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aa3412f Life ... is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. hopelessness futility life William Shakespeare
b224fae "Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation- the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true." hopelessness intelligence ambivalent implausible inner-conflict opposing-views impossible hopeless F. Scott Fitzgerald
ea76a2c Love demands everything, they say, but my love demands only this: that no matter what happens or how long it takes, you`ll keep faith in me, you`ll remember who we are, and you`ll never feel despair. hopelessness life love inspirational Ann Brashares
2262449 A weird time in which we are alive. We can travel anywhere we want, even to other planets. And for what? To sit day after day, declining in morale and hope. hopelessness future existentialism Philip K. Dick
c5968c1 A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future. hopelessness suicide hope Albert Camus
13f4214 The whole thing is quite hopeless, so it's no good worrying about tomorrow. It probably won't come. hopelessness worry J R R Tolkien
f2388d2 No reflection was to be allowed now, not one glance was to be cast back; not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet, so deadly sad, that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank, something like then world when the deluge was gone by. hopelessness future past sadness heartbreak Charlotte Brontë
ca4a8fb If a grasshopper tries to fight a lawnmower, one may admire his courage but not his judgement. hopelessness lost-causes Robert A. Heinlein
e892341 I am as silent as death. Do this: Go to your bedroom. Your nice, safe, warm bedroom that is not a glass coffin behind a morgue door. Lie down on your bed not made of ice. Stick your fingers in your ears. Do you hear that? The pulse of life from your heart, the slow in-and-out from your lungs? Even when you are silent, even when you block out all noise, your body is still a cacophony of life. Mine is not. It is the silence that drives me mad. The silence that drives the nightmares to me. Because what if I am dead? How can someone without a beating heart, without breathing lungs live like I do? I must be dead. And this is my greatest fear: After 301 years, when they pull my glass coffin from this morgue, and they let my body thaw like chicken meat on the kitchen counter, I will be just like I am now. I will spend all of eternity trapped in my dead body. There is nothing beyond this. I will be locked within myself forever. And I want to scream. I want to throw open my eyes wake up and not be alone with myself anymore, but I can't. I can't. hopelessness fear monologue Beth Revis
4032f26 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. hopelessness love John Fowles
6b63adc 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. hopelessness Stephen King
fa736e7 "There are times when you don't belong and you think you're going to kill yourself. Once I went to a hotel. Later that night I made a plan. The plan was I would leave my family when my second child was born. And that's what I did. I got up one morning, made breakfast, went to the bus stop, got on a bus. I'd left a note. I got a job in a library in Canada. It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. There it is. No-one's going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life." -Laura Brown-" hopelessness loneliness spirit life Michael Cunningham
e8b8853 The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes. hopelessness stars night eyes Elie Wiesel
2714a15 There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly-entered road of apprenticeship to Joe. hopelessness Charles Dickens
60bb1b7 I've been clinging to this world like a discarded shell of an insect stuck to a branch, about to be blown off forever by a gust of wind. hopelessness loneliness life Haruki Murakami
fc14fa5 It is a well-known fact that very often, putting the period of boyhood out of the argument, the older we grow the more cynical and hardened we become; indeed, many of us are only saved by timely death from moral petrification, if not from moral corruption. hopelessness morality amorality growing-old corruption immorality cynicism H. Rider Haggard
29a3b4d I often think of death. True. Suicide is a reasonable option. True. My sins are unpardonable. I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I leave it blank. hopelessness suicide guilt James Frey
6d921a5 . . .where there is no more hope, song remains. hopelessness music song Victor Hugo
4c88bcb I am no fun at all. In fact, I am anti-fun. Not as in anti-violence, but as in anti-matter. I am not so much against fun - although I suppose I kind of am - as I am the opposite of fun. I suck the fun out of a room. Or perhaps I'm just a different kind of fun; the kind that leaves on bereft of hope; the kind of fun that ends in tears. hopelessness tears David Rakoff
2be316f I am afraid a monster is grown that will devour all of us. Yet we must fight him. hopelessness fear monster hopeless Isaac Asimov
70e6f48 ...he began to fear whether in the presence of far greater events, all his acts would not fade into insignificance, just as a drop of rain disappears into the sea. hopelessness fear-of-failure Henryk Sienkiewicz
0cb0c45 I do not view suicide as wicked, just terribly sad. There is only one death, but it is like a stone cast into a pond - the ripples stretch far. Such an act must leave a burden of sorrow, guilt, shame and confusion on an entire family. A natural death, such as my father suffered, is hard enough to deal with. A decision to end one's life must be still more devastating for those left behind. I cannot imagine the degree of hopelessness someone must feel to contemplate such an act. hopelessness suicide sad Juliet Marillier
ca4e706 "All's well that ends well.' 'Assuming there's an end somewhere,' Aomame said. Tamaru formed some short creases near his mouth that were faintly reminiscent of a smile. 'There has to be an end somewhere. It's just that nothing's labeled "This is the end." Is the top rung of a ladder labeled "This is the last rung. Please don't step higher than this'?" Aomame shook her head. 'It's the same thing,' Tamaru said. Aomame said, 'If you use common sense and keep your eyes open, it becomes clear enough where the end is.' Tamaru nodded. 'And even if it doesn't' -- he made a falling gesture with his finger -- 'the end is right there." hopelessness suicide hope eyes-wide-open keep-going-keep-your-eyes-open ladder common-sense endings end Haruki Murakami
67aca3e An event of great agony is bearable only in the belief that it will bring about a better world. When it does not, as in the aftermath of another vast calamity in 1914-18, disillusion is deep and moves on to self-doubt and self-disgust. hopelessness hope Barbara W. Tuchman
1986824 Moonlight filtered in through the blinds illuminating their bedroom, but the bright glow couldn't penetrate the darkness that surrounded her heart. hopelessness depression sadness despair J.E.B. Spredemann
f885732 You are young; you have hopes. One by one they will go, and nothing will be left but the bare fact of life. hopelessness Jack Vance
6d0706c It ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all my life I hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last--into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment! I insist upon that. I have spoken of this because I keep wanting to know for a fact whether other people feel such enjoyment? I will explain; the enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one's own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into. And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely nothing. Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness, that one is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were any consolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realise that he actually is a scoundrel. hopelessness struggle depression agony inevitabilities fatalism shame despair Fyodor Dostoyevsky
781a30d For several years Quinn had been having the same conversations with this man, whose name he did not know. Once, when he had been in the luncheonette, they had talked about baseball, and now, each time Quinn came in, they continued to talk about it. In the winter, the talk was of trades, predictions, memories. During the season, it was always the most recent game. They were both Mets fans, and the hopelessness of that passion had created a bond between them. hopelessness sports Paul Auster
89e4b70 Confusion and hopelessness don't necessarily cause a person to act. hopelessness Bret Easton Ellis
b140d38 My last chance had vanished into itself like a snail coiling up into his shell. Insidiously I had lost my grip, and now this was it. I thought all this without much emotion. I really didn't care anymore. I couldn't hang on anymore. I didn't have the guts to kill myself, but I didn't want it to continue. I walked a couple of blocks, empty, listless, and wished I could cry. ...The diabolic hope, the purposeful pulsing of blood, the flight into coherence allowed for some rationalizing an afterlife. A new theology was evolving, one that had a faith-in-death clause. It was evolved when I kicked a dead waterbug on the pavement. It was dried out, hollowed, emptied, like some kind of shell. Maybe, I thought, its body is a shell, maybe all bodies are shells. We hatch and die. Our spirit or something like that is the yoke: it lives the real life, the true life. It wasn't comforting. hopelessness life Arthur Nersesian
792a272 To the bankrupt poet, to the jilted lover, to anyone who yearns to elude the doubt within and the din without, the tidal strait between Manhattan Island and her favorite suburb offers the specious illusion of easy death. Melville prepared for the plunge from the breakwater on the South Street promenade, Whitman at the railing of the outbound ferry, both men redeemed by some Darwinian impulse, maybe some epic vision, which enabled them to change leaden water into lyric wine. Hart Crane rejected the limpid estuary for the brackish swirl of the Caribbean Sea. In each generation, from Washington Irving's to Truman Capote's, countless young men of promise and talent have examined the rippling foam between the nation's literary furnace and her literary playground, questioning whether the reams of manuscript in their Brooklyn lofts will earn them garlands in Manhattan's salons and ballrooms, wavering between the workroom and the water. And the city had done everything in its power to assist these men, to ease their affliction and to steer them toward the most judicious of decisions. It has built them a bridge. hopelessness suicide east-river jacob-m-appel herman-melville brooklyn brooklyn-bridge walt-whitman whitman melville manhattan new-york-city failure Jacob M. Appel
7d9d306 It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it. When I decided to go to Alaska that April, like Chris McCandless, I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic. I thought climbing the Devils Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams. And I lived to tell my tale. hopelessness inspiring love teenage life-changing young Jon Krakauer
7a442e8 I knew I was catching at straws; but in the wide and weltering deep where I found myself, I would have caught at cobwebs. hopelessness hope Charlotte Brontë
52eb1df Tanto tenho vivido sem ter vivido! Tanto tenho pensado sem ter pensado! Pesam sobre mim mundos de violencias paradas, de aventuras tidas sem movimento. Estou farto do que nunca tive nem terei, tediento de deuses por existir. Trago comigo as feridas de todas as batalhas que evitei... Em mim o que ha de primordial e o habito e o jeito de sonhar. hopelessness portuguese portuguese-literature Fernando Pessoa
401a06c ...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. hopelessness Fyodor Dostoyevsky
7fa1932 Putting your time in at the office; dutifully spawning your two point five; smiling politely at your retirement party; then chewing on your bedsheet and choking on your canned peaches at the nursing home. It was better never to have been born-never to have wanted anything, never to have hoped for anything. hopelessness want hope nursing-home spawning retirement office career duty dying Donna Tartt
f2e1c5f Well, and what was there in that?--Who ever hung his hopes upon so frail a twig? hopelessness Anne Brontë
8e189a5 "I don't want anything else bad to happen," she whispered, her voice choked with tears. "I'm so sick to death of bad things happening, of seeing bad things that happened in the past! And I'm guilty of so many things. I'm sorry that I killed Mrs. Matthias and wrecked her stupid greenhouse back in the Eighties and I'm sorry I left you here alone while I went around the world." "I wasn't alone though, I knew you were doing what you wanted to do and that you were still alive, so I wasn't really alone, I knew you were still there somewhere," Alecto told her. His damaged smile and downcast, sorrowful eyes were draped in the shadow of the night, saving Mandy the trouble of seeing." hopelessness grief murder travel world sorrow death friendship love greenhouse eighties apart lonliness damaged bad together omen friend crying shadow smile tears trouble guilt Rebecca McNutt
0aac4fc He would not now conduct little Nell to the coast; he would not convey her by a steamer to Port Said, would not surrender her to Mr. Rawlinson; he himself would not fall into his father's arms and would not hear from his lips that he had acted like a true Pole! The end, the end! In a few days the sun would shine only upon the lifeless bodies and afterwards would dry them up into a semblance of those mummies which slumber in an eternal sleep in the museums in Egypt hopelessness death-and-dying doubt desert sahara Henryk Sienkiewicz
d331c61 I have given up on speech with the Rev; there is no use explaining that you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help. My trust, even down in that dark place I carry, is that some person will come running. And then finally the way through grief is grieving. hopelessness inspiration Jane Hamilton
5bc7d3d What do you expect? This place is one big anti-climax. hopelessness time existence futility apathy existentialism hopeless habit Michel Faber
14a65ef Le Gout du neant Morne esprit, autrefois amoureux de la lutte, L'Espoir, dont l'eperon attisait ton ardeur, Ne veut plus t'enfourcher! Couche-toi sans pudeur, Vieux cheval dont le pied a chaque obstacle bute. Resigne-toi, mon coeur; dors ton sommeil de brute. Esprit vaincu, fourbu! Pour toi, vieux maraudeur, L'amour n'a plus de gout, non plus que la dispute; Adieu donc, chants du cuivre et soupirs de la flute! Plaisirs, ne tentez plus un coeur sombre et boudeur! Le Printemps adorable a perdu son odeur! Et le Temps m'engloutit minute par minute, Comme la neige immense un corps pris de roideur; Je contemple d'en haut le globe en sa rondeur Et je n'y cherche plus l'abri d'une cahute. Avalance, veux-tu m'emporter dans ta chute? hopelessness suicide time Charles Baudelaire
21b2092 I wish I could help him. I wish I could help the dozens of other Sufferers - all the victims of wounds, maulings, burns, diseases, incipient malnutrition, and melancholic despair - aboard this entrapped ship and her sister ship. I wish I could help myself, for already I am showing the early signs of Nostalgia and Debility. But there is little that I - or any surgeon in the Year of Our Lord 1848 - can do. God help us all. hopelessness the-terror despair horror Dan Simmons
c97a9e1 I've read the stories. Teenagers committing suicide because all they can see ahead of them is shame and disgrace. Kids running away from home because they feel like they've list their future. Well, I'm not having that happen to Torin. hopelessness suicide child-pornography child-sexual-exploitation sexting shame Val McDermid
a0221d7 "Theme It's a sunny weekday in early May and after a ham sandwich and a cold bottle of beer on the brick terrace, I am consumed by the wish to add something to one of the ancient themes- youth dancing with his eyes closed, for example, in the shadows of corruption and death, or the rise and fall of illustrious men strapped to the turning wheel of mischance and disaster. There is a slight breeze, just enough to bend the yellow tulips on their stems, but that hardly helps me echo the longing for immortality despite the roaring juggernaut of time, or the painful motif of Nature's cyclial return versus man's blind rush to the grave. I could loosen my shirt and lie down in the soft grass, sweet now after its first cutting, but that would not produce a record of the pursuit of the moth of eternal beauty or the despondency that attends the eventual dribble of the once gurgling fountain of creativity. So, as far as great topics go, that seems to leave only the fall from exuberant maturity into sudden, headlong decline- a subject that fills me with silence and leaves me with no choice but to spend the rest of the day sniffing the jasmine vine and surrendering to the ivory goverance of the piano by picking out with my index finger the melody notes of "Easy to Love," a song in which Cole Porter expresses, with put-on nonchalance, the hopelessness of a love brimming with desire and a hunger for affection, but met only and always with frosty disregard." hopelessness immortality poetry love Billy Collins
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