Quotes about Despair

Only the dead dream fought on as the afternoon slipped away, trying to touch what was no longer tangible, struggling unhappily, undespairingly, towards that lost voice across the room.

But he hated to be sober. It made him conscious of the people around him, of that air of struggle, of greedy ambition, of hope more sordid than despair.

Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.

My soul is like the dead sea, over which no bird can fly; when it gets halfway, it sinks down spent to its death and destruction.

Sin is: in despair not wanting to be oneself before God.

My life is utterly meaningless

However, a self, every instant it exists, is in process of becoming, for the self [potentially] does not actually exist, it is only that which it is to become. In so far as the self does not become itself, it is not its own self; but not to be one's own self is despair.

Fortvivlelsens Misforhold er ikke et simpelt Misforhold, men et Misforhold i et Forhold, der forholder sig til sig selv, og er sat af et Andet, saa Misforholdet i hiint for sig værende Forhold tillige reflekterer sig uendeligt i Forholdet til den Magt, som satte det.

men var han ikke Synthese, kunde han slet ikke fortvivle, og var Synthesen ikke oprindeligt fra Guds Haand i det rette Forhold, kunde han heller ikke fortvivle.

Even if the words were terrible, even though it were a Shakespeare, a Byron, or a Shelley who broke the silence,20 the word always retains its redeeming power, because all despair and all the horror of evil expressed in one word are not as awful as silence.

when the ambitious man whose slogan is "Either Caesar or nothing" does not get to be Caesar, he despairs over it. But this also means something else: precisely because he did not get to be Caesar, he now cannot bear to be himself.

It takes a talent to doubt, it requires no talent at all to despair (pp515)