Despair

Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

• Mr. Fearing had, I think, a slough of despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him, or else he could never have been as he was.
  • John Bunyan, p. 191.

• Despair is the damp of hell; rejoicing is the serenity of heaven.
  • John Donne, p. 191.

• Disordered nerves are the origin of much religious despair, when the individual does not suspect it; and then the body and mind have a reciprocal influence upon each other, and it is difficult to tell which influences the other most. The physician is often blamed, when the fault lies with the minister. Depression never benefits body or soul. We are saved by hope.
  • Ichabod Spencer, p. 191.

• It is impossible for that man to despair who remembers that his Helper is omnipotent.
  • Jeremy Taylor, p. 191.

Unsourced

• "Despair is like forward children, who, when you take away one of their playthings, throw the rest into the fire for madness. It grows angry with itself, turns its own executioner, and revenges its misfortunes on its own head." ~ Pierre Charron

• "Despair is the conclusion of fools." ~ Benjamin Disraeli

• "It becomes no man to nurse despair, but, in the teeth of clenched antagonisms, to follow up the worthiest till he die." ~ Alfred, Lord Tennyson

• "It is a miserable state of mind to have few things to desire, and many things to fear." ~ Francis Bacon

• "The fact that God has prohibited despair gives misfortune the right to hope all things, and leaves hope free to dare all things" ~ Madame Swetchine

• "The man who lives only by hope will die with despair." ~ Italian proverb

• "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation ... A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind." ~ Henry David Thoreau

• "What we call despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope." ~ George Eliot

• "There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope." ~ George Eliot

• "...the specific character of despair is precisely this: it is unaware of being despair." ~ Søren Kierkegaard

• "Despair is Freedom." ~ Anonymous

• "Don't you understand? Can't you see? You're all going to die!" Unknown man (Film Zulu)

• "Senator, I agree with you-and I would also say that despair is not a method." ~ General John Abizaid, in response to Hillary Clinton's 'Hope is not a strategy'.