Desperation is a powerful emotion that often pushes us to our limits, revealing strength and resilience we didn’t know we had. Whether facing personal challenges or moments of uncertainty, these 48 powerful desperation quotes offer insight, motivation, and a reminder that even in our darkest times, there is hope and opportunity for growth. Dive into this curated collection to find words that resonate and inspire.
1. “When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” - Abraham Lincoln
2. “When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.” - Theodore Roosevelt
3. “If you were mine, I'd never leave you, Prudence. I couldn't.” - Anne Gracie
4. “THIS IS WHYHe will never be given to wonder muchif he was the mouth for some cruel forcethat said it. But if he were(this will comfort her) less than one momentout of millions had he meant it. So many years and so many turnsthey had swerved around the subject.And he will swear for many morethe kitchen and everything in it vanished --the oak table, their guests, the refrigerator doorhe had been surely propped against--all changed to rusted ironwork and ashexcept in the center in her linen caftan:she was not touched.He remembers the silence before he spokeand her nodding a little,as if in the meat of this gray wastehere was the signalfor him to speak what they had long agreed,what somewhere they had prepared together.And this one moment in the desert of ashstretches into forever.They had been having a dinner party.She had been lonely. A friend asked her almost jokingif she had ever felt really crazy,and when she started to unwind her answerin long, lovely sentences like scarves within herhe saw this was the waythey could no longer talk together.And that is when he said it,in front of the guests,because he couldn't bear to hear her.And this is why the guests have leftand she screams as he comes near her. ” - Michael Ryan
5. “The world was an awfully large place and it wasn't easy to find a person who'd gone missing sixty years earlier, even if that person was oneself.” - Kate Morton
6. “Nowadays most men lead lives of noisy desperation.” - James Thurber
7. “That if desperate times call for desperate measures, then I'm free to act as desperately as I wish.” - Suzanne Collins
8. “In the final analysis, with Rene she had been an apprentice to love, she had loved him only to learn how to give herself, enslaved and surfeited, to Sir Stephen.” - Pauline Réage
9. “We sensible often resist intrusive love and its chaos practically, employing measures to prevent the former for fear of the latter. But for all our wit and work, that desperation for control also prevents the pure, transcendental freedom more often delivered by both.” - Tiffany Madison
10. “I went down to the river,I set down on the bank.I tried to think but couldn't,So I jumped in and sank.” - Langston Hughes
11. “I did the only thing I knew how to do: I built my own walls of silence to disguise my desperation and what later came to be recognized and diagnosed as depression.” - Sharon E. Rainey
12. “I felt the kind of desperation, I think, that cancels the possibility of empathy...that makes you unkind.” - Sue Miller
13. “But when they made love he was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone else. Someone watching. Looking out of the window at the sea. At a boat in the river. Or a passerby in the mist in a hat.He was exasperated because he didn't know what that look meant. He put it somewhere between indifference and despair. He didn’t know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. He climbed into people’s eyes and became an exasperating expression.” - Arundhati Roy
14. “Technically, on the spectrum of very bad things, they did nothing truly wicked. But of course, that spectrum has no measure for the greatest of all carnal sins, the kind that occurs before skin touches skin, before wondering turns to yearning, yearning to having, having to holding for dear life, when two people cling to each other so desperately that even when they lie, inches apart, neither is fully satisfied until the light between them turns to darkness.” - Galt Niederhoffer
15. “I think our last kiss was meant to be quick and chaste, but after the first touch of his lips fire leaped up and roared through my belly. My fingers yanked him close, digging into his back, and his arms crushed me to him as if wanting to meld us together. I knotted my fingers in his hair and bit down on his bottom lip, making him groan. His lips parted, and my tongue swept in to dance with his. There was nothing sweet or gentle in our last kiss; it was filled with sorrow and desperation, of the bitter knowledge that we could've had something perfect, but it just wasn't meant to be.” - Julie Kagawa
16. “I feel like getting married, or committing suicide, or subscribing to L'Illustration. Something desperate, you know.” - Albert Camus
17. “Death, my son, is a good thing for all men; it is the night for this worried day that we call life. It is in the sleep of death that finds rest for eternity the sickness, pain, desperation, and the fears that agitate, without end, we unhappy living souls.” - Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
18. “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-” - Michael Cunningham
19. “He were found drowned. He were coming home very hopeless o' aught on earth. He thought God could na be harder than men; mappen not so hard; mappen as tender as a mother; mappen tenderer. I'm not saying he did right, and I'm not saying he didn't wrong. All I say is, may neither me nor mine ever have his sore heart, or we may do like things.” - Elizabeth Gaskell
20. “Facing death calmly is praiseworthy only if one faces it alone. Death together is no longer death, even for unbelievers. The source of sorrows lies not in leaving life, but in leaving that which gives it meaning. When love is our whole life, what difference is there between living together and dying together ?” - Raymond Radiguet
21. “Man cries, his tears dry up and run out. So he becomes a devil, reduced to a monster.” - Kouta Hirano
22. “The car was on the FDR drive now and, turning her head, she glanced out at the bleak brown buildings of the projects that stretched for blocks along the drive. Something inside her sank at the sight of all that sameness, and she suddenly felt defeated.She shifted uncomfortably in her seat. In the past year, she'd started experiencing these moments of desperate emptiness, as if nothing really mattered, nothing was ever going to change, there was nothing new; and she could see her life stretching before her--one endless long day after the next, in which every day was essentially the same. Meanwhile, time was marching on, and all that was happening to her was that she was getting older and smaller, and one day she would be no bigger than a dot, and then she would simply disappear. Poof! Like a small leaf burned up under a magnifying glass in the sun. These feelings were shocking to her, because she'd never experienced world-weariness before. She'd never had time. All her life, she'd been striving and striving to become this thing that was herself--the entity that was Nico O'Neilly. And then, one morning, time had caught up with her and she had woken up and realized that she was there. She had arrived at her destination, and she had everything she'd worked so hard for: a stunning career, a loving (well, sort of) husband, whom she respected, and a beautiful eleven-year-old daughter whom she adored.She should have been thrilled. But instead, she felt tired. Like all those things belonged to someone else.” - Candace Bushnell
23. “Happiness isn't something she spends much time thinking about. Survival, discomfort, hunger...these are the concerns that fill her days.” - David Maine
24. “Such a little childTo send to be a priestling...Icy poverty” - Shiki
25. “Things are never as they seem. A person. A Mark. A statement. They are always deeper than we perceive, like walking in the ocean and suddenly dipping under the surface because the bottom has disappeared beneath your feet. The water appears shallow until you are suddenly flailing around beneath the surface, desperately searching for stable ground once again.” - Kelseyleigh Reber
26. “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
27. “Sometimes loneliness makes the loudest noise.” - Aaron Ben-Ze'ev
28. “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.” - K. Jared Hosein
29. “The sea is endless when you are in a rowboat.” - Adolfo Bioy Casares
30. “If we never experience the chill of a dark winter, it is very unlikely that we will ever cherish the warmth of a bright summer’s day. Nothing stimulates our appetite for the simple joys of life more than the starvation caused by sadness or desperation. In order to complete our amazing life journey successfully, it is vital that we turn each and every dark tear into a pearl of wisdom, and find the blessing in every curse.” - Anthon St. Maarten
31. “If you can't find an answer at the mall or the library, what does that say about the world?” - Joan Bauer
32. “I would have stayed a hundred times and I would have left one time only - still, I left.” - Mihail Drumeş
33. “SONG OF DAWNI saw the sun rise by accident.It was a horrible sight.Annoyed by its splendor, I sought refugein a moist pillow, and lay there, alone,at the dawn of another day,that brought me closer to another death,pondering the vanity of my solitude,the vanity of procrastination,and the tiresome inevitability of waking upagain the same person.It might still be possible to change,but obstinately I remain the same,hoping that others might take solacein my consistency.But perhaps they take no solace in it,perhaps they too find it tedious.” - John Tottenham
34. “Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.” - Alain De Botton
35. “Between death and hell a bridge shining silver wings offers his soul hope.” - Aberjhani
36. “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
37. “How horrible to think what we may wish for, lay in anguish for, may be within our reach but we are unable to see them.” - D. Morgenstern
38. “These last few months Vida had started believing in all kinds of strange things she'd have laughed at when we lived back in Avalon. She'd tried every spell she could find in the dusty old books she brought home from thrift shops and garage sales; none of them ever worked, and it was awful watching her try.” - Judith Clarke
39. “A woman's voice answered, "Hello?"Walter cried back at her, "Hello, oh Lord, hello!""This is a recording," recited the woman's voice. "Miss Helen Arasumian is not home. Will you leave a message on the wire spool so she may call you when she returns? Hello? This is a recording. Miss Helen Arasumian is not home. Will you leave a message -"He hung up.He sat with his mouth twitching.On second thought he redialed that number."When Miss Helen Arasumian comes home," he said, "tell her to go to hell.” - Ray Bradbury
40. “...don't you realize a flawless profile means nothing when a mere smile drives me to desperation? Don't you covet that power?..” - John Geddes
41. “Love me. You have destroyed everything! But if you love me, it can all be restored in a new form. Love me.” - Anne Rice
42. “I think humans have always been desperate. I think it has always been about doing something awful if it might help, when the only other option is death. Maybe that's what being a parent is supposed to feel like.” - Lauren DeStefano
43. “Your eye will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You'll care only about the darkness and you'll watch it for hours, for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay.” - Mark Z. Danielewski
44. “Maybe it is desperation," I say. "Maybe we can't let things fall apart without trying. We can't let go of the people we love."He looks at me, and in the sunlight his eyes come alive with greens and golds. "Sometimes we can," he says.” - Lauren DeStefano
45. “Jared. I have a past" I almost whispered "Who doesn-" I interrupted him"Please just let me speak and then you can tell me what it is you want." He nodded and l continued. I hated this. I hadn't told people. But he could find out and he would; I had to tell him.” - Mercy Cortez (LiveForeverAnon)
46. “There he must, despite the anguish devouring his brain, present a face approximating the one that is associated with ordinary events and companionship. He must try to utter small talk, and be responsive to questions, and knowingly nod and frown and, God help him, even smile. But it is a fierce trial attempting to speak a few simple words.” - William Styron
47. “The truth is, living in any society is difficult. Those who become desperate with a fractured sense of security are much more prone to being taken advantaged of.” - John-Talmage Mathis
48. “The veneer of civilization fell away to reveal desperate animals, humanity at their worst.” - Travis Luedke
