Quotes about Despair

Red lips, White lies.... I smile for you.

I looked at the ceiling and wished this life was over.  This unhappy life that had started out so confidently.  I thought I would sleep no more that night but eventually I did.  In the end we always wear out our worries.That's what Wireman says.  (as the character Edgar from 'Duma Key')

"You need hedges.""Hedges," I said, bemused.  "Yes, Edgar." He looked surprised and a little disappointed, as if I had failed to understand a very simple concept.  "Hedges against the night."(in conversation btwn Edgar and his Dr.)

Eventually, as we become more fully aware of our problems, another critical point is reached, when insights really have occurred and we try to act upon them. We then discover to our dismay that our attempts to solve them by an effort of will avails us nothing, that our good intentions, as the saying goes, merely pave the way to hell. Good intentions all too readily can foster the illusion that we have settled an issue, when actually it is far from settled and seems to have not the slightest intention of ever being settled. This leads to a deadlock in which we see we need to change but cannot, try as we may. We know we need to renounce our egoistic controlling attempts but we cannot even make ourselves do that. We are up against the paradox that discipline and conscious effort are indispensable but do not get us far enough in our really critical areas. We reach the point where we are tempted to give up in despair because after all, what's the use? We begin to feel that analysis is like deliberate, organized torture; the most problematic things are rubbed in again and again and no matter how we exert ourselves there is no way to change them.

This state has its meaning too. As Dante puts it, the entrance to purgatory is at the deepest point of hell. A resolution of this seemingly hopeless impasse eventually occurs by virtue of the awareness that the ego's claim of a capacity to control rests on an illusion. Without the actual experience of this sort of impasse the ego cannot renounce its claim to the central position. It is only when we have come to our wits' end, and this in the face of our most sincere and extreme efforts, only when we realize that we are hopelessly incapable of changing ourselves, can we begin to accept our real existential position in the life drama. When we are able to say. "this is I, this is my being, and nothing can save me from or free me from being this sort of person," then we have come to the point of acceptance that initiates a fundamental transformation of which we are the object, not the subject. Transformation of our personality occurs in us, upon us but not by us. The unconscious changes itself and us in response to our awareness and acceptance of our station, of our cross.

Every person is born paired with a spiritual self, a higher self -- some people say the Divine or the Universal Self or the Soul.  Our language reflects this:  When we are sad, our hearts need to be re-paired to our spiritual selves, "repaired".  Likewise, "dis.." and "des.." are prefixes meaning "apart" and when we lose our connection, we feel disabled, disjointed and, if it is bad enough,  despair" (apart from our pair).   So, the spiritual choice, the critical choice,  is daily re-pairing or eventual des-pairing.

"...courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair."

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim.

Love is not always power; that
may be as good a description of the
human predicament as we are
likely to get.

Happiness, enthusiasm, joy and love are just as contagious as sadness, apathy, despair and fear. Which will you spread?

We were told we could do anything we wanted and then when we tried they told us we couldn't. That's Generation X, the generation trapped between idealism and despair.

d.b.mon. april 26, 1742
Oh that i could spend every moment of my life to His Glory!!

tues. april 27 1742
if i had a thousand lives my soul would gladly have laid them all down at once to have been with Christ.

i never felt so great a degree of resignation in my life.

oh that my soul might never offer any dead, cold services to my God!

friday april 30 1742

Nothing greives me so much as that i cannot live constantly to God's glory.

David Brainerd-saturday april 10 1742

oh, that al my late distresses and awful apprehensions might prove but Christ's school to make me fit for greater service, by teaching me the great lesson of Humility!

David Brainerd-Sunday, april 4 1742

O my Blessed  God! let me climb up near to Him, and love, and long, and plead, and wrestle, and strech after Him, and for deliverence from the body of sin and death. Alas! my soul mourned to think i should ever lose sight of its Beloved again. O come, Lord Jesus, amen.

"But in the mud and scum of things
There always, always something sings."

The soul is partly in time and partly in eternity.  We might remember the part that resides in eternity when we feel despair over the part that is in life.

"Here life goes on, even and monotonous on the surface, full of lightning, of summits and of despair, in its depths. We have now arrived at a stage in life so rich in new perceptions that cannot be transmitted to those at another stage - one feels at the same time full of so much gentleness and so much despair - the enigma of this life grows, grows, drowns one and crushes one, then all of a sudden in a supreme moment of light one becomes aware of the sacred."

- May Sarton Journal of a Solitude

We met… and from then on, it became impossible ever again to give up completely.  I have given some thought to why this should be.
I believe it was love.  When once you have encountered it, you will never sink again.  Then you will always yearn for the light and the surface.

We live in a world that responds to our longing; it is a place where the echoes always return, even if sometimes slowly.

So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever known, if a restiveness, like light and cloud shadow passes over your hands and over all that you do.  You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall.

He who labors diligently need never despair; for all things are accomplished by diligence and labor.

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

I can endure my own despair but not another's hope.

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud, if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair, if they were not cherished by our virtues.

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our own virtues.

Oft expectation fails, and most oft where most it promises; and oft it hits where hope is coldest; and despair most sits.

. . . no battle is ever won . . . they are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and Victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.

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

Labor is blossoming or dancing where The body is not bruised to pleasure soul, Nor beauty born out of its own despair, Nor blear-eyed wisdom out of midnight oil. O chestnut tree, great-rooted blossomer, Are you the leaf, the blossom or the bole? O body swayed to music, O brightening glance How can we know the dancer from the dance?

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. Love seeketh only Self to please, To bind another to its delight, Joys in another's loss of ease, And builds a Hell in Heaven's despite.

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.