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Despair Quotes

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Despair Quotes

“Two world wars, three monstrous dictatorships-in Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Red China-plus every lesser variant of devastating socialist experimentation in a global spread of brutality and despair, have not prompted modern intellectuals to question or revise their dogma. They still think that it is daring, idealistic and unconventional to denounce the rich. They still believe that money is the root of all evil-except government money, which is the solution to all problems.”

ThinkingWorldBelieveStillsTwoWarProblemGovernmentThreeEvilRichModernDespairSolutionsRedRootsChinaSpreadRussiaWar Of The WorldsGermanyPlusSovietDaringDogmaDictatorshipSocialistNaziBrutalityMonstrousExperimentationTwo WorldsIdealisticNazi GermanyUnconventionalSoviet RussiaMoney Is The Root Of All Evil
Author:Ayn Rand
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“Will you keep going when you don't know why? When you can't get any answers that would make the pain go away, will you still say, 'My Lord,' even though his ways are not clear to you? Will you keep going-with all the grace and grit and faith you can muster-and live in hope that one day God will set everything right. Will you trust that God is good? ... Ultimately, the choice everyone faces is the choice between hope and despair. Jesus says, 'Choose hope.'”

KnowsWayStillsPainFacesChoicesJesusAnswersLordClearGraceOne DayDespairGods WillGoing AwayKeep GoingGritHope And DespairMuster
Book:Everybody's Normal Till You Get to Know Them
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“One of the most extraordinary things about industrial society of the present day is its idiot lack of memory. Tabloids and movies take the place of mental processes and revolts, crimes, despairs pass off in a dribble of vague words and rubber stamp phrases without leaving a scratch on the mind of the driven instalment-paying, subway-packing mass.”

MindProcessMemoriesCrimeDespairMassExtraordinaryLeavingDrivenIdiotPhrasesVagueStampsScratchesRevoltSubwayPresent DayRubberTabloidsExtraordinary ThingsPackingDribble
Book:John Dos Passos: the major nonfictional prose
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“But human beings fall easily into despair, and from the very beginning we invented stories that enabled us to place our lives in a larger setting, that revealed an underlying pattern, and gave us a sense that, against all the depressing and chaotic evidence to the contrary, life had meaning and value.”

HumansStoriesValuesFallHuman BeingsOur LivesDespairEvidencePatternsContrarySettingSettingsDepressingChaotic
Book:A Short History Of Myth
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“There is a virtuous fear, which is the effect of faith; and there is a vicious fear, which is the product of doubt. The former leads to hope, as relying on God, in whom we believe; the latter inclines to despair, as not relying on God, in whom we do not believe. Persons of the one character fear to lose God; persons of the other character fear to find Him.”

BelievePersonsCharacterFearLosesDoubtEffectsProductsDespairFormerLatterVirtuousViciousInclineRelying On God
Author:Blaise Pascal
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“The auspices for philosophy are bad if, when proceeding ostensibly on the investigation of truth, we start saying farewell to all uprightness, honesty and sincerity, and are intent only on passing ourselves off for what we are not. We then assume, like those three sophists [Fichte, Schelling and Hegel], first a false pathos, then an affected and lofty earnestness, then an air of infinite superiority, in order to impose where we despair of ever being able to convince.”

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Author:Arthur Schopenhauer
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“The saddest thing in the world was that human beings, for all their ardent striving and desire, could never achieve physical, emotional, or intellectual perfection. The species was doomed to imperfection; it thrashed forever in despair or denial of that fact.”

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Book:Dark Rivers of the Heart: A Novel
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“[The masses] ... must turn their hopes toward a miracle. In the depths of their despair reason cannot be believed, truth must be false, and lies must be truth. "Higher bread prices," "lower bread prices," "unchanged bread prices" have all failed. The only hope lies in a kind of bread price which is none of these, which nobody has ever seen before, and which belies the evidence of one's reason.”

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Book:The End of Economic Man: The Origins of Totalitarianism
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“It is precisely the sort of thing I am always trying to do in my writing -- to present my unhappy reader with a wide-ranged chaos -- of actions and reactions, thoughts, memories and feelings -- in the vain hope that at the end he will see that the whole thing represents only one moment, one feeling, one person. A raging, trumpeting jungle of associations, and then I announce at the end of it, with a gesture of despair, "This is I!”

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Book:Blue Voyage: A Novel
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“If happiness is a state of the inward life, we have to look for its chief obstructions not in outward conditions but in deeper places. Happiness depends in the last issue, as we saw, on the essential view of life. It is not a matter of distractions, nor even of mere pleasurable sensations. There may be an appearance of great prosperity with incurable sadness hidden at the heart, as there is an outward peace which is only a well-masked despair. The way to happiness is indeed harder than the way to success; for its chief enemies entrench themselves within the soul.”

IfsWayWellsLooksHeartMaySoulMatterStatesLastsHappinessViewsEnemyIssuesSawsSadnessConditionsDependsEssentialsDespairHarderMereProsperityAppearanceDeeperChiefsSensationsDistractionInwardObstructionWay To Success
Book:Happiness
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“There's an inherent limit to the stress that any material can bear. Water has its boiling point, metals their melting points. The elements of the spirit behave the same way. Happiness can reach a pitch so great that any further happiness can't be felt. Pain, despair, humiliation, disgust, and fear are no different. Once the vessel is full, the world can't add to it.”

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Book:The Post-office Girl
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“At times it may seem worse - harder, at least - to live through the despair of this loss without the temporary comfort of our addictive behaviour. We cannot drown our sorrows. We must face the fact that we don’t know, really, where we are, how we got here, how long the pain will last, or how to move past it. That uncertainty may be the most painful part of not knowing a God: no one is there to reassure us that a God will take the pain and confusion away. We simply don’t know. And we have no way to numb ourselves or to forget the condition we’re in.”

KnowsWayMayLongFactsSeemsPainLastsPastFacesMovingLossForgetKnowingConditionsSorrowComfortDespairHarderPainfulGods WillConfusionUncertaintyTemporaryNot KnowingBehaviourNumbHis Loss
Author:Marya Hornbacher
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“Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair. If one truly responds to man and his future, ie , concernedly and "responsibly." one can respond only by faith or by despair. Rational faith as well as rational despair are based on the most thorough, critical knowledge of all the factors that are relevant for the survival of man.”

IfsMenWellsFormDespairSurvivalOptimismCriticalRationalFactorsPessimismRelevantThorough
Book:The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness
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