Despair Quotes

My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.

~ L.m. Montgomery

Oft hope is born when all is forlorn.

~ J.r.r. Tolkien

It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not.

~ J.r.r. Tolkien

The artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.

~ Woody Allen

She wondered that hope was so much harder then despair.

~ Patricia Briggs

You see, we cannot draw lines and compartments and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.' He paused, considering what he had just said. 'Yes', he repeated. 'In the end, it's all a question of balance.

~ Rohinton Mistry

Those who make us believe that anything’s possible and fire our imagination over the long haul, are often the ones who have survived the bleakest of circumstances. The men and women who have every reason to despair, but don’t, may have the most to teach us, not only about how to hold true to our beliefs, but about how such a life can bring about seemingly impossible social change.

~ Paul Rogat Loeb

To hope for nothing, to expect nothing, to demand nothing. This is analytical despair.

~ James Hillman

What makes a hero? Courage, strength, morality, withstanding adversity? Are these the traits that truly show and create a hero? Is the light truly the source of darkness or vice versa? Is the soul a source of hope or despair? Who are these so called heroes and where do they come from? Are their origins in obscurity or in plain sight?

~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.

~ Alain De Botton

Being a cheerful hobbit, he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed.

~ J.r.r. Tolkien

Hope was an instinct only the reasoning human mind could kill. An animal never knew despair.

~ Graham Greene

Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.

~ Alain De Botton

But hope is no less realistic than despair. It is still our choice whether to live in light or lie down in darkness.

~ Rick Yancey

When all else is lost, the future still remains.

~ Christian Bovee

Then, in spite of everything, he began to smile. So much of his existence in Everlost had been full of despair. Despair, and a fear of losing what he had. But Allie was not lost, she was just there across the river, waiting for him to find her. Nick was not lost either--not entirely.It was then that Mikey McGill realized something. It must have been his sister who first called this place Everlost, because by naming it so, it stripped away all hope except for a faith in her, and the safety she could provide. Well, Mary was wrong on all counts, because nothing in Everlost was lost forever, if one had the courage to search for it.Mikey held tightly on to this shining truth as he and the golem sunk into the earth. Then with all the force of his heart, his mind, and his soul, Mikey McGill began to dig.

~ Neal Shusterman

You were standing in the wake of devastation And you were waiting on the edge of the unknown And with the cataclysm raining down Insides crying Save me now You were there, impossibly alone

~ Linkin Park

Despair is a free man—hope isa slave.

~ L.m. Montgomery

With the need for the self in the time of another / I left my seaport grim and dear / knowing good work could be made / in the state governed by both Hope and Despair.

~ Roman Payne

Do you feel cold and lost in desperation? You build up hope, but failure’s all you’ve known Remember all the sadness and frustration And let it go. Let it go

~ Linkin Park

Despair is for people who know, beyond any doubt, what the future is going to bring. Nobody is in that position. So despair is not only a kind of sin, theologically, but also a simple mistake, because nobody actually knows. In that sense there is always hope.

~ Patrick Curry

...stooping very low, He engraves with careHis Name, indelible, upon our dust;And from the ashes of our self-despair,Kindles a flame of hope and humble trust.He seeks no second site on which to build,But on the old foundation, stone by stone,Cementing sad experience with grace,Fashions a stronger temple of His own.

~ Patricia St. John

Here is little habit that can make a big difference. Send sunbeams. Intentionally send a word of encouragement or appreciation every day to one person.

~ Steve Goodier

NOT, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of manIn me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

And now that its ruby eyes are set into the gold, you cannot see their tear-shape, so they seem to be laughing rather than crying. It is a constant reminder to me of the human ability to create something beautiful even when things are at the darkest.

~ Cressida Cowell

But hope, I can tell you, is an exhausting emotion; perhaps, along with fear, the most exhausting of all. It is like juggling eggs: the hope is the shell, and inside is despair. A single crack and the despair might spill everywhere, stain everything.

~ Sam Taylor

The days passed in a dream. I pictured our reunion again and again, played it out in my mind over and over until I’d almost worn a groove in my thoughts, so deep that it seemed the only thing I could think of was our reunion. Anticipation is a gift. Perhaps there is none greater. Anticipation is born of hope. Indeed it is hope’s finest expression. In hope’s loss, however, is the greatest despair.

~ Steven L. Peck

The Imagination merely enables us to wander into the darkness of the unknown where, by the dim light of the knowledge we carry, we may glimpse something that seems of interest. But when we bring it out and examine it more closely it usually proves to be only trash whose glitter had caught our attention. Imagination is at once the source of all hope and inspiration but also of frustration. To forget this is to court despair.

~ William Ian Beardmore Beveridge

Frodo raised his head, and then stood up. Despair had not left him, but the weakness had passed. He even smiled grimly, feeling now as clearly as a moment before he had felt the opposite, that what he had to do, he had to do, if he could, and that whether Faramir or Aragorn or Elrond or Galadriel or Gandalf or anyone else knew about it was beside the purpose. He took his staff in one hand and the phial in his other. When he saw that the clear light was already welling through his fingers, he thrust it into his bosom and held it against his heart. Then turning from the city of Morgul, now no more than a grey glimmer across a dark gulf, he prepared to take the upward road.

~ J.r.r. Tolkien

Despair wishes their hope diminishes.

~ Sherina Gandia

The power of hope! Even a lack of ambition can, for a time, pay off as a necessary facet, as long as hope outweighs it.

~ Criss Jami

Now I want you to remember something because I don't think we shall meet again very soon. It is this; however fashionable despair about the world and about people may be at present, and however powerful despair may become in the future, not everybody, or even most people, think and live fashionably; virtue and honour will not be banished from the world, however many popular moralists and panicky journalists say so. Sacrifice will not cease to be because psychiatrists have popularized the idea that there is often some concealed, self-serving element in it; theologians always knew that. Nor do I think love as a high condition of honour will be lost; it is a pattern in the spirit, and people long to make the pattern a reality in their own lives, whatever means they take to do so. In short, Davey, God is not dead. And I can assure you God is not mocked.

~ Robertson Davies

I think if Eternity held torment, its form would not be fiery rack, nor its nature, despair. I think that on a certain day amongst those days which never dawned, and will not set, an angel entered Hades — stood, shone, smiled, delivered a prophecy of conditional pardon, kindled a doubtful hope of bliss to come, not now, but at a day and hour unlooked for, revealed in his own glory and grandeur the height and compass of his promise: spoke thus — then towering, became a star, and vanished into his own Heaven. His legacy was suspense — a worse boon than despair.

~ Charlotte Brontë

They that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint.

~ Patricia Christian Punches

I have faced many moments of despair, thank God who relieved me from distress.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Hope says: one dayyou will see her, if you will only wait.Despair says:all you have left of her is your bitterness.Beat, heart…The earthhas not swallowed everything.

~ Antonio Machado

There is a sacred time, when the soul desire to know the spirit.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The optimist's hope and the pessimist's despair: reciprocal illusions.

~ Marty Rubin

something was dead in each of us,and what was dead was hope.

~ Oscar Wilde

I lie in the dark wondering if this quiet in me nowis a beginning or an end.

~ Jack Gilbert