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Despair Quotes

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Despair Quotes

“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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“These terrifying forms which advance on me, I feel that the despair they bring is alive. It slips into this nucleus of life beyond which the paths of eternity extend. It is truly an eternal separation. They slip their knives into this center where I feel myself a man, they sever those vital ties which bind me to the dream of my lucid reality.”

MenFeelsDreamRealityFormPathAliveDespairEternalEternitySeparationTiesKnivesSlipsNucleus
Book:Antonin Artaud, Selected Writings
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“The Southern newspapers, with their advertisements of negro sales and personal descriptions of fugitive slaves, supply details of misery that it would be difficult for imagination to exceed. Scorn, derision, insult, menace - the handcuff, the last - the tearing away of children from parents, of husbands from wives - the weary trudging in droves along the common highways, the labor of body, the despair of mind, the sickness of heart - these are the realities which belong to the system, and form the rule, rather that the exception, in the slave's experience.”

MindHeartChildrenBodyRealityWould BeLastsFormParentDifficultImaginationCommonWifeHusbandDespairLaborSlaveryMiserySlaveDetailsNewspapersInsultSicknessDescriptionExceptionSouthernWearyHighwaysScornExceedMenaceAdvertisementsFugitiveParent ChildDerisionHusband Wife
Book:Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839
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“My God, whose son, as on this night, took on Him the form of man, and for man vouchsafed to suffer and bleed, controls thy hand, and without His behest, thou canst not strike a stroke. My God is sinless, eternal, all-wise, and in Him is my trust, and though stripped and crushed by thee, -though naked, desolate, void of resource- I do not despair:where the lance of Guthrum now wet with my blood, I should not despair. I watch, I toil, I hope, I pray: Jehovah, in His own time, will aid.”

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Book:The Professor
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“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.”

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Author:Chris Hedges
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“But something occurred to me as I sped through that dirty shroud of fog, something Vonnegut has been trying to explain to the rest of us for most of his life. And that is this: Despair is a form of hope. It is an acknowledgment of the distance between ourselves and our appointed happiness. At certain moments, it is reason enough to live.”

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Book:(Not that You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions
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“In that one slight motion, I see the end of hope, beginning of destruction of everything I hold dear in the world. I can't guess what form my punishment will take, how wide the net will be cast, but when it is finished there most likely be nothing left. So you would think that at this moment, I would be in utter despair.”

ThinkingWorldI CanEndsMomentsWould BeFormLeftDespairDestructionDearCastsWideFinishedPunishmentUtter Despair
Book:The Hunger Games: Catching Fire
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“If fate is a shape-shifter, then loves is too. It can be, anyway, in its most dangerous form. It´s your best day and then your worst. It´s your most hope and then you most despair. Lightness, darkness, it can swing between extremes at lightning speed- a boat upon the water on the most dangerous day, and then the clouds crawl in and the sky turns black and the sea rages and the boat is lost.”

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Author:Deb Caletti
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“With faith in the merciful Redeemer and His power, potential despair turns to hope. One's very heart and desires change, and the once-appealing sin becomes increasingly abhorrent. A resolve to abandon and forsake the sin and to repair, as fully as one possibly can, the damage he or she has caused now forms in that new heart. This resolve soon matures into a covenant of obedience to God. With that covenant in place, the Holy Ghost, the messenger of divine grace, will bring relief and forgiveness.”

HeartFormDesireTurnsSinGraceDivineHolyDespairGhostObedienceDamageReliefAbandonResolveCovenantMercifulHoly GhostMessengersForsakeRedeemerDivine GraceObedience To GodAbhorrent
Author:D. Todd Christofferson
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“The body, the mind, and the spirit don't form a pyramid, they form a circle. Each of them runs into the other two. The body isn't below the mind and the spirit; from the point of view it's between them. if you reside too much in the mind, then you get too abstract and cut off from the world. You long for the spiritual life, but you can't get to it, and you fall into despair. The exercise of the senses frees you from abstraction and opens the way to transcendence.”

IfsWorldWayMindLongTwoBodyRunningSpiritualFormSpiritFallViewsToo MuchCuttingBalanceExerciseDespairPoint Of ViewCirclesSensesAbstractSpiritual LifeAbstractionTranscendencePyramids
Book:Moo
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“It is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the artist, is the expression in concrete form of their notions of reality. Like him, they deal with the verities of time and space, life and death, and the heights of exaltation as well as the depths of despair. The preoccupation with these eternal problems creates a common ground which transcends the disparity in the means used to achieve them.”

WellsMeanProblemRealityFormUsedArtistCommunitySpaceDealsCommonAchievePoetExpressionDespairEternalDepthNotionPhilosopherObjectivesChiefsHeightLife And DeathConcreteTime And SpacePreoccupationCommon GroundDisparityExaltation
Book:The Artist's Reality: Philosophies of Art
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“Compared with the person who is conscious of his despair, the despairing individual who is ignorant of his despair is simply a negativity further away from the truth and deliverance. . . . Yet ignorance is so far from breaking the despair or changing despair to nondespairing that it can in fact be the most dangerous form of despair. . . . An individual is furthest from being conscious of himself as spirit when he is ignorant of being in despair. But precisely this-not to be conscious of oneself as spirit-is despair, which is spiritlessness. . . .”

PersonsFactsFormSpiritIndividualDangerousDangerIgnoranceDespairConsciousIndividualityOneselfIgnorantNegativityDeliverance
Author:Soren Kierkegaard
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“Poetry has its uses for despair. It can carve a shape in which a pain can seem to be; it can give one’s loss a form and dimension so that it might be loss and not simply a hopeless haunting. It can do these things for one person, or it can do them for an entire culture. But poetry is for psychological, spiritual, or emotional pain. For physical pain it is, like everything but drugs, useless.”

GivingPersonsUseSeemsMightPainSpiritualFormCultureCan DoLossEmotionalDrugShapesDespairPsychologicalUselessDimensionsPoetry IsHopelessHauntingEmotional PainPhysical Pain
Author:Christian Wiman
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“In his larger forms, Schubert is a wanderer. He likes to move at the edge of the precipice, and does so with the assurance of a sleepwalker. To wander is the Romantic condition; one yields to it enraptured, or is driven and plagued by the terror of finding no escape. More often than not, happiness is but the surface of despair.”

DoeMovingFormConditionsDespairFindingsEdgesTerrorSurfaceDrivenLikesWanderYieldAssurancePrecipiceWanderersSchubert
Book:Music, Sense and Nonsense: Collected Essays and Lectures
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“Thinking is the subtlest form of self-polemics, the art of a certain finesse in psychological self-vivisection and self-crucifixion (Hegel of course called the path of self-disillusion the via dolorosa or "highway of despair," in Baillie's fine and florid rendering, like Jesus' route to Golgotha).”

ThinkingArtSelfPhilosophyFormCertainCoursesJesusPathFineDespairPsychologicalRoutesHighwaysCrucifixionRenderingHegelDisillusionVivisectionFinessePolemicsGolgotha
Author:Kenny Smith
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“All inner resistance is experienced as negativity in one form or another. All negativity is resistance. In this context, the two words are almost synonymous. Negativity ranges from irritation or impatience to fierce anger, from a depressed mood or sullen resentment to suicidal despair. Sometimes the resistance triggers the emotional pain body”

TwoSometimesBodyPainFormEmotionalDespairMoodResistanceRangeResentmentFierceNegativitySuicidalTriggersImpatienceEmotional PainIrritationSullen
Book:The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
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