Despair Quotes

Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.
Rollo May

Courage, Rather, Move

You don't despair about something like the Middle East, you just do the best you can.
P. J. O'Rourke

Best, Middle, East

Absence from whom we love is worse than death, and frustrates hope severer than despair.
William Cowper

Love, Hope, Death

Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.
Elie Wiesel

Remember, Duty, Reject

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.
Franz Kafka

Life, Down, Cannot

Would not the child's heart break in despair when the first cold storm of the world sweeps over it, if the warm sunlight of love from the eyes of mother and father did not shine upon him like the soft reflection of divine light and love?
Max Muller

Love, Mother, Heart

I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair.
Joseph Addison

Give, Fury, Sorrows

Without lies humanity would perish of despair and boredom.
Anatole France

Humanity, Boredom, Lies

We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.
Cesar Chavez

Strength, Live, Shall

But he who dies in despair has lived his whole life in vain.
Theodor Adorno

Life, Whole, Lived

When you get just a complete sense of blackness or void ahead of you, that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be, and the direction you are going seems to have no purpose, there is this word despair which is a very awful thing to feel.
Stephen Fry

Future, Impossible, Place

Despair is the damp of hell, as joy is the serenity of heaven.
John Donne

Joy, Hell, Serenity

Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss.
Alexandre Dumas

Feeling, Felt, Bliss

Despair often breeds disease.
Sophocles

Often, Disease, Breeds

Don't despair too much if you see beautiful things destroyed, if you see them perish. Because the best things are always growing in secret.
Ben Okri

Best, Beautiful, Secret

When too many Americans don't vote or participate, some see apathy and despair. I see disappointment and even outrage. And I believe that out of this frustration can come hope and action.
Paul Wellstone

Hope, Vote, Action

Just as despair can come to one only from other human beings, hope, too, can be given to one only by other human beings.
Elie Wiesel

Hope, Human, Beings

Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.
William Makepeace Thackeray

Good, Promise, Dinner

Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true.
Leonard Cohen

Faith, True, Justice

Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, and black despair succeeds brown study.
William Congreve

Brain, Black, Study

Melancholy and sadness are the start of doubt... doubt is the beginning of despair; despair is the cruel beginning of the differing degrees of wickedness.
Isidore Ducasse Lautreamont

Sadness, Doubt, Start

Persuade thyself that imperfection and inconvenience are the natural lot of mortals, and there will be no room for discontent, neither for despair.
Ieyasu Tokugawa

Natural, Room, Neither

Blues are the songs of despair, but gospel songs are the songs of hope.
Mahalia Jackson

Hope, Blues, Songs

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.
Alice Walker

Future, Mother, Woman

Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.
John Steinbeck

War, Football, Team

Action is the antidote to despair.
Joan Baez

Action, Antidote

Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. The modern industrial proletariat does not belong to the category of such classes.
Vladimir Lenin

Struggle, Evil, Understand

It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.
Charles Baudelaire

Work, Boring, Less

Don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair.
Franz Kafka

We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.
Elie Wiesel

Working, Else, Somebody

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Daniel Webster

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