#despair

Scotsmen are metaphisical and emotional, they are sceptical and mystical, they are romantic and ironic, they are cruel and tender, and full of mirth and despair. ↗

— William Dunbar

#despair #emotional #full #ironic #mirth

In a sense, 'American Pie' was a very despairing song but it can also be seen as very hopeful. ↗

— Don McLean

#american #american pie #despairing #hopeful #pie

The artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence. ↗

— Woody Allen

#artist #despair #emptiness #hope #art

I despair of ever writing excellent poetry. ↗

— Isaac Rosenberg

#ever #excellent #i #poetry #writing

You know one of the causes of modern despair is the fact that we have had proposed to us, from various quarters, an impossible perfection. ↗

— Morris West

#despair #fact #had #impossible #know

She thought of the recurrent waves of pain that for some reason or other she and her husband had had to endure; of the invisible giants hurting her boy in some unimaginable fashion; of the incalculable amount of tenderness contained in the world; of the fate of this tenderness, which is either crushed or wasted, or transformed into madness; of neglected children humming to themselves in unswept corners; of beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer. ↗

— Vladimir Nabokov

#innocence #insanity #beauty

By seeing the multitude of people around it, by being busied with all sorts of worldly affairs, by being wise to the ways of the world, such a person forgets himself, in a divine sense forgets his own name, dares not believe in himself, finds being himself too risky, finds it much easier and safer to be like the others, to become a copy, a number, along with the crowd. Now this form of despair goes practically unnoticed in the world. Precisely by losing oneself in this way, such a person gains all that is required for a flawless performance in everyday life, yes, for making a great success out of life. Here there is no dragging of the feet, no difficulty with his self and its infinitizing, he is ground smooth as a pebble, as exchangeable as a coin of the realm. Far from anyone thinking him to be in despair, he is just what a human being ought to be. Naturally, the world has generally no understanding of what is truly horrifying. ↗

— Søren Kierkegaard

#despair #loss #self #self-loss #success

Those who make us believe that anything’s possible and fire our imagination over the long haul, are often the ones who have survived the bleakest of circumstances. The men and women who have every reason to despair, but don’t, may have the most to teach us, not only about how to hold true to our beliefs, but about how such a life can bring about seemingly impossible social change. ↗

— Paul Rogat Loeb

#hope #imagination #social-change #change

No reflection was to be allowed now, not one glance was to be cast back; not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet, so deadly sad, that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank, something like then world when the deluge was gone by. ↗

— Charlotte Brontë

#future #heartbreak #hopelessness #past #sadness

What makes a hero? Courage, strength, morality, withstanding adversity? Are these the traits that truly show and create a hero? Is the light truly the source of darkness or vice versa? Is the soul a source of hope or despair? Who are these so called heroes and where do they come from? Are their origins in obscurity or in plain sight? ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#darkness #despair #fall #heroes #hope