Despair quotes
934 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside despair — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"Then my verse I dishonor, my pictures despise, my person degrade and my temper chastise; and the pen is my terror, the pencil my shame; and my talents I bury, and dead is my fame."
"The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our own virtues."
"Where does one go from a world of insanity? Somewhere on the other side of despair."
"Idleness and timidity often despair without being overcome, and forbear attempts for fear of being defeated; and we may promote the invigoration of faint endeavors, by showing what has already been performed."
"A reason I became a writer was to escape the hopelessness and despair of the real world and enter the world of hope I could create with my imagination."
"Voluptuaries, consumed by their senses, always begin by flinging themselves with a great display of frenzy into an abyss. But they survive, they come to the surface again. And they develop a routine of the abyss: It's four o clock. At five I have my abyss."
"You should therefore say: alone in one's boat, alone with one's care, alone with one's despair, which one is craven enough to want rather to keep than submit to the pain of being healed."
"Sin is: before God, or with the conception of God, in despair not to will to be oneself, or in despair to will to be oneself. Thus sin is intensified weakness or intensified defiance: sin is the intensification of despair. The emphasis is on before God, or with a conception of God; it is the conception of God that makes sin dialectically, ethically, and religiously what lawyers call 'aggravated' despair."
"I turned to speak to God About the world's despair But to make bad matters worse I found God wasn't there."
"What makes a hero truly great is that they never despair."
"When I think of all the harm [the Bible] has done, I despair of ever writing anything to equal it."
"Sport can create hope, where once there was only despair"
"We are torn between the craving to know and the despair of having known."
"Always the same. Now a spark of hope flashes up, then a sea of despair rages, and always pain; always pain, always despair, and always the same."
"In spite of death, he felt the need of life and love. He felt that love saved him from despair, and that this love, under the menace of despair, had become still stronger and purer. The one mystery of death, still unsolved, had scarcely passed before his eyes, when another mystery had arisen, as insoluble, urging him to love and to life."
"It behooves us to accomplish what God requires of us, even when we are in the greatest despair respecting the results."
"Despair is the only genuine atheism."
"Too strong a media emphasis on death and violence can lead to despair."
"Worse than despair, Worse than the bitterness of death, is hope."
"Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic."
