Behind the mask of indifference is bottomless misery and behind apparent callousness, despair.
Let there be no more war or bloodshed between Arabs and Israelis. Let there be no more suffering or denial of rights. Let there be no more despair or loss of faith.
Despair is most often the offspring of ill-preparedness.
Optimism is an alienated form of faith, pessimism an alienated form of despair.
I have been trying all my life to like Scotchmen, and am obliged to desist from the experiment in despair.
The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.
A positive future cannot emerge from the mind of anger of despair
S. E. Smith's I Live in a Hut has a deceptively simple title, considering that the brain in that hut contains galaxies-worth of invention: At night when your soldiers are praying ceaselessly for less rain and more underwear my soldiers make underwear out of rain. These poems seesaw between despair and delight but delight is winning the battle. Smith is a somersaulting tightrope walker of a poet and her poems will make you look at anything and everything with new eyes: For days I tried to rub the new freckle off my hand until I realized what it was and began to grant it its sovereignty.
It's one thing to be discouraged. It's another thing to have despair. Despair is when you think there's just no end to this [suffering]. There's no solution for this. Despair is when you think that your suffering has no purpose, and your suffering has no end.
God's grace is painted on the canvas of despair.
Some noble spirits mistake despair for content.
Let us not cease to do the utmost, that we may incessantly go forward in the way of the Lord; and let us not despair of the smallness of our accomplishments.
Try the Lamentations of Jeremiah. They always pick me up.
There are those. . . who enter the world in such poverty that they are deprived of both the means and the motivation to improve their lot. Unless these unfortunates can be touched with the spark which ignites the spirit of individual enterprise and determination, they will only sink back into renewed apathy, degradation and despair. It is for us, who are more fortunate, to provide that spark.
True repentance never leads to despair. Its leads home. It leads to grace.
Despair and postponement are cowardice and defeat. Men were born to succeed, not to fail.
The mind must have for ballast the clear conception of duty, if it is not to fluctuate between levity and despair.
When Levin thought what he was and what he was living for, he could find no answer to the questions and was reduced to despair; but when he left off questioning himself about it, it seemed as though he knew both what he was and what he was living for, acting and living resolutely and without hesitation.
Let us leave good sense behind like a hideous husk and let us hurl ourselves, like fruit spiced with pride, into the immense mouth and breast of the world! Let us feed the unknown, not from despair, but simply to enrich the unfathomable reservoirs of the Absurd!
There is hope after despair and many suns after darkness.
