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Absolutes Quotes

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Absolutes Quotes

“My pessimism (which, by the way, is far from absolute) originated with my despair in the lack of perfection to be found in human nature. I was attempting in my successive books to show the inevitable handicap of the human condition.”

Way Humans Book Shows Found Conditions Human Nature Despair Perfection Absolutes Inevitable Pessimism Human Condition Attempting Handicaps

Author:Stanislaw Lem

“In fine, a life of good or evil, the hope of Heaven or the despair of Hell, Faustus stands as a reminder that the choice between these two absolutes also falls to us.”

Two Choices Fall Evil Heaven Hell Fine Despair Absolutes Reminders Faustus

Book:Faust: My Soul be Damned for the World

Source: Faust: My Soul be Damned for the World

“An extensive empire must be supported by a refined system of policy and oppression; in the centre, an absolute power, prompt in action and rich in resources; a swift and easy communication with the extreme parts; fortifications to check the first effort of rebellion; a regular administration to protect and punish; and a well-disciplined army to inspire fear, without provoking discontent and despair.”

Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

“We are the most illusioned society on the planet. We have to become adults. And it's hard; it's painful. I struggle with despair all the time. But I'm not going to let it win. It is incumbent upon all of us that at the same time we recognize how dark the future is, we also recognize the absolute imperative of resistance in every form possible.”

Hard Form Winning Dark Struggle Planets Despair Adults Absolutes Painful Resistance Imperatives Incumbents

Author:Chris Hedges

“[Lost of the absolute] is in this sense that ''I no longer know what to do with my life" must be understood. Critics have been mistaken about the meaning of this phrase, seeing in it a cry of despair as in Simone de Beauvoir's "I have been cheated." When she uses this word it is to indicate that she claims from life an absolute which she cannot find there.”

Knows Has Beens Use Lost Seeing Cry Despair Understood Claims Absolutes Critics Phrases Mistaken Cheated

Author:Jean-Paul Sartre

“Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation.”

Source: The Portable Graham Greene

“An ad that pretends to be art is - at absolute best - like somebody who smiles warmly at you only because he wants something from you. This is dishonest, but what's sinister is the cumulative effect that such dishonesty has on us: since it offers a perfect facsimile or simulacrum of goodwill without goodwill's real spirit, it messes with our heads and eventually starts upping our defenses even in cases of genuine smiles and real art and true goodwill. It makes us feel confused and lonely and impotent and angry and scared. It causes despair.”

“Have you ever felt despair? Absolute hopelessness? Have you ever stood in the darkness and known, deep in your heart, in your spirit, that it was never, ever going to get better? That something had been lost, forever, and that it wasn't coming back?”

Heart Spirit Lost Felt Known Darkness Forever Despair Absolutes Get Better Hopelessness Coming Back

Book:The Dresden Files Collection 1-6

Source: The Dresden Files Collection 1-6

“Despair is the absolute extreme of self-love. It is reached when a person deliberately turns his back on all help from anyone else in order to taste the rotten luxury of knowing himself to be lost”

Persons Self Helping Wisdom Order Turns Lost Knowing Self Love Taste Despair Absolutes Extremes Luxury Rotten

Book:New Seeds of Contemplation

Source: New Seeds of Contemplation

“...we should all fortify ourselves against the dark hours of depression by cultivating a deep distrust of the certainties of despair. Despair is relentless in the certainties of its pessimism. But we have seen again and again, from our own experience and others', that absolute statements of hopelessness that we make in the dark are notoriously unreliable. Our dark certainties are not sureties.”

Should Hours Dark Despair Absolutes Statements Certainty Pessimism Again And Again Hopelessness Distrust Relentless Cultivating Unreliable Dark Hours

Author:John Piper

“I was very fond of Lagneau’s phrase: “I have no comfort but in my absolute despair.”

Comfort Despair Absolutes Phrases

Author:Simone de Beauvoir

“Despair, when not the response to absolute physical and moral defeat is, like war, the failure of imagination.”

War Imagination Moral Despair Absolutes Response Defeat Confusion

Book:What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)

Source: What Is Found There: Notebooks on Poetry and Politics (Expanded Edition)

“Then we are assured by Sartre that owing to the final disappearance of God our liberty is absolute! At this the entire audience waves its hat or claps its hands. But this natural enthusiasm is turned abruptly into something much less buoyant when it is learnt that this liberty weighs us down immediately with tremendous responsibilities. We now have to take all God's worries on our shoulders -now that we are become men like gods. It is at this point that the Anxiety and Despondency begin, ending in utter despair.”

Source: The Essential Wyndham Lewis: An Introduction to His Work