This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Confession heals, confession justifies, confession grants pardon of sin. All hope consists in confession. In confession there is a chance for mercy. Believe it firmly. Do not doubt, do not hesitate, never despair of the mercy of God. Hope and have confidence in confession." - Isidore of Seville, fully Saint Isidore of Seville NULL
"No person can be religious alone, however rich may be the ecstasy or despair of his isolation. Authentic religion… is rather a relationship in which one person responds reverently to another person." - Paul E. Johnson
"Alienation is a form of living death. It is the acid of despair that dissolves society." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul… You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair." - Douglas MacArthur
"Life, for all its agonies of despair and loss and guilt, is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing, full of liking and love, at times a poem and a high adventure, at times noble and at times very gay; and whatever (if anything) is to come after it--we shall not have this life again." -
"It is not impossibilities which fill us with the deepest despair, but possibilities which we have failed to realize." - Robert Mallett
"The silence of the spheres is the music of a wedding feast. The more we persist in misunderstanding the phenomena of life, the more we analyze them out into strange finalities and complex purposes of our own, the more we involve ourselves in sadness. But it does not matter much because no despair of ours can alter the reality of things, or stain the joy of the cosmic dance which is always there." - Thomas Merton
"People who know they are terminally ill often seem to live more meaningfully. Though dying, they somehow are more alive. They cherish each morning and are vividly aware of each day’s passing. They see despair as a self-indulgent waste, and they have no time to waste." - David Schmidtz
"Despair is the one sin that cannot be forgiven." - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o
"Life wants to secure itself against the void that is raging within. The risk of eternal void is to be met by the premium of temporal insurance… social security, old age pensions, etc. It springs no less from metaphysical despair than from material misery." - Franz Werfel, fully Franz Viktor Werfel
"All art is a challenge to despair." - E. C. Bentley, fully Edmund Clerihew Bentley
"Disappointment, defeat, despair are the tools God uses to show us the way." - Paul Dirac, fully Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
"The moment of near despair is quite often the moment that precedes courage rather than resignation. In a sense, with the back to the wall and no exit but death or acceptance, the options narrow to one." - Christopher Hitchens
"Those who have attained things worth having in this world have worked while others idled, have persevered while others gave up in despair, have practiced ...the valuable habits of self-denial, industry, and singleness of purpose." - Grenville Kleiser
"Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair." - Douglas MacArthur
"We believe in optimism rather than pessimism, hope rather than despair, learning in the place of dogma, truth instead of ignorance, joy rather than guild or sin, tolerance in the place of fear, love instead of hatred, compassion over selfishness, beauty instead of ugliness and reason rather than blind faith or irrationality." - Patroclus or Patroklos NULL
"Sins become more subtle as you grow older; you commit sins of despair rather than lust." - Piers Paul Read
"Our contemporary concern about meaning is peculiar to the modern world. It arises from our relative wealth and freedom in the context of malaise, even despair, about man's ability to achieve lasting and genuine happiness." - Irving Singer
"Philosophy may help to cleanse our thinking, but only in experience itself, in stumbling through life and reflecting about our moments of joy and despair, can we learn how to live." - Irving Singer
"Quiet and unacclaimed acts are, to me, the real margin of greatness. Greatness is not in popularity, wealth, or long life, as most people believe. Real greatness is in simplicity and supportive words. It is in firm encouragement and gentle patience. It is in finding god in the midst of the turmoil of the marketplace, and remembering His goodness during hardship. No, greatness is not always found in those whom the world calls its heroes, but in the unheard of saints who unselfishly serve their families, lend a kind ear to a friend in despair, and lovingly see the Best in those who have become too accustomed to seeing themselves as mediocre." - Alan Cohen
"Quiet and unacclaimed acts are, to me, the real margin of greatness. Greatness is not in popularity, wealth, or long life, as most people believe. Real greatness is in simplicity and supportive words. It is in firm encouragement and gentle patience. It is in finding god in the midst of the turmoil of the marketplace, and remembering His goodness during hardship. No, greatness is not always found in those whom the world calls its heroes, but in the unheard of saints who unselfishly serve their families, lend a kind ear to a friend in despair, and lovingly see the Best in those who have become too accustomed to seeing themselves as mediocre." -
"Quiet and unacclaimed acts are, to me, the real margin of greatness. Greatness is not in popularity, wealth, or long life, as most people believe. Real greatness is in simplicity and supportive words. It is in firm encouragement and gentle patience. It is in finding god in the midst of the turmoil of the marketplace, and remembering His goodness during hardship. No, greatness is not always found in those whom the world calls its heroes, but in the unheard of saints who unselfishly serve their families, lend a kind ear to a friend in despair, and lovingly see the Best in those who have become too accustomed to seeing themselves as mediocre." -
"Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time." - Albert Camus
"A calm despair, without angry convulsions or reproaches directed at heaven, is the essence of wisdom." - Alfred Victor de Vigny
"Patience: A minor form of despair, disguised as virtue." - Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
"Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue." - Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
"All the irascible passions imply movement towards something... And if we wish to know the order of all the passions in the way of generation, love and hatred are first; desire and aversion, second; hope and despair, third; fear and daring, fourth; anger, fifth; sixth and last, joy and sadness, which follow from all the passions... yet so that love precedes hatred; desire precedes aversion; hope precedes despair; fear precedes daring; and joy precedes sadness." - Aristotle NULL
"To laugh is to risk appearing the fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach out for another is to risk involvement. To expose our feelings is to risk exposing our true self. To place your ideas and dreams before the crowd is to risk loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk despair. To try at all is to risk failure. But risk we must, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The man, the woman who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing." - Author Unknown NULL
"Despair is the conclusion of fools." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"The disappointment of Manhood succeeds to the delusion of Youth; let us hope that the heritage of Old Age is not despair." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"Truth comes into this world with two faces. One is sad with suffering, and the other laughs; but it is the same face, laughing or weeping. When people are already in despair, maybe the laughing is better for them; and when they feel too good and are too sure of being safe, maybe the weeping face is better for them to see." - Black Elk, formallly Heȟáka Sápa NULL
"Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without passion, without business, without entertainment, without care. It is then that he recognizes that he is empty, insufficient, dependent, ineffectual. From the depths of the soul now comes at once boredom, gloom, sorrow, chagrin, resentment and despair." - Blaise Pascal
"True fear comes from faith; false fear comes from doubt. True fear is joined to hope, because it is born of faith, and because men hope in the God in whom they believe. False fear is joined to despair, because men fear the God in whom they have no belief. The former fear to lose Him; the latter fear to find Him." - Blaise Pascal
"There is nothing so insupportable to man as to be in entire repose, without passion, occupation, amusement, or application. Then it is that he feels his own nothingness, isolations, insignificance, dependent nature, powerlessness, emptiness. Immediately there issue from his soul ennui, sadness, chagrin, vexation, despair." - Blaise Pascal
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way." - Charles Dickens, fully Charles John Huffam Dickens
"Ennui, perhaps, has made more gamblers than avarice, more drunkards than thirst, and perhaps as many; suicides as despair." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Dejection and despair lead to defeatism and defeat." - Dag Hammarskjöld
"Wisdom is the tears of experience, the bridge of experience and imagination over time. It is the listening heart, the melancholy sigh, the distillation of despair to provide a realistic, if often despondent, view of the world." - Daniel Bell
"Never despair, but if you do, work on in despair." - Edmund Burke
"Never despair; but if you do, work on in despair." - Edmund Burke
"Most of the crimes which disturb the internal peace of society are produced by the restraints which the necessary, but unequal, laws of property have imposed on the appetites of mankind, by confining to a few the possession of those objects that are coveted by many. Of all our passions and appetites, the love of power is of the most imperious and unsociable nature, since the pride of one man requires the submission of the multitude. In the tumult of civil discord, the laws of society lose their force, and their place is seldom supplied by those of humanity. The ardor of contention, the pride of victory, the despair of success, the memory of past injuries, and the fear of future dangers, all contribute to inflame the mind, and to silence the voice of pity. From such motives almost every page of history has been stained with civil blood." - Edward Gibbon
"Despair gives courage to a coward." - English Proverbs
"Believe not much them that seem to despise riches, for they despise them who despair of them; and none are worse than they when riches come to them." - Francis Bacon
"Religion [cannot] maintain itself apart from thought, but either advances to the comprehension of the idea, or, compelled by thought itself, becomes intensive belief - or lastly, from despair of finding itself at home in thought, flees back from it in pious horror, and becomes superstition." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"He who has never hoped can never despair." - George Bernard Shaw
"Rage is for little wrongs; despair is dumb." - Hannah More
"To tell men that they cannot help themselves is to fling them into recklessness and despair." - James Froude, fully James Anthony Froude