Despair Quotes - page 5

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)
Haven't people learned yet that the time of superficial intellectual games is over, that agony is infinitely more important than syllogism, that a cry of despair is more revealing than the most subtle thought, and that tears always have deeper roots than smiles? View quote
Emil Cioran
Lucidity's task: to attain a correct despair, an Olympian ferocity. View quote
Emil Cioran
Innumerable confusions and a feeling of despair invariably emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transition. View quote
Marshall McLuhan
The man who will live above his present circumstances, is in great danger of soon living beneath them or as the Italian proverb says, The man that lives by hope, will die by despair. View quote
Joseph Addison
Blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope. View quote
Mahalia Jackson
I took to writing at an early age to escape from meaninglessness, uselessness, unimportance, insignificance, poverty, enslavement, ill health, despair, madness, and all manner of other unattractive, natural and inevitable things. View quote
William Saroyan
Let us not despair; it is a blessed cause, and success, ere long, will crown our exertions. Already we have gained one victory; we have obtained, for these poor creatures, the recognition of their human nature, which, for a while was most shamefully denied. This is the first fruits of our efforts; let us persevere and our triumph will be complete. Never, never will we desist till we have wiped away this scandal from the Christian name, released ourselves from the load of guilt, under which we at present labour, and extinguished every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times, will scarce believe that it has been suffered to exist so long a disgrace and dishonour to this country. View quote
William Wilberforce
Scientific discovery is a private event, and the delight that accompanies it, or the despair of finding it illusory, does not travel. One scientist may get great satisfaction from another's work and admire it deeply; it may give him great intellectual pleasure; but it gives him no sense of participation in the discovery, it does not carry him away, and his appreciation of it does not depend on his being carried away. If it were otherwise the inspirational origin of scientific discovery would never have been in doubt. View quote
Peter Medawar
It is not envy or malice, as so many people think, but utter despair that has persuaded many educational reformers to recommend the abolition of the English public schools. View quote
Peter Medawar
Between 1945 and 2005 the United States has attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 populist-nationalist movements struggling against intolerable regimes. In the process, the U. S. caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many millions more to a life of agony and despair. (William Blum)
A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair. View quote
Abraham Joshua Heschel
My mother had a look on her face that I'll never forget. It was one of complete despair and horror, for losing Bing, for being so foolish as to think she could use faith to change fate. View quote
Amy Tan
People are really suffering these days. There's a lot of corporate triumph and a lot of personal despair as they wonder what are they working for. View quote
Laurie Anderson
It was easy enough to kill yourself in a fit of despair. It was easy enough to play the martyr. It was harder to do nothing. To endure your life. To wait. View quote
Erica Jong
Faith has a saving connection with Christ. Christ is on the shore, so to speak, holding the rope, and as we lay hold of it with the hand of our confidence, He pulls us to shore; but all good works having no connection with Christ are drifted along down the gulf of fell despair. View quote
Charles Spurgeon
In our darkest hour, in my deepest despair, Will you still care? Will you be there? In my trials and my tribulations, Through our doubts and frustrations, In my violence and my turbulence, Through my fear and my confessions, And my anguish and my pain, Through my joy and my sorrow, In the promise of another tomorrow, I'll never let you part, For you're always in my heart. View quote
Michael Jackson
She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman. View quote
Oscar Wilde
When I think of all the harm the Bible has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it. View quote
Oscar Wilde
A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom. View quote
Alfred de Vigny
An ad that pretends to be art is - at absolute best - like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair. (David Foster Wallace)
Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist-slack they may be-these last strands of man In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. View quote
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Despair the twin-born of devotion. View quote
Algernon Charles Swinburne
If sub specie aeternitatis [from eternity's point of view] there is no reason to believe that anything matters, then that does not matter either, and we can approach our absurd lives with irony instead of heroism or despair. View quote
Thomas Nagel
We hardly need to be reminded that we are living in an age of confusion - a lot of us have traded in our beliefs for bitterness and cynicism or for a heavy package of despair, or even a quivering portion of hysteria. Opinions can be picked up cheap in the market place while such commodities as courage and fortitude and faith are in alarmingly short supply. View quote
Edward R. Murrow