Hopelessness Quotes

...if the United States never intended to help, it shouldn't have built up the expectation. The false promise of help was cruel and inexcusable and it would only get worse over time. If a man is drowning and a boat drives past in the distance, the man accepts his death and goes down quietly. If a man is drowning and a boat pulls up beside him, dangles a life jacket, tells the world he wants to help, but then doesn't throw the life jacket, the drowning man dies crying and his family might take a blood oath to take revenge on the boat's crew. This type of anger was already starting to build in Syria and al-Qaeda would capitalize on it. ~ Richard Engel

We have to get behind the scientists and push for a dementia breakthrough. It could be that we fear dementia out of a sense of hopelessness, but there is hope, and it rests in the hands of our scientists. ~ James Nesbitt

When I was in the Navy, everyone fell under the purview of "navy gray". It is the military's way of reminding its enlisted personnel that they are all equal. Man or woman, black or white, young or old, everyone was navy gray. With God's grace I can proudly say a better understanding of this concept has helped me ameliorate disputes, mend fences that appeared hopeless and find light in the midst of darkness. ~ Carlos Wallace

Nothing prompts creativity like poverty, a feeling of hopelessness, and a bit of panic. ~ Catherine Tate

Hopelessness may be the saddest word in our language. Despair is the enemy of our souls. It can paralyze us, halt our progress, and cause us to lose our way. But hope awakens us like a light shining in the darkness. We can endure all things when our hope is centered in one who will never fail us-our Savior, Jesus Christ, who is the light of the world. ~ Dwan J. Young

Luck always seems like it belongs to someone else. ~ David Levien

I'm having a hard time writing about Sunday. Getting the long hollow feeling of Sundays. No mail and faraway lawn mowers, the hopelessness. ~ Lucia Berlin

INT. MINISTÈRE DES AFFAIRES MAGIQUES, RECORDS ROOM ATRIUM - NIGHT
MELUSINE: Puis-je vous aider?
NEWT: Er - yes, this is Leta Lestrange. And - I'm her -
TINA: Fiancé.
There is an increased awkwardness between them.
NEWT: Tina, about that fiancée business -
TINA (brittle): Sorry, yeah. I should have congratulated you -
The doors to the records office open. They enter briskly.

INT. MINISTÈRE DES AFFAIRES MAGIQUES, RECORDS ROOM - NIGHT
The doors close behind them, plunging them into darkness.
NEWT: No, that's -
TINA: Lumos.
NEWT: Tina - about Leta -
TINA: Yes, I've just said, I am happy for you -
NEWT: Yeah, well, don't.
She stops. Looks at him. What?
NEWT: Please don't be happy.
(in trouble) Uh, no, no. I'm sorry. I don't . . . Uh, obviously, I - Obviously I want you to be. And I hear that you are now. Uh, which is wonderful. Sorry -
(a gesture of hopelessness) What I'm trying to say is, I want you to be happy, but don't be happy that I'm happy, because I'm not.
(off her confusion) Happy.
(off her continued confusion) Or engaged.
TINA: What?
NEWT: It was a mistake in a stupid magazine. My brother's marrying Leta, June the sixth. I'm supposed to be best man. Which is sort of mildly hilarious.
TINA: Does he think you're here to win her back?
(beat)
Are you here to win her back?
NEWT: No! I'm here to -
A beat. He stares at her.
NE ~ J.K. Rowling

The provisions for the poor which structure both land ownership and the sacred calendar in ancient Israel, the rights of gleaners and of those widows, orphans, and strangers who pass through the fields, and the cycles of freedom from debt and restoration of alienated persons and property, all work against the emergence of the poor as a class, as people marked by deprivation and hopelessness. ~ Marilynne Robinson

For Death is the meaning of night;
The eternal shadow
Into which all lives must fall,
All hopes expire. ~ Michael Cox

Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to re-open the wound. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

White America is tortured by black America's failure to thrive, and all that guilt and anxiety has only gotten worse as a substantial quota of white America loses its own footing in the middle class and plunges into the rough country of joblessness, hopelessness, and government dependency. ~ James Howard Kunstler

The future has become uninhabitable. Such hopelessness can arise, I think, only from an inability to face the present, to live in the present, to live as a responsible being among other beings in this sacred world here and now, which is all we have, and all we need, to found our hope upon. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

And the hopelessness of herself, of ever being the person she wanted to be and of doing the things that person would do. Had all her life been nothing but a dream, and was this real? ~ Patricia Highsmith

As I see it today, Hitler and Goebbels were in fact molded by the mob itself, guided by its yearnings and its daydreams. Of course, Goebbels and Hitler knew how to penetrate through to the instincts of their audiences; but in the deeper sense they derived their whole existence from these audiences. Certainly the masses roared to the beat set by Hitler's and Goebbels' baton; yet they were not the true conductors. The mob determined the theme. To compensate for misery, insecurity, unemployment, and hopelessness, this anonymous assemblage wallowed for hours at a time in obsessions, savagery and license. The personal unhappiness caused by the breakdown of the economy was replaced by a frenzy that demanded victims. By lashing out at their opponents and vilifying the Jews, they gave expression and direction to fierce primal passions. ~ Albert Speer

A sense of hopelessness had weighed me down like a fever since I'd stepped across the border weeks before. And with this fever came a vision that had sharpened, coming into greater focus, as if inviting me to look closer. My first reaction was a laugh of disgust at the ugliness around me, like the reek of a latrine that makes you howl or at the sight of a dirty bucket of chicken pieces covered with flies. After the moment of helpless hilarity passed, what remained was the vow that I never wanted to see another place like this. ~ Paul Theroux

She waited uneasily and shyly. From afar he saw that her eyes
clearly her father's
were filled with desperate innocence. He pictured, in her, his own redemption. Violins and lit candles revolved in the sky. Leo ran forward with flowers out-thrust. ~ Bernard Malamud

By capitulating to life, this world has betrayed nothingness ... I resign from movement, and from my dreams. Absence! You shall be my sole glory ... Let "desire" be forever stricken from the dictionary, and from the soul! I retreat before the dizzying farce of tomorrows. And if I still cling to a few hopes, I have lost forever the faculty of hoping ~ Emil Cioran

I believed in belief, for its own shining sake. To believe in the face of utter hopelessness, every article of evidence to the contrary, to ignore apparent catastrophe - what other choice was there? We are so much stronger than we imagine, and belief is one of the most valiant and long-lived human characteristics. To believe, when all along we humans know that nothing can cure the briefness of this life, that there is no remedy for our basic mortality, that is a form of bravery. To continue believing in yourself ... believing in whatever I chose to believe in, that was the most important thing. ~ Lance Armstrong

You can be an unhappy person, but you must never be a hopeless person! You can be an unsuccessful person or a defeated or an abandoned unlucky person, but you must never be a hopeless person! Being hopeless is the worst of the worst, it is the ultimate worst! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

We agree that there is something that happens inside of a person, a people, a community when you think you will not love, that the people around you will not live. We talk about how you develop an attitude, on that dismisses hope, that discards dreams. ~ Patrisse Khan-Cullors

Living in musty shadows and dismal, oppressive silence, Thérèse could see her whole life stretching out before her totally void, bringing night after night the same cold bed and morning after morning the same empty day. ~ Emile Zola

Trying to keep us both whole was tearing me apart ~ Laura E Weymouth

You grew up, became a man, had to adjust to taking less than you hoped for; you discovered the dream-machine had a big OUT OF ORDER sign on it. ~ Stephen King

Man cries, his tears dry up and run out. So he becomes a devil, reduced to a monster. ~ Kohta Hirano

A sense of hopelessness permeated from Hallie's slumped shoulders. The finality of surrender weighed heavily on Catch too, but what other options did they have? The weaponry being used was highly sophisticated. Their attackers could literally shoot around corners, and what really worried Catch was what would come once the gunmen got bored of pelleted rounds. ~ Sean J. Quirk

Slowly the big gates opened. Red-gold fire glow from inside silhouetted a number of figures who moved out toward the bridge, where the strengthening light picked out the drawn swords, the spears, the dark cloaks, and the helmed heads of the Renselaeus warriors. They were wearing their own colors, and battle gear. No liveries, no pretense of being mere servants. In the center of their formation were Khesot and the four others--unarmed.
There were no shouts, no trumpets, nothing but the ringing of iron-shod boots on the stones of the bridge, and the clank of ready weaponry.
Could we rescue them? I could not see Khesot's face, but in the utter stillness with which they stood, I read hopelessness.
I readied myself once again--
Then from the center of their forces stepped a single equerry, with a white scarf tied to a pole. He started up the path that we meant to descend. As he walked the light strengthened, now illuminating details. Still with that weird detachment I looked at his curly hair, the freckles on his face, his small nose. We could cut him down in moments, I thought, and then winced the thought away. We were not Galdran. I waited.
He stopped not twenty-five paces from me and said loudly, "Countess, we request a parley."
Which made it obvious they knew we were there.
Questions skittered through my mind. Had Khesot talked? How otherwise could the enemy have seen us? The only noise now was the rain, pattering softly with the magnificent ~ Sherwood Smith

The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty
it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There's a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God. ~ Mother Teresa

When today's generation reads Jack's books or they listen to the music created by some of us, I believe that they see there is a different way of approaching today's life and today's sometimes seeming hopelessness that can provide answers. ~ David Amram

What we can see in most societies is the gravity of suffering, tears of sorrow and nightmares of hopelessness. ~ Nilantha Ilangamuwa

Hope like that, as I thought before, doesn't make you a weak person. It's hopelessness that makes you weak. Hope makes you stronger, because it brings with it a sense of reason. Not a reason for how or why they were taken from you, but a reason for you to live. Because it's a maybe. A 'maybe someday things won't always be this shit.' And that 'maybe' immediately makes the shittiness better. ~ Cecelia Ahern

Relaxing with the present moment, relaxing with hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything is changing all the time - that is the basic message. ~ Pema Chodron

Noah realized with some embarrassment that he wanted to hold her and comfort her, whisper all the right words that would bring her peace of mind. He wanted to be the one to get her through this. To rescue her. To put his arms around her, protect her and bring contentment where there was fear and pain. Hope. He would show her hope where there was hopelessness. ~ Robyn Carr

They thought that the bullets would silence us, but they failed. And out of that silence came thousands of voices. The terrorists thought they would change my aims and stop my ambitions. But nothing changed in my life except this: weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born. ~ Malala Yousafzai

This is meant to be in praise of the interval called hangover,
a sadness not co-terminous with hopelessness,
and the North American doubling cascade
that (keep going) "this diamond lake is a photo lab"
and if predicates really do propel the plot
then you might see Jerusalem in a soap bubble
or the appliance failures on Olive Street
across these great instances,
because "the complex Italians versus the basic Italians"
because what does a mirror look like (when it´s not working)
but birds singing a full tone higher in the sunshine.

I´m going to call them Honest Eyes until I know if they are,
in the interval called slam clicker, Realm of Pacific,
because the second language wouldn´t let me learn it
because I have heard of you for a long time occasionally
because diet cards may be the recovery evergreen
and there is a new benzodiazepene called Distance,

anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship, anti-showmanship.

I suppose a broken window is not symbolic
unless symbolic means broken, which I think it sorta does,
and when the phone jangles
what´s more radical, the snow or the tires,
and what does the Bible say about metal fatigue
and why do mothers carry big scratched-up sunglasses
in their purses.

Hello to the era of going to the store to buy more ice
because we are running out.
Hello to feelings that arrive unintroduced.
Hel ~ David Berman

But there is one thing I do know, tucked away inside myself: hope unstitches you. Hope leaves you open and wounded. Without hope there is no fear, there is just living. ~ Patti Russon

The main trouble with despair is that it is self-fulfilling. People who fear the worst tend to invite it. Heads that are down can't scan the horizon for new openings. Bursts of energy do not spring from a spirit of defeat. Ultimately, helplessness leads to hopelessness. ~ Norman Cousins

I didn't really want to live, so anything that was an investment in time made me angry ... but also I just felt sad. When the hopelessness is hurting you, it's the fixtures and fittings that finish you off. ~ Angelina Jolie

Sometimes I can't see the sun. ~ Randolph Randy Camp

When Clients say they're wrestling with depression, what I choose to hear is that they're in a state of decompression -- in a deserved limbo, taking a little time to recover from a something that set them back... I don't see the hopelessness of the here-and-now. I see the hope in what's to come. ~ Michael Anthony-Nalepa

Hope was always creating pleasantly ideological, and therefore impossible things. ~ Sean DeLauder

Hope is your torch in the darkest hour. ~ Katie St. Claire

He knew...there was no redemption for the damned. ~ Alan Kinross

But here's the thing about self-comparison: In addition to making you vacate your own experience, your own soul, your own life, in its extreme it breeds resignation. If we constantly feel that there is something more to be had - something that's available to those with a certain advantage in life, but which remains out of reach for us - we come to feel helpless. And the most toxic byproduct of this helpless resignation is cynicism - that terrible habit of mind and orientation of spirit in which, out of hopelessness for our own situation, we grow embittered about how things are and about what's possible in the world. Cynicism is a poverty of curiosity and imagination and ambition. ~ Maria Popova

Among the people Jurgis lived with now money was valued according to an entirely different standard from that of the people of Packingtown; yet, strange as it may seem, he did a great deal less drinking than he had as a workingman. He had not the same provocations of exhaustion and hopelessness; he had now something to work for, to struggle for. He soon found that if he kept his wits about him, he would come upon new opportunities; and being naturally an active man, he not only kept sober himself, but helped to steady his friend, who was a good deal fonder of both wine and women than he. ~ Upton Sinclair

Just those three words, said and meant. I love you.
They were quite hopeless. He said it as he might have said, I have cancer.
His fairy story. ~ John Fowles

In the resolved quiet of the heart it was possible to say "Give up; it's done," but in practice, hopelessness was too bitter wine for drinking day after day. One would steal a little sip of sweetness and wonder, "What if...? ~ Kai Ashante Wilson

Hopeless emptiness. Now you've said it. Plenty of people are onto the emptiness, but it takes real guts to see the hopelessness. ~ Richard Yates

All suffering is a consequence of a constant quest. A quest to follow a mirage, the mirage that is the creation of our mind, the illusion of happiness, the illusion of being loved. That is what it is. Love itself is an illusion. We misuse the word so much we forget what it means. It means nothing, because it simply does not exist. It is the destiny of the mind to seek. When it does not discover what it seeks, it gives birth to hopelessness. And given our undying spirit, from that hopelessness rises hope itself. This hope takes us to the quest all over again, churning us in an endless cycle of suffering. This cycle is called life. Suffer you will, one way or the other... ~ Nilesh Rathod

Hope as evidence of life. Life as evidence of death. ~ Lara Biyuts

Sometimes, when people look at me, I can see the pity in their eyes. All I want is hope, but neither of us can give it to each other. ~ Genesis Quihuis

Powerlessness is an excruciating pain; it is torture insurmountable. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

…her entire being suspended between newborn faith and ancient hopelessness. ~ Sonali Dev

Nothing changes, love. Ever. Hope is a fickle vixen sent to torment us with discontent. And I am done with her, and her empty promises, and wishes unfulfilled. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

One should ... be able to see things as hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

I can feel the grip of lost lives beneath me, starved hearts hoping to escape their shadowy fates. ~ Ky Grabowski

Nothing left but hopelessness.' Say die and I will die. Say die and watch me die. ~ Jean Rhys

We must first peer into the darkness, feel strangled and entombed in the hopelessness of living without God, before we are ready to feel the presence of His living light. ~ Abraham Joshua Heschel

This is our part in spiritual war. We proclaim Christ's truth by praying it, speaking it and (undoubtedly most importantly) by demonstrating it. We are not to accept with sere pious resignation the evil aspects of our world as "coming from a father's hand." Rather, following the example of our Lord and Savior, and going forth with the confidence that he has in principle already defeated his (and our) foes, we are to revolt against the evil aspects of our world as coming from the devil's hand. Our revolt is to be broad
as broad as the evil we seek to confront, and as broad as the work of the cross we seek to proclaim. Wherever there is destruction, hated, apathy, injustice, pain or hopelessness, whether it concerns God's creation, a structural feature of society, or the physical, psychological or spiritual aspect of an individual, we are in word and deed to proclaim to the evil powers that be, "You are defeated." As Jesus did, we proclaim this by demonstrating it. ~ Gregory A. Boyd

In despair there are the most intense enjoyments, especially when one is acutely conscious of the hopelessness of one's position. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The morning sun
shines over the prison wall,

And drives away the shadows
and miasma of hopelessness.

A life-giving breeze
blows across the earth.

A hundred imprisoned faces
smile once more. ~ Ho Chi Minh

One faerie - and then we were free. Just on more swing of my arm.
And maybe one more after that - maybe one more swing, up and inward and into my own heart. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Pattie helped me understand that you can provide someone with food and shelter, train them in a skill for employment, even offer professional treatment for an addictions, but these acts don't necessarily reach down to that place inside a person where fear, shame, guilt, hurt, and hopelessness wreak havoc. Pattie's greatest need was to be seen, and then to be loved, accepted and validated. ~ Jim Palmer

And her dreams that didn't happen, that couldn't have happened because she'd pinned them on somebody too broken and unattainable to love her back. ~ Janette Rallison

So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. they err who would assert that invariable this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. An when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bides the soul be rid of it. ~ Herman Melville

A writer's life is of dreams and passion, the passion that trembles to give life to the lifeless, color to the colorless landscape, so as to discover hope amid hopelessness, and it becomes a story of power and truth. ~ Jayita Bhattacharjee

I painted stars and the moon and clouds and just endless, dark sky." I finished the sixth, and was well on my way sawing through the seventh before I said, "I never knew why. I rarely went outside at night - usually, I was so tired from hunting that I just wanted to sleep. But I wonder ... " I pulled out the seventh and final arrow. "I wonder if some part of me knew what was waiting for me. That I would never be a gentle grower of things, or someone who burned like fire - but that I would be quiet and enduring and as faceted as the night. That I would have beauty, for those who knew where to look, and if people didn't bother to look, but to only fear it ... Then I didn't particularly care for them, anyway. I wonder if, even in my despair and hopelessness, I was never truly alone. I wonder if I was looking for this place - looking for you all. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Rainy, gloomy, drab, sunless day. There are times when hope seems entirely clouded over, when looking for the blessings in your circumstances feels like trying to catch a ray of sunshine from six feet under. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

The horror of profound depression, and the hopelessness that usually accompanies it, are hard to imagine for those who have not experienced them. Because the despair is private, it is resistant to clear and compelling description. Novelist William Styron, however, in recounting his struggle with suicidal depression, captures vividly the heavy, inescapable pain that can lead to suicide:

What I had begun to discover is that, mysteriously and in ways that are totally remote from normal experience, the gray drizzle of horror induced by depression takes on the quality of physical pain. But it is not an immediately identifiable pain, like that of a broken limb. It may be more accurate to say that despair, owing to some evil trick played upon the sick brain by the inhabiting psyche, comes to resemble the diabolical discomfort of being imprisoned in a fiercely overheated room. And because no breeze stirs this cauldron, because there is no escape from this smothering confinement, it is entirely natural that the victim begins to think ceaselessly of oblivion. (105) ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

Finishing my thoughts aloud meant saying how my dad had passed, and I had failed. How I had smoked joints and lay in bed enabling my hopelessness. I'd been the ugly in my world. ~ Rebecca Berto

Home is where the heart is, and where the hell is, and where the hate is, and where the hopelessness is. Which made Aurora Hills pretty much like home. ~ Nova Ren Suma

Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante's hell is the inscription: Leave behind all hope, you who enter here. ~ Jurgen Moltmann

We should all fortify ourselves against the dark hours of depression by cultivating a deep distrust of the certainties of despair. Despair is relentless in the certainties of its pessimism. But we have seen again and again, from our own experience and others', that absolute statements of hopelessness that we make in the dark are notoriously unreliable. Our dark certainties are not sureties. ~ John Piper

God created you to trust him and love others. When you are not trusting or not loving, you are disconnected from your purpose, and hopelessness will thrive. ~ Edward T. Welch

The nineteenth was the first century of human sympathy,
the age when half wonderingly we began to descry in others that transfigured spark of divinity which we call Myself; when clodhoppers and peasants, and tramps and thieves, and millionaires and
sometimes
Negroes, became throbbing souls whose warm pulsing life touched us so nearly that we half gasped with surprise, crying, Thou too! Hast Thou seen Sorrow and the dull waters of Hopelessness? Hast Thou known Life? ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

... from the outside what can you see of the deepest despair? ~ Nathalie Léger

How hard it is to now believe that these strong, merciless chains of fear and hopelessness, rendering the limbs of my mind motionless, were once innocuous mere threads."
-Mehul.M ~ Abhinav .M

They said when you are in love you will be happy but when the day comes i fell in love with someone.i regret the day that i met him.. it gives to much pain inside i feel everything is wrong.
knowing that loves is happiness.but in me it has a reversed meaning.it makes my life unhappy. ~ O.v Grace

To stay with that shakiness-to stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge-that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic-this is the spiritual path. ~ Pema Chodron

There is no way to overpower, outrun, or outsmart the mad dog of hopelessness because it's simply more vicious than I. The only thing to do is let it attack, go limp in its jaws, and be shaken. But I notice one promising pattern. If I play dead, it will eventually let me go. I start thinking of the dog of hopelessness as an obstacle that will reappear on every curve of the spiral staircase. He'll always be there waiting and snarling, but with every go-round, I'll be more confident and less fearful. Eventually, I'll learn the tricks that will allow me to breeze right past him. But the mad dog of hopelessness will always be there. My spiral staircase of progress means that my pain will be both behind me and in front of me, every damn day. I'll never be "over it," but I vow to be stronger each time I face it. Maybe the pain won't change, but I will. I keep climbing. ~ Glennon Doyle Melton

the United States decided it was not going to intervene in Syria - at least for the time being. The Syrian opposition felt betrayed and abandoned. Worse, Syrians were now completely without hope, which is the most dangerous human condition. A man or woman with no hope is capable of anything. ~ Richard Engel

God created woman as a Warrior. I think about the tragedies the women in my life have faced. How every time a child gets sick or a man leaves or a parent dies or a community crumbles, the women are the ones who carry on, who do what must be done for their people in the midst of their own pain. While those around them fall away, the women hold the sick and nurse the weak, put food on the table, carry their families' sadness and anger and love and hope. They keep showing up for their lives and their people with the odds stacked against them and the weight of the world on their shoulders. They never stop singing songs of truth, love, and redemption in the face of hopelessness. They are inexhaustible, ferocious, relentless cocreators with God, and they make beautiful worlds out of nothing. Have women been the Warriors all along? ~ Glennon Doyle Melton

Kenneth Tynan once said that the only people who can do Russian drama, outside of the Russians themselves, are the Irish. I presume that's because we are somewhat manic in the mood department. It's no bother to soar from the darkest depths to the mountaintops of delight, with the heart borne by all of that which is alive and singing. It's even less bother to swan-dive into the pits of despair and total hopelessness, with the realization that it's no use being Irish unless you know the world is eventually going to break your heart. ~ Malachy McCourt

We began our hospital visits: one day Susan, one day me, everyday The Big Hoom. On one of these visits, she told me about the tap that opened at my birth and the lack drip filling her up, and it tore a hole in my heart. If this was what she could manage with a single sentence, what did thirsty years of marriage do to The Big Hoom? ~ Jerry Pinto

Things must be negative but not too negative. Hopelessness, despair - these drive us to do nothing. Pity, empathy - those drive us to do something, like get up from our computers to act. But anger, fear, excitement, or laughter - these drive us to spread. They drive us to do something that makes us feel as if we are doing something, when in reality we are only contributing to what is probably a superficial and utterly meaningless conversation. Online games and apps operate on the same principles and exploit the same impulses: be consuming without frustrating, manipulative without revealing the strings. ~ Ryan Holiday

The room was a small square of hopelessness.
A flash of red. And then:
Dimensions: 10 ft. by 9 ft.
I swallowed a horrific giggle. Perfect. And now I knew the exact measurements of hopelessness. ~ Debra Driza

Desire is the outcome of sensation - the outcome with all the images that thought has built. And this desire not only breeds discontent but a sense of hopelessness.
Never suppress it, never discipline it but probe into the nature of it - what is the origin, the purpose, the intricacies of it? To delve deep into it is not another desire, for it has no motive; it is like understanding the beauty of a flower, to sit down beside it and look at it. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

Froi saw the foolishness of dreamers, and he decided he'd like to die so foolish. With a dream in his heart about the possibilities, rather than a chain of hopelessness. ~ Melina Marchetta

Marriage is like a series of opposing reflections, inverse images getting ever smaller like nesting dolls, each one of your trying to squeeze yourself smaller to fit inside the hopes of the other, until one of you cracks or stops existing. ~ Jacob M. Appel

All they did was stir up desire, and longing, and hopelessness, a trio of miserable caged wildcats that had been installed in me without my permission, or at least without my understanding how long they would live and how vicious they would be. ~ Alice Munro

By using money as the scapegoat and work as our all-consuming routine, we are able to conveniently disallow ourselves to do otherwise: 'John, I'd love to talk about the gaping void I feel in my life, the hopelessness that hits me like a punch in the eye every time I start my computer in the morning, but I have so much work to do! I've got at least three hours of unimportant email to reply to before calling prospects who said 'no' yesterday. Gotta run! ~ Timothy Ferriss

We must face the bitter fact that we have forsaken our great dream of a life of, for, and by the people; that the burning passions and ideals of the American dream lie congealed by cold cynicism. Great parts of the masses of our people no longer believe that they have a voice or a hand in shaping the destiny of this nation. They have not forsaken democracy because of any desire or positive action of their own; they have been driven down into the depths of a great despair born of frustration, hopelessness, and apathy. A democracy lacking in popular participation dies of paralysis. ~ Saul Alinsky

I raced alongside the car but they were too far down the road. Brokenheartedly, I roared out in hopelessness and grief. She was gone.#Ren ~ Colleen Houck

I am in no mood to fulminate on paper
I wish the two of us were in a room together talking of what matters most, the air thick with affinity. In January a man crawls into a cave of hopelessness; he hallucinates sympathies catching fire. Letters are glaciers, null frigates, trapping us where we are in the moment, unable to carry us on toward truth. ~ Carlene Bauer

One of the sure signs that we have been co-opted by our culture is that, like frogs in the proverbial kettle, we have grown comfortable with things that should shock us and mobilize us to action. We no longer feel the heat of outrage against things that anger God. We have so embraced the American dream that we can no longer see or feel the world's nightmare of poverty, suffering, and hopelessness. ~ Richard Stearns

You can choose to stay strong and keep moving on or you can run, and in the end still make a U-turn.. ~ Chinonye J. Chidolue

But it is just in that cold, abominable half despair, half belief, in that conscious burying oneself alive for grief in the underworld for forty years, in that acutely recognised and yet partly doubtful hopelessness of one's position, in that hell of unsatisfied desires turned inward, in that fever of oscillations, of resolutions determined for ever and repented of again a minute later--that the savour of that strange enjoyment of which I have spoken lies. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

When surrounded by the ashes of all that I once cherished, despite my best efforts I can find no room to be thankful. But standing there amidst endless ash I must remember that although the ashes surround me, God surrounds the ashes. And once that realization settles upon me, I am what I thought I could never be ... I am thankful for ashes. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

When a third wave of poverty overwhelmed me, I knew with even greater certitude than when I had lived in Clerkenwell that the only complete solution to my problem was suicide. I never brought it off. I was afraid. A lifetime of never making positive decisions, accepting instead the lesser of the evils presented to me, had atrophied my will. It was not so much that I longed for death as that I didn't long for life. Emptiness, though, was not a sufficiently definite feeling to lead to a violent act. Instead of sitting in my room and balancing the relative convenience of various ways of ending it all, I ought to have been busy trying to summon up a reasonable amount of despair. Hopelessness was thinly spread like drizzle over my whole outlook. But, in an emergency, I could not find a puddle of despondency deep enough to drown in. ~ Quentin Crisp

Most people in the grip of depression at its ghastliest are, for whatever reason, in a state of unrealistic hopelessness, torn by exaggerated ills and fatal threats that bear no resemblance to actuality. It may require on the part of friends, lovers, family, admirers, an almost religious devotion to persuade the sufferers of life's worth, which is so often in conflict with a sense of their own worthlessness, but such devotion has prevented countless suicides. ~ William Styron