Quotes About Despair

unbearable claustrophobia of the soul

His face had grown so poisonous to her that now she wouldn't even touch the photograph except to pick it up by the edges. The despair of her house was the work of his hand. He deserved to die. Throwing the snake on his grandmother had given her no relief. It was him she wanted.

A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.

the only light came from a lamp which threw a sharp white circle on melted candles, computer cables, empty beer bottles and butane cans, oil pastels boxed and loose, many catalogues raisonnés, books in German and English including Nabokov's Despair

the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime.

But depression wasn't the word. This was a plunge encompassing sorrow and revulsion far beyond the personal: a sick, drenching nausea at all humanity and human endeavor from the dawn of time.

Angrily, I concentrated on her flaws, willfully studying the photographs that caught her at awkward ages and less flattering angles - long nose, thin cheeks, her eyes (despite their heartbreaking color) naked-looking with their pale lashes - Huck-Finn plain. Yet all these aspects were - to me - so tender and particular they moved to despair.

I can't believe you two," Henry said crossly. "I reminded you of this last night." "But we forgot," said the twins, in simultaneous despair. "How could you?" "Well, if you wake up intending to murder someone at two o'clock, you hardly think what you're going to feed the corpse for dinner." "Asparagus is in season," said Francis helpfully.

Nothing", he said. "Except that my life, for the most part, has been very stale and colorless. Dead, I mean. The world has always been an empty place to me. I was incapable of enjoying even the simplest things. I felt dead in everything I did.

And just as music is the space between notes, just as the stars are beautiful because of the space between them, just as the sun strikes raindrops at a certain angle and throws a prism of color across the sky- so the space where I exist, and want to keep existing, and to be quite frank I hope I die in, is exactly this middle distance: where despair struck pure otherness and created something sublime.

Era melhor nunca ter nascido — nunca ter desejado nada, nunca ter esperado nada.

Moreover, Lincoln, unlike the brooding Chase, possessed a life-affirming humor and a profound resilience that lightened his despair and fortified his will.

There I go When my heart all worn by grief Sinketh low. Where my baseless hopes do lie There to find my peace, go I. Sad and slow . . 

Inside she was dissolving in horror at them both, at how far they had both sunk from honesty of emotion.

Anna switched off; something inside her went dead, or moved apart from what was happening. She became a shell. She stood there, looking at words like love, friendship, duty, responsibility and knew them to be all lies.

I was no Cherokee. I was no warrior. I was nobody special. I was just a girl, scared and angry. When I saw myself in Daddy Glen's eyes, I wanted to die. No, I wanted to be already dead, cold and gone. Everything felt hopeless. He looked at me and I was ashamed of myself. It was like sliding down an endless hole, seeing myself at the bottom, dirty, ragged, poor, stupid.

The reality is that for many of us family was as much the incubator of despair as the safe nurturing

At eight the bar was emptied of all but those whose goal was alcoholism

So, as Lymond strode out and stopped, rigid and white by the doorpost, Sybilla set eyes on Francis, the son of her heart; and so Francis Crawford, after four years of unharnessed power, came face to face at last with his mother. And Kate, falling upon the door and looking up at her self-contained relative by marriage, saw his face torn apart and left, raw as a wound without features; only pain and shock and despair and appalled recognition, all the more terrible for being perfectly voiceless.

From the door, he glanced back, once, at the unresponsive wreck of the room. 'Then God damn your soul!' he said, and walked out.

She told me one night that she had no wish to go on living, and that if she did, it could only harm you. She was thirteen years old.… Can you not stand still, and look me in the face, and give me an answer?

Poor bloody bastard: he hasn't a chance, has he? Kicked from cradle to whorehouse; his mother slaughtered by Gabriel, his father propped up by opium.

What is there but untruth and heartbreak wherever you go?

The sin of our times is the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.