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329. Living by a total falsehood, as I think they are living with their religious views. I can’t help admiring them. But despairing for them. (Religion & Despair) Francis Bacon, cited The Art of Francis Bacon
2,149. Life is just filled really with suffering and despair. (Life'’s Like That & Suffer & Despair) Francis Bacon, cited The Art of Francis Bacon
11,079. I feel ever so strongly that an artist must be nourished by his passions and his despairs. These things alter an artist whether for the good or the better or the worse. It must alter him. The feelings of desperation and unhappiness are more useful to an artist than the feeling of contentment, because desperation and unhappiness stretch your whole sensibility. (Art & Despair & Unhappiness) Francis Bacon, cited John Gruen ‘The Artist Observed’ 1991
880. If you look for truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you look for comfort you will not get either comfort or truth only soft soap and wishful thinking to begin, and in the end, despair. (Truth & Comfort & Despair) C S Lewis
1,095. Life begins on the other side of despair. (Life & Despair) Jean-Paul Sartre
1,178. Who shall hinder me?
I will despair, and be at enmity
With cozening hope. He is a flatterer,
A parasite, a keeper-back of death,
Who gently would dissolve the bonds of life,
Which false hope lingers in extremity. (Life’s Like That & Despair & Hope & Death) William Shakespeare, Richard II II ii 67-72, Queen to Bushy et al
76,323. Our hap is loss, our hope but sad despair. (Hope & Despair) ibid. II iii 9, George et al
76,324. Till then fair hope must hinder life’s decay,
And I the rather wean me from despair. ibid. IV v 16-17, Lady Gray et al
50,538. Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
The better angel is a man right fair,
The worser spirit a woman, coloured ill. William Shakespeare, Sonnet 144
2,057. The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. (Life’s Like That & Despair & Quiet) Henry David Thoreau, Walden 1854
4,143. The name of the slough was Despond. (World & Despair) John Bunyan, The Pilgrims’ Progress
9,728. It is closing time in the gardens of the West and from now on an artist will be judged only by the resonance of his solitude or the quality of his despair. (Art & Solitude & Despair) Cyril Connolly, Horizon December 1949 - January 1950
10,397. Vincent was left to his own despair. (Artist: van Gogh & Despair) Vincent - The Untold Story of Our Uncle II, caption
22,953. Most men live lives of quiet desperation. (Film Noir & Alcohol & Men & Despair & Life’s Like That) The Lost Weekend 1945 starring Ray Milland & Jane Wyman & Phillip Terry & Howard Da Silva & Doris Dowling & Frank Faylen & Mary Young & Anita Sharp-Bolster & Lilian Fontaine et al, director Billy Wilder, Don to Helen
40,134. He’s got his hands on his knees and holds his head in despair. (Football & Despair) David Coleman
50,523. This fall I think you're riding for – it’s a special kind of fall, a horrible kind. The man falling isn’t permitted to feel or hear himself hit bottom. He just keeps falling and falling. The whole arrangement’s designed for men who, at some time or other in their lives, were looking for something their own environment couldn't supply them with. Or they thought their own environment couldn't supply them with. So they gave up looking. They gave it up before they ever really even got started. (Depression & Mental Health & Despair) J D Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
50,525. You’re fucked. You thought you were going to be someone, but now it’s obvious you’re nobody. You haven’t got as much talent as you thought you had, and there was no Plan B, and you got no skills and no education, and now you’re looking at forty or fifty years of nothing. Less than nothing, probably. That’s pretty heavy. That’s worse than having the brain thing, because what you got now will take a lot longer to kill you. You’ve got the choice of a slow, painful death, or a quick, merciful one. (Depression & Mental Health & Suicide & Life’s Like That & Despair & Sadness) Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down
50,534. I sit alone
In the room
On the chair
As I look at the silver moon
I feel nothing
But despair. Jim Bean, Despair, Leicester University magazine c.1994
50,535. Never despair. [Nil Desperandum] Horace, Odes
50,536. Only in the firm foundation of unyielding despair can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built. (Despair & Soul) Bertrand Russell, Philosophical Essays 1910
50,537. Down-dragged like corpse in sucking, slimy fen,
I sank to feel the breath of that Despair. Wilfred Owen, Supposed Confessions of a Secondrate Sensitive Mind in Dejection
50,539. I think you underestimate my commitment to despair. Ian Pattison, Rab C Nesbitt: Bug, Rab
50,540. In all things it is better to hope than to despair. (Despair & Hope) Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
50,541. The nympholepsy of some fond despair. Lord Byron
50,975. Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep despair. (Devil & Despair) John Milton, Paradise Lost I:126
50,978. What reinforcement we may gain from hope;
If not, what resolution from despair. (Devil & Despair) ibid. I:190
50,542. Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest spirit
That fought in heaven now fiercer by despair. ibid. II:44
50,543. Thus repulsed, our final hope
Is flat despair. ibid. II:141
50,544. Night was our friend, our leader was Despair. John Denham
50,545. In despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is very acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position. Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underworld
50,546. To be thoroughly conversant with a man’s heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of despair. Edgar Allan Poe