“My only hope lies in my despair.”
Mon unique espérance est dans mon désespoir.
Atalide, Bajazet, (1672), act I, scene IV.
11th Public Talk, London, UK (25 May 1961)
1960s
“My only hope lies in my despair.”
Mon unique espérance est dans mon désespoir.
Atalide, Bajazet, (1672), act I, scene IV.
“But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.”
George Eliot book Middlemarch
Source: Middlemarch (1871)
“If you are wise, mingle these two elements: do not hope without despair, or despair without hope.”
Si sapis, alterum alteri misce: nec speraveris sine desperatione nec desperaveris sine spe.
Seneca the Younger (-4–65 BC) Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, and dramatist
Alternate translation: Hope not without despair, despair not without hope. (translated by Zachariah Rush).
Source: Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter CIV: On Care of Health and Peace of Mind, Line 12
“It's not the despair, Laura, I can stand the despair. It's the hope.”
Michael Frayn (1933) British writer
Clockwise (1986), cited from Malcolm Page File on Frayn (London: Methuen, 1994) p. 65.
“Hope was an instinct only the reasoning human mind could kill. An animal never knew despair.”
Graham Greene book The Power and the Glory
Source: The Power and the Glory
“2542. Hope is as cheap as Despair.”
Thomas Fuller (writer) (1654–1734) British physician, preacher, and intellectual
Introductio ad prudentiam: Part II (1727), Gnomologia (1732)
Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Source: Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 32, Shadow in the Throes of Death
Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Context: First, about the mind. You tell me there is no fighting or hatred or desire in the Town. That this is a beautiful dream, and I do want your happiness. But the absence of fighting or hatred or desire also means the opposites do not exist either. No joy, no communion, no love. Only where there is disillusionment and depression and sorrow does happiness arise; without the despair of loss, there is no hope.
Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist
Source: Talking About a Revolution: Interviews with Michael Albert, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Ehrenreich, bell hooks, Peter Kwong, Winona LaDuke, Manning Marable, Urvashi Vaid, and Howard Zinn
“Prayer is a bridge from despair to hope.”
Bill Hybels (1951) American writer
Too Busy Not to Pray (2008, InterVarsity Press)
Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …
Existentialism Is a Humanism, lecture (1946)