Emotions

"This absoluteness of desire uninhibited by thoughts of virtue … represents the turn in philosophy away from trying to tame or perfect desire by virtue, and toward finding out what one’s desire is and living according to it. This is largely accomplished by criticizing virtue, which covers and corrupts desire. Our desire becomes a kind of oracle we consult; it is now the last word, while in the past it was the questionable and dangerous part of us."

"There is no fear for one whose mind is not filled with desires."

"Those who restrain desire do so because theirs is weak enough to be restrained."

"There are two futures, the future of desire and the future of fate, and man's reason has never learnt to separate them. Desire, the strongest thing in the world, is itself all future, and it is not for nothing that in all the religions the motive is always forwards to an endless futurity of bliss or annihilation. Now that religion gives place to science the paradisical future of the soul fades before the Utopian future of the species, and still the future rules. But always there is, on the other side, destiny, that which inevitably will happen, a future here concerned not as the other was with man and his desires, but blindly and inexorably with the whole universe of space and time. The Buddhist seeks to escape from the Wheel of Life and Death, the Christian passes through them in the faith of another world to come, the modern reformer, as unrealistic but less imaginative, demands his chosen future in this world of men. Can we in any better way reconcile desire and fate?"

"The desire to reach for the stars is ambitious. The desire to reach hearts is wise."

"Through patience, [one’s legitimate] desires are realized."

"Lustful desires are fatal illnesses, and the best cure for them is acquiring patience against them."

"The heart that is attached to lustful desires is unable to benefit from sincere exhortations."

"Do not desire for everything that you hear, for this suffices as gullibility (or foolishness)."

"Every man who has rotted here over the centuries has looked up to the light and imagined climbing to freedom. So easy... So simple... And like shipwrecked men turning to sea water from uncontrollable thirst, many have died trying. I learned here that there can be no true despair without hope."

"It is impossible for that man to despair who remembers that his Helper is omnipotent."

"Disordered nerves are the origin of much religious despair, when the individual does not suspect it; and then the body and mind have a reciprocal influence upon each other, and it is difficult to tell which influences the other most. The physician is often blamed, when the fault lies with the minister. Depression never benefits body or soul. We are saved by hope."

"Despair is the damp of hell; rejoicing is the serenity of heaven."

"Mr. Fearing had, I think, a slough of despond in his mind, a slough that he carried everywhere with him, or else he could never have been as he was."

"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!"

"then black despair, The shadow of a starless night, was thrown Over the world in which I moved alone."

"No change, no pause, no hope! Yet I endure."

"Thou tyrant! Do not repent these things, for they are heavier Than all thy woes can stir: therefore, betake thee To nothing but despair."

"Oh, break, my heart! poor bankrupt, break at once! To prison, eyes, ne'er look on liberty! Vile earth, to earth resign; end motion here; And thou and Romeo press one heavy bier!"

"Discomfort guides my tongue And bids me speak of nothing but despair."

"For nothing canst thou to damnation add Greater than that."

"They have tied me to a stake; I cannot fly. But, bear-like, I must fight the course."

"O, that this too too solid flesh would melt, Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!"

"Desperatio magnum ad honeste moriendum incitamentum."

"Thus repuls'd, our final hope Is flat despair."

"Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest spirit That fought in heaven, now fiercer by despair."

"Nil desperandum Teucro duce et auspice Teucro."

"Night was our friend, our leader was Despair."

"Darkness our guide, Despair our leader was."

"The nympholepsy of some fond despair."

"The name of the Slough was Despond."

"The world goes whispering to its own, "This anguish pierces to the bone;" And tender friends go sighing round, "What love can ever cure this wound?" My days go on, my days go on."

"Despair of ever being saved, "except thou be born again," or of seeing God "without holiness," or of having part in Christ except thou "love him above father, mother, or thy own life." This kind of despair is one of the first steps to heaven."

"I will indulge my sorrows, and give way To all the pangs and fury of despair."

"Because I remember, I despair. Because I remember, I have the duty to reject despair. I remember the killers, I remember the victims, even as I struggle to invent a thousand and one reasons to hope."

"Waking among the dead, one wondered if one was still alive. And yet real despair only seized us later. Afterwards. As we emerged from the nightmare and began to search for meaning."

"I can endure my own despair, But not another’s hope."

"How can we drop negativity, as you suggest? By dropping it. How do you drop a piece of hot coal that you are holding in your hand? How do you drop some heavy and useless baggage that you are carrying? By recognizing that you don't want to suffer the pain or carry the burden anymore and then letting go of it."

"Your unhappiness is polluting not only your own inner being and those around you but also the collective human psyche of which you are an inseparable part. The pollution of the planet is only an outward reflection of an inner psychic pollution: millions of unconscious individuals not taking responsibility for their inner space. Either stop doing what you are doing, speak to the person concerned and express fully what you feel, or drop the negativity that your mind has created around the situation and that serves no purpose whatsoever except to strengthen a false sense of self. Recognizing its futility is important. Negativity is never the optimum way of dealing with any situation. In fact, in most cases it keeps you stuck in it, blocking real change. Anything that is done with negative energy will become contaminated by it and in time give rise to more pain, more unhappiness. Furthermore, any negative inner state is contagious: Unhappiness spreads more easily than a physical disease. Through the law of resonance, it triggers and feeds latent negativity in others, unless they are immune - that is, highly conscious. Are you polluting the world or cleaning up the mess? You are responsible for your inner space; nobody else is... p. 53"

"The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life. The pain that you create now is always some form of non acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. The intensity of the pain depends on the degree of resistance to the present moment, and this in turn depends on how strongly you are identified with your mind. The mind always seeks to deny the Now and to escape from it. In other words, the more you are identified with your mind, the more you suffer. Or you may put it like this: the more you are able to honor and accept the Now, the more you are free of pain, of suffering - and free of the egoic mind. p. 26"

"Let despair be known as my ebb-tide; but let prayer have its springs, too, brimming, disarming him; discovering somewhere among his fissures deposits of mercy where trust may take root and grow."

"[I]t becomes no man to nurse despair, But in the teeth of clench'd antagonisms To follow up the worthiest till he die."

"I believe in evil. It is the property of all those who are certain of truth. Despair and fanaticism are only differing manifestations of evil."

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

"Reviewers, with some rare exceptions, are a most stupid and malignant race. As a bankrupt thief turns thief-taker in despair, so an unsuccessful author turns critic."

"Despair is a kind of maturity too, or at least a last stage on one road to maturity."

"I shall despair. There is no creature loves me; And if I die, no soul will pity me: Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself Find in myself no pity to myself?"

"Human life begins on the far side of despair."

"If either the absence or the presence of novelty is equally annoying, it would hardly seem that either could be the true cause of despair."

"Only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul's habitation henceforth be safely built."