Despairingly Quotes & Sayings

Pessimism, feelings of worthlessness and lack of entitlement, inability to derive satisfaction from pleasure, a tormenting awareness of the world's general crappiness: for Katz's Jewish paternal forebears, who'd been driven from shtetl to shtetl by implacable anti-Semites, as for the old Angles and Saxons on his mother's side, who'd labored to grow rye and barley in the poor soils and short summers of northern Europe, feeling bad all the time and expecting the worst had been natural ways of equilibriating themselves with the lousiness of their circumstances. Few things gratified depressives, after all, more than really bad news. This obviously wasn't an optimal way to live, but it had its evolutionary advantages. Depressives in grim situations handed down their genes, however despairingly, while the self-improvers converted to Christianity or moved away to sunnier locales. — Jonathan Franzen

My misery was too deep to speak any more. I scanned the page; I was having trouble breathing, as though the oxygen were leaving the room. Amid its devastation my mind flashed from thought to thought, despairingly in search of something left which it could rely on. Not rely on absolutely, that was obliterated as a possibility, just rely on a little,some solace, something surviving in the ruin. — John Knowles

You're like this little blip of light that lasts for a very brief time and you can shine as brightly as you choose. — Sean Faircloth

Few - very few - are entirely bereft of at least one solace-giving memory: a childhood prayer answered, a testimony borne long ago, a fleeting moment of perfect peace. And for those few who despairingly insist they have never heard so much as a whisper, then know this: We don't need to look for a burning bush when all we need is to be still and remember that we have known the goodness of love, the rightness of virtue, the nobility of kindness and faithfulness. And as we remember, we can ask if we perceive in such beauties merely the random effects of Darwinian products, or the handwriting of God on our hearts. — Terryl L. Givens

Why keep in touch with them? That's what I want to know,' asked Larry despairingly. 'What satisfaction does it give you? They're all either fossilized or mental.'
'Indeed, they're not mental,' said Mother indignantly.
'Nonsense, Mother ... Look at Aunt Bertha, keeping flocks of imaginary cats ... and there's Great-Uncle Patrick, who wanders about nude and tells complete strangers how he killed whales with a penknife ... They're all bats. — Gerald Durrell

More often than not, nothingness is reluctantly and despairingly taken to be the only hypothesis possible when all the others have failed, since by definition it cannot be disproven and is beyond the scope of reason. — Georges Bernanos

Oh gosh. I mean, I love Saxon. Yes I do. *slaps forehead* *runs fingers despairingly through hair* — M..

AIDS itself is subject to incredible stigma. — Bill Gates

Cynthia sighs, contemplating a fruit and nut bar. 'Chocolate,' she says despairingly. 'Safer than cocaine, easier to get hold of than Prozac. The government's most effective way to prevent revolution. — Jennifer Gilby Roberts

Despairingly she looked all round. She was completely encircled by the tremendous ice walls, which were made fluid by explosions of blinding light, so that they moved and changed with a continuous liquid motion, advancing in torrents of ice, avalanches as big as oceans, flooding everywhere over the doomed world. Wherever she looked, she saw the same fearful encirclement, soaring battlements of ice, an over-hanging ring of frigid, fiery, colossal waves about to collapse upon her. Frozen by the deathly cold emanating from the ice, dazzled by the blaze of crystalline ice-light, she felt herself becoming part of the polar vision, her structure becoming one with the ice and snow. As her fate, she accepted the world of ice, shining, shimmering, dead; she resigned herself to the triumph of glaciers and the death of her world. — Anna Kavan

Knowledge is what we get when an observer, preferably a scientifically trained observer, provides us with a copy of reality that we can all recognize. — Christopher Lasch

The most altruistic and sustainable philosophies fail before the brute brain stem imperative of self-interest. — Peter Watts

Too many leaders act as if the sheep ... their people ... are there for the benefit of the shepherd, not that the shepherd has responsibility for the sheep. — Ken Blanchard

Is writing the gift of curling up, of curling up with reality? One would so love to curl up, of course, but what happens to me then? What happens to those, who don't really know reality at all? It's so very dishevelled. No comb, that could smooth it down. The writers run through it and despairingly gather together their hair into a style, which promptly haunts them at night. Something's wrong with the way one looks. The beautifully piled up hair can be chased out of its home of dreams again, but can anyway no longer be tamed. Or hangs limp once more, a veil before a face, no sooner than it could finally be subdued. Or stands involuntarily on end in horror at what is constantly happening. It simply won't be tidied up. It doesn't want to. — Elfriede Jelinek

It's only those who love so strongly that grieve so despairingly. — Celia Mcmahon

When we find Science, which has done so much and promised so much for the happiness of mankind, devoting so large a proportion of its resources to the destruction of human life, we are prone to ask despairingly - Is this the end? If not; how are we to discover and assure for stricken Humanity the vision and the possession of a Better Land? — Alexander Philip

the spectral summer of narcotic flowers and humid seas of foliage that bring wild and many-coloured dreams. And as I walked by the shallow crystal stream I saw unwonted ripples tipped with yellow light, as if those placid waters were drawn on in resistless currents to strange oceans that are not in the world. Silent and sparkling, bright and baleful, those moon-cursed waters hurried I knew not whither; whilst from the embowered banks white lotos-blossoms fluttered one by one in the opiate night-wind and dropped despairingly into the stream, swirling away horribly — H.P. Lovecraft

Oh, for heaven's sake, Sirius, Dumbledore said no!"
A bearlike black dog had appeared at Harry's side as Harry clambered over the various trunks cluttering the hall to get to Mrs. Weasley.
"Oh honestly," said Mrs. Weasley despairingly. "Well, on your own head be it!"
The great black dog gave a joyful bark and gamboled around them, snapping at pigeons, and chasing its own tail. Harry couldn't help laughing. Sirius had been trapped inside for a very long time. — J.K. Rowling

Saturday night. Buddy Dow, hired skipper of a big lunker owned by an insurance company in Atlanta, had enlisted two recruits and was despairingly in need of more. — John D. MacDonald

An appetite for knowledge is apt to rush one off one's feet, like any other appetite if not curbed. I often stand in the in the centre of the Library here and think despairingly how impossible it is ever to become possessed of all the wealth of facts and ideas contained in the books surrounding me on every hand. — W.N.P. Barbellion

One loses the capacity to grieve as a child grieves, or to rage as a child rages: hotly, despairingly, with tears of passion. One grows up, one becomes civilized, one learns one's manners, and consequently can no longer manage these two functions - sorrow and anger - adequately. — Anita Brookner

Rules help us live our lives
when we lose the will to do it on our own — Yvonne Woon

And the most intense desire gave force to her passionate words as the girl glanced despairingly about the dreary room like a caged creature on the point of breaking loose. — Louisa May Alcott

Self-preservation is not a man's first duty: flight is his last. Better and wiser and infinitely nobler to stand a mark for the "slings and arrows of outrageous fortune" and to stop at our post though we fall there, better infinitely to toil on, even when toil seems vain, than cowardly to keep a whole skin at the cost of a wounded conscience or despairingly to fling up work, because the ground is hard and the growth of the seed imperceptible. Prudent advices, when the prudence is only inspired by sense, are generally foolish. — Alexander MacLaren

She can't even stand to be around me, and I didn't do anything," I said despairingly. "You really know how to pick 'em, don't you?" Toby joked. "I think I'm cursed." "I wouldn't say cursed," Toby mused. "More like suffering the aftermath of a personal tragedy." The aftermath of a personal tragedy. I liked that. It sounded appropriately gloomy. — Robyn Schneider

We must be bound to one another then," Elric murmured despairingly. "Bound by hell-forged chains and fate-haunted circumstance. Well, then - let it be thus so - and men will have cause to tremble and flee when they hear the names of Elric of Melinbone and Stormbringer, his sword. We are two of a kind - produced by an age which has deserted us. Let us give this age cause to hate us! — Michael Moorcock

I have nothing to hide. I am a servant of the living God. He is the only one I answer to. — Benny Hinn

And as I walked by the shallow crystal stream I saw unwonted ripples tipped with yellow light, as if those placid waters were drawn on in resistless currents to strange oceans that are not in the world. Silent and sparkling, bright and baleful, those moon-cursed waters hurried I knew not whither; whilst from the embowered banks white lotos-blossoms fluttered one by one in the opiate night-wind and dropped despairingly into the stream, swirling away horribly under the arched, carven bridge, and staring back with the sinister resignation of calm, dead faces. — H.P. Lovecraft

Was he joking? Was he being sarcastic? Aggressive? Impertinent? Or just courteous? There was no telling from his impassive face. What a country, he thought despairingly. In Russia you always knew. If a man made a stern face he was threatening; if he was laughing uproariously, he was joking. — George Mikes

And when it has got in; as one not finding what it seeks, whatever that may be, it wails and howls to issue forth again: and not content with stalking through the aisles, and gliding round and round the pillars, and tempting the deep organ, soars up to the roof, and strives to rend the rafters: then flings itself despairingly upon the stones below, and passes, muttering, into the vaults. — Charles Dickens

The infinite space that each man carries within himself, wherein despairingly he contrasts the movement of his spirit with the acts of his life, is and overpowering thing. — Victor Hugo

Magical, yes, but THE SNOW CHILD is also satisfyingly realistic in its depiction of 1920s homestead-era Alaska and the people who settled there, including an older couple bound together by resilient love. Eowyn Ivey's poignant debut novel grabbed me from the very first pages and made me wish we had more genre-defying Alaska novels like this one. Inspired by a fairy tale, it nonetheless contains more depth and truth than so many books set in this land of extremes. — Andromeda Romano-Lax

The 'Great Walk to Beijing' was a fundraiser for my cancer center. It was a three-week trek with fellow cancer 'thrivers,' including celebrities ranging from Joan Rivers to Leeza Gibbons and Olympians. — Olivia Newton-John

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow; but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. — Agatha Christie

It's alright. It's okay if it's about your ego. Sometimes it's got to be about your ego. Just know that it is. — Crystal Zevon