top of page
.png){kind=small}
Despair Quotes
"Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair."
68
"No matter how ephemeral it is, a novel is something, while despair is nothing."
56
"I am living in hell from one day to the next. But there is nothing I can do to escape. I don't know where I would go if I did. I feel utterly powerless, and that feeling is my prision. I entered of my own free will, I locked the door, and I threw away the key."
51
"I've found a different way to scent the air: already it's a by-word for despair."
45
"Schizophrenia cannot be understood without understanding despair."
44
"There was a castle called Doubting Castle, the owner whereof was Giant Despair."
43
"Waste brings woe, and sorrow hates despair."
42
"Weariness that wants to reach the ultimate with one leap, with one fatal leap, a poor ignorant weariness that does not want to want any more: this created all gods and afterworlds."
41
"The novel is born of disillusionment; the poem, of despair."
40
"We define only out of despair, we must have a formula... to give a facade tot he void."
40
"Renewed hope followed renewed effort: It shone like the former for some weeks, then, like it, faded, flickered: Not a line, not a word reached me. When half a year wasted in vain expectancy, my hope died out, and then I felt dark indeed."
40
"Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference."
38
"Everyone, at some point in their lives, wakes up in the middle of the night with the feeling that they are all alone in the world, and that nobody loves them now and that nobody will ever love them, and that they will never have a decent night's sleep again and will spend their lives wandering blearily around a loveless landscape, hoping desperately that their circumstances will improve, but suspecting, in their heart of hearts, that they will remain unloved forever. The best thing to do in these circumstances is to wake somebody else up, so that they can feel this way, too."
38
"Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair."
38
"Let me die because I do not want to see the sun again."
37
"Living on pills, phone calls unmade, people unseen, pages unwritten, money unmade, pressure piling up all around to make some kind of breakthrough and get moving again. Get the gum off the rails, finish something, croak this awful habit of not ever getting to the end- of anything."
36
"Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you."
35
"There was a listlessness in his gait, as if he saw no reason for taking one step further, nor felt any desire to do so, but would have been glad, could he be glad of anything, to fling himself down at the root of the nearest tree, and lie there passive for evermore. The leaves might bestrew him, and the soil gradually accumulate and form a little hillock over his frame, no matter whether there were life in it or no. Death was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided."
35
"I killed four flies while waiting. Damn, death was everywhere. Man, bird, beast, reptile, rodent, insect, fish didn't have a chance. The fix was in. I didn't know what to do about it. I got depressed. You know, I see a boy at the supermarket, he's packing my groceries, then I see him sticking himself into his own grave along with the toilet paper, the beer and the chicken breasts."
35
"To doubt is worse than to have lost; and to despair is but to antedate those miseries that must fall on us."
34
"Persuade thyself that imperfection and inconvenience are the natural lot of mortals, and there will be no room for discontent, neither for despair."
32
"Gaiety is often the reckless ripple over depths of despair."
31
"We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else."
31
"I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair."
30
"When you get to know me, I don't despair - I just get up, clean up, and start again."
29
"The worst of it is that while we continue to sink deeper into the muck and mire that we've created, in the very descent itself we ignorantly declare that in reality we are rising. And until desperation has crippled us sufficiently to confess the lie that we are lifting ourselves out of this mess, and until the panic of utter hopelessness has driven us to completely surrender all of the pathetic contrivances that we've fashioned that have put us there, we will never realize that God has readied solid ground that stands but a single step away."
26
"The only difference was one of them was trying to make a perfect cake and one of them was trying to write a great book. But if we remove that from the equation, it's the same impulse and they are equally entitled to their ecstasies and their despair."
25
"Innumerable confusions and a feeling of despair invariably emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transition."
25
bottom of page