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Despair Quotes

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Despair Quotes

“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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“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!”

WritingTryingPersonsEndsWholeMomentsFeelingsActionMemoriesReaderDespairChaosWideRageUnhappyReactionsVainAssociationGesturesJungleAlways TryingAction And Reaction
Book:Blue Voyage: A Novel
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“I believe that a person should take an affirmative outlook. There are always problems in life, old and new, uncertainties, and unexpected contingencies. The optimal way to deal with this is not to give up in despair, but to move ahead using the best intelligence and resources that we have to overcome adversity.”

WayGivingShouldBelievePersonsProblemMovingI BelieveDealsAtheismDespairGiving UpResourcesOvercomingAdversityPositive AtheismUncertaintyUnexpectedNot Giving UpOutlookOvercoming AdversityAffirmativeProblems In LifeMoving AheadContingencyOptimalOld And New
Author:Paul Kurtz
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“As a general rule, those who are dissatisfied with themselves will seek to go out of themselves into an ideal world. Persons in strong health and spirits, who take plenty of air and exercise, who are "in favor with, their stars," and have a thorough relish of the good things of this life, seldom devote themselves in despair to religion or the muses. Sedentary, nervous, hypochondriacal people, on the contrary, are forced, for want of an appetite for the real and substantial, to look out for a more airy food and speculative comforts.”

PeopleWorldWantLooksPersonsRealSpiritStrongStarsAirExerciseComfortDespairIdealsGood ThingsContraryFavorsNervousPlentyThis LifeAppetiteMuseThoroughRelishDissatisfiedAiryIdeal WorldSedentary
Author:William Hazlitt
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“All the things that are negative in me as a person - the incompetence and despair and weakness and pain - are like a gift from God in a performer. If you don't hide them and if you stop lying to yourself about what you are and are not, there is a ring or a tent or a stage where you can take them and use them to make something beautiful.”

IfsPersonsUsePainBeautifulLyingActorsStageDespairWeaknessNegativeRingsPerformersIncompetenceGift From GodTentsSomething BeautifulLying To YourselfStop Lying
Author:Elizabeth Ashley
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“The spiritual differs from the religious in being able to endure isolation. The rank of a spiritual person is proportionate to his strength for enduring isolation, whereas we religious people are constantly in need of 'the others,' the herd. We religious folks die, or despair, if we are not reassured by being in the assembly, of the same opinion as the congregation, and so on. But the Christianity of the New Testament is precisely related to the isolation of the spiritual man.”

PeopleIfsMenNeedsPersonsAbleSpiritualDiesReligiousChristianityOpinionDespairEndureFolksRelatedIsolationTestamentNew TestamentAssemblyHerdsCongregation
Author:Soren Kierkegaard
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“I think it's probably true that creative people are touched by melancholy more than the average person, and to the extent that delving into that shadow world produces good work, I'm all for it. But I think you have to be able to step back from the work, and say, "Look how miserable I felt. Look how beautifully I wrote about it. Now I'm going to get an iced coffee and chat with a friend." Writing should be a way out of despair.”

PeopleThinkingWorldWayShouldWritingLooksPersonsAbleFeltStepsCreativeProduceDespairShadowAverageCoffeeMiserableTouchedMelancholyGood WorkCreative PeopleAverage PersonDelving
Author:David Starkey
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“Once a person has taken their life, in the inner realms, the suicide will repeat automatically the feelings of despair and fear which preceded his self murder, and go through the act and the death struggle time after time with ghastly persistence... They remain conscious - often entangled in the final scene of the earth life for a very long time, unaware that they have lost the physical body.”

PersonsLongSelfFeelingsBodyEarthLostStruggleTakenSceneDespairLong TimeConsciousMurderSuicideFinalsPersistenceRealmsRepeatsPhysical BodyGhastlyEarth Life
Author:Annie Besant
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“A religious man is a person who holds God and man in one thought at one time, at all times, who suffers harm done to others, whose greatest passion is compassion, whose greatest strength is love and defiance of despair.”

MenLovePersonsDoneReligionSufferingPassionReligiousCompassionDespairEncouragementHarmAll TimeOne TimeDefianceReligious PersonReligious Love
Book:Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity: Essays
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“I write, and I feel how the correct and precise use of words is sometimes like a remedy to an illness. Like a contraption for purifying the air, I breathe in and exhale the murkiness and manipulations of linguistic scoundrels and language rapists of all shades and colors. I write and I feel how the tenderness and intimacy I maintain with language, with its different layers, its eroticism and humor and soul, give me back the person I used to be, me, before my self became nationalized and confiscated by the conflict, by governments and armies, by despair and tragedy.”

GivingFeelsWritingPersonsDifferentSoulSelfSometimesUseGovernmentUsedLanguageAirColorConflictDespairGive MeTragedyArmyIllnessBreatheUsed To BeIntimacyManipulationShadeLayersTendernessRemedyPreciseScoundrelsPurifying
Author:David Grossman
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“For, besides, that many persons find too sensible an interest in perpetually recalling such topics; besides this, I say, the motive of blind despair can never reasonably have place in the sciences; since, however unsuccessful former attempts may have proved, there is still room to hope, that the industry, good fortune, or improved sagacity of succeeding generations may reach discoveries unknown to former ages.”

MayPersonsStillsAgeInterestRoomsGenerationsIndustrySucceedDespairDiscoveryBlindFortuneFormerMotiveSensibleTopicsGood FortuneUnsuccessfulSagacity
Book:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
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“The bible says no man can take your joy. That means no person can make you live with a negative attitude. No circumstance, no adversity can force you to live in despair. As Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of wheelchair-bound President Franklin D. Roosevelt, often said, ‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

MenFeelsMeanPersonsSaidJoyForcePresidentAttitudeWifeCircumstancesDespairNegativeAdversityBoundsInferiorsConsentFranklinEleanorWheelchairsNegative AttitudePresident Franklin D. Roosevelt
Author:Joel Osteen
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“Yet I think the demon's target is not the possessed; it is us . . . the observers . . . every person in this house. And I think---I think the point is to make us despair; to reject our own humanity, Damien: to see ourselves as ultimately bestial; as ultimately vile and putrescent; without dignity; ugly; unworthy.”

ThinkingPersonsHumanityHouseDespairDignityUglyDemonRejectsTargetPossessedObserversUnworthy
Book:If There Were Demons Then Perhaps There Were Angels: William Peter Blatty’s Own Story of the Exorcist
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“The response to war is to live like brothers and sisters. The response to injustice is to share. The response to despair is a limitless trust and hope. The response to prejudice and hatred is forgiveness. To work for community is to work for humanity. To work for peace is to work for a true political solution; it is to work for the Kingdom of God. It is to work to enable every one to live and taste the secret joys of the human person united to the eternal.”

HumansPersonsWarPoliticalJoyHumanityCommunityUnitedSecretShareBrotherTasteDespairEternalSolutionsHatredPrejudiceResponseInjusticeKingdomsBrothers And SistersLimitlessKingdom Of God
Author:Jean Vanier
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“One of the great tragedies of life, it seems to me, is when a person classifies himself as someone who has no talents or gifts. When, in disgust or discouragement, we allow ourselves to reach depressive levels of despair because of our demeaning self-appraisal, it is a sad day for us and a sad day in the eyes of God. For us to conclude that we have no gifts when we judge ourselves by stature, intelligence, grade-point average, wealth, power, position, or external appearance is not only unfair but unreasonable.”

PersonsSelfSeemsEyeWealthLevelsTalentPositionJudgingDespairTragedyAverageAppearanceGradesDisgustingUnfairUnreasonableDiscouragementStatureDepressiveDemeaningGreat TragedyAppraisalSad DayExternal Appearance
Author:Marvin J. Ashton
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“There are moments that define a person's whole life. Moments in which everything they are and everything they may possibly become balance on a single decision. Life and death, hope and despair, victory and failure teeter precariously on the decision made at that moment. These are moments ungoverned by happenstance, untroubled by luck. These are the moments in which a person earns the right to live, or not.”

MayPersonsMadeWholeMomentsDecisionBalanceVictoryDespairLuckWhole LifeLife And DeathThat MomentHope And DespairDecisions MadeHappenstance
Book:Tales of the Rot & Ruin: Rot & Ruin; Dust & Decay; Dead & Gone, a Rot & Ruin story; Flesh & Bone
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“This faith transforms the whirlwind of despair into a warm and reviving breeze of hope. The words of a motto which a generation ago were commonly found on the wall in the homes of devout persons need to be etched on our hearts: Fear knocked at the door. Faith answered. There was no one there.”

NeedsHeartPersonsHomeFoundGenerationsDoorsWallDespairWarmMottoBreezeWhirlwind
Book:A Gift of Love: Sermons from Strength to Love and Other Preachings
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“Sometimes with the most intense pain a paralysis of sensibility occurs. The soul disintegrates--hence the deadly frost--the free power of the mind--the shattering, ceaseless wit of this kind of despair. There is no inclination for anything any more--the person is alone, like a baleful power--as he has no connection with the rest of the world he consumes himself gradually--and in accordance with his own principle he is--misanthropic and misotheos.”

WorldMindKindPersonsSoulSometimesPainPrinciplesDespairConnectionsWitIntenseSensibilityInclinationFrostParalysisPower Of The MindShatteringMisanthropicIntense Pain
Book:Novalis: Philosophical Writings
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“Being a homicide detective ca be the loneliest job in the world. The friends of the victim are upset and in despair, but sooner or later - after weeks or months - they go back to their everyday lives. For the closest family it takes longer, but for the most part, to some degree, they too get over the grieving and despair. Life has to go on; it does go on. But the unsolved murders keep gnawing away and in the end there's only one person left who thinks night and day about the victim: it's the office who is left with the investigation.”

ThinkingWorldPersonsDoeEndsJobsNightLeftWeekMonthsGoes OnDespairOfficeDegreesMurderVictimEverydayUpsetGrievingInvestigationClosestSooner Or LaterEveryday LifeGet OverDetectivesHomicide
Author:Steig Larsson
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“It is as though some old part of yourself wakes up in you, terrified, useless in the life you have, its skills and habits destructive but intact, and what is left of the present you, the person you have become, wilts and shrivels in sadness or despair: the person you have become is only a thin shell over this other, more electric and endangered self. The strongest, the least digested parts of your experience can rise up and put you back where you were when they occurred; all the rest of you stands back and weeps.”

PersonsSelfLeftSadnessHabitSkillsDespairWake UpUselessDestructiveStrongestElectricShellsTerrifiedPtsd
Author:Peter Straub
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“What is courage? This courage will not be the opposite of despair. We shall often be faced with despair, as indeed every sensitive person has been during the last several decades in this country. Hence Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Camus and Sartre have proclaimed that courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.”

PersonsHas BeensCountryLastsMovingCourageDespairCapacityOppositesDecadesAbsenceSensitiveSpiteOften IsMoving AheadSensitive Person
Author:Rollo May
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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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“Love was undoubtedly one of the things capable of changing a person's whole life from one moment to the next. But there's the other side of the coin, the second thing that could make a human being take a totally different course from one he or she had planned; and that was called despair. Yes, perhaps love really could transform someone, but despair did the job more quickly.”

HumansPersonsDifferentWholeMomentsJobsCoursesNextSidesHuman BeingsDespairCapableWhole LifeCoinsPerhaps Love
Author:Paulo Coelho
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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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“You don't have to say anything. You don't have to teach anything. You just have to be who you are: a bright flame shining in the darkness of despair, a shining example of a person able to cross bridges by opening your heart and mind.”

MindHeartPersonsAbleTeachDarknessExampleDespairCrossesWho You AreShiningOpeningBridgesFlamesSay AnythingHeart And MindOpen Your HeartBe Who You Are
Book:Open Heart, Open Mind: A Guide to Inner Transformation
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“In the country, I stopped being a person who, in the words of Sylvia Boorstein, startles easily. I grew calmer, but beneath that calm was a deep well of loneliness I hadn't known was there. ... Anxiety was my fuel. When I stopped, it was all waiting for me: fear, anger, grief, despair, and that terrible, terrible loneliness. What was it about? I was hardly alone. I loved my husband and son. I had great friends, colleagues, students. In the quiet, in the extra hours, I was forced to ask the question, and to listen carefully to the answer: I was lonely for myself. [p. 123]”

WellsPersonsCountryAsksWaitingHoursAnswersGriefKnownLonelinessStudentsSonGrewTerribleQuietHusbandDespairAnxietyLonelyCalmExtrasFuelMy HusbandColleaguesGreat FriendCalmer
Author:Dani Shapiro
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“J.R.R.Tolkien has confessed that about a third of the way through The Fellowship of the Ring, some ruffian named Strider confronted the hobbits in an inn, and Tolkien was in despair. He didn't know who Strider was, where the book was going, or what to write next. Strider turns out to be no lesser person than Aragorn, the unrecognized and uncrowned king of all the forces of good, whose restoration to rule is, along with the destruction of the evil ring, the engine that moves the plot of the whole massive trilogy, The Lord of the Rings.”

KnowsWayWritingPersonsBookWholeMovingTurnsEvilNextForceLordKingsDespairDestructionThirdsRingsPlotMassiveEnginesFellowshipRestorationInnsFellowship Of The RingTrilogiesStriderRuffian
Book:Plot
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“How could one comfort a disturbed person? He is already assailed with doubts about his faith. He would have to despair with such a doctrine. Rather one must seek to convince him that the Savior is there for him, has already forgiven him, and has already accepted him. As soon as one makes faith even in the least a requirement for justification, one takes from such a person all the comfort of the Gospel.”

PersonsDoubtComfortDespairAcceptedDoctrineConvinceSaviorJustificationRequirementsForgivenDisturbed
Author:C. F. W. Walther
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“I've learned that next to the atomic bomb, the greatest danger is defeatism, despair, and inadequate awareness of what human beings possess. I feel that any problem that can be defined is capable of being resolved. Out of this has come my conviction that no person knows enough to be a pessimist.”

KnowsFeelsHumansPersonsEnoughProblemNextHuman BeingsAwarenessDangerDespairCapableConvictionDefinedI've LearnedBombsPessimismInadequatePessimistAtomic Bomb
Author:Norman Cousins
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“I'd almost say hope isn't what it used to be. It's very difficult today to be a teacher. I speak to children. And tell them, look, no matter what, you must have hope. You must. When I invoke Camus, who said when there is no hope, you must invent hope. . .hope is something that is not what God gives us. It's like peace. It's a gift that one can give to one another. Only another person can push me to despair. And only another person can push me to hope. Its my choice.”

GivingLooksChildrenPersonsSaidMatterTodayPoliticalUsedChoicesSpeakDifficultTeacherDespairNo Matter WhatUsed To BeNo HopeHaving HopeInvoke
Author:Elie Wiesel
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