Quotes About Despair

I kept imagining the end, the despair I would suffer when it came, and it made any happiness I had in the present seem not merely ephemeral, but doomed. Because the happier I allowed myself to be now, the more miserable I would be later.

want out. No one will ever love me, I will live and die alone, I will go nowhere fast, I will be nothing at all. Nothing will work out. The promise that on the other side of depression lies a beautiful life, one worth surviving suicide for, will have turned out wrong. It will all be a big dupe.

Alone again, Beverly relaxed somewhat. It was hard to believe that life could get any worse than this. More than once lately, she had thought about killing herself, erasing the fact that she had ever existed. It would be so easy, so—except that she wouldn't. She didn't respect people who committed suicide.

In the sleepless dark, all things are possible, the worst most likely, all darkness visible

She cried until the tears were no longer able to meet the demands of her sadness

Whatever the rights or wrongs of their affection, in the teeth of danger and despair love is entitled to speak its mind, and all others should be blind and deaf.

But she was no longer a ship. She was not even afloat, really.

And all the defenses they had so carefully constructed to prevent hope from entering their minds collapsed.

A still small voice spake unto me,"Thou art so full of misery,Were it not better not to be?"

She said, "I am aweary, aweary,I would that I were dead!"

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,Tears from the depth of some divine despairRise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,In looking on the happy autumn fields,And thinking of the days that are no more.

In my preface, I quoted an e-mail message from someone who was upset by the news that neuroscientists had shown that free will is an illusion. She was, she said, "in a lot of despair." My final moral is the title of a song: "Don't Worry, Be Happy." Scientists have not shown this. Nor has anyone shown that there are no effective intentions. This is good news for just about everyone.

Above all, we must abolish hope in the heart of man. A calm despair, without angry convulsions, without reproaches to Heaven, is the essence of wisdom.

It is a common trick of Nature – and a profoundly significant one – that, just when despair is deepest, she waves a wand before the weary eyes and does her best to waken an impossible hope.

O splendid and sterile Dolores,Our Lady of Pain.

O sad kissed mouth, how sorrowful it is!

O all fair lovers about the world, There is none of you, none, that shall comfort me. My thoughts are as dead things, wrecked and whirled Round and round in a gulf of the sea; And still, through the sound and the straining stream, Through the coil and chafe, they gleam in a dream, The bright fine lips so cruelly curled, And strange swift eyes where the soul sits free.

It was the worst of times, it was the worst of times.

One might imagine it'd be unpleasant, being sealed inside a tree. One might imagine, ah, pining. But the scent lightens despair. It's perhaps a little like wearing a coat of armour except much nicer, because the armour is made of a substance through which the years themselves, formative, have run.

I'm tired of the news...I'm tired of anger. I'm tired of the meanness. I'm tired of selfishness...I'm tired of lying governments. I'm tired of people not caring whether they're being lied to anymore. I'm tired of being made to feel this fearful.

But in a world where England is finished and dead,I do not wish to live.

I have seen much to hate here--much to forgive, But in a world where England is finished and dead, I do not wish to live.

The fact is, I have been dead so long and it has been simply such a grim shoving of the hours behind me…since the hideous summer of '78, when I went down to the deep sea, its dark waters closed over me and I knew neither hope nor peace.

The day and time itself: late afternoon in early February, was there a moment of the year better suited for despair?