Quotes About Despair

Everything was lost, I had fallen off the map: the disorientation of being in the wrong apartment, with the wrong family, was wearing me down, so I felt groggy and punch-drunk, weepy almost, like an interrogated prisoner prevented from sleeping for days. Over and over, I kept thinking I've got to go home and then, for the millionth time, I can't.

The world and everything in it was intolerably and permanently fucked and nothing had ever been good or okay, unbearable claustrophobia of the soul, the windowless room, no way out, waves of shame and horror, leave me alone.

Old age, sickness, death. No escape for anyone. Even the beautiful ones were like soft fruit about to spoil. And yet somehow people still kept fucking and breeding and popping out new fodder for the grave, producing more and more new beings to suffer like this was some kind of redemptive, or good, or even somehow morally admirable thing: dragging more innocent creatures into the lose-lose game. Squirming

It was better never to have been born - never to have wanted anything, never to have hoped for anything.

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.

Part of me was immobile, stunned with despair, like those rats that lose hope in laboratory experiments and lie down in the maze to starve.

Butthole," he sobbed.

I don't think I can explain the despair my surroundings inspired in me. Though I now suspect, given the circumstances and my disposition, I would've been unhappy anywhere, in Biarritz or Caracas or the Isle of Capri, I was then convinced that my unhappiness was indigenous to that place.

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. And

Are you tired?" he said, looking at me closely. Was I? I was wide awake, and yet part of me was so glassed-off and numb I was practically in a coma. "If you'd rather have company? Perhaps if I build a fire in the other room? Tell me what you want." At this question, I felt a sharp rush of despair—for as bad as I felt there was nothing he could do for me, and from his face, I realized he knew that, too.

One thief was saved that no sinner might despair, but only one, that no sinner might presume.

I grant you true repentance is never too late, but I warn you at the same time, late repentance is seldom true. I grant you, one penitent thief was converted in his last hours, that no man might despair; But I warn you,

I grant you true repentance is never too late, but I warn you at the same time, late repentance is seldom true. I grant you, one penitent thief was converted in his last hours, that no man might despair; But I warn you, only one was converted, that no man might presume.

Life is filled with unanswered questions, but it is the courage to seek those answers that continues to give meaning to life. You can spend your life wallowing in despair, wondering why you were the one who was led towards the road strewn with pain, or you can be grateful that you are strong enough to survive it.

Lord take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the unbeliever who would fain believe, on the galley slave of life who puts out to sea alone under a firmament no longer lit by the consoling beacon fires of the ancient hope

He realized at last that the arguments of pessimism were powerless to comfort him

Like a tide-race, the waves of human mediocrity are rising to the heavens and will engulf this refuge, for I am opening the flood-gates myself, against my will. Ah! but my courage fails me and my heart is sick within me! -- Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the unbeliever who would fain believe, on the galley-slave of life who puts out to sea alone, in the night, beneath a firmament no longer lit by the consoling beacon-fires of the ancient hope!" (A Rebours, final words)

Pervenche glissait dans un trou profond et sombre. Ou plutôt, c'était son vieux rêve d'un boyau perforant la terre dans lequel elle rampait, les coudes serrées contre ses flacs, les genoux écorchés, avec juste assez de place pour pouvoir avancer d'une ondulation douloureuse qu'elle ne savait plus si elle avançait ou si elle reculait. Elle savait plus depuis combien de temps elle était enfermée dans cette chambre.»

A Touch of Comfort On the darkest night of my life, God made sure I wasn't alone. It not only brought me comfort that night, but the memory brings comfort every time I start to feel despair. On the darkest night God will shine a light. -Beth Arvin

It's the circle of life, and it moves us all, through despair and hope, through faith and love, 'till we find our place, on the path unwinding.

Psychiatry is the management of despair.

Not me, girl dear, not me in the whole wide world. You need a man…I'm just a corpse walking.

American society as a whole can never achieve the outer-reaches of potential, so long as it tolerates the inner cities of despair.

Bad enough I'm a goddamn burden to myself.