of prior desperation and a prior need and my longing is for the story and their lives to somehow come together, even if not finally or forever, to face something; and it felt like a lot of the time with the essays I was wading into situations where there was an assumption of finality of understanding, and I felt like I could wade into any understood moment and tear it apart and make it fall apart.

  Charles D'Ambrosio

  Fall, People, Forever

  Source: quarterlyconversation.com

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• Despair makes victims sometimes victors.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Despair, Sometimes, Victim

  8 Copy quote

• Nowadays not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be called a suicide, since it is really thought which takes his life. He does not die with deliberation but from deliberation.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Suicide, Suicidal, Long

  8 Copy quote