Despair Quotes

“Crime, violence, infamy are not tragedy. Tragedy occurs when a human soul awakes and seeks, in suffering and pain, to free itself from crime, violence, infamy, even at the cost of life. The struggle is the tragedy - not defeat or death. That is why the spectacle of tragedy has always filled men, not with despair, but with a sense of hope and exaltation.”

“Life can be full of despair without intimacy from a youth's family members and they need to understand that values of caring can help an individual to overcome his or her struggle as he or she develops to become an adult.”

“I've found a different way to scent the air: already it's a by-word for despair.”

“He hated this feeling of free-floating, just drifting from place to place, thought to thought, without any sense of anchor or root.”

“It ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all my life I hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last—into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment! I insist upon that. I have spoken of this because I keep wanting to know for a fact whether other people feel such enjoyment? I will explain; the enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one’s own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into.And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely nothing. Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness, that one is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were any consolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realise that he actually is a scoundrel.”

“He looks forlornly ahead of him, gazing at the road but looking at nothing in particular. The whole world is one big giant ball of light to him, and he feels like a bug inside it, waiting to be squashed. He feels like there is no sense of purpose, no direction. There is nothing waiting for him at the end of the rainbow. No pot of gold for all the pain he is feeling now, or the pain he has felt before. He just feels empty and lost, as if he is looking for something that can never be found. He feels lost that he can’t explain it to anyone and that no one will understand. He feels left out, standing alone, waiting endlessly for a ray of hope which never comes. He has suffered through this before, lurking in the shadows of his own despair, fighting for his life and losing the battle. But nothing ever makes this pain go away. Or the fear. He doesn’t fear what people fear. Not the loss of life or riches—Roman fears losing himself in this swamp called existence. He fears becoming the person he doesn’t want to become, and most of all, he fears himself. Fears his own potential to destroy and destruct. To obliterate. To suffocate his own life. He fears all that and he is afraid no one will ever know what his heart aches for, or how bad he has it. At times he feels the urge to tell this to someone, but other times he just enjoys being silent, watching on like a passerby at his own life, an observer rather than someone who’s actually living it.”

“Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven.”

“I remember one teacher there -- I can't recall her name now. She was short and spare, and I remember her eager jutting chin. Quite unexpectedly one day (in the middle, I think, of an arithmetic lesson) she suddenly launched forth on a speech on life and religion. "All of you," she said, "every one of you -- will pass through a time when you will face despair. If you never face despair, you will never have faced, or become, a Christian, or known a Christian life. To be a Christian you must face and accept the life that Christ faced and lived; you must enjoy things as he enjoyed things; be as happy as he was at the marriage at Canaan, know the peace and happiness that it means to be in harmony with God and with God's will. But you must also know, as he did, what it means to be alone in the Garden of Gethsemane, to feel that all your friends have forsaken you, that those you love and trust have turned away from you, and that God Himself has forsaken you. Hold on then to the belief that that is not the end. If you love, you will suffer, and if you do not love, you do not know the meaning of a Christian life." She then returned to the problems of compound interest ...”

“Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.Where there is hatred, let me sow love,Where there is injury, pardon;Where there is doubt, faith;Where there is despair, hope;Where there is darkness, light;And where there is sadness, joy.O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved, as to love.For it is in giving that we receive,It is in pardoning that we are pardoned,and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

“Between hope and despair treads a life without love!”

“I understand it was Derian who spoiled everything. He purposefully tainted your view of me and forced you to go along with him. I know none of what happened was your idea or your desire, Eena.”She didn’t get up, but spoke from her curled position. Her voice was weak, still heavy with despair. “Derian didn’t force me to do anything.”“But if he hadn’t influenced you, we would be enjoying a pleasant dinner again, telling stories and laughing. I’m sure that would be the case. You would be happy……and so would I.”Eena chuckled without amusement.“You have to admit we shared some very enjoyable evenings, didn’t we? There’s really no reason we can’t put this whole mess behind us and start from where we left off.” He sounded genuinely serious.“You forget,” she reminded him, “I heard your conversation with the Ghengats. This isn’t about Derian, it’s about you.”“Alright,” he admitted with an acquiescent sigh, “so I’m not everything you’d hoped for. But really, what man can ever live up to any woman’s terribly high expectations?”This got her attention. She almost stood up to face him, but decided it wasn’t worth the effort. Leaning forward, she retorted, “Expecting a man to respect you, to be honest with you, and, oh yes, to not be a shameless murderer—I don’t think those are overly high expectations!”He shrugged, casually excusing his faults. “Nobody’s perfect.”“What do you want?” she finally asked, exasperated.He squatted to her level and stated his desire. “I want you.”Eena thought the expression on his face—the look in his weary blue eyes—appeared strangely sincere. But there was one thing she had learned from all this: never trust a master of deceit.”

“Though he plunged into work as another man might have plunged into dissipation, to drown the thought of her, you could see that he had no longer any interest in it; he no longer loved it. He attacked it with a fury that had more hate in it than love.”

“Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.”

“The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can’t lick ‘em, join ‘em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe a happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.”

“At crossroad, God is our guide post. He points the right path.”

“Embrace life with hope than despair.”

“Books inspire a man to embrace the world or flee it. They start wars and end them. They make the men and women who write and publish them vast fortunes, and nearly as quickly can drive them into madness and despair. Stay away from what you do not fathom from now on...”

“But for each high, there's a low. Periods of such despair and listlessness that you don't ever see a way of getting out of it. Everything's bad. Nothing's ever going to be all right again. There's no reason to get out of bed in the morning. You don't want to talk to anybody, and when you do you end up pissing them off. You can't remember what it's like to be happy.”

“But then, as I looked in the mirror, I became fixated on some hairs near my carotid artery that were still there. I pushed the blade deep against my neck to shave them off, and then blood squirted out.”

“The sense that everything is going wrong has existed in every era, and rightly so since men have found no greater pleasure than in inventing new ways to make each other miserable.”