Despair Quotes

“I'm falling apart, one part after another. Falling down on the world like snow. Half of me is already on the ground, watching from below.”
― Ashly Lorenzana

“Sometimes the world is so much sicker than the inmates of its institutions.”
― Joanne Greenberg, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

“When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, Can You Drink the Cup?

“So now I just assume that it won't work, and that if it does work, I'll lose it anyway. This is meant to protect me, although it doesn't, because somehow the hope sneakily finds its way in. I'm never aware of the hope until it's gone, whooshed away like a rug pulled from under my feet, each time I hear another "I'm sorry.”
― Liane Moriarty, What Alice Forgot

“I walk out the door with a heavy feeling in my heart as another secret falls on top of it.”
― Jessica Sorensen, The Coincidence of Callie & Kayden

“Ivanov: With a heavy head, with a slothful spirit, exhausted, overstretched, broken, without faith, without love, without a goal, I roam like a shadow among men and I don't know who I am, why I'm alive, what I want. And I now think that love is nonsense, that embraces are cloying, that there's no sense in work, that song and passionate speeches are vulgar and outmoded. And everywhere I take with me depression, chill boredom, dissatisfaction, revulsion from life... I am destroyed, irretrievably!”
― Anton Chekhov, Ivanov

“There is a point when the anguished soul finally despairs. A moment in life when the heart, the will, even the spirit crumbles. Some say that after much grief and drowning in tears, it is possible to pick up the pieces and carefully repair what was shattered.
I say nay.
For the chains of despair have no key, and the soul destroyed by that monster can never hope to be unaffected. There are things done that cannot be undone.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“Don’t fail through defects of temper and over-sensitiveness at moments of trial. One of the great helps to success is to be cheerful; to go to work with a full sense of life; to be determined to put hindrances out of the way; to prevail over them and to get the mastery. Above all things else, be cheerful; there is no beatitude for the despairing.”
― Amelia E. Barr

“A carpet of despair which lay underneath the levels of fury.”
― Lionel Shriver, We Need to Talk About Kevin

“The vacancy left by absence of worship is filled by mere killing of time and by boredom, which is directly related to inability to enjoy leisure; for one can only be bored if the spiritual power to be leisurely has been lost. There is an entry in Baudelaire... "One must work, if not from taste then at least from despair. For, to reduce everything to a single truth: work is less boring than pleasure.”
― Josef Pieper, Leisure: The Basis of Culture

“Trees lose their leaves in blizzards like these.”
― Ashly Lorenzana

“Moisture falls from the sky, cleansing the world and sustaining precious life. But it's the gloom—the cold, dark air—that receives notice. We fail to see the miracle of raindrops through our own tears.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“She searched her mind for a single day when it had felt good to be alive. There must have been one, surely?”
― Rachel Abbott, Only the Innocent

“Regret is her companion and the one who whispers to her often. She has even let hope die and that brings about despair.”
― Donna Lynn Hope

“The opposite of hope is despair, and when we despair, it is because we feel there are no choices.”
― Warren G. Bennis, On Becoming a Leader

“I settle into my imagination so that I might be someone when the real world tells me I'm no one.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“As ofttimes as it rains on my little spot of earth, you'd think I'd grow accustomed to the gloom.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“By seeing the multitude of people around it, by being busied with all sorts of worldly affairs, by being wise to the ways of the world, such a person forgets himself, in a divine sense forgets his own name, dares not believe in himself, finds being himself too risky, finds it much easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, along with the crowd.

Now this form of despair goes practically unnoticed in the world. Precisely by losing oneself in this way, such a person gains all that is required for a flawless performance in everyday life, yes, for making a great success out of life. Here there is no dragging of the feet, no difficulty with his self and its infinitizing, he is ground smooth as a pebble, as exchangeable as a coin of the realm. Far from anyone thinking him to be in despair, he is just what a human being ought to be. Naturally, the world has generally no understanding of what is truly horrifying.”
― Kierkegaard

“A Wish on the Sun"

"I see the world beyond a tiny window that allows a glimpse of Heaven into my life. Those who dwell in that enviable light cannot hear me through the glass that muffles my cries. They do not appear to see my face pressed against this barrier.

I watch them live, carefree and smiling. Even when our eyes lock—mine wide and weary—theirs squint beyond notice of me. They can't peer past the glass, the sunlight glaring off its surface. They don't see me. They won't see me.

I make a wish on the sun, staring into its fiery brightness, imagining it blinding me to the beauty beyond my reach. Would my hell feel so awful then? The sun, this nearest star, absorbs my deepest wish for the thousandth time. 'Save me! Hold my hand! Pretend to care!'

The light is blocked by a figure stepping past my window, and I feel the universe turn its cold shoulder on me. Despair smothers the hope that made my lips move in utterance of a desperate wish. It ebbs and weakens, but it does not die. The flicker of an ember remains, enough to ignite hope again—another time.

All storms eventually cease, do they not?

Once more, I press my face against the glass to view a glimpse of Heaven lived by the undeserving. I savor the sunlight, the only thing powerful enough to penetrate the window that bars me in hell. The warm rays touch me. I imagine God's fingers caressing my face—and the dying ember of hope suddenly inflames.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“Times moves differently down here in the dark. With no sunlight or shadows. No weather at all.
There's no future, no right now. Nothing but your memory to keep you company. But they keep me so angry and weak. I can barely think straight.
How long have I been locked up...wuuks? months?
I don't even konow how I got to this place. There are times I don't even know who I am anymore.”
― Scott Snyder, American Vampire, Vol. 2

“Although secular fundamentalist “progressives” might believe in a future “golden age,” such an age does not exist. The future that they herald is merely one of gathering gloom and ever darkening clouds. This fate has ever been so for those who proclaim their “Pride.” They have nothing to expect in the future but their fall.

As for the Christian, he has nothing to fear but his falling into the pride of despair. If he avoids becoming despondent and retains his humility, he will receive the gift of hope which is its fruit. Where there is hope there is the Way, the Truth and the Life.”
― Joseph Pearce

“You’ve had many ordeals in the past. During these ordeals, life seemed unbearable. You may have collapsed from the exhaustion of hopelessness and curled into a fetal position. Regardless of how difficult this new ordeal may be, as with the others, this too will be overcome. It will make you stronger.”
― John-Talmage Mathis, For the (soon) unemployed: You Against Them

“He pried Clara's arms loose and stood up, smoothing his wrinkled coat. Clara looked straight into his face. Her eyelids were red, but her gaze was like a lance. Dr. Wintermute had a sudden, uncomfortable conviction that she had seen into his soul. It was a look he was to remember often in the weeks to come.”
― Laura Amy Schlitz, Splendors and Glooms

“Ja nie jestem, mnie nie ma, ja dopiero będę.”
― Wit Szostak

“The driver, a black silhouette upon his box, whipped up his bony horses. Icy silence in the coach. Marius, motionless, his body braced in the corner of the carriage, his head dropping down upon his breast, his arms hanging, his legs rigid, appeared to await nothing now but a coffin; Jean Valjean seemed made of shadow, and Javert of stone.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Woe to those who call evil good and good evil...who put darkness for light and light for darkness...who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight." Issiah 5:20,21”
― Nikki Rosen, In The Eye Of Deception: A True Story

“Today is the day after my wedding. And nothing is the way I expected it to be.”
― Rachel Abbott, Only the Innocent

“В дневнике находишь доказательства того, что даже в состояниях, которые сегодня кажутся невыносимыми, ты жил, смотрел вокруг и записывал свои наблюдения, что, таким образом, вот эта правая рука двигалась, как сегодня, когда ты благодаря возможности обозреть тогдашнее состояние, правда, поумнел, но с тем большим основанием ты должен признать бесстрашие своего тогдашнего стремления, сохранившегося, несмотря на полное неведение.”
― Franz Kafka

“مليت من نصحك
ولعلمك
لو سبتك غرقان ف طموحك
مين بس يرسيك على بر
الهامر اللي بتخطف عينك
أبدا مش ليك.”
― محمد ربيع محمد, نظرة تانية للملامح ع الخريطة

“Sometimes it feels as though happiness is just a word people say to hide the despair of not knowing anything.”
― Michael Gilbert, Modern Happiness