“Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.”

Last update Sept. 28, 2025. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with …" by Alain de Botton?

Alain de Botton146

Swiss writer 1969

Related quotes

“I don't know any more than you what the future will hold. But my point of view is different. You see despair and I see cause for hope. I read the future in a way that is more agreeable than you do.”

Alain-René Lesage (1668–1747) French writer

La Tontine (1709)

“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

“Apocalypse is a frame of mind." [Nicodemus] said then. "A belief. A surrender to inevitability. It is a despair for the future. It is the death of hope.”

Jim Butcher book Death Masks

Source: Death Masks

“Never despair. Never surrender.”

Alan Moore book Watchmen

Source: Watchmen

“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or despair… Come to it any way but lightly.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“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.

“There’s a really interesting thing about despair, I think. It has a spark in it of deep motivation. I think despair can be described as looking at every possible scenario and seeing no hopeful one. But what that means is, if you can present someone in despair with one scenario that looks hopeful – that looks like a real possibility – then there’s this immense wealth of motivation to drive toward it, because despair is not a nice place to be.”

Shaun Chamberlin

Kosmos interview on grief, Dark Optimism, aliveness and activism (2014) http://www.darkoptimism.org/2014/12/21/dark-optimism-power-of-grief/#post-4075