168 Despair Quotes

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

I always wished I had died, and I still wish that, because I could have gotten the whole thing over with.

My wind is turned to bitter north, That was so soft a south before; My sky, that shone so sunny bright, With foggy gloom is clouded o'er My gay green leaves are yellow-black, Upon the dank autumnal floor; For love, departed once, comes back No more again, no more.

Did it ever strike you on such a morning as this that drowning would be happiness and peace?

Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise and sink again; Love can not fill the thickened lung with breath, Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone; Yet many a man is making friends with death Even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

The will to power is the will to ecstasy is the will to surrender is the will to submit and, in extremis, to die. Or to put it another way, the rage to attain a freedom and happiness one's psyche cannot accept creates enormous anxiety and ends in self-punishing despair.

To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. What hours, O what black hours we have spent This night!

Every four years the naive half who vote are encouraged to believe that if we can elect a really nice man or woman President everything will be all right. But it won't be. Any individual who is able to raise $25 million to be considered presidential is not going to be much use to the people at large. He will represent oil, or aerospace, or banking, or whatever moneyed entities are paying for him. Certainly he will never represent the people of the country, and they know it. Hence, the sense of despair throughout the land as incomes fall, businesses fail and there is no redress.

The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.

I tried to commit suicide because I sacrificed everything for Hitler. And that man whom we sacrificed everything for left us all alone. If he had committed suicide four years before, it would have been all right.

My love is of a birth as rare As 'tis for object strange and high; It was begotten by Despair Upon Impossibility.

In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.

Revenge is barren of itself: it is the dreadful food it feeds on; its delight is murder, and its end is despair.

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist-slack they may be-these last strands of man In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

But her life was as cold as an attic facing north; and boredom, like a silent spider, was weaving its web in the shadows, in every corner of her heart.

Deep down, all the while, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she kept casting desperate glances over the solitary waster of her life, seeking some white sail in the distant mists of the horizon. She had no idea by what wind it would reach her, toward what shore it would bear her, or what kind of craft it would be - tiny boat or towering vessel, laden with heartbreaks or filled to the gunwhales with rapture. But every morning when she awoke she hoped that today would be the day; she listened for every sound, gave sudden starts, was surprised when nothing happened; and then, sadder with each succeeding sunset, she longed for tomorrow.

I am writing this under an appreciable mental strain, since by tonight I shall be no more. Penniless, and at the end of my supply of the drug which alone makes life endurable, I can bear the torture no longer; and shall cast myself from this garret window into the squalid street below.

I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, for grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want everyone to scratch himself to death.

All is lost! Monks, Monks, Monks! So, now all is gone - Empire, Body, and Soul!

I attacked those Western playwrights who use their influence and affluence to preach to the world the nihilistic doctrine that life is pointless and irrationally destructive, and that there is nothing we can do about it. Until everyone is fed, clothed, housed and taught, until human beings have equal leisure to contemplate the overwhelming fact of mortality, we should not (I argued) indulge in the luxury of 'privileged despair.'

Several times I asked myself, 'Can it be that I have overlooked something, that there is something which I have failed to understand? Is it not possible that this state of despair is common to everyone?' And I searched for an answer to my questions in every area of knowledge acquired by man. For a long time I carried on my painstaking search; I did not search casually, out of mere curiosity, but painfully, persistently, day and night, like a dying man seeking salvation. I found nothing.

'Tis not where we lie, but whence we fell; The loss of heaven's the greatest pain in hell.

Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony.

'But he who dies in despair has lived his whole life in vain.'

My silks and fine array, My smiles and languished air, By love are driv'n away; And mournful lean Despair Brings me yew to deck my grave: Such end true lovers have.

Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, And black despair succeeds brown study.

Because no battle is ever won, he said. They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

People are often unable to do anything, imprisoned as they are in I don't know what kind of terrible, terrible, oh such terrible cage. I do know that there is a release, the belated release. A justly or unjustly ruined reputation, poverty, disastrous circumstances, misfortune, they all turn you into a prisoner. You cannot always tell what keeps you confined, what immures you, what seems to bury you, and yet you can feel those elusive bars, railings, walls. Is all this illusion, imagination? I don't think so. And then one asks: My God! will it be for long, will it be for ever, will it be for eternity?

In order to persuade Britain to pack up, to compel her to make peace, it was essential to rob her of her hope of being able still to confront us, on the continent itself, with an adversary of a stature equal to our own.(15th February 1945-discussing the reasons for the invasion of the Soviet Union)

'No, but one can feel desperate at any age, don't you think? The young are eternally desperate,' he said frankly. 'And books, they offer one hope - that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved.

Friends, wives and husbands, sons and daughters, dead Of plague, famine, and arrows: and the houses Battered unsafe by cannonades of stone Hurled in by the Assyrians: the town-walls Crumbling out of their masonry into mounds Of foolish earth, so smitten by the rams: The hunger-pangs, the thirst like swallowed lime Forcing them gulp green water maggot-quick That lurks in corners of dried cisterns: yea, Murders done for a drink of blood, and flesh Sodden of infants: and no hope alive Of rescue from this heat of prisoning anguish Until Assyrian swords drown it in death.

I thought: 'I am perishing of cold and hunger, and here is a man thinking only of how to clothe himself and his wife, and how to get bread for themselves. He cannot help me. When the man saw me he frowned and became still more terrible, and passed me by on the other side. I despaired, but suddenly I heard him coming back. I looked up, and did not recognize the same man: before, I had seen death in his face; but now he was alive, and I recognized in him the presence of God.

How could I have died and gone to hell without noticing the transition?

Hark! to the hurried question of despair: 'Where is my child?'-an echo answers, 'Where?'

Farewell! For in that word, that fatal word,-howe'er We promise, hope, believe,-there breathes despair.

In spite of despair staring me in the face on the political horizon, I have never lost my peace. In fact, I have found people who envy my peace. That peace, I tell you, comes from prayer; I am not a man of learning, but I humbly claim to be a man of prayer. I am indifferent as to the form. Every one is a law unto himself in that respect. But there are some well-marked roads, and it is safe to walk along the beaten tracks, trod by the ancient teachers.

I wonder whether, in the history of all the civilisations that have ever been, a more insanely optimistic notion has ever been entertained than that you and I, mortal, puny creatures, may yet aspire, with God's grace and Christ's help, to be reborn into what St Paul calls the glorious liberty of the children of God. Or if there was ever a more abysmally pessimistic one than that we, who reach out with our minds and our aspirations to the stars and beyond, should be able so to arrange our lives, so to eat and drink and fornicate and learn and frolic, that our brief span in this world fulfils all our hopes and desires.

She has been condemned to death by hanging. A man may escape this death by becoming the hangman, a woman by marrying the hangman. But at the present time there is no hangman; thus there is no escape. There is only a death, indefinitely postponed. This is not fantasy, it is history.

Just before the forecastle sunk, the remaining sailors determined to leave. The steward, with whom the child had always been a great favorite, took it, almost by main force, and plunged with it into the sea; neither reached the shore alive. The Marquis Ossoli was soon afterwards washed away, but his wife remained in ignorance of his fate. The cook, who was the last person that reached the shore alive, said that the last words he heard her speak were: 'I see nothing but death before me, - I shall never reach the shore.' It was between two and three o'clock in the afternoon, and after lingering for about ten hours, exposed to the mountainous surf that swept over the vessel, with the contemplation of death constantly forced upon her mind, she was finally overwhelmed as the foremast fell.

They found me in the gutter. The night was the only thing I had left and not much of it at that. I heard the car stop, the doors open and shut and two voices talking. A pair of arms jerked me to my feet and held me there. 'Drunk,' the cop said. The other one turned me around into the light. 'He don't smell bad. That cut on his head didn't come from a fall either.' 'Mugged?' 'Maybe.' I didn't give a damn which way they called it. They were both wrong anyhow. Two hours ago I was drunk. Not now. Two hours ago I was a roaring lion. Then the bottle sailed across the room. No lion left now. Now was a time when I wasn't anything. Nothing was left inside except the feeling a ship must have when it's torpedoed, sinks and hits bottom.

I can't think of words. I feel no emotion about anything. I don't want to laugh or cry. I'm numb-dead inside.

I recall an endless desert of infinite and flaming matter. I am burning! I pass through immeasurable, unorganized time, completely done, despairing, crying in the wilderness. And slowly the flame subsides, the womb of matter grows cool, the stone comes alive, breaks open, and a small green leaf uncurls into the air, trembling. It clutches the soil, steadies itself, raises its head and hands, grasps the air, the water, the light, and sucks at the Universe.

Comrades, I've voyaged long and far on sea and soul, my eyes have seen disease, gods, ghosts, and men, and yet in no land have I seen a more false, murderous siren than that wind-headed, babbling, blind bitch-hound called Hope!

Descend you weary-laden, descend in the dark earth, help me to finish swiftly my dread master's shroud, let each hem hold my pain, each corner hide a crow, a lean, voracious crow to peck his heart out bit by bit.

I'm not interested in my own life anymore. Do you understand? The only life I care about in the world is yours. If I lose you, what is there to hold me here?

Why has my life turned out to be so worthless?

Rage at the death of his daughter and all the things that had gone wrong and the people who had screwed up. He needed to kill somebody, to tear them apart, only there wasn't anybody to kill.

She wants to die, Aaron. Please try to constrain her so she doesn't take the rest of us with her' I don't want to die! I wasn't to live in freedom, like any of you!

Kierkegaard has another answer: human existence is possible as existence not in despair, as existence not in tragedy; it is possible as existence in faith... Faith is the belief that in God the impossible is possible, that in Him time and eternity are one, that both life and death are meaningful. -- The Ecological Vision: Reflections on the American Condition (1993)

[the masses] ...must turn their hopes toward a miracle. In the depths of their despair reason cannot be believed, truth must be false, and lies must be truth. 'Higher bread prices,' 'lower bread prices,' 'unchanged bread prices' have all failed. The only hope lies in a kind of bread price which is none of these, which nobody has ever seen before, and which belies the evidence of one's reason. -- The End of Economic Man (1939)

I realized suddenly that I was in an impossible situation, and there was really no way out. No acceptable way. I could not go on - so I stopped.

'Who are you?' I asked the phantom, 'I am rest from Hate and Pride. 'I am friend to king and beggar, 'I am Alpha and Omega, 'I was councilor to Hagar 'But men call me suicide.' I was weary of tide breasting, Weary of the world's behesting, And I lusted for the resting As a lover for his bride.

Despair is of the army of Satan and hopefulness is that of God. Be always hopeful.

Our circumstance is abject, indefensible, and terrifying. It would be hilarious if the stakes were not so high.

Nearly anyone in this line of work would take a bullet for the last pregnant dodo. But should we not admire the person who, when faced with an overwhelmingly sad reality beyond and personal blame or control, strives valiantly to rescue whatever can be salvaged, rather than retreating to the nearest corner to weep or assign fault?

Grim-visaged comfortless Despair.

I see no changes. Wake up in the morning and I ask myself/'Is life worth living? Should I blast myself?'

I shot myself ... I only hope I haven't botched it.

Tel homme qui dans un exces de melancolie se tue aujourd'hui aimerait a vivre s'il attendait huit jours.

She can only believe I am serious in her own fashion of being serious: as an antic sort of seriousness, which is not seriousness at all but despair masquerading as seriousness. [citation needed]

Perhaps I am like Carrie Jensen, the sister of one of my hired men. She had never been out of the cornfields, and a few years ago she got despondent and said life was just the same thing over and over, and she didn't see the use of it. After she had tried to kill herself once or twice, her folks got worried and sent her over to Iowa to visit some relations. Ever since she's come back she's been perfectly cheerful, and she says she's contented to live and work in a world that's so big and interesting. She said that anything as big as the bridges over the Platte and the Missouri reconciled her. And it's what goes on in the world that reconciles me.

The years seemed to stretch before her like the land: spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning; the same pulling at the chain - until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled and weakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead woman, who might cautiously be released.

'I die, I die!' the Mother said, 'My children die for lack of Bread.'

The Army of the Revolution is recruited by the Soldiers of Despair.

Ah! Whither, whither shall I fly, A poor unhappy Maid; To hopeless Love and Misery By my own Heart betray'd?

I wish I wouldn't exist at all.

'I am but as others: I am but what I was born to be.' 'Do you recognize what you were born to be? Not only a nobleman, but a gentleman; not only a gentleman, but a man - man, made in the image of God. How can you, how dare you, give the lie to your Creator?' 'What has He given me? What have I to thank Him for?' 'First, manhood; the manhood His Son disdained not to wear; worldly gifts, such as rank, riches, influence, things which others have to spend half an existence in earning; life in its best prime, with much of youth yet remaining - with grief endured, wisdom learnt, experience won. Would to Heaven, that by any poor word of mine I could make you feel all that you are - all that you might be!' A gleam, bright as a boy's hope, wild as a boy's daring, flashed from those listless eyes - then faded. 'You mean, Mr. Halifax, what I might have been. Now it is too late.' 'There is no such word as 'too late,' in the wide world - nay, not in the universe. What! shall we, whose atom of time is but a fragment out of an ever-present eternity - shall we, so long as we live, or even at our life's ending, dare to cry out to the Eternal One, 'It is too late!''

Hate me Do it and do it again Waste me Rape me, my friend.

Y hoy me encuentro tan solo y triste cual hoja al viento quisiera llorar, quisiera morir, como Kurt Cobain, de sentimiento. (And today I am so alone and sad like a leaf in the wind I wish to cry, I wish to die like Kurt Cobain, of feeling)

It's a picture perfect evening And I'm staring down the sun Fully loaded, deaf, and dumb And done waiting for sedation to disconnect my head Or any situation where I'm better off than dead

As to your Life Force, which you think irresistible, it is the most resistible thing in the world for a person of any character. But if you are naturally vulgar and credulous, as all reformers are, it will thrust you first into religion, where you will sprinkle water on babies to save their souls from me; then it will drive you from religion into science, where you will snatch the babies from the water sprinkling and inoculate them with disease to save them from catching it accidentally; then you will take to politics, where you will become the catspaw of corrupt functionaries and the henchman of ambitious humbugs; and the end will be despair and decrepitude, broken nerve and shattered hopes, vain regrets for that worst and silliest of wastes and sacrifices, the waste and sacrifice of the power of enjoyment: in a word, the punishment of the fool who pursues the better before he has secured the good.

First we try to preserve ourselves, until we see that we can't. Then we try to preserve our children, until we see we can't. Then we act to preserve our kin, and then our village or tribe, and when we see we can't preserve even them, then we act in order to preserve our memory. And if we can't do that, what is left? We finally have the perspective of trying to act for the good of humanity as a whole Or despairing

Of all the traitors who have ever lived, Lanik Mueller, there must be a special place in hell reserved for you I've been to hell. It's a better place than this

Maybe I'm worried because she seems to care less about the things that I care about You care about everything! How can anybody care so much! My father cares even more On the contrary, tight-gut, your father cares as little as we do. It's just that he tends to despair, while we are full of hope

My every move is a calculated step, to bring me closer/to embrace an early death, now there's nothin left

Mama come rescue me I'm suicidal thinkin thoughts/I'm innocent, so there'll be bullets flyin when I'm caught/Fuck doin jail time, better day, sacrifice

Plus all my homies wanna die, call it euthanasia/Dear Lord, look how sick this ghetto made us

Go on baby scream to God, he can't hear you/I can feel your heart beatin fast cause it's time to die/(we) Gettin high, watchin time fly, and all my motherf**kers

Where is the end to all my misery, is there a close?/I suppose that's why I murder my foes, when thugs cry

Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression. I thank God it always passed. A school of fish appeared around the net or a knot cried out to be reknotted. Or I thought of my family of how they were spared this terrible agony. The blackness would stir and eventually go away, and God would remain, a shining point of light in my heart. I would go on loving. p. 209

There is hope, but not for us.

Men without hope, resigned to despair and oppression, do not make revolutions. It is when expectation replaces submission, when despair is touched with the awareness of possibility, that the forces of human desire and the passion for justice are unloosed. (Berkeley, 10-22-1966)

The plight of the cities--their physical decay and human despair that pervades them--is the great internal problem of the American nation, a challenge which must be met. (Buffalo NY, 1-20-67)

You know Mr. Hendrie? I hope that someday I'm driven to murder so that I could go to hell and watch them spin you over a pit...Bastard... *click*

Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

Only they who can keep their heart strong and their will as sharp as a sword when the general disillusionment is at its worst can be regarded as a fighter for the working class or called a revolutionary.

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

The tempest was terrible and separated me from my [other] vessels that night, putting every one of them in desperate straits, with nothing to look forward to but death. Each was certain the others had been destroyed. What man ever born, not excepting Job, who would not have died of despair, when in such weather seeking safety for my son, my brother, shipmates, and myself, we were forbidden [access to] the land and the harbors which I, by God's will and sweating blood, had won for Spain?

I swear that I'm dying slowly but it's happening, and if the perfect spring is waiting somewhere... just take me there.

You see your breath in the air as you'll climb up the stairs to that coffin you call your apartment.