Quotes about despair

You chose, as I choose

to despair, or not

on a given night or day.

That despair turned inside out

you called love.

Rage and grief are savage companions, but despair is the final undoing.

How do you even choose what to mend when so much has already been destroyed? How could she think, she asked herself, that she could revive or save anything? (p152)

“There’s still hope.”

But a small, private voice said: there’s hope, and there’s desperation.

She had no reason not to believe in the impossible. Desperation was always ready to pray for miracles.

Nothing is so insufferable to man as to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without diversion, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness. There will immediately arise from the depth of his heart weariness, gloom, sadness, fretfulness, vexation, despair.

Desperation guides us in life. Rationality does not.

My lord, our immortal philosopher Kagemni, vizier to King Huni, says that patience is man's refuge in times of despair, and his armor against misfortunes.

The old man told how he was now worthless and no good to anyone anymore because he was filled with despair, and despair was useless in times such as these. He told him to remain angry, because anger was more useful than despair and would deliver him. But to despair would surely lead to failure and tragedy.

Writers sometimes cast themselves into the most profound depths of despair in order to master it and move on.

I will avoid despair but if this disease of the mind infects me then I will work on in despair. I will toil and I will endure. I will ignore the obstacles at my feet and keep my eyes on the goals above my head, for I know that where dry desert ends, green grass grows.

I was drowning in broad daylight and no one could tell.