Quotes About Despair

Your country baffles me: a luxurious unharmed lotus land in which great hordes of handsome dynamic people either wallow in deep gloom, or play like overexcited children, or fall to work like all the devils in hell, while the press steadily drones detestation of the government and despair of the system. I don't understand how America works, any more than Frances Trollope or Dickens did, but it's an ongoing miracle of sorts.

The Elephant of Depression wasn't just parked on my chest, it was relaxing there with the Walrus of Gloom and the Hippo of Bleak Friday Nights in Alone. They had beers. They were settling in.

When night falls and the world lies lost in sleep, I take to my bed, my heart throbbing, about to break, anxieties swarming, piercing—I may go mad with grief.

For of all creatures that breathe and creep about on the earth, there is none so miserable as man.

Grief wrapped around her, eating at her heart. The house was full of chairs but she could not bear to sit upright.

he took a cable which had been service on a blue-bowed ship, made one end fast to a high column in the portico, and threw the other over the round-house, high up, so that their feet would not touch the ground. As when long-winged thrushes or doves get entangled in a snare . . . so the women's heads were held fast in a row, with nooses round their necks, to bring them to the most pitiable end. For a little while their feet twitched, but not for very long.

We men are wretched things

The business of wretches is wretched even in guarantee giving.

When Achilles heard this he sank into the black depths of despair. He picked up the dark dust in both his hands and poured it on his head...he cast himself down on the earth and lay there like a fallen giant, fouling his hair and tearing it out with his own hands...[the maidservants] beat their breasts with their hands and sank to the ground beside their royal master.

Poor wretches, what evil has come on you? Your heads and faces and the knees underneath you are shrouded in night and darkness; a sound of wailing has broken out, your cheeks are covered with tears, and the walls bleed, and the fine supporting pillars. All the forecourt is huddled with ghosts, the yard is full of them as they flock down to the underworld and the darkness. The sun has perished out of the sky, and a foul mist has come over.

They burst into cries, wailing, streaming live tears that gained us nothing —what good can come of grief?

Nothing is more miserable than man, Of all upon the earth that breathes and creeps.

Pero aquel que se siente tocado por mi lanza no tarda en expirar. Su esposa se desgarra las mejillas, quedan sus hijos huérfanos y enrojece él la tierra con su sangre, y se corrompe, y hay en torno suyo más aves de rapiña que hembras gemebundas

You're driving in the car and you feel like your whole world has fallen apart. And people in the car beside you are laughing and carrying on. Their life is normal, and you think, 'Goddamn it. What gives you the right to laugh?' Because nothing has happened to them. You don't understand how everything else can go on normally when your life will never be normal again. Ever.

some art commentators have described as the inner despair of a world laughing at its own misfortune.

I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time.

The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we'd get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.

How many more nights and weird mornings can this terrible shit go on? How long can the body and the brain tolerate this doom-struck craziness? This grinding of teeth, this pouring of sweat, this pounding of blood in the temples… small blue veins gone amok in front of the ears, sixty and seventy hours with no sleep.

For a loser, Vegas is the meanest town on earth.

There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge.

What sells, today, is whatever Fucks You Up - whatever short-circuits your brain and grounds it out for the longest possible time.

How many more nights and weird mornings can this terrible shit go on? How long can the body and the brain tolerate this doom-struck craziness?

It was easy to understand why Sala didn't mind sharing; neither of us ever went there except to change clothes or sleep. Night after night I would sit uselessly at Al's, drinking myself into a stupor because I couldn't stand the idea of going back to the apartment.

Freud Wept, God cried, Even the Devil was Shamed