Quotes About Despair

If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the foundation of all there lay only a wildly seething power which writhing with obscure passions produced everything that is great and everything that is insignificant, if a bottomless void never satiated lay hidden beneath all–what then would life be but despair?

What is to come? What does the future hold? I don't know, I have no idea. When from a fixed point a spider plunges down as is its nature, it sees always before it an empty space in which it cannot find a footing however much it flounders. That is how it is with me: always an empty space before me, what drives me on is a result that lies behind me. This life is back-to-front and terrible, unendurable.

My reflection on life altogether lacks meaning. I take it some evil spirit has put a pair of spectacles on my nose, one glass of which magnifies to an enormous degree, while the other reduces to the same degree.

From earliest childhood, an arrow of grief has been embedded in my heart. As long as it remains there, I am ironic — if it is drawn out, I will die.

However, a self, every instant it exists, is in process of becoming, for the self [potentially] does not actually exist, it is only that which it is to become. In so far as the self does not become itself, it is not its own self; but not to be one's own self is despair.

every actual instant of despair is to be referred back to possibility, every instant the man in despair is contracting it, it is constantly in the present tense, nothing comes to pass here as a consequence of a bygone actuality superseded. at every actual instant of despair the despairer bears as his responsibility all the foregoing experience in possibility as a present.

Fortvivlelsens Misforhold er ikke et simpelt Misforhold, men et Misforhold i et Forhold, der forholder sig til sig selv, og er sat af et Andet, saa Misforholdet i hiint for sig værende Forhold tillige reflekterer sig uendeligt i Forholdet til den Magt, som satte det.

men var han ikke Synthese, kunde han slet ikke fortvivle, og var Synthesen ikke oprindeligt fra Guds Haand i det rette Forhold, kunde han heller ikke fortvivle.

hay posibilidad del bien incluso en el último instante, y que hay por tanto esperanza todavía incluso para el más perdido.

That one is in despair is not a rarity; no, it is rare, very rare, that one is…not in despair.

Hence it is a superficial view (which presumably has never seen a person in despair, not even one's own self) when it is said of a man in despair, He is consuming himself. For precisely this it is he despairs of, and to his torment it is precisely this he cannot do, since by despair fire has entered into something that cannot burn, or cannot burn up, that is, into the self.

La mayoría de los hombres se desesperarían si se les dijera cuán infinitamente rica es la existencia, y que un hombre, un solo hombre, basta, lo es todo, y que con él los más grandes acontecimientos son posibles.

It is an infinite merit to be able to despair.

The despairing man who is unconscious of being in despair is, in comparison with him who is conscious of it, merely a negative step further from the truth and from salvation.

Even if the words were terrible, even though it were a Shakespeare, a Byron, or a Shelley who broke the silence,20 the word always retains its redeeming power, because all despair and all the horror of evil expressed in one word are not as awful as silence.

when the ambitious man whose slogan is "Either Caesar or nothing" does not get to be Caesar, he despairs over it. But this also means something else: precisely because he did not get to be Caesar, he now cannot bear to be himself.

So despair, then, and your frivolity shall never more cause you to roam like an inconstant spirit, like a ghost among the ruins of a world which is yet lost to you; despair, and your spirit shall become beautiful and joyous to you once more, though you now look at it with different eyes, and your spirit, now liberated, shall vault up into the world of freedom.

Jeg kommer netop nu fra et Selskab, hvor jeg var Sjælen; Vittigheder strømmede ud fra min Mund, alle loe, beundrede mig - men jeg gik, ja den Tankestreg bør være ligesaa lang som Jordbanens Radier ------------------------------- hen og ville skyde mig selv.

To despair over oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself—this is the formula for all despair.

It takes a talent to doubt, it requires no talent at all to despair (pp515)

My life achievement amounts to nothing at all, a mood, a single color

If a human being did not have an eternal consciousness, if underlying everything there were only a wild, fermenting power that writhing in dark passions produced everything, be it significant or insignificant, if a vast, never appeased emptiness hid beneath everything, what would life be then but despair?

The Lord tends to come at the moment of great alarm, when we're 'ready to sink into despair.

optimism is a disease