Despair is suffering without meaning.

A man’s concern, even his despair, over the worthwhileness of life is an existential distress but by no means a mental disease.

Despair gives courage to a coward

O star-eyed Science, hast thou wander’d there, To waft us home the message of despair?

If we openly declare what is wrong with us, what is our deepest need, then perhaps the death and despair will by degrees disappear.

The least sin should humble the soul, but certainly the greatest sin should never discourage the soul, much less should it work the soul to despair. Despairing Judas perished, whereas the murderers of Christ, believing on Him, were saved.

When fear is excessive it can make many a man despair

While injustice is the worst of sins, despair is the most dangerous; because when you are in despair you care neither about yourself nor about others

For me, prayer means launching out of the heart towards God; it means lifting up one’s eyes, quite simply, to heaven, a cry of grateful love, from the crest of joy or the trough of despair; it’s a vast, supernatural force which opens out my heart, and binds me close to Jesus

To desire Him to be merciful to us is to acknowledge Him as God. To seek His pity when we deserve no pity is to ask Him to be just with a justice so holy that it knows no evil and shows mercy to everyone who does not fly from Him in despair

No death, no doom, no anguish can arouse the surpassing despair which flows from a loss of identity.

For perfect hope is achieved on the brink of despair, when instead of falling over the edge, we find ourselves walking on air

Every time I see an adult on a bicycle, I no longer despair for the future of the human race.

Writing is a deeper sleep than death. Just as one wouldn’t pull a corpse from its grave, I can’t be dragged from my desk at night.

I turned to speak to God About the world’s despair But to make bad matters worse I found God wasn’t there.

We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.

All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing as they must if they believe they can do nothing. There is nothing worse because the council of despair is declaration of irresponsibility; it is Pilate washing his hands.

The law was given to drive us to despair over the hopelessness of ever being able to keep it.

Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair.

Joy runs deeper than despair.

Do not despair. Do not give up. Look for the sunlight through the clouds.

The only real laughter comes from despair.

There, pride, avarice, and envy are the tongues men know and heed, a Babel of despair.

When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.

Doubt discovers difficulties which it never solves; it creates hesitancy, despondency, despair. Its progress is the decay of comfort, the death of peace. “Believe!” is the word which speaks life into a man, but doubt nails down his coffin.

Marriage happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.

Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

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

Each of us has heaven and hell in him, Basil,’ cried Dorian with a wild gesture of despair

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall – think of it, always.

Yesterday This Day’s Madness did prepare; To-morrow’s Silence, Triumph, or Despair:
Drink! for you know not whence you came, nor why: Drink! for you know not why you go, nor where.

It is becoming a bad dream—in the daytime as well as at night. I see him nearly all the time and can’t get at him, I mustn’t show anything, must remain gay while I’m really in despair

I’ve always had to pay double for my sins: once with scoldings and then again with my own sense of despair.

From what I gather in reading ancient texts, right up to the present, human beings have always been confronted by the same kinds of problems. I think that this world is not a realm that admits to a solution. That isn’t what this world is about. It’s a different kind of activity that we have here. We have to deal with good and evil continually. With joy and despair, with all the antinomies, all the opposites and contraries. That’s what our life is about. We can’t abdicate that.