Are you feeling down and out? Are you struggling to find hope in these hard times? Have you ever felt so overwhelmed with despair that you’ve thought about giving up? If so, you’re not alone. Despair can be overwhelming and can be hard to move past. However, there is hope and understanding to be found in the words of others who have felt and experienced the same emotion. In this blog post, we’ll explore some of the most powerful and inspiring despair quotes from some of the most influential minds in history. We hope that these words of wisdom will help to restore some of your faith and bring you some comfort.
The best despair quotes
1. I have learned that one cannot truly know hope unless he has found out how like despair hope is. — Thomas Merton
2. People that want it to just be funny should not despair, because there is so much true crazy comedy coming up. — Mary Steenburgen
3. Be a light today for all in despair. In hope that if you should fall…they will light your way tomorrow! www.bullyingben.com — Timothy Pina
4. If seeds despaired in their darkest hours, they would never rise to enjoy their brightest days. — Matshona Dhliwayo
5. Everything passes. Joy. Pain. The moment of triumph — the sigh of despair. Nothing lasts forever–not even this.
6. To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing — Raymond Williams
7. Great thoughts of your sin alone will drive you to despair — but great thoughts of Christ will pilot you into the haven of peace.
8. You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or despair … Come to it any way but lightly. — Stephen King
9. To face despair and not give in to it, that’s courage. — Ted Koppel
10. You are never stronger…than when you land on the other side of despair. — Zadie Smith
11. Love seeketh not itself to please, nor for itself hath any care, but for another gives its ease, and builds a Heaven in Hell’s despair. — William Blake
12. What makes the hero truly greatis never, never to despair. — Robert Burns
13. I loved her enough to forget myself, my self pitying despairs, and be content that something she thought happy was going to happen. — Truman Capote
14. Our reliance on the physician is a kind of despair of ourselves. — Ralph Waldo Emerson
15. The windy sky Cries out a literate despair. — Wallace Stevens
16. The labor movement was the principal force that transformed misery and despair into hope and progress. — Martin Luther King
17. Each life unfulfilled, you see; It hangs still, patchy and scrappy: We have not sighed deep, laughed free, Starved, feasted, despaired, –been happy. — Robert Browning
18. The stockmarket is a semi–psychotic creature given to extremes of elation and despair. — Warren Buffett
19. The entire world shall be populous with that action which saves one soul from despair. — Omar Khayyam
20. For there comes a day on which we will see a mirror of judgement; to gaze not on man, but within ourselves. what cometh on that day in you? truth or despair? love or hate? — Robert Vanleeuwen
21. Where there is ignorance, there you will find despair; with knowledge comes hope. — Paul Bamikole
22. We cannot do without it, and yet we disgrace and vilify the same. It may be compared to a cage, the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair to get out. — Michel De Montaigne
23. Hope transcends everything. It goes beyond all doubts. It silences fear. It quiets despair. — Nikki Rosen
24. To my utter despair I have discovered, and discover every day anew, that there is in the masses no revolutionary idea or hope or passion. — Mikhail Bakunin
25. Never shall a young man, Thrown into despairBy those great honey–colouredRamparts at your ear, Love you for yourself aloneAnd not your yellow hair. — W.B. Yeats
26. Despair makes priests and friars. — Martin Luther
27. Despair wishes their hope diminishes. — Sherina Gandia
28. Despair will destroy you…If you allow it too. Please… don’t let it destroy you! — Timothy Pina
29. It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour which the night fastens to all timetables. — Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
30. It is only necessary to know that love is a direction and not a state of the soul. If one is unaware of this, one falls to despair at the first onslaught of affliction. — Simone Weil
31. Despair is a cruel companion. It robs you of everything — especially the choices that still lie within your control.
32. A tree does not despair when its fruit falls to the ground, because it knows in due time, its seeds will rise. — Matshona Dhliwayo
33. I shall despair. There is no creature loves me; And if I die no soul will pity me: And wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity to myself? — William Shakespeare
34. My generation must have despair.–Leonard Bernstein Ch 40/Dog Water Free, A Memoir — Michael Jay
35. Your destiny grows clearer, Jason Grace. When the choice comes again–storm or fire–remember me. And do not despair. — Rick Riordan, The House of Hades
36. It is because of pain that you value pleasure, sorrow that you value joy, despair that you value hope, war that you value peace, and hate that you value love. — Matshona Dhliwayo
37. The fame is birthed through the opposition. The success through the dynamism of fighting the despair. No fight, No lift! — Paul Gitwaza
38. The most common despair is…not choosing, or willing, to be oneself…[but] the deepest form of despair is to choose to be another than oneself. — Soren Kierkegaard
39. My silks and fine array, My smiles and languished air, By love are driv’n away And mournful lean Despair Brings me yew to deck my grave: Such end true lovers have. — William Blake
40. When we have reached the depths of despair, only then can we look up and see the light of hope. — Stephen Richards
41. You don’t despair about something like the Middle East, you just do the best you can. — P. J. O’Rourke
42. The soul does not give itself up to despair until it has exhausted all illusions. — Victor Hugo
43. Without dreams, there could be no despair. — Neil Gaiman
44. You are never stronger…than when you land on the other side of despair. — Zadie Smith
45. You are never stronger…than when you land on the other side of despair. — Zadie Smith
46. Symmetry is ennui, and ennui is the very essence of grief and melancholy. Despair yawns. — Victor Hugo
47. Affection makes fools. Always, without exception, love digs a channel that’s sooner or later flooded by the briny water of despair. — Sonya Hartnett, Surrender
48. Despair is a wholly selfish response to fortune’s slings and arrows. — Rick Yancey, The Final Descent
49. Guilt is a timorous thing ere perpetration; despair alone makes guilty men be bold. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge
50. Being a cheerful hobbit, he had not needed hope, as long as despair could be postponed. — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
Conclusion
No matter how bleak things may seem, we can take comfort in the fact that we are not alone. Despair quotes remind us that even in the darkest moments, we can find hope and strength. These quotes can help us remember to look for the light at the end of the tunnel, and never give up on ourselves.