Quotes About Despair

I knew suddenly that I could not endure another week in Venice, not another day of their gentle melancholy, not another hour of fashionable despair.

He knew suddenly that if he fell he would fall forever. Into the abyss, plunging into his own terror and defeat, endlessly, through the self-spinning labyrinth, mind frozen in boundless anguish, a maze of unending experience, unending fright, implacable walls, halls, steps, ramps, crypts, vaults, passages, always icy, always out of reach.

love transforms hate. Acceptance dissipates prejudice, hope ends despair. Peace dominates war, faith reconciles doubt.

The wish for a new life is predicated on the hope that one can have a better one, and the despair that such a better life cannot be grafted onto the present one.

The most extreme agony is to feel that one has been utterly forsaken.

No hay otro modo de sanarse sin esperar curar: hay que ir hasta el fondo de la situación de desamparo en la que todos nos encontramos, cualquiera sea el matiz que adquieran nuestras angustias.[18]

Can there be anything sadder than a human being changed into the rubber tube of an enema?

He believed that the non-Christian enjoys a false optimism by living partly on the basis of Christian presuppositions. Schaeffer aimed to destroy that by pushing the person toward the despair and darkness to which his or her non-Christian presuppositions logically led.

His head was ringing like a goddamn church bell on a Sunday, only instead of calling the devout to worship it was signaling his total and obvious eternal damnation.

I suck, she thought. I have achieved levels of suckitude unrivaled by anyone ever in the entire history of suck.

To live without hope is to cease to live.

Oh, lonely death on lonely life! Oh, now I feel my topmost greatness lies in my topmost grief.

More terrible, to see how feline Fate will sometimes dally with a human soul, and by a nameless magic make it repulse a sane despair with a hope which is but mad. Unwittingly I imp this cat-like thing, sporting with the heart of him who reads; for if he feel not he reads in vain.

So, cutting the lashing of the waterproof match keg, after many failures Starbuck contrived to ignite the lamp in the lantern; then stretching it on a waif pole, handed it to Queequeg as the standard-bearer of this forlorn hope. There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.

I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people's hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.

Ahab era inaccesible socialmente [...]. Vivía en el mundo como vivieran en el Misuri colonizado los últimos osos grises. Y así como al término del estío aquel Lotario de las selvas se encerraba en el tronco de un árbol a pasar el tiempo chupándose las patas, así Ahab se encerraba, en su inclemente ancianidad, en el tronco hueco de su propio cuerpo, comiéndose las lúgubres patas de su propia melancolía.

Captain Ahab had evinced his customary activity, to call it so; yet now that the creature was dead, some vague dissatisfaction, or impatience, or despair, seemed working in him; as if the sight of that dead body reminded him that Moby Dick was yet to be slain; and though a thousand other whales were brought to his ship, all that would not one jot advance his grand, monomaniac object.

There, then, he sat, holding up that imbecile candle in the heart of that almighty forlornness. There, then, he sat, the sign and symbol of a man without faith, hopelessly holding up hope in the midst of despair.

By vast pains we mine into the pyramid; by horrible gropings we come to the central room; with joy we espy the sarcophagus; but we lift the lid- and nobody is there!-appallingly vacant as vast is the soul of a man!

The cheeks of his soul collapsed in him, he dashed himself in blind fury and swift madness against the wall, and fell dabbling in the vomit of his loathed identity.

The man oppressed with cares, he can not love; the man of gloom finds not the god.

rotted down from manhood by their hopeless misery on the isle; wonted to cringe in all things to their lord, himself the worst of slaves; these wretches were now become wholly corrupted to his hands. He used them as creatures of an interior race; in short, he gaffles his four animals, and makes murderers of them; out of cowards fitly manufacturing bravoes.

rotted down from manhood by their hopeless misery on the isle; wonted to cringe in all things to their lord, himself the worst of slaves; these wretches were now become wholly corrupted to his hands. He used them as creatures of an inferior race; in short, he gaffles his four animals, and makes murderers of them; out of cowards fitly manufacturing bravoes

Whenever I feel a dark November in my soul