Quotes About Despair

Great dangers stalk the globe—the four horsemen of the apocalypse: war, famine, pestilence, and death. There is no mystery about them. They are self-fulfilling prophecies. Joyous, transcendent creativity expresses itself in the positive vision that is the key to defeat the general that commands the four horsemen—despair itself. Trust, hope, and creativity can defeat the horsemen. We must not just call for them. We must develop them step-by-step.

I would almost rather we had died that day than to have found ourselves here, lost somewhere between the dreaming and the coming true.

If you knew that hope and despair were paths to the same destination, which would you choose?

It is the first purpose of hope to make hopelessness bearable.

There is always sufficient reason for despair, but there is never sufficient purpose.

The artist's talent sits uneasy as an object of public acclaim, having been so long an object of private despair.

For myself, there is something which makes suicide possible - not even possible but absolutely necessary: it is the vision of the void, the feeling of void which is impossible to bear.

The ground-root folly of this piteous philanthropy is thinking to distribute indivisibles, and make equality in things incommensurable: forged under such delusions, all Utopias are castles in the air or counsels of despair.

And dead leaves wrap the fruits that summer planted: And birds that love the South have taken wing. The wanderer, loitering o'er the scene enchanted, Weeps, and despairs of spring.

Take away love and our earth is a tomb.

Without love, our earth is a tomb

In durance vile here must I wake and weep,And all my frowsy couch in sorrow steep.

Ae fond kiss, and then we severA farewell, and then foreverDeep in heart-wrung tears I'll pledge thee,Warring sighs and groans I'll wage thee.Who shall say that Fortune grieves him,While the star of hope she leaves himMe, nae cheerful twinkle lights me,Dark despair around benights me.

If there be a hell upon earth, it is to be found in a melancholy man's heart.

It takes patience and humility to dull your brilliant colors, to put on the mask of the inconspicuous. Do not despair at having to wear such a bland mask--it is often your unreadability that draws people to you and makes you appear a person of power.

The whole law of human existence consists in nothing other than a man's always being able to bow before the immeasurably great. If people are deprived of the immeasurably great, they will not live and will die in despair. The immeasurable and infinite are as necessary for man as the small planet he inhabits. —Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Looking out from his window, he felt he had been granted a glimpse of a great truth, one that had been whispering at his conscience for many years: that God was not to be pressed into service merely to suit the needs of men, however righteous they believed their cause to be; that such presumption was itself a sin. He felt both despair and a bitter vindication.

Bosses shape how people spend their days and whether they experience joy or despair, perform well or badly, or are healthy or sick. Unfortunately, there are hoards of mediocre and downright rotten bosses out there, and big gaps between the best and the worst.

They may come to feel that only the world's death can enable them to overcome their own inner deadness.

hope is like a piece of string when you're drowning; it just isn't enough to get you out by itself.

She understood his eyes, colder than winter's heart. A man who knew he was dead and couldn't make himself care; you are spared that. Mashiara. His lost love.

A spoonful of hope and a cup of despair

He has forgotten how to laugh except in bitterness; there are no tears left in him. Unless he finds laughter and tears again, the world faces disaster. He

He has forgotten how to laugh except in bitterness; there are no tears left in him