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Hopelessness Quotes

Browse 527 quotes about Hopelessness.

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Hopelessness Quotes

“It wont be much longer now and then there wont be anything left; we wont even have anything to do left, not even the privilege of walking backward slowly for a reason, for the sake of honor and what’s left of pride. Not God; evidently we have done without Him for four years, only He just didn’t think to notify us; and not only not shoes and clothing but not even any need for them, and not only no land nor any way to make food, but no need for the food since we have learned to live without that too; and so if you dont have God and you dont need food and clothes and shelter, there isn’t anything for honor and pride to climb on and hold to and flourish. And if you haven’t got honor and pride, then nothing matters. Only there is something in you that doesn’t care about honor and pride yet that lives, that even walks backward for a whole year just to live; that probably even when this is over and there is not even defeat left, will still decline to sit still in the sun and die, but will be out in the woods, moving and seeking where just will and endurance could not move it, grabbing for roots and such – the old mindless sentient undreaming meat that doesn’t even know any difference between despair and victory.”

PrideHonorDespairHopelessness
Book:Absalom, Absalom!
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“I wish I could help him. I wish I could help the dozens of other Sufferers - all the victims of wounds, maulings, burns, diseases, incipient malnutrition, and melancholic despair - aboard this entrapped ship and her sister ship. I wish I could help myself, for already I am showing the early signs of Nostalgia and Debility. But there is little that I - or any surgeon in the Year of Our Lord 1848 - can do. God help us all.”

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Book:The Terror
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“And then Elena's dog ate her bacon. She had heated up a slice of bacon on a paper towel, put it on the table, and turned to open the fridge. The dog swallowed the bacon and the paper towel. She stared at the dog, its expression smug, and all the frustrations of her life boiled up in her head. A dog eating her bacon, a dog eating her bacon while she was jobless.”

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Author:Chimanda Ngozi Adichie
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“Some people never have any luck. All at once, as though a thick veil had been whisked aside, he clearly saw the wretchedness―the bottomless, monotonous wretchedness―of his existence. The wretchedness which had been, which was, and which was yet to come. His last days indistinguishable from the first, with nothing ahead of him or behind him or around him, nothing in his heart, nothing anywhere.”

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Book:A Day in the Country and Other Stories
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“It ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all my life I hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last—into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment! I insist upon that. I have spoken of this because I keep wanting to know for a fact whether other people feel such enjoyment? I will explain; the enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one’s own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into. And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely nothing. Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness, that one is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were any consolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realise that he actually is a scoundrel.”

StruggleDespairDepressionShameAgonyActionsHopelessnessFatalismInevitabilities
Book:Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
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“Despair is not for the living but for those unable to rise and continue; they are the only souls with a right to it. It is an end where breath and strength and will have vanished, leaving no way to persevere. To sink into the abyss that is despair is to suffer an existence far worse than death; therefore, cling to its enemy, our ally—hope. For life goes on, and we must not live in despair. We must not.”

HopeDespairRichelle GoodrichRichelle E GoodrichRichelleHopelessnessIanEenaThe Harrowbethian SagaDerianAngelle
Book:Eena, The Two Sisters
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“You’ve had many ordeals in the past. During these ordeals, life seemed unbearable. You may have collapsed from the exhaustion of hopelessness and curled into a fetal position. Regardless of how difficult this new ordeal may be, as with the others, this too will be overcome. It will make you stronger.”

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Book:For the (soon) unemployed: You Against Them
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“There is a point when the anguished soul finally despairs. A moment in life when the heart, the will, even the spirit crumbles. Some say that after much grief and drowning in tears, it is possible to pick up the pieces and carefully repair what was shattered. I say nay. For the chains of despair have no key, and the soul destroyed by that monster can never hope to be unaffected. There are things done that cannot be undone.”

PainGriefTearsSorrowDespairDestructionRichelle GoodrichRichelleHopelessness
Book:Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, & Grumblings for Every Day of the Year
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“(visions) of strange cities, of sandy plains, of gigantic ruins, of midnight skies with strange bright constellations, of mountain-passes, of grassy nooks flecked with the afternoon sunshine through the boughs: I was in the midst of such scenes, and in all of them one presence seemed to weigh on me in all these mighty shapes - the presence of something unknown and pitiless. For continual suffering had annihilated religious faith within me: to the utterly miserable - the unloving and the unloved - there is no religion possible, no worship but a worship of devils. And beyond all these, and continually recurring, was the vision of my death - the pangs, the suffocation, the last struggle, when life would be grasped at in vain. ("The Lifted Veil")”

DeathDespairHopelessnessRomanticismDecadence
Book:The Gentlewomen of Evil: An Anthology of Rare Supernatural Stories from the Pens of Victorian Ladies
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“He felt the woman he devoted half of his life to slipping through his fingers: the pain lying in his desire for her, but the truth lying in his inability to love her. Sooner or later their sand castle built on beaches of make believe would crumble, washed away by the hungering tide of time and all he could do was watch it vanish, watching her fade out to sea.”

SadnessLonelinessHopelessnessLove Lost
Book:Tales of the Sibling Not-So-Grim
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“No one will understand your pain but you, you feel trapped , you want to find someone and share your pain but no one cares. As you sit there and stare your heart racing, your anxiety level is through the roof your stomach is sick because of your anxiety, you feel numb . You don’t know what to do or what to say. Your mind is blank can’t think of anything ,can’t think clearly your mind is foggy. You have plans for the New Years but you’ve lost the momentum to even sit and focus on your plan. You feel so lost , no one understands you, no one realizes that you are in pain because you mask it so well. You feel like you are failing as a mother your daughter doesn’t listen to you when you speak to her. Your husband doesn’t care much about your feelings anymore. You feel like your life is falling apart all you want to do is scream, but you just sit there silently not knowing what to do or what is yet to come. Please help me lord I feel helpless and afraid. You feel that your husband is hiding secrets from you , you feel as if he as a secret identity, he as a fetish for big buttocks that makes me feel less of a woman to him , I feel like I am not within his standards my body is not enough for him but he doesn’t see that he is hurting me”

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Author:Unknown Authorwn
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“In the winter of the heart...we experience a wide gap between what we know of God and what we taste and see of God. Our theology says one thing - God is loving, faithful, righteous, bestowing wonders. But our experience says another - that he's aloof, angry, capricious, dealing bruises. And we feel deeply alone; even when we're with others, we're estranged from them. Sadness is a room we can't find the door out of. And worst of all, we feel the encroachment of death. Everything looks dead. We feel dead. Sometimes we wish we were dead. But Christ, the Man for All Seasons, meets us even here, in the depth of our wintertime. He waits with us. He prunes us. He breaks our self-dependency and deepens our God-dependency. He brings us into a fresh encounter with the God who raises the dead. And always, the Man for All Seasons leads us out of winter.”

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Book:Spiritual Rhythm: Being with Jesus Every Season of Your Soul
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“There is a noise that is different to grief. Sadness wails and cries and lets loose a sound to the heavens like a baby calling for its mother. That kind of noisy grief is hopeful. It believes that things can be put right, or that help can come. There is a different kind of sound to that. Babies left alone too long do not even cry. They become very still and quiet. They know no one is coming.”

HopeSoundGriefSadnessHopelessness
Book:The Power
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“In Putin's Russia, Assad's Syria, or Maduro's Venezuela, politicians and television personalities often play a different game. They lie constantly, blatantly, obviously. But when they are exposed, they don't bother to offer counterarguments. When Russian-controlled forces shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in 2014, the Russian government reacted not only with a denial but with multiple stories, plausible and implausible: they blamed the Ukrainian army, or the CIA, or a nefarious plot in which 298 dead people were placed on a plane in order to fake a crash and discredit Russia. This tactic, the so-called "fire hose of falsehoods," produces not outrage but nihilism. Given so many explanations, how can you know what actually happened? What if you can never know? If can't understand what is going on around you, then you are not going to join a great movement for democracy, or follow a truth-telling leader, or listen when anyone speaks about positive political change. Instead, you will avoid politics altogether. Autocrats have an enormous incentive to spread that hopelessness and cynicism, not only in their own countries, but around the world.”

LyingLiesLiarsCynicismHopelessnessNihilismAutocracyFalsehoodsAutocratsAutocracies
Book:Autocracy, Inc.
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“But I do think it’s important that we stay hopeful about our capacity to overcome that bigotry. And I am persuaded that hopelessness is the enemy of justice; that if we allow ourselves to become hopeless, we become part of the problem. I think you’re either hopeful, or you’re the problem. There’s no neutral place. Injustice prevails where hopelessness persists. And if I’ve inherited anything from the generation who came before me, I have inherited their wisdom about the necessity of hope.”

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Author:Bryan Stevenson
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