Quotes about despair
page 9

“A man of courage does not tremble in the hour of danger. He is not embarrassed and bewildered. He does not sink down. He is not overwhelmed by despair.. He smiles away all dangers and difficulties, blows the trumpet of triumph and attains victory in the end.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Conquest of Fear, Divine Life Society, http://dlshq.org/download/conquest_fear.pdf (circa 1960)

Courage, Victory, Smile

“Despair, dismay, disorientation, and delusion: the four horsemen of the bureaucratic apocalypse are coming my way.”

Charles Stross The Laundry Files

Source: The Laundry Files, The Annihilation Score (2015), Chapter 5, “The Office” (p. 77)

Way

“In Christ, God enters human affairs and takes sides with the oppressed. Their suffering becomes his; their despair, divine despair. Through Christ the poor man is offered freedom now to rebel against that which makes him other than human.”

James H. Cone (1938–2018) American theologian

Source: Black Theology and Black Power (1969), p. 36

God, Freedom, Suffering, Christ

“Poetry is the art that is closest to music, standing between music and narrative orality (which can be speechmaking, sermon or theater). Poetry is the voice of what can’t be spoken, the mode of truth-telling when meaning needs to rise above or skim below everyday language in shapes not discernible by the ordinary mind. It trumps the rhetoric of politicians. Poetry is prophetic by nature and not bound by time. Because of these qualities poetry carries grief, heartache, ecstasy, celebration, despair, or searing truth more directly than any other literary art form. It is ceremonial in nature. Poetry is a tool for disruption and creation and is necessary for generations of humans to know who they are and who they are becoming in the wave map of history. Without poetry, we lose our way.”

Joy Harjo (1951) American writer

On the art of poetry in “An Interview with Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate” https://poets.org/text/interview-joy-harjo-us-poet-laureate?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIiJP5naHW5QIV0Rx9Ch0tGgkkEAAYASAAEgIJD_D_BwE in Poets.org (2019 Mar 31)

Time, History, Nature, Art

“My mouth shall be the mouth of those calamities that have no mouth, my voice the freedom of those who break down in the prison holes of despair.”

Aimé Césaire (1913–2008) Martiniquais politician

Source: Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (1939), p. 13

Freedom

“Let no man.. despair because he thinks the task too great for him; what man has done man can do, and just in proportion as we extend our aid to those whom we can help, so will those who have already attained be able in their turn to help us. So from the lowest to the highest we who are treading the steps of the path are bound together by one long chain of mutual service, and none need feel neglected or alone, for though sometimes the lower flights of the great staircase may be wreathed in mist, we know that it leads up to happier regions and purer air, where the light is always shining.”

Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854–1934) English theosophist

Source: Invisible Helpers (1915), Ch. 17

Light, Help, Thinking, Feeling

“Some problems are unavoidable. Some evils can be coped with to a certain extent, but not prevented. But that a nation should have saddled itself, without necessity and without countervailing benefit, with a wholly avoidable problem of immense dimensions is enough to make one weep. That the same nation should stubbornly persist in allowing the problem, great as it already is, to be magnified further, is enough to drive one to despair.”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

Speech in Walsall (9 February 1968), quoted in Still to Decide (Elliot Right Way Books, 1972), p. 290
1960s

Problem, Making love, Evil

“We are still ruled, in some ways, by our Church. We are a people more cursed by religion and its manifestations and assumptions than any other. The Steel Tsar, with his messianic socialism, offers us religion again, perhaps. You English have never had quite the same need for God. We have known despair and conquest too often to ignore Him altogether.”

Michael Moorcock (1939) English writer, editor, critic

He shrugged. “Old habits, Mr Bastable. Religion is the panacea for defeat. We have a great tendency to rationalize our despair in mystical and utopian terms.”
Book 2, Chapter 4 “The Black Ships” (p. 361)
Oswald Bastable, The Steel Tsar (1981)

God, Religion, People, Way

“What’s haunting is that the women I met with today told me in no uncertain terms that they would experience retribution for telling us what they shared.They all began sobbing - out of fear of being punished, out of sickness, out of desperation, lack of sleep, trauma, despair.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Twitter, https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1145801283191955464 (1 July 2019) Twitter Quotes (2019), July 2019

Sleep, Fear, Women

“If we again slink out of this affair with our tail between our legs, if we cannot pull ourselves together to present demands which we are prepared to enforce by the sword, then I despair of the future of the German Reich.”

Helmuth von Moltke the Younger (1848–1916) Chief of the German General Staff

Letter to his wife during the Agadir Crisis (1911), quoted in L. C. F. Turner, 'The Significance of the Schlieffen Plan', in Paul Kennedy (ed.), The War Plans of the Great Powers, 1880-1914 (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1985), p. 211

Future

“Alas! I always loved sorrow and tribulation, but only for myself, for myself; but I wept over them, pitying them. I stretched out my hands to them in despair, blaming, cursing and despising myself. I told them that all this was my doing, mine alone; that it was I had brought them corruption, contamination and falsity. I besought them to crucify me, I taught them how to make a cross. I could not kill myself, I had not the strength, but I wanted to suffer at their hands. I yearned for suffering, I longed that my blood should be drained to the last drop in these agonies. But they only laughed at me, and began at last to look upon me as crazy. They justified me, they declared that they had only got what they wanted themselves, and that all that now was could not have been otherwise. At last they declared to me that I was becoming dangerous and that they should lock me up in a madhouse if I did not hold my tongue. Then such grief took possession of my soul that my heart was wrung, and I felt as though I were dying; and then... then I awoke.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky book The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

Source: The Dream of a Ridiculous Man (1877), V

Soul, Suffering, Heart, Love

“Had Mephistopheles conferred no other service on Faust than easing him for a while of his cloak of learning, the doctor would have had little cause for despair. But the act of awaking is regulated by different principles from those which govern the act of going to sleep. In the former case, the hand of force is often necessary. Life points out with an iron staff the path which each individual should follow. Happy is the man who sees this staff, and follows the path; instead of tarrying by the way until weary, and, incapable of further exertion, he sinks bleeding to the ground. A high degree of mental culture, or a delicate tact, possessed by few, are required to distinguish the necessity of earnestness, or even of pain, in the midst of enjoyment.”

Ernst, Baron von Feuchtersleben (1806–1849) Austrian psychiatrist, poet and philosopher

Source: The Dietetics of the Soul; Or, True Mental Discipline (1838), P. 112

Sleep, Pain, Learning, Way

“The memory of that great and glorious minister, who, to all succeeding ages, will be quoted as an illustrious example, how one great man, by his superior ability, could raise his drooping country from the abyss of despair to the highest pinnacle of glory, and render her honoured, respected, revered, and dreaded by the whole universe.”

William Pitt, 1st Earl of Chatham (1708–1778) British politician

Admiral George Rodney, writing in December 1779.
G. B. Mundy (ed.), The Life and Correspondence of Admiral Lord Rodney: Volume I (London: 1830), pp. 204-5.
About William Pitt

Country, Universe, Memory, Age

“To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair. The movies are onto the search, but they screw it up. The search always ends in despair. They like to show a fellow coming to himself in a strange place-but what does he do? He takes up with the local librarian, sets about proving to the local children what a nice fellow he is, and settles down with a vengeance. In two weeks time he is so sunk in everydayness that he might just as well be dead.”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

The Moviegoer (1961)

Time, Dead, Search, Children

“We commenced research where modern conjecture closes its faithless wings. And with us, those were the common elements of science which the sages of to-day disdain as wild chimeras, or despair of as unfathomable mysteries.”

Edward Bulwer-Lytton book Zanoni

Quoted by H.P. Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, Part One, Science, Ch. 1 (1877)
Zanoni (1842)

Science

“A cover emotion is an emotion that exists to keep you out of a lower vibrational feeling. For example, anger is a cover emotion for fear. The cover emotions are like ice over a lake that prevents you from falling into the deep water beneath. Numbness or lack of feeling is in fact a cover emotion for the emotion of despair.”

Teal Swan (1984) American spiritual teacher

Anger, Water, Fear, Feeling

“I had seen firsthand that we were wasting unimaginable amounts of our tax dollars, increasing crime and despair, and severely and unnecessarily harming people’s lives, particularly our children’s, by our failed drug policy. In short, I had seen that our drug laws were a failure, and I simply could not keep quiet about it any longer.”

James P. Gray (1945) American judge

Source: Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs, 2011, p. 1

Law, Children, People, Failure

“To an atheist […], there is no all-seeing all-loving god to keep us free from harm. But atheism is not a recipe for despair. I think the opposite. By disclaiming the idea of the next life, we can take more excitement in this one. The here and now is not something to be endured before eternal bliss or damnation. The here and now is all we have, an inspiration to make the most of it. So atheism is life-affirming, in a way religion can never be. Look around you. Nature demands our attention, begs us to explore, to question. Religion can provide only facile, ultimately unsatisfying answers. Science, in constantly seeking real explanations, reveals the true majesty of our world in all its complexity. People sometimes say "There must be more than just this world, than just this life."”

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

But how much more do you want? We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they’re never going to be born. The number of people who could be here, in my place, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. If you think about all the different ways in which our genes could be permuted, you and I are quite grotesquely lucky to be here, the number of events that had to happen in order for you to exist, in order for me to exist. We are privileged to be alive and we should make the most of our time on this world. End of the part 2: "The Virus of Faith" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMUG6qd98wc The Root of All Evil? (January 2006)

God, Love, Religion, Question

“Let us have faith.
No, let us not be cast down.
To despair is to desert.
Let us look to the future.
The future,—no one knows what tempests still separate us from port, but the port, the distant and radiant port, is in sight; the future, we repeat, is the republic for all men; let us add, the future is peace with all men.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Napoleon the Little (1852), Conclusion, Part Second, II
Napoleon the Little (1852)

Peace, Faith, Future, Distant

“I have for some time been impatient with the prevailing sense of pessimism and despair, especially among the intellectual and professional groups of the "New Class". I am not blind to the tragic and absurd, which seem to have been built into our time and perhaps into the human constitution. But I also feel that the sense of hope and possibility is also built in over the millennia of human coping. It is no small part of the new transformative insights that they have released this sense of hope and possibility.”

Max Lerner (1902–1992) American journalist and educator

Forward to The Aquarian Conspiracy by Marilyn Ferguson (1980)

Time, Hope, Sense, Feeling

“I will say, finally, that I despair of the republic while slavery exists therein. If I look up to God for success, no smile of mercy or forgiveness dispels the gloom of futurity; if to our own resources, they are daily diminishing; if to all history, our destruction is not only possible, but almost certain. Why should we slumber at this momentous crisis? If our hearts were dead to every throb of humanity; if it were lawful to oppress, where power is ample; still, if we had any regard for our safety and happiness, we should strive to crush the Vampire which is feeding upon our life-blood. All the selfishness of our nature cries aloud for a better security. Our own vices are too strong for us, and keep us in perpetual alarm; how, in addition to these, shall we be able to contend successfully with millions of armed and desperate men, as we must eventually, if slavery do not cease?”

William Lloyd Garrison (1805–1879) American journalist

Address to the Colonization Society http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=562 (4 July 1829)

Selfishness, God, Forgiveness, Dead

“We may not stop until we have done our part to fashion a world in which there shall be some share of fellowship; which shall be better than a den of thieves. Let us not disguise the difficulties; and, above all, let us not content ourselves with nobel aspirations, counsels of perfection, and self-righteous advice to others. We shall need the wisdom of the serpent; we shall have to be content with short steps; we shall be obliged to give and take; we shall face the strongest passions of mankind — our own not the least; and in the end we shall have fabricated an imperfect instrument. But we shall not wholly have failed; we shall have gone forward, if we bring to our task a pure and chastened spirit, patience, understanding, sympathy, forbearance, generosity, fortitude, and, above all, an inflexible determination. The history of man has just begun; in the aeons which lie before him lie limitless hope or limitless despair. The choice is his; the present choice is ours. It is worth the trial.”

Learned Hand (1872–1961) American legal scholar, Court of Appeals judge

"A Pledge of Allegiance" - speech for "I Am an American Day" Central Park, New York, New York. (20 May 1945) Hand credited H. G. Wells with inspiring some of the ideas expressed in this speech.
Extra-judicial writings

Understanding, History, Hope, Perfection

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

Raymond Williams (1921–1988) philosopher

"The Politics of Nuclear Disarmament" (1980), in Resources of Hope (1989).

Making love, Hope, Change

“Shedding tears we spend the night in this deepening dark,
Our day is but a long struggle against an uphill path,
Not a single moment goes when we don't bewail our lot,
Lo! we cast a lingering look on these doors and walls.
Fare thee well, my countrymen, we are going afar!
We wish you well, O friends, leave you to His care,
And entrust our Qaiser Bagh to the blowing air,
While we give our tender heart to terror and despair.
Fare thee well, my countrymen, we are going afar!
I am betrayed by my friends, whom should I excuse?
Except God the gracious, I have no refuge,
I can't escape exile, under any excuse.
Lo, we cast a lingering look on the doors and wells,
Fare thee well, my countrymen, we are going afar!
I have been told this much too, ah! the scourage of time!
The servant calls his master 'mad,' a travesty of the mind.
As for me, I cannoy help, but rot in alien climes.
Lo, we cast a lingering look on these doors and walls,
Fare thee well, my countrymen, we are gong afar!
This is the cause of my regret, to whom should I complain?
What wondrous goods of mine are subjected to disdain,
My exile has raised a storm in the whole domain.
Lo we cast a lingering look on the doors and walls,
Fare thee well, my countrymen, we are going afar!
You cannot help but suffer, O heart, the sharp strings of grief,
They didn't spare even the things essential for the mourning meets,
In the scorching summer heat, I've no cover or sheet.
Akhtar now departs from all his friends and mates,
There is little time or need to dwell upon my fate,
Save, O God, my countrymen from the dangers lying in wait!
Lo, we cast a lingering look on these doors and walls,
Fare thee well, my countrymen, we are going afar!”

Wajid Ali Shah (1822–1887) Nawab of Awadh

Masterpieces of Patriotic Urdu Poetry, p. 63-67
Poetry

God, Time, Night, Waiting

“I can’t afford the luxury of despair or pessimism. We still have to hope. We’re a timeless people, we’ve lived in a timeless land. We have suffered the invasion of two hundred years, and we’ll go on suffering. But we are going to survive.”

Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920–1993) Aboriginal Australian poet, artist, teacher and campaigner for Indigenous rights

On the Aboriginal people in “‘Recording the Cries of the People’: AN INTERVIEW WITH OODGEROO (KATH WALKER)” http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1725&context=kunapipi in Kunapipi (1988)

Suffering, People, Hope

“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

Wealth, Hope, Thinking, Motivation

“We have been alienated by costs that soared beyond the means of all but the well-insured or wealthy; by specialization and the cold, quantifying approach that brushes past human concerns, and by the growing despair that comes from spending without regaining health.”

Marilyn Ferguson (1938–2008) American writer

Source: The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Eight, Healing Ourselves, p. 244

Past, Health

“Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protesters who hold out for longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal. If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance. History simply affords too little evidence that anyone's individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one's own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

"A Poem of Difficult Hope"
What Are People For? (1990)

History, Dependency, Success, Hope

“Pain, despair, misplaced bodily activity and wrong direction (or control) of the life currents are the results of the obstacles in the lower psychic nature.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect : a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary by Alice A. Bailey, (1927)

Pain, Life, Nature

“No amount of happiness enjoyed by some organisms can notionally justify the indescribable horrors of Auschwitz. [...] Nor can the fun and games outweigh the sporadic frightfulness of pain and despair that occurs every second of every day. For there's nothing inherently wrong with non-sentience or [...] non-existence; whereas there is something frightfully and self-intimatingly wrong with suffering.”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

2.7 Why Be Negative? https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon2.htm#negative*Negative-utilitarianism is only one particular denomination of a broad church to which the reader may well in any case not subscribe. Fortunately, the program can be defended on grounds that utilitarians of all stripes can agree on. So a defence will be mounted against critics of the theory and application of a utilitarian ethic in general. For in practice the most potent and effective means of curing unpleasantness is to ensure that a defining aspect of future states of mind is their permeation with the molecular chemistry of ecstasy: both genetically precoded and pharmacologically fine-tuned. Orthodox utilitarians will doubtless find the cornucopian abundance of bliss this strategy delivers is itself an extra source of moral value. Future generations of native ecstatics are unlikely to disagree. 2.7 Why Be Negative? https://www.hedweb.com/hedethic/hedon2.htm#negative The Hedonistic Imperative https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/514875 (1995)

Pain, Game, Happiness, Suffering

“[T]he recognition of the irredeemable vanity and falsity of all beauty and all greatness is itself a kind of beauty and greatness that fills the soul when it is conveyed by a work of genius. And the spectacle of nothingness is itself a thing in these works, and seems to enlarge the reader’s soul, to raise it up and to make it take satisfaction in itself and its despair.”

Giacomo Leopardi book Zibaldone

260, 5th October 1820. Translation by Michael Caesar and Franco D'Intino et al. [Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, ISBN 9780141194400], p. 177
Zibaldone (1898)

Soul, Making love, Beauty

“Pain, despair, misplaced bodily activity and wrong direction (or control) of the life currents are the results of the obstacles in the lower psychic nature.”

Alice A. Bailey (1880–1949) esoteric, theosophist, writer

The Light of the Soul: Its Science and Effect: a paraphrase of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, with commentary (1927)

Life, Pain, Nature

“In July 1969 I happened to be in Kenya, on the shore of Lake Rudolf, when I heard with incredulity from a naked Turkana fisherman that the 'Wazungu' as he called Europeans, including Americans - had landed on the moon. He had heard the news at a distant mission station. To him this achievement, being incomprehensible, was without significance; it filled me, however, with a sense of desecration, and of despair at the deadly technical ingenuity of modern man. Even as a boy I recognized that motor transport and aeroplanes must increasingly shrink the world and irrevocably destroy its fascinating diversity. My forebodings have been amply fulfilled.”

Wilfred Thesiger (1910–2003) British explorer

Source: The Life Of My Choice (1987), p. 443.

Boy, Distant, Sense, World

“One look outward to Jesus and you are saved; not a look inward to a feeling that can give nothing but despair to the conscientious soul.”

William Paton Mackay (1839–1885) Scottish clergyman

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 230.

Soul, Feeling

“Life was created in the valleys. It blew up onto the hills on the old terrors, the old lusts, the old despairs. That's why you must walk up the hills so you can ride down.”

William Faulkner book As I Lay Dying

As I Lay Dying (1930)

Life

“Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a heaven in hell’s despair.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

The Clod and the Pebble, st. 1
1790s, Songs of Experience (1794)

Sad, Heartbreaking, Love, Hell

“Liberalism is not being killed by dictators. Liberalism is committing suicide—out of despair and a bad conscience. What liberalism needs is a revival, in the evangelical sense of the word. It needs to admit its sins, as the basis of renewing its life.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
pp. 73-74

Suicide, Bad luck, Sense, Life

“Do not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble.”

John Lewis (civil rights leader) (1940) American politician and civil rights leader

Source: A tweet https://twitter.com/repjohnlewis/status/1011991303599607808 from June 2018 Source: Quoted in Get in good trouble, necessary trouble': Rep. John R. Lewis in his own words https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/18/rep-john-lewis-most-memorable-quotes-get-good-trouble/5464148002/ Joshua Bote, USA Today (18 July 2020)

Sea, Making love, Hope

“I know your pain, your rage, your sense of despair and hopelessness. Justice has, indeed, been denied for far too long. Rioting, looting, and burning is not the way. Organize. Demonstrate. Sit-in. Stand-up. Vote. Be constructive, not destructive.”

John Lewis (civil rights leader) (1940) American politician and civil rights leader

Source: Twitter https://twitter.com/repjohnlewis/status/1266878938049101826, (30 May 2020)

Pain, Justice, Way, Rage

“[W]e understand that if the child were to give in to the overpowering character of reality and experience he would not be able to act with the kind of equanimity we need in our non-instinctive world. So one of the first things a child has to do is to learn to “abandon ecstasy,” to do without awe, to leave fear and trembling behind. Only then can he act with a certain oblivious self-confidence, when he has naturalized his world. We say “naturalized” but we mean unnaturalized, falsified, with the truth obscured, the despair of the human condition hidden, a despair that the child glimpses in his night terrors and daytime phobias and neuroses. This despair he avoids by building defenses; and these defenses allow him to feel a basic sense of self-worth, of meaningfulness, of power. They allow him to feel that he controls his life and his death, that he really does live and act as a willful and free individual, that he has a unique and self-fashioned identity, that he is somebody—not just a trembling accident germinated on a hothouse planet that Carlyle for all time called a “hall of doom.””

Ernest Becker book The Denial of Death

We called one’s life style a vital lie, and now we can understand better why we said it was vital: it is a necessary and basic dishonesty about oneself and one’s whole situation. This revelation is what the Freudian revolution in thought really ends up in and is the basic reason that we still strain against Freud We don’t want to admit that we arerevelation is what the Freudian revolution in thought really ends up in and is the basic reason that we still strain against Freud. We don’t want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not really control our own lives. We don’t want to admit that we do not stand alone, that we always rely on something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers in which we are embedded and which support us. This power is not always obvious. It need not be overtly a god or openly a stronger person, but it can be the power of an all-absorbing activity, a passion, a dedication to a game, a way of life, that like a comfortable web keeps a person buoyed up and ignorant of himself, of the fact that he does not rest on his own center. All of us are driven to be supported in a self-forgetful way, ignorant of what energies we really draw on, of the kind of lie we have fashioned in order to live securely and serenely. Augustine was a master analyst of this, as were Kierkegaard, Scheler, and Tillich in our day. They saw that man could strut and boast all he wanted, but that he really drew his “courage to be” from a god, a string of sexual conquests, a Big Brother, a flag, the proletariat, and the fetish of money and the size of a bank balance.
Human Character as a Vital Lie
The Denial of Death (1973)

Life, Confidence, Time, Night

“It happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 5. Upon some Verses of Virgil
Essais (1595), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Bird

“It (marriage) happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 5
Essais (1595), Book III

Marriage, Bird

“The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares.”

Henri Nouwen (1932–1996) Dutch priest and writer

Friendship, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“Enough of dreams! No longer mock
The burdened hearts of men!
Not on the cloud, but on the rock
Build thou thy faith again;O range no more the realms of air,
Stoop to the glen-bound streams;
Thy hope was all too like despair:
Enough, enough of dreams.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

"The Secret Inn : 'The Kingdom is Within You'" in Master Mind Magazine, Vol. VII, No. 3 (December 1914), p. 99

Faith, Dreams, Hope, Heart

“Better the myth of happiness, than the myth of despair.”

Michael Moorcock The Cornelius Quartet

The Cornelius Quartet, The Condition of Muzak (1977)
Source: The Mirror; or, Harlequin Everywhere (p. 786)

Happiness

“There was a helplessness to his joy, the same kind of helplessness as in that woman’s despair.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie book Purple Hibiscus

Source: Purple Hibiscus (2003)

Joy

“The nation has come to the end of its psychological endurance. Many people are beginning to despair. Now it is not days but hours that separate us from a national catastrophe. Honesty compels one to ask the question: Did things have to come to this?”

Wojciech Jaruzelski (1923–2014) Polish military officer and politician

Source: Excerpts of Martial law speech (14 December 1981)

People, Question

“Divine way is extremely difficult to tread, but you should not despair. If you have courage, true aspiration, and ardency of love, then come to this path, otherwise be silent.”

Bu Ali Shah Qalandar (1209–1324) Indian Sufi saint

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 271

Courage, Way, Love

“I never lost hope, and never did I despair of coming back alive.”

James Robinson Risner (1925–2013) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Source: "Nine Feet Tall" in Air Force Magazine https://www.airforcemag.com/article/0212tall/ (1 February 2012)

Hope

“It's time to turn this debate around, drive out politics of despair and offer a vision for Britain in Europe.”

John McDonnell (1951) British politician (born 1951)

Source: John McDonnell criticises EU vote campaign 'negativity' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36310486 BBC News (17 May 2016)

Time

“We have room for the man with an honest dream,
With his heart on fire and his eyes agleam;
We have room for the man with a purpose true,
Who comes to our shores to start life anew,
But we haven't an inch of space for him
Who comes to plot against life and limb.
We have room for the man who will learn our ways,
Who will stand by our Flag in its troubled days;
We have room for the man who will till the soil,
Who will give his hands to a fair day's toil,
But we haven't an inch of space to spare
For the breeder of hatred and black despair.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: When Day is Done (1921), No Room for Hate, stanzas 1 and 2

Life, Learning, Dreams, Heart

“God bestows perfect security on His devotees and removes all sorts of fears. He transforms the sense of insecurity and fear into one of confidence and faith. He saves him from panic and despair.”

Swami Sivananda (1887–1963) Indian philosopher

Conquest of Fear (c-1960)

God, Confidence, Faith, Perfection

“The future belongs to those who can generate hope from the past rather than despair.”

Donal McKeown (1950) Roman Catholic bishop

Northern Ireland: Bloody Sunday commemorated 50 years on https://www.vaticannews.va/en/world/news/2022-01/northern-ireland-bloody-sunday-commemorated-50-years-on.html (29 January 2022)

Past, Future, Hope