Quotes about Despair

All dressed up with nowhere to go. Walking with a dead man over my shoulder. Don't run away, it's only me.…

As long as matters are really hopeful," wrote Chesterton, "hope is mere flattery or platitude. It is only when everything is hopeless that hope begins to be a strength at all. Like all the Christian virtues, it is as unreasonable as it is indispensable.

There is no literature in all the world that is more true to life and more honest than Psalms, for here we have warts-and-all religion. Every skeptical thought, every disappointing venture, every pain, every despair that we can face is lived through and integrated into a personal, saving relationship with God—a relationship that also has in it acts of praise, blessing, peace, security, trust and love.

Inappropriate, anxiety-driven, fear-driven work would only interfere with and distract from what God was already doing. My "work" assignment was to pay more attention to what God does than what I do, and then to find, and guide others to find, the daily, weekly, yearly rhythms that would get this awareness into our bones. Holy Saturday for a start. And then Sabbath keeping. Staying in touch with people in despair, knowing them by name, and waiting for resurrection.

Drugged their despair with Thunderbird and buried their dead visions and dreams in the alley behind the Pastime, ignorant of the God at work beneath their emptiness.

He who has felt his own ruin will not imagine the case of any to be hopeless; nor will he think them too fallen to be worthy his regard.

Beware of despairing about yourself: you are commanded to put your trust in God, and not in yourself.

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.

Where there is discord may we bring harmony. Where there is error, may we bring truth. Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. Where there is despair, may we bring hope.

She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.

Many people are despairing of the possibility of finding love. And some of the people who are despairing the most are in their thirties and forties and looking just great.

I keep thinking of all the people who cast despairing eyes toward the dark heavens and cry "Why?" And I imagine him. I imagine him listening. I picture his eyes misting and a pierced hand brushing away a tear. And although he may offer no answer, although he may solve no dilemma, although the question may freeze painfully in midair, he who also was once alone, understands.