Despairs Quotes & Sayings

Time changes everything, and changes change time. The one who trusts this never despairs. — Vatsal Surti

The lover never despairs.
For a committed heart everything is possible. — Rumi

Paint here no draped despairs, no saddening clouds Where the soul rests, proclaims eternity. But let the wrong cry out as raw as wounds This Time forgets and never heals, far less transcends. — Stephen Spender

If the time comes when our culture tires of the endless homicidal feuds, despairs of the use of force and war as a means of bringing peace, becomes discontent with the half-lives that its members are living - only then will our culture seriously look for alternatives. — Carl Rogers

In the United States, there is no end which human will despairs of attaining through the combined power of individuals united in a society. — Alexis De Tocqueville

I hear of a convention to be held at Baltimore, or elsewhere, for the selection of a candidate for the Presidency, made up chiefly of editors, and men who are politicians by profession; but I think, what is it to any independent, intellegent, and respectable man what decision they may come to? Shall we not have the advantage of his wisdom and honesty, nevertheless? Can we not count upon some independent votes? Are there not many individuals in the country who do not attend conventions? But no: I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates thus selected as his only AVAILABLE one, thus proving that he is himself AVAILABLE for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought. — Henry David Thoreau

He who gives back at the first repulse and without striking the second blow, despairs of success has never been, is not, and never will be a hero in war, love, or business. — Frederic Tudor

Of all faults the greatest is the excess of impious terror, dishonoring divine grace. He who despairs wants love, wants faith; for faith, hope, and love are three torches which blend their light together, nor does the one shine without the other. — Pietro Metastasio

I have observed that not the man who hopes when others despair, but the man who despairs when others hope, is admired by a large class of persons as a sage. — John Stuart Mill

The circles of shame are vicious. Painful feelings of shame help cause people to be depressed and suicidal, these in turn become shameful aspects of the self. Being angry does not necessarily cause more anger, being envious does not necessarily cause more envy (though once we envy, we can also envy someone's lack of envy), but, in our culture at least, shame (and envy and self-pity) are things to be ashamed about. The two common feelings of suicide are hopelessness and powerlessness; each is shameful, and this additional experience of shame adds pain on pain. A man who despairs because he feels his prospects of having a family are hopeless also feels he will never lose the feeling of shame over being wifeless and childless. To be powerless to change one's life in ways that others can is cause to feel ashamed of one's powerlessness. — David L. Conroy

A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is sensitive; or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture
in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers. — Andrea Dworkin

I cut my hair myself and colour it. I know everybody in the hairdressing business despairs of me, but it's so much easier to do it yourself. — Joanna Lumley

Youth is the age of despairs. — Lawrence Durrell

A man's age is something impressive, it sums up his life: maturity reached slowly and against many obstacles, illnesses cured, griefs and despairs overcome, and unconscious risks taken; maturity formed through so many desires, hopes, regrets, forgotten things, loves. A man's age represents a fine cargo of experience and memories. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Then 'tis little wonder your family despairs of ever seeing you married off. Sounds to me as though you haven't time at all to be courting." "Hmm." Tavish leaned in so close he could smell the flowery scent he'd come to associate with her since their picnic by the river. Could she hear how hard his heart had begun pounding? "Is that a complaint or an invitation, Sweet Katie?" he whispered. — Sarah M. Eden

In justice to desponding men, it is as well to remember that the brighter endurance of women at these epochs - invaluable, sweet, angelic, as it is - owes more of its origin to a narrower vision that shuts out many of the leaden-eyed despairs in the van, than to a hopefulness intense enough to quell them. — Thomas Hardy

can we find a way of living in which we don't use another, psychologically, emotionally, not depend on another, not use another as a means of escape from our own tortures, from our own despairs, from our own loneliness? To — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Despair has been called the unforgivable sin-not presumably because God refuses to forgive it, but because it despairs of the possibility of being forgiven. — Frederick Buechner

I feel ever so strongly that an artist must be nourished by his passions and his despairs. These things alter an artist whether for the good or the better or the worse. It must alter him. The feelings of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility. — Francis Bacon

The man of regular life and rational mind never despairs. — Charlotte Bronte

To write with taste, in the highest sense, is to write [ ... ] so that no one commits suicide, no one despairs; to write [ ... ] so that people understand, sympathize, see the universality of pain, and feel strengthened, if not directly encouraged to live on.
If there is good to be said, the writer should say it. If there is bad to be said, he should say it in a way that reflects the truth that, though we see the evil, we choose to continue among the living.
The true artist [ ... ] gets his sense of worth and honor from his conviction that art is powerful
— John Gardner

Our life is always deeper than we know, is always more divine than it seems, and hence we are able to survive degradations and despairs which otherwise must engulf us. — William James

To live is often only to have a choice of several despairs. — Georgette Leblanc

Love is hope when reason despairs. — Jack Hyles

What is Zen? Zen means doing anything perfectly, making mistakes perfectly, being defeated perfectly, hesitating perfectly, doing anything perfectly or imperfectly, perfectly. What is the meaning of this perfectly? How does it differ from perfectly? Perfectly is in the will; perfectly is in the activity. Perfectly means that at each moment of the activity there is no egoism in it ... our pain is not only our own pain; it is the pain of the universe. The joy of the universe is also our joy. Our failure and misjudgment is that of nature, which never hopes or despairs, but keeps on trying. R. H. Blyth — R.H. Blyth

If just once you were depressed for no reason, you have been so all your life without knowing it.
Becoming: an agony without an ending.The older I grow, the less I enjoy performing my little Hamlet. The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death. If History had a goal, how lamentable would be the fate of those of us who have accomplished nothing!
On the frontiers of the self: 'What I have suffered, what I am suffering, no one will ever know, not even I'. Events - tumours of time.
Man secretes disaster.
The secret of my adaptation to life? - I've changed despairs the way I've changed shirts. Each day is a Rubicon in which I aspire to be drowned. — Emil M. Cioran

In treading upon the ashes of dead men in Italy, Egypt - on the banks of the Bosphorus, one almost despairs to think how idle are the dreams and toils of this life, and were it not for the intellectual pleasure of knowing and learning, one would almost be damaged by travel in these historic lands. — William T. Sherman

I festered with this duality of love and ego, where ego scorns the very love its seeking and then despairs in its absence. — Meghna Pant

I loved her enough to forget myself, my self pitying despairs, and be content that something she thought happy was going to happen. — Truman Capote

Like most parents, I think, my children have been the source of some of my most intense joys and despairs, my deepest moral dilemmas and greatest moral achievements. — Alison Gopnik

We draw our strength from the pains and despairs in which we have been forced to endure. But because of that strength, we shall endure. — Jose N. Harris

I know nothing more mocking than a devil that despairs. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

You must have a love, a great love, to ensure an alibi at unjustified despairs that conquer all of us — Albert Camus

Despite the difficulties of my story, despite discomforts, doubts, despairs, despite impulses to be done with it, I unceasingly affirm love, within myself, as a value. — Roland Barthes

To understand is nothing, but to be understood-that is the problem and the source of anguish. The soul throbs and would have the other know-but can not and feels isolated. Then come gestures, words, awkward explanations and material symbols for imponderable outbursts of feeling-and the soul despairs. — Andre Gide

The universe, which is not merely the stars and the moon and the planets, flowers, grass and trees, but other people, has evolved no terms for your existence, has made no room for you, and if love will not swing wide the gates, no other power will or can. And if one despairs
as who has not?
of human love, God's love alone is left. — James Baldwin

A prophet is the one who, when everyone else despairs, hopes. And when everyone else hopes, he despairs. You'll ask me why. It's because he has mastered the Great Secret: that the Wheel turns. — Nikos Kazantzakis

A man who owes a little can clear it off in a very little time, and, if he is a prudent man, will; whereas a man, who by long negligence, owes a great deal, despairs of ever being able to pay, and therefore never looks into his accounts at all. — Lord Chesterfield

Nothing stands today where it stood yesterday. The choice which life presents is ever more between growth and decay, perfection and deterioration. There is no standing still, not can be. Advance or recede, occupy or give place, are the stern and inoperative alternatives, [the] self-existing and self-enforcing law of life, from the cradle to the grave.

He who despairs of progress despises the hope of the world, and shuts himself out from the chief significance of assistance -- and is dead while he lives. — Frederick Douglass

A pictorial record of his hopes and despairs would have looked like a fever chart. — P.G. Wodehouse

He who gives back at first repulse and without striking the second blow, despairs success, has never been, is not, and never will be, a hero in love, war or business. - Frederick Tudor — Gavin Weightman

An artist must learn to be nourished by his passions and by his despairs, — Francis Bacon

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

Life was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That's why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down. — William Faulkner

I'm the fussiest eater on earth; my husband despairs. I like chicken and pasta, and can't resist milk chocolate. I figure if you're going to do something naughty, make it really enjoyable. — Bonnie Langford

The nation, taken as a whole, will be less brilliant, less glorious, and perhaps less strong; but the majority of the citizens will enjoy a greater degree of prosperity, and the people will remain quiet, not because it despairs of amelioration, but because it is conscious of the advantages of its condition. — Alexis De Tocqueville

His mouth open, he fell asleep, because a man always falls asleep in the end. One weeps, one shrieks, one rages, one despairs, and then one eats and sleeps as if nothing had happened. — Georges Simenon

Patience is the mother of joy. It is through patience that we can endure each others company long enough to fall in love, through patience that we can cooperate in a task, through patience that we can go from abysmally bad to almost all right, through patience that we can restrain ourselves from wasting our lives in anger and disappointment. The patient person waits, listens, expects, hopes, nurtures, cares, remembers, speaks, trusts, and is courteous. The impatient person demands, gets angry, hurries, presumes, is careless, despairs, forgets, complains, distrusts, disrupts. — William Bryant Logan

The wondrous theme of the Bible that frightens so many people is that the only visible sign of God in the world is the cross. Christ is not carried away from earth to heaven in glory, but He must go to the cross. And precisely there, where the cross stands, the resurrection is near; even there, where everyone begins to doubt God, where everyone despairs of God's power, there God is whole, there Christ is active and near. Where the power of darkness does violence to the light of God, there God triumphs and judges the darkness. Then — Michael Van Dyke

He who hopes for spring with upturned eye never sees so small a thing as Draba. He who despairs of spring with downcast eye steps on it, unknowing. He who searches for spring with his knees in the mud finds it, in abundance. — Aldo Leopold

He that despairs degrades the Deity, and seems to intimate that He is insufficient, or not just to His word; and in vain hath read the scriptures, the world, and man. — Owen Feltham

I'm very different to my mum. I'm not as beautiful as she is, nor - she probably despairs about this - as groomed. I certainly rebelled against her idea of looking well turned-out. I spent several years with a shaved head in jeans and baggy shirts. — Natascha McElhone

That's why it's good to have had love in your life after all, to have had an unhappy passion - it gives you an alibi from the great despairs we all suffer from. — Albert Camus

Take a journey into the things which you are carrying, the known- not into the unknown-into what you already know: your pleasures, your delights, your despairs, your sorrows. Take a journey into that, that is all you have. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Revolutionists are accused of sowing fear abroad. Every barricade seems a crime. Their theories are incriminated, their aim suspected, their ulterior motive is feared, their conscience denounced. They are reproached with raising, erecting, and heaping up, against the reigning social state, a mass of miseries, of griefs, of iniquities, of wrongs, of despairs, and of tearing from the lowest depths blocks of shadow in order therein to embattle themselves and to combat. People shout to them: "You are tearing up the pavements of hell!" They might reply: "That is because our barricade is made of good intentions. — Victor Hugo

He that despairs measures Providence by his own little contracted model and limits infinite power to finite apprehensions. — Robert South

Humility provides everyone, even him who despairs in solitude, with the strongest relationship to his fellow man. — Franz Kafka

I have a producer friend who despairs that I come across as rather frosty and never show the real me, and she might have a point. — Mariella Frostrup

As for hobbies, people with stimulating hobbies suffer from the most noxious of despairs since they are tranquilized in their despair. — Walker Percy

Los Angeles was the most glamorous, tackiest, most elegant, seediest, most clever, dumbest, most beautiful, ugliest, forward-looking, retro-thinking, altruistic, self-absorbed, deal-savvy, politically ignorant, artistic-minded, criminal-loving, meaning-obsessed, money-grubbing, laid-back, frantic city on the planet. And any two slices of it, as different as Bel Air and Watts, were nevertheless uncannily alike in essence: rich with the same crazy hungers, hopes, and despairs. — Dean Koontz

Sang Ly, we are literature-our lives, our hopes, our desires, our despairs, our passions, our strengths, our weaknesses. Stories express our longing not only to make a difference today but to see what is possible for tomorrow. Literature has been called a handbook for the art of being human. — Camron Wright

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool. — Albert Camus

Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm; great good fortune comes to failure in the end. All is change; all yields its place and goes; to persevere, trusting in what hopes he has, is courage in a man. The coward despairs. — Euripides

He who despairs is wrong. Progress infallibly awakens, and, in short, we might say that it advances even in sleep, for it has grown. — Victor Hugo

Beauty - the beauty Peter craves - is this, then: a human bundle of accidental grace and doom and hope. Mizzy must have hope, he must, he wouldn't shine like this if he were in true despair, and of course he's young, who in this world despairs more exquisitely than the young, it's something the old tend to forget. — Michael Cunningham

He who despairs is wrong. — Victor Hugo

Everyone becomes brave when he observes one who despairs. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Each book is a new book. I've never written it before and I have to teach myself how to write it as I go along. The fact that I've written books in the past seems to play no part in it. I always feel like a beginner and I'm continually running into the same difficulties, the same blocks, the same despairs. You make so many mistakes as a writer, cross out so many bad sentences and ideas, discard so many worthless pages, that finally what you learn is how stupid you are. It's a humbling occupation. — Paul Auster

Believe me there is no such thing as great suffering, great regret, great memory ... everything is forgotten, even a great love. That's what's sad about life, and also what's wonderful about it. There is only a way of looking at things, a way that comes to you every once in a while. That's why it's good to have had love in your life after all, to have had an unhappy passion- it gives you an alibi for the vague despairs we all suffer from. — Albert Camus

An individual in despair despairs over something ... In despairing over something, he really despair[s] over himself, and now he wants to get rid of himself. Consequently, to despair over something is still not despair proper ... To despair over oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself-this is the formula for all despair. — Soren Kierkegaard

Sometimes one feels rage and despair that one should know so little the people one loves. one is heartbroken at the impossibility of understanding them, of getting right down into their hearts . sometimes, accidentally or under the influence of some emotion, one gets a glimpse of some emotion , one gets a glimpse of those inner selves , and one despairs how ignorant one is of that inner self and how far away one is from it. — W. Somerset Maugham

The reason why all men honor love is because it looks up, and not down; aspires and not despairs. — Ralph Waldo Emerson