#despair

So one must be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox... ↗

— Stanisław Lem

#cycles #despair #emotion #fear #free-will

She had an emptiness in her eyes like a ghost tired of haunting. ↗

— Stuart Jaffe

#history #short-story #world-war-ii #short-story

He opened his mouth. The words were there. He was about to say them when a jolt of terror went through him, the terror of someone who, wandering in a mist, pauses only to realise that they have stopped inches from the edge of a gaping abyss. The way she was looking at him - she could read what was in his eyes, he realised. It must have been written plainly there, like words on the page of a book. There had been no time, no chance, to hide it. “Will,” she whispered. “Say something, Will.” But there was nothing to say. There was only emptiness, as there had been before her. As there would always be. 'I have lost everything', Will thought. 'Everything. ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#clockwork-angel #despair #love #tessa-gray #will-herondale

In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair...the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die. ↗

— Dorothy L. Sayers

#despair

I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair. ↗

— Joseph Addison

#despair #fury #give #i #indulge

Because thou must not dream, thou need not despair. ↗

— Matthew Arnold

#despair #dream #must #need #thou

So long as we have failed to eliminate any of the causes of human despair, we do not have the right to try to eliminate those means by which man tries to cleanse himself of despair. ↗

— Antonin Artaud

#causes #cleanse #despair #eliminate #failed

Action is the antidote to despair. ↗

— Joan Baez

#antidote #despair

Men die in despair, while spirits die in ecstasy. ↗

— Honore de Balzac

#die #ecstasy #men #spirits #while

He who learns must suffer. And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God. ↗

— Aeschylus

#awful #cannot #comes #despair #drop