Despair Quotes

Certainly something had happened to me during the night. Or after months of tension I had arrived at the edge of some precipice and now I was falling, as in a dream slowly, even as I continued to hold the thermometer in my hand, een as I stood with the soles of my slippers on the floor, even as I felt myself solidly contained by the expectant looks of my children. It was the fault of the torture that my husband had inflicted. But enough, I had to tear the pain from memory, I had to sandpaper away the scratches that were damaging my brain.

~ Elena Ferrante

... A lobotomy involved some kind of rod or probe inserted through the eyesocket,the term was always frontal lobotomy;but was there any other kind?Knowing that internal stress could cause failure on the exam merely set up internal stress about the prospect of internal stress. There must be some other way to deal with the knowledge of the disastrous consequences fear and stress could bring about.Some answer or trick of the will:the ability not to think about it.What if everyone knew this trick but Claude Sylvanshine?He tended to conceptualize some ultimate,platonic-level Terror as a bird of prey in whose mere aloft shadow the prey was stricken and paralyzed,tembling as the shadow enlarged and became inevitability.He frequently had this feeling:What if there was something essentially wrong with Claude Sylvanshine that wasn't wrong with other people?What if he was simply ill-suited,the way some people are born without limbs or certain organs?The neurology of failure.What if he was simply born and destined to live in the shadow of Total Fear and Despair,and all his so called activities were pathetic attempts to distract him from the inevitable?...

~ David Foster Wallace

I would not have shied away from an assignment to sail a canoe around Cape Horn or to take charge of the government of Afghanistan.

~ Jan Valtin

Sometimes, situation may be uncomfortable but must endure.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

It is often when night looks darkest, it is often before the fever breaks that one senses the gathering momentum for change, when one feels that resurrection of hope in the midst of despair and apathy.

~ Hillary Clinton

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.

~ Elie Wiesel

With optimism, you look upon the sunny side of things. People say, 'Studs, you're an optimist.' I never said I was an optimist. I have hope because what's the alternative to hope? Despair? If you have despair, you might as well put your head in the oven.

~ Studs Terkel

Blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope.

~ Mahalia Jackson

Intellectual despair results in neither weakness nor dreams, but in violence. It is only a matter of knowing how to give vent to one's rage; whether one only wants to wander like madmen around prisons, or whether one wants to overturn them.

~ Georges Bataille

All my humor is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing in the bread line - right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.

~ Lenny Bruce

I think that humor is part of what saves us from despair.

~ John Perry Barlow

Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.

~ John Steinbeck

Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in Hell's despair.

~ William Blake

I think most artists create out of despair. The very nature of creation is not a performing glory on the outside, it's a painful, difficult search within.

~ Louise Berliawsky Nevelson

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

~ Edmund Burke

Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.

~ Elie Wiesel

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.

~ César Chávez

Sad Patience, too near neighbour to despair.

~ Matthew Arnold

Oh rage! Oh despair! Oh age, my enemy!

~ Pierre Corneille

Revenge is barren of itself: it is the dreadful food it feeds on; its delight is murder, and its end is despair.

~ Friedrich Schiller

Presumption should never make us neglect that which appears easy to us, nor despair make us lose courage at the sight of difficulties.

~ Benjamin Banneker

Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.

~ Rollo May

Despair gives courage to a coward.

~ Thomas Fuller

I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair.

~ Joseph Addison

Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith.

~ Christopher Fry

Every human - especially the most vulnerable, the unborn, the infirm, those ravaged by age and those desperate in despair - should be protected in law, loved, and told repeatedly of their incredible beauty and worth.

~ Sam Brownback

I tried out various experiments described in treatises on physics and chemistry, and the results were sometimes unexpected. At times, I would be encouraged by a little unhoped-for success; at others, I would be in the deepest despair because of accidents and failures resulting from my inexperience.

~ Marie Curie

The novel is born of disillusionment; the poem, of despair.

~ Jose Bergamin

As the plane got closer to Miami, I had this terrible feeling he was dying. Maybe he was telling me that he was going. I felt anger, panic, despair and helplessness.

~ Robin Gibb

I went to Iraq because I wanted to see what one year of occupation had done to Iraqi society, and I went to the West Bank and Gaza Strip because I wanted to see what three generations of occupation had done to Palestinian society. I found a lot more hopelessness and despair in Palestine.

~ Michael Franti

When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you, that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be, and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose, there is this word despair which is a very awful thing to feel.

~ Stephen Fry