75 Quotes About Overcoming Despair

In times of despair, when the weight of the world seems too heavy to bear, words can become our beacon of hope, guiding us back to the light. The power of a well-timed quote is transformative, offering solace, strength, and the motivation needed to rise above life's darkest moments. This collection of 75 quotes has been carefully selected to inspire, uplift, and empower you on your journey from despair to resilience. Whether you're seeking comfort in times of struggle or simply a reminder of the indomitable human spirit, these timeless words will help reignite your inner strength and hope. Join us as we explore the wisdom of poets, philosophers, leaders, and thinkers who have captured the essence of overcoming despair.

1. “my beerdrunk soul is sadder than all the dead christmas trees of the world.” - Charles Bukowski

2. “My life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes.” - L.M. Montgomery

3. “There's only one great evil in the world today. Despair.” - Evelyn Waugh

4. “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 Vasquez

5. “If you can cope the pride when winning,then you can confront despair when lose.” - Toba Beta

6. “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.” - Philip K. Dick

7. “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

8. “To be truly radical is to make hope possible rather than despair convincing” - Raymond Williams

9. “At night I no longer dreamed, nor did I let my imagination work during the day. The once vibrant escapes of watching myself fly through the clouds in bright blue costumes, were now a thing of the past. When I fell asleep, my soul became consumed in a black void. I no longer awoke in the mornings refreshed; I was tired and told myself that I had one day less to live in this world. I shuffled through my chores, dreading every moment of every day. With no dreams, I found that words like hope and faith were only letters, randomly put together into something meaningless - words only for fairy tales. ” - Dave Pelzer

10. “It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me.” - John Fowles

11. “...stooping very low, He engraves with careHis Name, indelible, upon our dust;And from the ashes of our self-despair,Kindles a flame of hope and humble trust.He seeks no second site on which to build,But on the old foundation, stone by stone,Cementing sad experience with grace,Fashions a stronger temple of His own.” - Patricia St. John

12. “I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.” - Henry Miller

13. “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. 2 Corinthians 4:8-9” - Anonymous

14. “Courage is not the absence of fear or despair; it is the capacity to continue on despite them, no matter how great or overwhelming they become.” - Robert Fanney

15. “I think if Eternity held torment, its form would not be fiery rack, nor its nature, despair. I think that on a certain day amongst those days which never dawned, and will not set, an angel entered Hades — stood, shone, smiled, delivered a prophecy of conditional pardon, kindled a doubtful hope of bliss to come, not now, but at a day and hour unlooked for, revealed in his own glory and grandeur the height and compass of his promise: spoke thus — then towering, became a star, and vanished into his own Heaven. His legacy was suspense — a worse boon than despair.” - Charlotte Brontë

16. “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

17. “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

18. “...the heart has no tears to give,--it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence.” - Harriet Beecher Stowe

19. “Here dwells a snake, one thousand miles longCoiled, one thousand miles deepEyes like candy, it has eyes like candyHard and blue, but soft as kittens feetOut of sight or in the element of lightIt could be a devil, it could be an angelWith spiders inside a vision from hellIts spine is a vertical screamSlow as concrete, blurred as a dreamFueled by inertia, depth, radius, and velocity,Its soul--a twisted wreckage of despair and painAnd the spiders inside are just praying for rainKilling time killing timeAnd praying for rainOne thousand miles deep” - James O'Barr

20. “Despair is the result of each earnest attempt to go through life with virtue, justice and understanding, and to fulfill their requirements. Children live on one side of despair, the awakened on the other side.” - Hermann Hesse

21. “In a world gushing blood day and night, you never stop mopping up pain.” - Aberjhani

22. “Despair wishes their hope diminishes.” - Sherina Gandia

23. “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

24. “The Second Koran tells us that the darkness in ourselves is a sinister thing. It waits until we relax, it waits until we reach the most vulnerable moments, and then it snares us. I want to be dutiful. I want to do what I should. But when I go back to the tube, I think of where I am going; to that small house and my empty room. What will I do tonight? Make more paper flowers, more wreaths? I am sick of them. Sick of the Nekropolis.I can take the tube to my mistress' house, or I can go by the street where Mardin's house is. I'm tired. I'm ready to go to my little room and relax. Oh, Holy One, I dread the empty evening. Maybe I should go by the street just to fill up time. I have all this empty time in front of me. Tonight and tomorrow and the week after and the next month and all down through the years as I never marry and become a dried-up woman. Evenings spent folding paper. Days cleaning someone else's house. Free afternoons spent shopping a bit, stopping in tea shops because my feet hurt. That is what lives are, aren't they? Attempts to fill our time with activity designed to prevent us from realizing that there is no meaning?” - Maureen F. McHugh

25. “For how imperiously, how coolly, in disregard of all one’s feelings, does the hard, cold, uninteresting course of daily realities move on! Still we must eat, and drink, and sleep, and wake again, - still bargain, buy, sell, ask and answer questions, - pursue, in short, a thousand shadows, though all interest in them be over; the cold, mechanical habit of living remaining, after all vital interest in it has fled.” - Harriet Beecher Stowe

26. “Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair.” - Irvin D. Yalom

27. “El destino se lleva siempre su parte y no se retira hasta obtener lo que le corresponde.” - Haruki Murakami

28. “I could hear the knock and whistle of the water pipes, the purr of the calico cat. And at that moment a happiness filled me that was pure and perfect and yet it was bled with despair - as if I had been handed a cup of ambrosial nectar to drink from and knew that once I finished drinking, the cup would be withdrawn forever, and nothing to come would ever taste as good.” - David Leavitt

29. “Despair is for people who know, beyond any doubt, what the future is going to bring. Nobody is in that position. So despair is not only a kind of sin, theologically, but also a simple mistake, because nobody actually knows. In that sense there is always hope.” - Patrick Curry

30. “The whole thing is quite hopeless, so it's no good worrying about tomorrow. It probably won't come.” - J. R. R. Tolkien

31. “George was full of hatred. Of his own weakness and stupidity, of his magic, of the stubbornness and the pride of Beatrice and Marit, and, last of all, hatred of Dr. Gharn, who had started it all.But the hatred swayed to pity. Then to hopelessness. Then back to anger.Every once in a great while, he felt a moment of peace, usually when he caught a glimpse of Beatrice and Marit together. He loved them both in different ways. But that could not be.He turned away, and the cycle began again.” - Mette Ivie Harrison

32. “I feel as if I had been born dead underAmerican bombardment.” - Stefan Bolea

33. “And in despair I bowed my head;"There is no peace on earth," I said;"For hate is strong,And mocks the songOf peace on earth, good-will to men!"Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep!The Wrong shall fail,the Right prevail,With peace on earth, good-will to men!” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

34. “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.” - Brandon Sanderson

35. “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

36. “For after all, why do we go on fighting? If we die for democracy then we must be one of the democracies. Let the rest fight with us, if that is the case. But the most powerful of them, the only one that could save us, chooses to bide its time. Very good. That is its right. But by so doing, that democracy signifies that we are fighting for ourselves alone. And we go on fighting despite the assurance that we have lost the war. Why, then, do we go on dying? Out of despair? But there is no despair. You know nothing about defeat if you think there is room in it for despair.There is a verity that is higher than the pronouncements of the intelligence. There is a thing which pierces and governs us and which cannot be grasped by the intelligence. A tree has no language. We are a tree. There are truths which are evident, though not to be put into words. I do not die in order to obstruct the path of the invasion, for there is no shelter upon which I can fall back with those I love. I do not die to preserve my honor, since I deny that my honor is at stake, and I challenge the jurisdiction of my judge. Nor do I die out of desperation.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

37. “No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.Comforter, where, where is your comforting?Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief-woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing —Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief'.O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fallFrightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheapMay who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our smallDurance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: allLife death does end and each day dies with sleep.” - Gerard Manley Hopkins

38. “You were standing in the wake of devastation And you were waiting on the edge of the unknown And with the cataclysm raining down Insides crying "Save me now" You were there, impossibly alone” - Linkin Park

39. “Do you feel cold and lost in desperation? You build up hope, but failure’s all you’ve known Remember all the sadness and frustration And let it go. Let it go” - Linkin Park

40. “Knowlege of God without knowledge of man's wretchedness leads to pride. Knowledge of man's wretchedness without knowledge of God leads to despair. Knowledge of Jesus Christ is the middle course, because by it we discover both God and our wretched state.” - Blaise Pascal

41. “Whatever happens in your life, no matter how troubling things might seem, do not enter the neighbourhood of despair.Even when all doors remain closed, God wil open up a new path only for you. Be thankful! It is easy to be thankful when all is well. A Sufi is thankful not only for what he has been given but also for all that has been denied.” - Elif Shafak

42. “Despair was a heavy blackness that let no light in or out. It was a hell beyond expression.” - Yann Martel

43. “When all else is lost, the future still remains.” - Christian Bovee

44. “Our society is so fragmented, our family lives so sundered by physical and emotional distance, our friendships so sporadic, our intimacies so 'in-between' things and often so utilitarian, that there are few places where we can feel truly safe.” - Henri J.M. Nouwen

45. “First of all, you have to keep unmasking the world about you for what it is: manipulative, controlling, power-hungry, and, in the long run, destructive. The world tells you many lies about who you are, and you simply have to be realistic enough to remind yourself of this. Every time you feel hurt, offended, or rejected, you have to dare to say to yourself: 'These feelings, strong as they may be, are not telling me the truth about myself. The truth, even though I cannot feel it right now, is that I am the chosen child of God, precious in God's eyes, called the Beloved from all eternity, and held safe in an everlasting belief.” - Henri J.M. Nouwen

46. “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.” - james frey

47. “The difference between hope and despair is a different way of telling stories from the same facts.” - Alain De Botton

48. “I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing” - Guy de Maupassant

49. “The very nastiest and coarsest, I can't tell you. It is not grief, not dullness, but much worse. It is as if all that was good in me had hidden itself, and only what is horrid remains.” - Leo Tolstoy

50. “I remember in treatment, Mr. Shaw told me that the alcohol and drugs never were my problem. He said the alcohol and drugs were my solution and that was my problem. And he was right.” - Ryan Winfield

51. “Defeat I can endure with cheerfulness, my lady. But betrayal is like taking the wind from my sails, or the earth from beneath my feet. It chills my spirits like a rainy day, and all I can do is draw the curtains and cry into my pillow.” - Margaret George

52. “Certainly something had happened to me during the night. Or after months of tension I had arrived at the edge of some precipice and now I was falling, as in a dream slowly, even as I continued to hold the thermometer in my hand, een as I stood with the soles of my slippers on the floor, even as I felt myself solidly contained by the expectant looks of my children. It was the fault of the torture that my husband had inflicted. But enough, I had to tear the pain from memory, I had to sandpaper away the scratches that were damaging my brain.” - Elena Ferrante

53. “I dread the loss of her I've never touched love keeps me a slave in a cage of tears I gnaw my tongue with which to her I can never speak I miss a woman who was never born I kiss a woman across the years that say we shall never meet Everything passes Everything perishes Everything palls my thought walks away with a killing smile leaving discordant anxiety which roars in my soul No hope No hope No hope No hope No hope No hope No hope” - Sarah Kane

54. “I can still hear the screams. They wake me in the night. Terrible, gut wrenching, painful screams; screams that can only come from the deepest and darkest recesses of the mind. These were not screams of pain. These were screams of years of sorrow and despair. These were screams that made your skin crawl. These were the worst screams I have ever heard. I cannot get them out of my head. Perhaps, they will be with me forever. I shouldn't be so lucky.” - Jamie Schoffman

55. “The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,White as a knuckle and terribly upset.It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quietWith the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.--from "The Moon and the Yew Tree", written 22 October 1961” - Sylvia Plath

56. “They watched the rain and downed their Cokes like a pair of diabetics in a suicide pact.” - Paco Ignacio Taibo II

57. “There is a point when the anguished soul finally despairs. A moment in life when the heart, the will, even the spirit crumbles. Some say that after much grief and drowning in tears, it is possible to pick up the pieces and carefully repair what was shattered. I say nay. For the chains of despair have no key, and the soul destroyed by that monster can never hope to be unaffected. There are things done that cannot be undone.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

58. “A desperate plea to the Trinityis not something you can justapologize for in the morning-Drunk Dialing the Divine” - Amber Koneval

59. “I sat up in the strange bed fearing it had been a dream, afraid I would never see her again. Not because I wanted anything from her, only her presence. The disappearance of the presence of beauty is the most despairing of events on this time-wheel of ours that rolls onward towards death.” - Roman Payne

60. “Losing your life is not the worst thing that can happen. The worst thing is to lose your reason for living.” - Jo Nesbo

61. “It’s awful, telling it like this, isn’t it? As though we didn’t know the ending. As though it could have another ending. It’s like watching Romeo drink poison. Every time you see it you get fooled into thinking his girlfriend might wake up and stop him. Every single time you see it you want to shout, 'You stupid ass, just wait a minute,' and she’ll open her eyes! 'Oi, you, you twat, open your eyes, wake up! Don’t die this time!' But they always do.” - Elizabeth Wein

62. “Between the desireAnd the spasm,Between the potencyAnd the existence,Between the essenceAnd the descent,Falls the Shadow.This is the way the world ends.from "The Hollow Man” - T.S. Eliot

63. “He pried Clara's arms loose and stood up, smoothing his wrinkled coat. Clara looked straight into his face. Her eyelids were red, but her gaze was like a lance. Dr. Wintermute had a sudden, uncomfortable conviction that she had seen into his soul. It was a look he was to remember often in the weeks to come.” - Laura Amy Schlitz

64. “Trees lose their leaves in blizzards like these.” - Ashly Lorenzana

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

66. “Was that what it was really like to be alive? The feeling of darkness dragging you forward?How could they live with it? And yet they did, and even seemed to find enjoyment in it, when surely the only sensible course would be to despair. Amazing. To feel you were a tiny living thing, sandwiched between two cliffs of darkness. How could they stand to be alive?” - Terry Pratchett

67. “مليت من نصحكولعلمكلو سبتك غرقان ف طموحكمين بس يرسيك على برالهامر اللي بتخطف عينكأبدا مش ليك.” - محمد ربيع محمد

68. “Ja nie jestem, mnie nie ma, ja dopiero będę.” - Wit Szostak

69. “Today is the day after my wedding. And nothing is the way I expected it to be.” - Rachel Abbott

70. “Times moves differently down here in the dark. With no sunlight or shadows. No weather at all. There's no future, no right now. Nothing but your memory to keep you company. But they keep me so angry and weak. I can barely think straight. How long have I been locked up...wuuks? months? I don't even konow how I got to this place. There are times I don't even know who I am anymore.” - Scott Snyder

71. “Anna Petrovna: Kolya, my dearest, stay at home.Ivanov: My love, my unhappy darling, I beg you, don't stop me going out in the evenings. It's cruel and unjust on my part, but let me commit that injustice. It's an agony for me at home. As soon as the sun disappears, my spirit begins to be weighed down by depression. What depression! Don't ask why. I myself don't know. I swear by God's truth I don't know. Here I'm in anguish, I go to the Lebedevs and there it's still worse; I return from there and here it's depression again, and so all night... Simply despair!” - Anton Chekhov

72. “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

73. “The driver, a black silhouette upon his box, whipped up his bony horses. Icy silence in the coach. Marius, motionless, his body braced in the corner of the carriage, his head dropping down upon his breast, his arms hanging, his legs rigid, appeared to await nothing now but a coffin; Jean Valjean seemed made of shadow, and Javert of stone.” - Victor Hugo

74. “So now I just assume that it won't work, and that if it does work, I'll lose it anyway. This is meant to protect me, although it doesn't, because somehow the hope sneakily finds its way in. I'm never aware of the hope until it's gone, whooshed away like a rug pulled from under my feet, each time I hear another "I'm sorry.” - Liane Moriarty

75. “Sometimes it feels as though happiness is just a word people say to hide the despair of not knowing anything.” - Michael Gilbert