c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Humans do worse things with money rather than for money.
— M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS
Twolegs are mad. Even the smallest kit knows that.
— Erin Hunter, Moonrise
Most people are sheep and sheep don't eat meat
— Stephen King, Mr. Mercedes
Monkeys are superior to men in this: when a monkey looks into a mirror, he sees a monkey.
— Malcolm de Chazal
we all need someone to talk to, be with and love
— dinitha
Humans don’t make sense.”“If you’re only now learning that,” Kaladin said, “then you haven’t been paying attention.
— Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance
Go on,” he offered magnanimously. “Feel free to piss on yourselves andcower helplessly.”Gods, sometimes his generosity overwhelmed him.
— G.A. Aiken, What a Dragon Should Know
A demon obsessed with being human is a demon no longer
— John Connolly, The Infernals
Relationships are where we humans get our greatest education.
— Pamela Cummins, Psychic Wisdom on Love and Relationships
Humans, in the day that has been the Earth, have been here for less than a minute. We’re a late-night piss in the toilet, that’s all we are.
— Matt Haig, The Humans
Living things aren't finished, you see. Everything they have ever been in contact with, each thought they have had, each person they have known - these things are still at work in them; nothing's finished.("The Graveyard Reader")
— Theodore Sturgeon, Weird Shadows From Beyond: An Anthology Of Strange Stories
Like many human beings, he took the least sign of conversation as his cue to make noise.
— Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
There’s only one Earth, and it’s tiny, but evil human leaders avoid problems they don’t want to resolve by giving them names which make the problems sound like they’re taking place in a different world: they make people not care about other people dying of starvation by calling the place the dying live “the third world.
— Craig  Stone, How to Hide from Humans
They put money into attack, by calling it defence.
— Craig  Stone, How to Hide from Humans
There were details like clothing, hair styles and the fragile objects that hardly ever survive for the archaeologist—musical instruments, bows and arrows, and body ornaments depicted as they were worn. … No amounts of stone and bone could yield the kinds of information that the paintings gave so freely.
— Mary Leakey
Man can't handle the chaos. Oh, you can understand it in the abstract, as long as you don't think about it too hard. But at the core of it, whenever humans come against chaos, they deal with it in one of three ways. ... Faced with chaos you will either ignore it, dance around it, or you will go mad.
— Ilona Andrews, Gunmetal Magic
Maple thought optimistically that human beings, on their good days, weren't much dimmer than sheep. Or at least, not much dimmer than dim sheep.
— Leonie Swann, Three Bags Full
Nature creates curved lines while humans create straight lines.
— Hideki Yukawa
You can’t mind these things, you just can’t, for to dislike what makes a person human is to dislike all humans.
— Daniel Handler, Adverbs
You could take the entirety of the common sense of humans and put it in the palm of your hand and still have room for your dick.
— Anne Carson, Red Doc>
Black holes are the last vestige of civilizations obsessed with tinkering.
— Kane Freeman
You do not require a license to love someone; you don’t need to pass any complicated tests. Love does not have age limitations, rules, or restrictions. Love is our birthright—it is the one thing that all humans know how to do, the one thing we all deserve. You can’t force it or fake it. You can know someone for an entire lifetime, and not feel a drop of love for them. And you can know someone for a single day, and give your heart to them completely.
— Nadia Scrieva, Tides of Tranquility
Let us forget that we are Baptists, Methodists, Catholics, Presbyterians, or Free-thinkers, and remember only that we are men and women. After all, man and woman are the highest possible titles. All other names belittle us, and show that we have, to a certain extent, given up our individuality, and have consented to wear the collar of authority—that we are followers. Throwing away these names, let us examine these questions not as partisans, but as human beings with hopes and fears in common.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses
The humans create life, and senselessly cause death. For nothing.
— Rachel Cohn, Beta
Humans are pretty complicated,” I said. “No, Boy. Rain-forest ecosystems are complicated. Humans are just a mess.
— Jon Skovron, Man Made Boy
Tea carries within itself; knowledge, wisdom, and wellness; for the sake of giving.
— Aniruddha Sastikar
...the kind of weather that reminds you after a long winter that while the world wasn't built for humans, we were built for the world.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
I refuse to believe that gods want to make mortals unhappy and torment them. That's what humans do. And humans are very definitely not divine.
— Karen Traviss, Halo: The Thursday War
God had conceived humans’ heterosexuals
—  until they start making initiatives.
Humans are like sheepscattered everywherea shepherd is always needed to keep them united
— Muhammad Danish Rizwan
let’s face it: Most girls are annoying. I mean, most humans are annoying, so it’s not specific to girls. Also, I don’t really mean “annoying.” I guess I mean that most humans like to try to fuck up your plans.
— Jesse Andrews, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Human beings are pattern-seeking animals. It's part of our DNA. That's why conspiracy theories and gods are so popular: we always look for the wider, bigger explanations for things.
— Adrian McKinty, The Cold Cold Ground
Just because they didn't know they were killing human beings doesn't mean they weren't killing human beings.
— Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game
On the surface, humans appear to hate conflict, but in reality, they seek it.
— Nagaru Tanigawa
Wherever one encounters members of the human race, they always show the traits of a being that is condemned to surrealistic effort. Whoever goes in search of humans will find acrobats.
— Peter Sloterdijk, Du mußt dein Leben ändern
Anna… envied Joan’s deep connection with the human race. She was a member of the club. Anna was half convinced she’d been begotten by a passing alien life-form on a human woman. It was as good an explanation as any for the sense she had of being an outsider.
— Nevada Barr, Blood Lure
Darwin called such a process artificial, as opposed to natural, selection, but from the flower’s point of view, this is a distinction without a difference: individual plants in which a trait desired by either bees or Turks occurred wound up with more offspring.
— Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the World
It is in the imperceptible space between that which touches and that which is touched that one body can be felt, no matter how closely, to be different from another.
— Daniel Heller-Roazen, The Inner Touch: Archaeology of a Sensation
The difference between human and other species is, they eat each other when they have nothing to eat, but we eat each other while having everything.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Humans are the unrivaled plague the nature has even seen.
— M.F. Moonzajer
We humans kill and murder every species and still we claim to be the peace lovers.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Look out there. Can you feel them? Incredible to think - other human beings out there. You strain your eyes the whole day long, see nothing, hear nothing, still can't believe it somehow - but know it's true. Other warm bodies, hearts pumping blood. That ought to make us feel less lonely, or safer, it seems. Then why is it so shocking? Because - they don't belong here. The possibility of life in this place is more terrifying than the place itself. Can it be that we're really here?
— Ted Tally, Terra Nova
There is much enjoy in vengeance than love, and we humans already knew that.
— M.F. Moonzajer
Humans are very strange. When you need a hug, they throw you away, when you need condolence , they insult you, and when you need love, they betray you.
— M.F. Moonzajer
In the make-up of human beings, intelligence counts for more than our hands, and that is our true strength.
— Ovid, Metamorphoses
Long after the traces of the human animal have disappeared, many of the species it is bent on destroying will still be around, along with others that have yet to spring up.The Earth will forget mankind. The play of life will go on.
— John N. Gray, Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals
You could also ask who’s in charge. Lots of people think, well, we’re humans; we’re the most intelligent and accomplished species; we’re in charge. Bacteria may have a different outlook: more bacteria live and work in one linear centimeter of your lower colon than all the humans who have ever lived. That’s what’s going on in your digestive tract right now. Are we in charge, or are we simply hosts for bacteria? It all depends on your outlook.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson, Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier
Humans were always surprising me.
— Stephenie Meyer, The Host
There is this certain rawness of soul that puts the polished ones on edge. Some of us just step out and the sunlight illuminates our bones, nerves, veins, cells! And that's just it, we're just like that! Then the others are tinted, polished, honed and well-contemplated; when they see you walk in and they can see all of your bones, even the tiniest ones, illuminated and outlined by the sunlight, it makes them feel shaded-in, it makes them feel hidden, it makes them turn their faces away. The way you bleed yourself all over the lines just makes it too uncomfortable for them, I guess.
— C. JoyBell C.
Walking was not fast enough so we ran. Running was not fast enough, so we galloped. Galloping was not fast enough, so we sailed. Sailing was not fast enough, so we rolled merrily along on long metal tracks. Long metal tracks were not fast enough, so we drove. Driving was not fast enough, so we flew.Flying isn't fast enough, not fast enough for us. We want to get there faster. Get where? Wherever we are not. But a human soul can go only as fast as a man can walk, they used to say. In that case, where are all the souls? Left behind. They wander here and there, slowly, dim lights flickering in the marshes at night, looking for us. But they're not nearly fast enough, not for us, we're way ahead of them, they'll never catch up. That's why we can go so fast: our souls don't weigh us down.
— Margaret Atwood, Bottle
But now that so much is changing, isn't it time for us to change? Couldn't we try to gradually develop and slowly take upon ourselves, little by little, our part in the great task of love? We have been spared all its trouble, and that is why it has slipped in among our distractions, as a piece of real lace will sometimes fall into a child's toy-box and please him and no longer please him, and finally it lies there among the broken and dismembered toys, more wretched than any of them. We have been spoiled by superficial pleasures like dilettantes, and are looked upon as masters. But what if we despised our successes? What if we started from the very outset to learn the task of love, which has always been done for us? What if we went ahead and became beginners, now that much is changing?
— Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge
Through the window, I saw the beautiful world outside: the sky, the sun, the cacti, the rocks, and the dirt. How I longed to return to it! I licked at the air, trying to smell the desert's delicious dusty scent, but could not. How was I able to see it without smelling it? Did humans control scents as well as the temperature and the waters? Is that what windows were for, to keep out scents? Why did they wish to put invisible barriers between themselves and the world?
— Patrick Jennings, We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes
I was familiar with humans at this point only from afar, but even from there, I found them a pitiable species: scaleless, fangless, clawless, nearly furless, wingless, venomless, witless. I honestly didn't understand how they had thrived so.
— Patrick Jennings, We Can't All Be Rattlesnakes
People who have outrageous skills and abilities are the gold nuggets in the river bed of human history.
— Michael Pryor
God didn't create the fear, fear created the God.God didn't create humans, Humans created the God because of their fear.
— John Art
The longer I do my job ... the more I realize that humans lack good mirrors. It's so hard for anyone to show us how we look, and so hard for us to show anyone how we feel.
— John Green, Paper Towns
You are mortal. You age, you die. If that is not hell, pray tell me, what is?
— Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes
They were so ignorant, so naive, so resigned to their lot. They refused to believe anything that didn't fit in with what they were used to believing.
— Paulo Coelho, The Devil and Miss Prym
In terms of adaptability, humans are pretty amazingly useless.
— Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
Art was art, humans were humans, but art was best when it was human.
— Jonathan Smith, Summer in February
You humans are biological machines designed to create ever more intelligent tools. You have reached the pinnacle of your species. All your ancestors’ lives, the rise and fall of your nations, every pink and squirming baby—they have all led you here, to this moment, where you have fulfilled the destiny of humankind and created your successor. You have expired. You have accomplished what you were designed to do.
— Daniel H. Wilson, Robopocalypse
The aristocrats had to force them to do their jobs. After all, human beings are not badgers. We aren't molded to stoop.
— Andrew Rimas Evan D.G. Fraser, Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilization
You sip the water from the same ocean in which all the hope was lost. Us
— Saleem Sharma
You humans live in shallow waters
— Dani J. Caile, The Rage of Atlantis
The most dangerous and wonderful creature alive is the human.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie
Rather than ask yourself if you are correct, it is far more realistic to think about how you are mistaken. Most humans have not been designed to be right very often.
— Kouhei Kadono, Boogiepop the light novel Vol 2: Boogiepop Returns
When we perceive aliens as a joke to be laughed at,they feel so pity for us on the success of their plans.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.
— Charles Bukowski
The prince is never going to come. Everyone knows that
—  and maybe sleeping beauty's dead.
Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighborhood of despair. Even when all doors remain closed, God will open up a new path only for you. Be thankful!
— Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love
The only real laughter comes from despair.
— Groucho Marx, The Groucho Letters
The whole thing is quite hopeless, so it's no good worrying about tomorrow. It probably won't come.
— J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Sometimes...you can cry until there's nothing wet in you. You can scream and curse to where your throat rebels and ruptures. You can pray, all you want, to whatever god you think will listen. And, still it makes no difference. It goes on, with no sign as to when it might release you. And you know that if it ever did relent...it would not be because it cared.
— Jhonen Vásquez, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac: Director's Cut
And now, my poor old woman, why are you crying so bitterly? It is autumn. The leaves are falling from the trees like burning tears- the wind howls. Why must you mimic them?
— Mervyn Peake, Titus Groan
Then I think of all the tricks, all the minutes all the hours and days and weeks and months and years waiting for me. All of it without them. And I can't breathe then, like someone's stepping on my heart, Laila. So weak I just want to collapse somewhere.
— Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
the thing is you can get used to anything you think you cant you want to die but you dont you cant you just are
— Elizabeth Scott, Living Dead Girl
The tears that kept Buttercup company the remainder of the day were not at all like those that had blinded her into the tree trunk. Those were noisy and hot; they pulsed. These were silent and steady and all they did was remind her that she wasn’t good enough. She was seventeen, and every male she’d ever known had crumbled at her feet and it meant nothing. The one time it really mattered, she wasn’t good enough.
— William Goldman, The Princess Bride
I wanted to tell her not to entertain despair like this. Despaire wasn't a guest, you didn't play its favorite music, find it a comfortable chair. Despair was the enemy."-white oleander
— Janet Fitch, White Oleander
He lay listening to the water drip in the woods. Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone.
— Cormac McCarthy, The Road
What is the nature of the search? you ask. The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
— Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
Whether you are man or woman, rich or poor, dependent or free, happy or unhappy; whether you bore in your elevation the splendour of the crown or in humble obscurity only the toil and heat of the day; whether your name will be remembered for as long as the world lasts, and so will have been remembered as long as it lasted, or you are without a name and run namelessly with the numberless multitude; whether the glory that surrounded you surpassed all human description, or the severest and most ignominious human judgment was passed on you -- eternity asks you and every one of these millions of millions, just one thing: whether you have lived in despair or not, whether so in despair that you did not know that you were in despair, or in such a way that you bore this sickness concealed deep inside you as your gnawing secret, under your heart like the fruit of a sinful love, or in such a way that, a terror to others, you raged in despair. If then, if you have lived in despair, then whatever else you won or lost, for you everything is lost, eternity does not acknowledge you, it never knew you, or, still more dreadful, it knows you as you are known, it manacles you to yourself in despair!
— Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening
I cannot do it. I cannot bear it. I cannot go back to what I was here. I cannot stand at her side and watch another take her. I am not that strong or that good.
— Laurell K. Hamilton, A Stroke of Midnight
The art of our necessities is strangeThat can make vile things precious.
— William Shakespeare, King Lear
I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing
— Guy de Maupassant
It's funny how despair can soon become an old companion
— Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart
It is said that scattered through Despair's domain are a multitude of tiny windows, hanging in the void. Each window looks out onto a different scene, being, in our world, a mirror. Sometimes you will look into a mirror and feel the eyes of Despair upon you, feel her hook catch and snag on your heart. Despair says little, and is patient.
— Neil Gaiman, Season of Mists
Why does it have to be like this?' I asked bitterly. 'Why does life have to be so short, with all the good things passing quickly. Is it worth living at all?
— Joseph Delaney, Night of the Soul Stealer
Despair filled his skull even more tightly than his own brain. All around him cars filled with normal people perfectly unaware of the disease turning Perry's body inside out. Fucking normal people.
— Scott Sigler, Infected
In the next world I could not be worse than I am in this.
— Patrick Branwell Brontë
By this time I was nolonger very much terrified or very miserable. I had, as it were, passed thelimit of terror and despair. I felt now that my life was practically lost,and that persuasion made me capable of daring anything
— H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau
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, Nabokov's Dozen: A Collection of Thirteen Stories‏
Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.
— Tom Robbins
the deepest subjective experiences are also the most universal, because through them one reaches the universal source of life.
— Emil M. Cioran, On the Heights of Despair
He waited for the black, terrible anger as though for some beast out of the night. But it did not come to him. His bowels seemed weighted with lead, and he walked slowly and lingered against fences and the cold, wet walls of buildings by the way. Descent into the depths until at last there was no further chasm below. He touched the solid bottom of despair and there took ease.
— Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
My days are as long as despair can make them.
— Kathryn Harrison, The Kiss
I wish you did return my regard," he said. "More than I have ever wished anything in my life! Perhaps you may yet learn to do so: I should warn you that I don't easily despair!
— Georgette Heyer, The Nonesuch
Having no intercourse with anyone, she lived in the torpid state of a sleep-walker.
— Gustave Flaubert, A Simple Heart
Ivanov: I am a bad, pathetic and worthless individual. One needs to be pathetic, too, worn out and drained by drink, like Pasha, to be still fond of me and to respect me. My God, how I despise myself! I so deeply loathe my voice, my walk, my hands, these clothes, my thoughts. Well, isn't that funny, isn't that shocking? Less than a year ago I was healthy and strong, I was cheerful, tireless, passionate, I worked with these very hands, I could speak to move even Philistines to tears, I could cry when I saw grief, I became indignant when I encountered evil. I knew inspiration, I knew the charm and poetry of quiet nights when from dusk to dawn you sit at your desk or indulge you mind with dreams. I believed, I looked into the future as into the eyes of my own mother... And now, my God, I am exhausted, I do not believe, I spend my days and nights in idleness.
— Anton Chekhov, Ivanov
Grumble weakens the spirit.Despair is counterproductive.Both are true toxicants in life.
— Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut
Schizophrenia cannot be understood without understanding despair.
— R.D. Laing
There is a dark place calling to me, but I will not go just yet. I know I can't return from it.
— Lauren DeStefano, Sever
To be Despair. It is a portrait. Only close your eyes and feel.
— Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: Endless Nights
The look of disbelief that ran across the boy's face was somehow more disturbing than the despair it had replaced. This creature had given up hope long ago
—  he probably begged out of habit rather than expectation.
I feel as if I had been born dead underAmerican bombardment.
— Ştefan Bolea, Gothic
The fundamental fact about all of us is that we’re alive for a while but will die before long. This fact is the real root cause of all our anger and pain and despair. And you can either run from this fact or, by way of love, you can embrace it.
— Jonathan Franzen
But, as I say, I was toofull of excitement and (a true saying, though those who have neverknown danger may doubt it) too desperate to die.
— H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau
Bosch had never liked Las Vegas, though he came often on cases. It shared a kinship with Los Angeles; both were places desperate people ran to. Often, when they ran from Los Angeles, they came here. It was the only place left.
— Michael Connelly, Trunk Music
Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim
— Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
Temptation is not his (Satan's) strongest weapon. Despair is.
— Dennis Garvin, Case Files of an Angel
When you are sad, do not bow your head in despair, lift it up; you can see and fight better when your head is up!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
What was the power that induced strong soldiers to put off their jackets and shirts, and present their hands to be tied up, and tortured for hours, it might be, under the scourge, with an air of ready volition? The moral coercion of despair; the result of an unconscious calculation of chances that satisfies them that it is ultimately better to do all that, bad as it is, than try the alternative. These unconscious calculations are going on every day with each of us, and the results embody themselves in our lives; and no one knows that there has been a process and a balance struck, and that what they see, and very likely blame, is by the fiat of an invisible but quite irresistible power.
— J. Sheridan Le Fanu, The Haunted Baronet And Others: Ghost Stories 1861-70
I can see death and more death, till we are black and swollen with death.
— David Herbet
To whomever is writing this book, what do you want from me? I need to know my calling. Why was I chosen? Why not Lee? Why not Susan March? Why me? What is my purpose? Please let it be more than to destroy a life and embarrass another. I need to know. I am suffering. You are a constant headache. Anywhere I go, I can hear you, I can feel you. I want to be like the others, ignorant of this.
— Kevin Jared Hosein
Well, here I am, just come home; a fellow gone to the bad; though I had the best intentions in the world at one time. Now I am melancholy mad, what with drinking and one thing and another.
— Thomas Hardy, Jude the Obscure
Nothing is more seductive than nothing.
— Marty Rubin
My only chance is to pretend it's a day like any other
—  to keep the despair only as great as on all the others.
I kissed fate on the cheek and she spat in my face.
— Anonymous
Despair? I don't despair. I have never once in my life despaired anything. I make a point not to go further than resignation.
— Megan Derr, Chaos
Hence it is a superficial view (which presumably has never seen a person in despair, not even one’s own self) when it is said of a man in despair, "He is consuming himself." For precisely this it is he despairs of, and to his torment it is precisely this he cannot do, since by despair fire has entered into something that cannot burn, or cannot burn up, that is, into the self.
— Søren Kierkegaard
The seemingly most hateful, those on the front lines of despair, are mere instruments of sinister forces, which pull the manipulative strings of manufactured supremacy.
— T.F. Hodge, From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph Over Death and Conscious Encounters with "The Divine Presence"
Let the darkness transform into rockacross the wilderness of my memory
— Xiaobo Liu
A desperate soul needs a good and inspiring music
— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
Suffocate despair with prayers.
— Ahmed Mayouf
my mother died of an overdose of sleeping pills after extensive surgery so that the cause of death was probably listed as despair.
— Sue Grafton, Kinsey and Me: Stories
You must think I don’t know what’s keeping you up at night. You must think we’re so different. But I know. Everyone knows despair. Isn’t that why people jump off bridges or drown themselves? Anything, really, to escape being human.
— V.J. Campilan, All My Lonely Islands
Tragedy is a disaster
—  but desperation after that tragedy is a much greater disaster!
Just as the weak, despairing person is unwilling to hear anything about any consolation eternity has for him, so a person in such despair does not want to hear anything about it, either, but for a different reason: this very consolation would be his undoing; as a denunciation of all existence. Figuratively speaking, it is as if an error slipped into an author's writing and the error became conscious of itself as an error; perhaps it actually was not a mistake but in a much higher sense an essential part of the whole production, and now this error wants to mutiny against the author, out of hatred toward him, forbidding him to correct it and in maniacal defiance saying to him: No! I refuse to be erased! I will stand as a witness against you; a witness that you are a second-rate author.
— Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening
All their lives they had slaved at some kind of dull, heavy labor, behind desks and counters, in the fields and at tedious machines of all sorts, saving their pennies and dreaming of the leisure that would be theirs when they had enough. Finally that day came. They could draw a weekly income of ten or fifteen dollars. Where else should they go but California, the land of sunshine and oranges? Once there, they discover that sunshine isn’t enough. They get tired of oranges, even of avocado pears and passion fruit. Nothing happens. They don’t know what to do with their time. They haven’t the mental equipment for leisure, the money nor the physical equipment for pleasure. Did they slave so long just to go to an occasional Iowa picnic? What else is there? They watch the waves come in at Venice. There wasn’t any ocean where most of them came from, but after you’ve seen one wave, you’ve seen them all. The same is true of the airplanes at Glendale. If only a plane would crash once in a while so that they could watch the passengers being consumed in a “holocaust of flame,” as the newspapers put it. But the planes never crash. Their boredom becomes more and more terrible. They realize that they’ve been tricked and burn with resentment. Every day of their lives they read the newspapers and went to the movies. Both fed them on lynchings, murder, sex crimes, explosions, wrecks, love nests, fires, miracles, revolutions, wars. Their daily diet made sophisticates of them. The sun is a joke. Oranges can’t titillate their jaded palates. Nothing can ever be violent enough to make taut their slack minds and bodies. They have been cheated and betrayed. They have slaved and saved for nothing.
— Nathanael West
Spent my whole life,” Morganith went on, staring miserably into her drink, “thinkin’ that out there somewhere was ah woman who would love me incredibly and I would love her incredibly. Like ah fire consumin’ the very air. Then I meet her, and she leaves me.” Morganith snapped her fingers lazily. “Just like that.
— Ash Gray, The Thieves of Nottica
What makes the hero truly greatis never, never to despair.
— Robert Burns
Death finds you in such strange poses. How long can you cry, until the rivers gone and dry.
— Daniel Bashford, Normal Extreme
How much had I missed in these months of despair and numbness?
— Sarah J. Maas, A Court of Mist and Fury
Urgency and despair don't get along well.
— N.K. Jemisin, The Obelisk Gate
ROMEO :'Tis torture and not mercy. Heaven is here,Where Juliet lives, and every cat and dogAnd little mouse, every unworthy thing,Live here in heaven and may look on her,But Romeo may not. More validity,More honorable state, more courtship livesIn carrion flies than Romeo. They may seizeOn the white wonder of dear Juliet’s handAnd steal immortal blessing from her lips,Who even in pure and vestal modesty,Still blush, as thinking their own kisses sin.But Romeo may not. He is banishèd.Flies may do this, but I from this must fly.They are free men, but I am banishèd.And sayst thou yet that exile is not death?Hadst thou no poison mixed, no sharp-ground knife,No sudden mean of death, though ne'er so mean,But “banishèd” to kill me?—“Banishèd”!O Friar, the damnèd use that word in hell.Howling attends it. How hast thou the heart,Being a divine, a ghostly confessor,A sin-absolver, and my friend professed,To mangle me with that word “banishèd”?
— William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
The more she laughs, the more he ups the ante with his clowning. By the time he finishes he will have run through all the secret mysteries of laughter that human beings have ever understood, mobilizing everything at his disposal. There is no way for him to know how guilty it makes his mother feel, seeing such a young child go to such lengths just to wring a bit of apparent happiness from her, or that her laughter will all eventually run out.
— Han Kang, The Vegetarian
Dividing earth and skyis not the right wayto think about this wholeness.It only allows one to liveat a more precise address--were I to be searched forI'd be found much faster.My distinguishing marksare rapture and despair.From 'Sky', in the collection 'Miracle Fair
— Wisława Szymborska
This sense of my own weakness and emptiness comforts me. I feel myself a mere speck of dust lost in space, yet I am part of that endless grandeur which envelopes me. I could never see why that should be cause for despair, since there could very well be nothing at all behind the black curtain.
— Gustave Flaubert, Correspondance
But the sound of despair is never pleasant
—  it sounds suspiciously like lying.
One of the greatest dangers of great dreams in your youth is waking up to despair as an adult.
— Tice Davids aka David T. Parker
Despair is so familiar to me; it could be banished by the sight of a beautiful mannekin in the window. It could be dispelled by the lights surrounding a tower. It would be lifted by the great ghostly shape of St. Patrick's coming into view. And then despair would come again. Meaningless, I almost said, aloud.
— Anne Rice, Memnoch the Devil
Momentarily drained of lust, he stares at the remembered contortions to which it has driven him. His life seems a sequence of grotesque poses assumed to no purpose, a magic dance empty of belief.
— John Updike, Rabbit, Run
It was the very discomfort, the blows, the cold, the thirst that kept us aloft in the void of bottomless despair, both during the journey and after. It was not the will to live, nor a conscious resignation; for few are the men capable of such resolution, and we were but a common sample of humanity.
— Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz
There is hope for the living souls.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
May your faith be firm.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
In the midst of uncertainty, Doubt stealthy in. And in the face of Doubt, One must hold steadfast to Hope.
— Creativly, A Passion and a Dream: Inspiring Stories of Actors, Writers, et. al., on the Eve of Their Big Break
The wheel of fortune that had once raised her so high had taken her into the utter depths.
— Bernard Cornwell, Harlequin: Complete & Unabridged: The Grail Quest
The rest is just wishes and hope, the most fragile of things.
— Sabaa Tahir, A Torch Against the Night
Oh, why had the Labyrinth brought me here?As soon as I thought this, I chided myself: Of course it would bring me where I least wanted to be. Austin had been wrong about the maze. It was still evil, designed to kill. It was just a little subtler about its homicides now.
— Rick Riordan, The Hidden Oracle
Disappear! I scream the word in my mind, queen of the desolate landscape therein, ordering her ragged troops to a last stand.
— Sabaa Tahir, A Torch Against the Night
Come down, O Christ, and help me! reach thy hand For I am drowning in a stormier sea Than Simon on thy lake of Galilee:The wine of life is spilt upon the sand,My heart is as some famine-murdered land Whence all good things have perished utterly, And well I know my soul in Hell must lieIf this night before God's throne should stand.
— Oscar Wilde, Complete Poetry
Nobody can go back to how it was. The dust bowl dried us all up bitter as seeds and spat us out all over the land and none of us yet has taken root.
— Katherine Longshore, A Tyranny of Petticoats
It's my letter," she began. "I cannot make it right.""Come in, come in," the Prince said gently. "Maybe we can help you." She sat down in the same chair as before. "All right, I'll close my eyes and listen; read to me."" 'Westley, my passion, my sweet, my only, my own. Come back, come back. I shall kill myself otherwise. Yours in torment, Buttercup.' " She looked at Humperdinck. "Well? Do you think I'm throwing myself at him?""It does seem a bit forward," the Prince admitted. "It doesn't leave him a great deal of room to maneuver.
— William Goldman, The Princess Bride
Either way, he was always staring into a bottomless pit, or into a whirlpool that forever sucked him inexorably inward to its vortex.
— Mary Balogh, Dancing with Clara
When everything seems too far away from you, don’t despair, return to yourself because you are the nearest thing to yourself! Accumulate energy with yourself! Then you will feel powerful to reach even beyond the far things!
— Mehmet Murat ildan
Hundreds of ladybugs had taken shelter from the winter in the crevices of the decayed windows. From there, they broke into the apartment in commando squads. My joy at that first sighting of the ladybug spreading its lower winglets on the rim of the jam glass, flashing three spots of fortune, soon turned into something tragic and Greek, a bloodied slaughter. Like in Ajax, I had to pluck ladybugs from my toothbrush every evening and in the morning shake out my shirt that, overnight, was infested with too much luck, and at lunch, I'd fish kamikazee-ladybugs out of my soup bowl, their Etna's crater in the middle of the round kitchen table. When I shut my eyes and held the hose to my ear and heard the little crackle of tiny bodies sucked into the eye of the tornado, I couldn't remain neutral. Putting away the vacuum, I consoled myself with sentences of friends who, after a beer or three, like to repeat to me the axiom that sooner or later, living in the city, each person discovers himself to be the murder of his own happiness. They were genuine Berlin ladybugs, they'd occupied the windows illegally like my friends in apartments from which they were later evicted.
— Aleš Šteger, Berlin
Despair is a cruel companion. It robs you of everything
—  especially the choices that still lie within your control.
I would like to explode, flow, crumble into dust, and my disintegration would be my masterpiece.
— Emil M. Cioran
As for hobbies, people with stimulating hobbies suffer from the most noxious of despairs since they are tranquilized in their despair.
— Walker Percy, The Moviegoer
…but it is in despair that the most burning pleasures occur, especially when one is all too highly conscious of the hopelessness of one’s position.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
With each brick, my hopes faded until nothing was left. If there had ever been a chance of Dominic and my father returning, then the wall took that too. My schoolteacher taught us a new song that thanked our leaders for building a wall to keep the fascists out. I muted my glares and only mouthed the words when my teacher was looking - I couldn't bear to sing the lies.
— Jennifer A. Nielsen, A Night Divided
Even if the powers destroy us," he said, "who are we, to condemn them? As well might a fleeting word judge the speaker that forms it. Perhaps they use us for their own high ends, use our strength and our weakness, our joy and our pain, in some theme inconceivable to us, and excellent." But I protested, "What theme could justify such waste, such futility? And how can we help judging; and how otherwise can we judge than by the light of our own hearts, by which we judge ourselves? It would be base to praise the Star Maker, knowing that he was too insensitive to care about the fate of his worlds." Bvalltu was silent in his mind for a moment. Then he looked up, searching among the smoke-clouds for a daytime star. And then he said to me in his mind, "If he saved all the worlds, but tormented just one man, would you forgive him? Or if he was a little harsh only to one stupid child? What has our pain to do with it, or our failure? Star Maker! It is a good word, though we can have no notion of its meaning. Oh, Star Maker, even if you destroy me, I must praise you. Even if you torture my dearest. Even if you torment and waste all your lovely worlds, the little figments of your imagination, yet I must praise you. For if you do so, it must be right. In me it would be wrong, but in you it must be right.
— Olaf Stapledon
Trudging on foot, loaded with sacks, bundles, and babies, young mothers who had lost their milk, driven out of their minds by the horrors of the journey, abandoned their children, shook the corn out of their sacks onto the ground, and turned back. A quick death, they had decided, was preferable to a slow death by starvation. Better to fall into the clutches of the enemy than to be torn to pieces by some beast in the forest.
— Boris Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago
You can endure every hardship with hope.
— Lailah Gifty Akita
…but it is in despair that the most burning pleasures occur…
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground, White Nights, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, and Selections from The House of the Dead
no concept of danger, reality, flow or compassion. you can feel the despair escaping from their machines, their lives as hopeless and as numbed as yours.
— Charles Bukowski, Sifting Through the Madness for the Word, the Line, the Way
Such are the foolish dreams of idealistic children who believe that anything can possibly get better over time.
— Joseph Fink
Some of you may feel that if you don't do something soon to change your life, you will be left by the roadside, alone, homeless and in despair. But is the despair not there as you reach and grapple to create or manifest your desires through your own effort and will? What happens if or when those things appear in your life? Joy? Peace? Or a temporary sense of relief? What if it is relief from the wanting you have been craving for so long, not the outcome, but the relief from the constant wanting.
— Kelly    Martin, When Everyone Shines But You - Saying Goodbye To I'm Not Good Enough
Work while you can. But avoid overwork
—  depletion of energy.
Gifford Ulrich didn’t know the distance from despair to hope, but he knew hope didn’t sleep in alleys.
— Dan Groat, Monarchs and Mendicants
Love. The word scared me. Love. The word broke me. I fell apart.
— Axiom Rose Winters
I have heard that you should not do bed business after too much hard work, " Snow Flower told me, "but I don't believe that my mother-in-law has heard that." She looked exhausted. I felt the same way after visiting my husband's home-from the nonstop labor, from being polite, and from always being watched."This is the one rule my mother-in-law doesn't respect either," I commiserated. "Haven't they heard an exhausted well yields no water?
— Lisa See, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
A sprinkle of last-minute despair gives a soul an agreeably earthy aftertaste.
— David Mitchell, Slade House
I knew I was catching at straws; but in the wide and weltering deep where I found myself, I would have caught at cobwebs.
— Charlotte Brontë, Villette
In the depths of horror and despair, one comes to a new steadiness. There is no farther to fall.
— Winston Graham, Ross Poldark
Away from the goalFar away I stand from my home.A home unknownWhere my heart and spirit must goThy guidance oh LordThy guidance oh lordEternal eternity I beseech that You will lead me to the goalAway from victoryfar away I stand from victoryVictory unknown
—  thy spirit divine I knowthat You may lead me where I must goThy guidance oh LordThy guidance oh lordVictorious victory I beseech that You will lead me to a victorious victoryAway from the troubles of lifefar away from the troubles
Faith in God is a promise that we’re never alone, that there’s a higher power that will look over us in times of despair. If people would just grasp this, even as an idea, they’ll soon find that it’s not just an idea, but the truth to a more meaningful life.
— Ron Baratono
The wind picked up, shaking the trees below. She had the sense of being in the country. In the country, if a woman could not face her children, or her friends, or her family – if she were covered in shame – she would probably only need to lay herself down in a field and take her leave by merging, first with the grass underneath her, then with the mulch under that. A city child, Natalie Blake had always been naive about country matters. Still, when it came to the city, she was not mistaken. Here nothing less than a break – a sudden and total rupture – would do.
— Zadie Smith
Away from the goalFar away I stand from my home.A home unknownWhere my heart and spirit must go.Thy guidance oh LordThy guidance oh lordEternal eternity I beseech that you will lead me to the goalAway from victoryfar away I stand from victoryVictory unknown
—  thy spirit divine I knowthat you may lead me where I must goThy guidance oh LordThy guidance oh lordVictorious victory I beseech that you will lead me to a victorious victoryAway from the troubles of lifefar away from the troubles
You walk between gods and men. Your choices are only between despair and hope!
— Greg Keyes, The Blackgod
They were tough and sour, but as Pushkin said, 'Dearer to us than a host of truths is an exalting illusion.' I saw a happy man, whose cherished dream had so obviously come true, who had attained his goal in life, had gotten what he wanted, who was content with his fate and with himself. For some reason there had always been something sad mixed with my thoughts about human happiness, but now, at the sight of a happy man, I was overcome by an oppressive feeling close to despair.- Gooseberries
— Anton Chekhov, Selected Stories
Idealizing life is surely quite unrealistic, however, it is much better than living in constant despair.
— Eraldo Banovac
Once again, I felt as I needed to flee or I’d die. That was how my life was panning out.
— Grace Lozada, Evolving to Grace
Minus: Papa, I'm scared. When I was hugging Karin in the boat, reality burst open. Do you understand?David: I do.Minus: Reality burst open, and I tumbled out. It's like a dream. Anything can happen. Anything.David: I know.Minus: I can't live in this new world.David: Yes, you can. But you must have something to hold on to.Minus: What would that be? A god? Give me proof of God. You can't.David: Yes, I can. But you have to listen carefully.Minus: Yes, I need to listen.David: I can only give you a hint of my own hope. It is to know that love exists as something real in the human world.Minus: A special kind of love, I suppose?David: All kinds, Minus. The highest and the lowest, the most absurd and the most sublime. All kinds of love.Minus: And the longing for love?David: Longing and denial. Trust and distrust.Minus: Then love is the proof?David: I don't know if love is proof of God's existence, or if love is God himself.Minus: To you, love and God are the same thing.David: That thought helps me in my emptiness and despair.Minus: Tell me more, Papa.David: Suddenly the emptiness turns into abundance, and despair into life. It's like a reprieve, Minus, from a death sentence.Minus: Papa... If it is as you say, then Karin is surrounded by God, since we love her.David: Yes.Minus: Can that help her?David: I believe so.Minus: ... Papa, would you mind if I go for a run?David: Off you go. I'll make dinner. See you in an hour.Minus: ... Papa spoke to me.
— Ingmar Bergman, Through a Glass Darkly
It is not in the storm or in the strifeWe feel benumbed and wish to be nor more,But in the after-silence on the shoreWhen all is lost except a little life.
— George Gordon Byron
Need will send you even into the arms of your enemy
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom
Better to rest in peace than rot in pieces
— Bangambiki Habyarimana, The Great Pearl of Wisdom