Actions Quotes Logo

Despair Quotes

It's lies. It's all lies. Some of them are just prettier than others, that's all. People see what th...

Show More

Was that what it was really like to be alive? The feeling of darkness dragging you forward?How could...

Show More

Well, here I am, just come home; a fellow gone to the bad; though I had the best intentions in the w...

Show More

Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.

Have you ever longed for someone so much, so deeply that you thought you would die? That your heart ...

Show More

She was part of the machine she tended, and every faculty that was not needed for the machine was do...

Show More

Day after day he roamed about in the arctic cold, his soul filled full of bitterness and despair. He...

Show More

What you love, you will love. What you undertake you will complete. You are a fulfiller of hope; you...

Show More

But she knew, though very vaguely, that she was crying, because hope hurts terribly when it breaks t...

Show More
Picture of Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le GuinPlanet of Exile / Mankind Under the Leash

Her despair grew so great that it burst her breast open and like a bird of fire shattered the stone ...

Show More
Picture of Ursula K. Le Guin
Ursula K. Le GuinThe Tombs of Atuan

The driver, a black silhouette upon his box, whipped up his bony horses. Icy silence in the coach. M...

Show More

She thought of the recurrent waves of pain that for some reason or other she and her husband had had...

Show More
Picture of Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir NabokovNabokov's Dozen: A Collection of Thirteen Stories‏

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that f...

Show More

What is the nature of the search? you ask. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not ...

Show More

As for hobbies, people with stimulating hobbies suffer from the most noxious of despairs since they ...

Show More

Much protest is naïve; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such imp...

Show More

Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and...

Show More

For those who have dwelt in depression's dark wood, and known its inexplicable agony, their return f...

Show More
Picture of William Styron
William StyronDarkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness

Dividing earth and skyis not the right wayto think about this wholeness.It only allows one to liveat...

Show More

The artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence...

Show More

Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression.

The wind picked up, shaking the trees below. She had the sense of being in the country. In the count...

Show More

The death of a dream can in fact serve as the vehicle that endows it with new form, with reinvigorat...

Show More

In a world gushing blood day and night, you never stop mopping up pain.

A
AberjhaniThe River of Winged Dreams

Never trust the advice of a man in difficulties.

The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.

Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surren...

Show More

February 13, 1936I ask of people more than they can give me. It is useless to maintain the contrary....

Show More

We cannot despair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings.

Despair is the central part of the psychopathology. For the handmaiden of gossip is treachery:

Picture of Alexander Cockburn
Alexander CockburnCorruptions of Empire: Life Studies and the Reagan Era

Oh, Mercédès, I have spoken your name with sighs of melancholy, with groans of pain and with the cro...

Show More

Christ! What are patterns for?

Politics was his passion, but he wasn't suited for the rough-and-tumble of the game. He felt things ...

Show More

It is not hard to live through a day, if you can live through a moment. What creates despair is the ...

Show More

Depression is the flaw in love. To be creatures who love, we must be creatures who can despair at wh...

Show More
Picture of Andrew Solomon
Andrew SolomonThe Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Despair is the constant companion of the clown.

Could one that's damned stand in high Heaven, even thereHe'd feel within himself all Hell and Hell's...

Show More
Picture of Angelus Silesius
Angelus SilesiusSelections from The Cherubinic Wanderer

She was tranquil, but it was with the quietness of exhausted grief, not of resignation; and she look...

Show More

Despair is so familiar to me; it could be banished by the sight of a beautiful mannekin in the windo...

Show More

The more she was absolutely in need of external friendship, the more disposed was she to reject it, ...

Show More

And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fle...

Show More

Ivanov: With a heavy head, with a slothful spirit, exhausted, overstretched, broken, without faith, ...

Show More

Ivanov: I am a bad, pathetic and worthless individual. One needs to be pathetic, too, worn out and d...

Show More

Anna Petrovna: Kolya, my dearest, stay at home.Ivanov: My love, my unhappy darling, I beg you, don't...

Show More

They were tough and sour, but as Pushkin said, 'Dearer to us than a host of truths is an exalting il...

Show More

The light in that room was a glow; I seem to remember the color green, or perhaps flowers. A pale gr...

Show More

Hope says: one dayyou will see her, if you will only wait.Despair says:all you have left of her is y...

Show More
Picture of Antonio Machado
Antonio MachadoCampos de Castilla

But when they made love he was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone...

Show More

Isolation and loneliness are central causes of depression and despair.

Presumption should never make us neglect that which appears easy to us, nor despair make us lose cou...

Show More

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

The wheel of fortune that had once raised her so high had taken her into the utter depths.

Picture of Bernard Cornwell
Bernard CornwellHarlequin: Complete & Unabridged: The Grail Quest

Knowlege of God without knowledge of man's wretchedness leads to pride. Knowledge of man's wretchedn...

Show More

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

Trudging on foot, loaded with sacks, bundles, and babies, young mothers who had lost their milk, dri...

Show More

[Deserters], they've given up everything. Oaths. Families. When you desert, it breaks you. It leaves...

Show More

He opened his mouth. The words were there. He was about to say them when a jolt of terror went throu...

Show More

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.

my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.

no concept of danger, reality, flow or compassion. you can feel the despair escaping from their mach...

Show More
Picture of Charles Bukowski
Charles BukowskiSifting Through the Madness for the Word

When ladies as young, and good, and beautiful as you are," replied the girl steadily, "give away you...

Show More

Of all my old associations, of all my old pursuits and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, ...

Show More

No reflection was to be allowed now, not one glance was to be cast back; not even one forward. Not o...

Show More

To toil, to think, to long, to grieve,—Is such my future fate?The morn was dreary, must the eveBe al...

Show More

I think if Eternity held torment, its form would not be fiery rack, nor its nature, despair. I think...

Show More

I knew I was catching at straws; but in the wide and weltering deep where I found myself, I would ha...

Show More

Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith.

Despair is something horribly simple.

Picture of Christopher Isherwood
Christopher IsherwoodDown There on a Visit

Is there any good news?' Tesla

Picture of Clive Barker
Clive BarkerThe Great and Secret Show

A good novel can be a doorstop to despair.

Picture of Colum McCann
Colum McCannLet the Great World Spin

Good. Drink your tea," he ordered. "It will make you feel better."Nothing will make me feel better, ...

Show More

He lay listening to the water drip in the woods. Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes ...

Show More

... A lobotomy involved some kind of rod or probe inserted through the eyesocket,the term was always...

Show More

I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m us...

Show More
Picture of David Foster Wallace
David Foster WallaceA Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments

A sprinkle of last-minute despair gives a soul an agreeably earthy aftertaste.

Loyal companions are an unequaled grace, stanching fear before it bleeds you numb, a reliable antido...

Show More
Picture of Dean Koontz
Dean KoontzOdd Interlude: A Special Odd Thomas Adventure

Despair dragged at me like an anchor, pulling me down. I closed my eyes and retreated to some dim pl...

Show More

I had kissed my share of men, particularly during the war years, when flirtation and instant romance...

Show More

When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.

As always when he worked with this much concentration he began to feel a sense of introverting press...

Show More

You'd be surprised, Theo." she said, leaning back in her shawl-shaped chair, "what small, everyday t...

Show More
Picture of Donna Tartt
Donna TarttThe Goldfinch

Fame you'll be famous, as famous as can be, with everyone watching you win on TV, Except when they d...

Show More

When you come back you will not be you. And I may not be I.

Picture of E. M. Forster
E. M. ForsterThe Life to Come and Other Stories

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

How nice it would be to be dead if only we could know we were dead. That is what I hate, the not bei...

Show More
E
Edward Thomas (poet)Letters from Edward Thomas to Gordon Bottomley

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by...

Show More

We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it...

Show More

Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.

We’re miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and re...

Show More

And I am weary of the anguishIncreasing winters bear;Weary to watch the spirit languishThrough years...

Show More

There's only one great evil in the world today. Despair.

It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write...

Show More

Ah! The anguish, the vile rage, the despairOf not being able to expressWith a shout, an extreme and ...

Show More
Picture of Fernando Pessoa
Fernando PessoaA Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems

And with a relentlessness that comes from the world's depths, with a persistence that strikes the ke...

Show More

And leaning on the windowsill to enjoy the day, gazing at the variegated mass of the whole city, jus...

Show More
Picture of Fernando Pessoa
Fernando PessoaThe Book of Disquiet

We gave ourselves for lost men, and prepared for death. Yet we did lift up our hearts and voices to ...

Show More

We gave ourselves for lost men, and prepared for death. Yet we did lift up our hearts and voices to ...

Show More

We gave ourselves for lost men, and prepared for death. Yet we did lift up our hearts and voices to ...

Show More

We gave ourselves for lost men, and prepared for death. Yet we did lift up our hearts and voices to ...

Show More

We gave ourselves for lost men, and prepared for death. Yet we did lift up our hearts and voices to ...

Show More