"Some comfort it would have been, could I, like a Faust, have fancied myself tempted and tormented of the Devil; for a Hell, as I imagine, without Life, though only Diabolic Life, were more frightful: but in our age of Downpulling and Disbelief, the very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb."

Despair, Universe, Life, Devil

13

Create Your Own Wallpaper

Standard

Customized

"Some comfort it would have been, could I, like a Faust, have fancied myself tempted and tormented of the Devil; for a Hell, as I imagine, without Life, though only Diabolic Life, were more frightful: but in our age of Downpulling and Disbelief, the very Devil has been pulled down, you cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To me the Universe was all void of Life, of Purpose, of Volition, even of Hostility: it was one huge, dead, immeasurable Steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, to grind me limb from limb."

Exlpore more Despair quotes

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

Charlotte Bronte, British Novelist

Despair, Desperation, Hope, Survival, Faith

"I pull my lower lip all the way in between my teeth. If I try hard enough, maybe I can gobble my whole self this way.... I didn't try hard enough to swallow myself."

Laurie Halse Anderson, American Author

Despair, Self, Isolation, Pain

"We destroy ourselves when we are ignorant or decide to live in ignorance."

Sunday Adelaja, Nigerian Author

Despair, Ignorance, Destruction, Awareness, Consequences

"It's despair at the lack of (I'm cheating, I didn't say all these things - but I'm going to write what I want to say as well as what I did) feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world."

John Fowles, English Novelist

Despair, Violence, Humanity, Ethics

"Where is my chance to be somebody's Peter Van Houten?' He hit the steering wheel weakly, the car honking as he cried. He leaned his head back, looking up. 'I hate myself I hate myself I hate this I hate this I disgust myself I hate it I hate it I hate it just let me fucking die."

John Green, American Author

Despair, Self, Hate, Emotion, Truth

"So where do you go? Back to the bottle And back to a tiny room somewhere. And wait. And wait, and wait. That's all."

Charles Bukowski, American Author

Despair, Addiction, Waiting, Isolation

"When we arrived in London, my sadness at leaving Paris was turned into despair. After my long stay in the French capital, huge, ponderous, massive London seemed to me as ugly a thing as man could contrive to make."

James Weldon Johnson, American Poet

Despair, London, Man, Paris

"Despair is a form of certainty, certainty that the future will be a lot like the present or will decline from it."

Rebecca Solnit, American Actress

Despair, Certainty, Future, Emotion

"I was dying. And I had never been enough for anything."

Robin Hobb, American Author

Despair, Sensitivity, Regret, Self-Worth, Sadness

"Those who commit suicide, pensive, lonely, philosophers, are awake in life, which is a serious crime. In life everybody must be asleep."

Bangambiki Habyarimana, Rwandan Author

Despair, Suicide, Life, Crime, Awakening

Explore more quotes by Thomas Carlyle

"History, a distillation of rumour."

History

"Make yourself an honest man, and then you may be sure there is one less rascal in the world."

Man

"The spiritual is the parent of the practical."

Spiritual

"Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man, but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity."

Life

"It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five."

Happiness

"Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone."

Action

"I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil."

God

13