Emotions

"Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving — it doesn't matter, Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times, Come, come again, come."

"What is the light that can dispel this ignorance of ours and remove all sorrows? A. The knowledge of the Four Noble Truths, as the Buddha called them... How can we escape the sufferings which result from unsatisfied desires and ignorant cravings? A. By complete conquest over, and destruction of, this eager thirst for life and its pleasures, which causes sorrow.... By following the Noble Eight-fold Path which the Buddha discovered and pointed out...The man who keeps these... in mind and follows them will be free from sorrow and ultimately reach salvation."

"IT'S BETTER TO DIE IN THE FLESH OF HOPE THAN TO LIVE IN THE SLIMNESS OF DESPAIR."

"Me miserable! which way shall I fly Infinite wrath, and infinite despair? Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep Still threatening to devour me opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven."

"Buddhism’s famed Four Truths are called noble because they liberate us from suffering."

"My love is of a birth as rare As ’tis for object strange and high: It was begotten by Despair Upon Impossibility.Magnanimous Despair alone Could show me so divine a thing, Where feeble Hope could ne’er have flown But vainly flapped its tinsel wing."

"How often, for example, a young man desires affection from someone who cannot give it to him, who has it not to give! From such a desire as that comes often a great deal of sadness, jealousy and much other ill-feeling. You will say that such a desire is natural; undoubtedly it is, and affection which is returned is a great source of happiness. Yet if it cannot be returned, a man should have the strength to accept the situation, and not allow sorrow to be caused by the unsatisfied desire."

"The First Truth is an assertion that all manifested life is sorrow, unless man knows how to live it... the Cause of Sorrow is always desire. If a man has no desires, if he is not striving for place or power or wealth, then he is equally tranquil whether the wealth or position comes or whether it goes. He remains unruffled and serene.... Being human, he will of course wish for this or that, but always mildly and gently, so that he does not allow himself to be disturbed... the Noble Eightfold Path... can be taken at all levels. The man in the world, even the uneducated man, can take it in its lowest aspects and find a way to peace and comfort through it. And yet the highest philosopher may also take it and interpret it at his level and learn very much from it."

"Despair is paralysis. It robs us of agency. It blinds us to our own power and the power of the earth."

"Just as a physician might say there isn’t a single human being who enjoys perfect health, so someone with a proper knowledge of man might say there is not a single human being who does not despair at least a little, in whose innermost being there does not dwell an uneasiness, an unquiet, a discordance, an anxiety about a possibility in life or an anxiety about himself, so that as a physician speaks of one’s going about with an illness in the body, he goes about with a sickness, goes about weighed down with a sickness of the spirit, which only now and then reveals its presence within, in glimpses, and with what is for him an inexplicable anxiety."

"Despair is exactly a consumption of the self, but an impotent self-consumption not capable of doing what it wants. But what it wants is to consume itself, which it cannot do, and this impotence is a new form of self-consumption, but in which despair is once again incapable of doing what it wants, to consume itself. This is a heightened despair, or the law for the heightening of despair. This is the hot incitement or the cold fire of despair, this incessantly inward gnawing, deeper and deeper in impotent self-consumption. Far from its being any comfort to the despairer that the despair doesn’t consume him, on the contrary this comfort is just what torments him; this is the very thing that keeps the sore alive and life in the sore. For what he – not despaired of – despairs over is precisely this: that he cannot consume himself, cannot be rid of himself, cannot become nothing. This is the heightened formula of despair, the rising fever in this sickness of the self."

"In the dark night of despair, when every light has gone out for the sufferer, there is still one place where the light is kept burning – it is along this way the despairing one must go, which is the way out: when you love God. In the fearful moment of disconsolateness, when there is no more talk or thought of any concluding clause, but humanly speaking the meaning is ended – there is still one clause left, a courageous clause of comfort that intrepidly penetrates into the greatest terror and creates new meaning: when you love God. In the dreadful moment of decisiveness, when humanly speaking no turn is any longer possible, when there is everywhere only wretchedness wherever you turn and however you turn – there is still one more turn possible: it will miraculously turn everything into good for you: when you love God."

"Bid me despair, and I’ll despair, Under that cypress tree: Or bid me die, and I will dare E’en Death, to die for thee.Thou art my life, my love, my heart, The very eyes of me: And hast command of every part, To live and die for thee."

"Despair is the price one pays for setting oneself an impossible aim."

"[W]hat we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope."

"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 the conclusion of fools."

"To have fallen is not a grievous thing, but to remain prostrate after falling, and not to get up again; and, playing the coward and the sluggard, to conceal feebleness of moral purpose under the reasoning of despair."

"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."

"The very knowledge that he lived in vain, That all was over on this side the tomb, Had made Despair a smilingness assume."

"Because thou must not dream, thou needst not then despair!"

"We grow like flowers, and bear desire, The odor of the human flowers."

"The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow."

"Oh! could I throw aside these earthly bands That tie me down where wretched mortals sigh— To join blest spirits in celestial lands!"

"As the hart panteth after the water-brooks."

"Velle suum cuique est, nec voto vivitur uno."

"The thing we long for, that we are For one transcendent moment."

"Nil cupientium Nudus castra peti."

"Passing into higher forms of desire, that which slumbered in the plant, and fitfully stirred in the beast, awakes in the man."

"If one is able to become deeply aware of the negative consequences of desires, one will not become involved in them. This is what is meant by renouncing desire."

"If people were told: what makes carnal desire imperious in you is not its pure carnal element. It is the fact that you put into it the essential part of yourself—the need for Unity, the need for God—they wouldn’t believe it. To them it seems obvious that the quality of imperious need belongs to the carnal desire as such. In the same way it seems obvious to the miser that the quality of desirability belongs to gold as such, and not to its exchange value."

"Boredom: the desire for desires."

"On the new earth, enjoyment will replace wanting as the motivating power behind people's actions. Wanting arises from the ego's delusion that you are a separate fragment that is disconnected from the power that lies behind all creation."

"In the beginning the body causes difficulties because it claims its rights without realizing that it is cutting off its own head by not surrendering."

"There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart's desire. The other is to get it."

"The rain drenches not my heart spring ignites not my desires and in the name of love these days no longer any furor does stir within."

"Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires."

"Had doting Priam checked his son's desire, Troy had been bright with fame and not with fire."

"Methinks I have a great desire to a bottle of hay: good hay, sweet hay, hath no fellow."

"Can one desire too much of a good thing?"

"I do desire we may be better strangers."

"I have Immortal longings in me."

"But man desires to continue in sin."

"Is then he who has a clear argument from his Lord similar to him to whom his evil conduct is made fair-seeming; and they follow their low desires."

"Have you seen he who has taken as his god his (own) desire, and God has sent him astray due to knowledge and has set a seal upon his hearing and his heart and put over his vision a veil? So who will guide him after God? Then will you not be reminded?"

"But if they do not respond to you – then know that they only follow their [own] desires. And who is more astray than one who follows his desire without guidance from God? Indeed, God does not guide the wrongdoing people."

"It will not be in accordance with your vain desires nor the vain desires of the People of the Book. Whoever does evil, will be requited for it and will not find for himself besides God a guardian nor a savior."

"So is it other than the religion of Allah they desire, while to Him have submitted (all) those within the heavens and earth, willingly or by compulsion, and to Him they will be returned?"

"The sluggard craves and gets nothing, but the desires of the diligent are fully satisfied."

"I salute my desires with a bow., were it not for them to come and play mind would be empty just like me."