Hopelessness Quotes

“In an age of hope men looked up at the night sky and saw “the heavens." In an age of hopelessness they call it simply “space.”
― Peter Kreeft

“It wasn't that she was sad—sadness had very little to do with it, really, considering that most of the time, she felt close to nothing at all. Feeling required nerves, connections, sensory input. The only thing she felt was numb. And tired. Yes, she very frequently felt tired.”
― Nenia Campbell, Terrorscape

“[A] person whose head is bowed and whose eyes are heavy cannot look at the light.”
― Christine de Pizan, Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc

“We all go through hard times in life. It’s a part of being alive and it's the reality we all have to deal with. There are times we forget our value as a person because we are so blinded with these thoughts of loneliness, emptiness and ego. Somewhere along the road we become numbed with all the frustrations and dissatisfaction. But life itself isn't always about darkness and sadness, Life is also filled with colors and that makes it beautiful. Along this path of darkness there's always light waiting to be seen by our daunted hearts. Our heart is gifted to see this light. It may be hiding behind those circumstances that we encounter; in a stranger we just met at an unexpected place; a family who has been always there but you just ignored because of your imperfect relationship with them; it might be a long time friend you have or a friend you just met. Open your heart and you will see how blessed you are to have them all in your life. Sometimes they are the light that shines your path in some dark phases of life. Don't lose hope”
― Chanda Kaushik

“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, The Collector

“I felt as if I were riding a pendulum. Just as I would swing into the abyss of hopelessness, the pendulum would swing back with some small goodness.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Between Shades of Gray

“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, Dreamcatcher

“You can break a man with hope.”
― Kate Morgenroth, Jude

“….Nothing was inevitable. She had not chosen this way. It was her fate. It had been decided since before time began. It had been decided before she began. Nothing could be done. There was no point in trying. It was way too late. The inevitability of nothing was totally supreme, overriding everything. No way out. No way through. She could only accept the unacceptable. She could only endure the unendurable. Nothing was wrong!

Nothing was wrong and the wrongness of this awesome nothing seeped from her. Some people, only a few, saw it. Some people, only a few felt it. Some people, only a few, recognised it and in recognising it for what it was, raged against it. Through the nothingness, these few reached out for her.

She could not reach back. Through the nothingness, these few fought for her. She could not fight back for herself. Through the nothingness, these few cared for her. She could not care back for herself. Through the nothingness, these few spoke out for her, shattering the frozen silence over and over again. She could not speak out for herself…. “

*I hope this may give some comfort to people who need it. There are good, caring people (whether outside or within yourself, if need be) and you do deserve to be cared for and supported as much as anyone else does."

From “Nothing”, one of the short stories in “Fight! Rabbit! Fight!”
― Laurie Matthew, Fight! Rabbit! Fight!

“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.”
― Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“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.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“Your hope is the most beautiful and the saddest in the world.”
― Naomi Benaron, Running the Rift

“Hope is for people who can't see the Truth.”
― Jeff Lindsay, Dexter Is Dead

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

“I'm pretty lost in becoming all this frost. Bitter, like Winter. Strung-out like a string of pearls.”
― Ashly Lorenzana

“Why does a human body become deceased?
The reason is that as long as the human body is not free from suffering, mind cannot be happy.
If a man lacks enthusiasm, either his body or mind is in a deceased condition....

Now what saps the enthusiasm in man?
If there is no enthusiasm, life becomes drudgery - a mere burden to be dragged. Nothing can be achieved if there is no enthusiasm.
The main reason for this lack of enthusiasm on the part of a man is that an individual looses the hope of getting an opportunity to elevate himself.
Hopelessness leads to lack of enthusiasm.
The mind in such cases becomes deceased....

When is enthusiasm created?
When one breaths an atmosphere where one is sure of getting the legitimate reward for one's labor, only then one feels enriched by enthusiasm and inspiration.”
― Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual

“So one must be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox...”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

“[asked if his suicide attempt was a cry for help]

No. I told no one. You only cry for help if you believe that there's help to cry for.”
― Wentworth Miller

“At cocktail parties, I played the part of a successful businessman's wife to perfection. I smiled, I made polite chit-chat, and I dressed the part. Denial and rationalization were two of my most effective tools in working my way through our social obligations. I believed that playing the roles of wife and mother were the least I could do to help support Tom's career.
During the day, I was a puzzle with innumerable pieces. One piece made my family a nourishing breakfast. Another piece ferried the kids to school and to soccer practice. A third piece managed to trip to the grocery store. There was also a piece that wanted to sleep for eighteen hours a day and the piece that woke up shaking from yet another nightmare. And there was the piece that attended business functions and actually fooled people into thinking I might have something constructive to offer.
I was a circus performer traversing the tightwire, and I could fall off into a vortex devoid of reality at any moment. There was, and had been for a very long time, an intense sense of despair. A self-deprecating voice inside told me I had no chance of getting better. I lived in an emotional black hole.
p20-21, talking about dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder).”
― Suzie Burke, Wholeness: My Healing Journey from Ritual Abuse

“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.”
― H. Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure

“There is absolutely no worse death curse than the humdrum daily existence of the living dead.”
― Anthon St. Maarten

“Suicidal pain includes the feeling that one has lost all capacity to effect emotional change. The agony is excruciating and looks as if it will never end. There is the feeling of having been beaten down for a very long time. There are feelings of agitation, emptiness, and incoherence. 'Snap out of it and get on with your life,' sounds like a demand to high jump ten feet.”
― David L. Conroy, Out of the Nightmare: Recovery from Depression and Suicidal Pain

“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 invariably 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. And when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bids the soul rid of it.”
― Herman Melville, Bartleby the Scrivener

“Behold, we know not anything;
I can but trust that good shall fall
At last -- far off -- at last, to all,
And every winter change to spring.”
― Alfred Lord Tennyson

“You are young; you have hopes. One by one they will go, and nothing will be left but the bare fact of life.”
― Jack Vance, Durdane

“Realizing the seriously ruthless, venomous habits and agendas of evil always instills a more fierce passion and longing for a closer God. Men, out of pride, may claim their own authorities over what constitutes good and evil; they may self-proclaim a keen knowledge of subjective morality through religion or science. But that is only if they are acknowledging the work of evil as a cartoon-like, petty little rain cloud in the sky that merely wants to dampen one's spirits. On the contrary, a man could be without a doubt lit with the strength, the peace, and the knowledge of the gods, his gods, but when or if the devils grow weary in unsuccessful attempts to torment him, they begin tormenting his loved ones, or, if not his loved ones, anyone who may attempt to grasp his philosophies. No matter how godly he may become, God is, in the end, his only hope and his only grace for the pressures built around him - it is left up to a higher authority and a more solid peace and a wider love to eclipse not just one's own evils but all evils for goodness to ultimately matter. If all men were gods, each being would dwell in a separate prison cell, hopeless, before finally imploding into nothingness.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Days, weeks, months, years," said the boy. "Minutes and hours and seconds. I don't know about any of those things.”
― Tim Bowler, Frozen Fire

“Each mind conceives god in its own way. There may be as many variation of the god figure as there are people in the world”
― Bangambiki Habyarimana, Pearls Of Eternity

“The problem with hope, Anne finds through the years, is that it gets your hopes up. But hopelessness is worse.”
― Kelly Braffet, Last Seen Leaving

“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