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Alas for him who never sees The stars shine through his cypress-trees Who, hopeless, lays his dead away, Nor looks to see the breaking day Across the mournful marbles play!

Action is the antidote to despair.

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a cross-roads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.

Despair ruins some, presumption many.

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS.

It is necessary to work, if not from inclination, at least from despair. Everything considered, work is less boring than amusing oneself.

Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim. It is, one is told, the unforgivable sin, but it is a sin the corrupt or evil man never practices. He always has hope. He never reaches the freezing-point of knowing absolute failure. Only the man of goodwill carries always in his heart this capacity for damnation.

But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

All my life I believed I knew something. But then one strange day came when I realized that I knew nothing, yes, I knew nothing. And so words became void of meaning. I have arrived too late at ultimate uncertainty.

Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair.

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

Despair is perfectly compatible with a good dinner, I promise you.

The fact that God has prohibited despair gives misfortune the right to hope all things, and leaves hope free to dare all things.

When we are flat on our backs there is no way to look but up.

It becomes no man to nurse despair, but, in the teeth of clenched antagonisms, to follow up the worthiest till he die.

The man who lives only by hope will die with despair.

What we call despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.

Despair is like forward children, who, when you take away one of their playthings, throw the rest into the fire for madness. It grows angry with itself, turns its own executioner, and revenges its misfortunes on its own head.

Despair is the conclusion of fools.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation ... A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind.