“But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.”

“How can we tell our children that — when we have ourselves so often cried out in bitter despair at what we regarded to be the injustice of life — and when we have so often surrendered?”

“There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and to have recovered hope.”

“Despair exists only when there is hope.”

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”

“My only hope lies in my despair.”

“What we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.”

“It is then in making hope practical, rather than despair convincing, that we must resume and change and extend our campaigns.”

“What we call unfaithfuless: our attempt for once to get out from behind our own face, our desperate hope of eluding the definitive.”

“For years this rule has kept me out of hopeless despair:
You simply do not feel what is always there.
I ask my brain to entertain that pain is the same,
that if I feel it all the time, can you really call it pain?”