Rebecca Solnit Quotes

Despair is the greatest of our errors.

Despair, in short, seeks its own environment as surely as water finds its own level.

Despair exaggerates not only our misery but also our weakness.

Despair itself if it goes on long enough, can become a kind of sanctuary in which one settles down and feels at ease.

I'm constantly tortured, and that's why I say happiness is irrelevant. Happiness is for children and yuppies.

I want you to take away the hope because that's the thing that's killing me.

Despair doth strike as deep a furrow in the brain as mischief or remorse.

Unhappiness was my god.

Panic was the worst thing. When you panicked, you couldn't see possibilities. Then came despair.

There's only one great evil in the world today. Despair.

My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone.

The various forms of despair at the various stations on the road.

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

And worse I may be yet: the worst is not So long as we can say 'This is the worst.

You're not eating anything," said Marilla sharply, eying her as if it were a serious shortcoming. Anne sighed. I can't. I'm in the depths of despair. Can you eat when you are in the depths of despair?" I've never been in the depths of despair, so I can't say," responded Marilla. Weren't you? Well, did you ever try to IMAGINE you were in the depths of despair?" No, I didn't." Then I don't think you can understand what it's like. It's very uncomfortable a feeling indeed.

Despair ... is like a gas, odourless, tasteless, without nourishment. You breathe it in, your limbs relax, you cease to care, even at the moment when the steel touches your throat.

My mind was bursting with depression and anguish. I muttered imprecations and murmuring as I passed along. I was full of loathing and abhorrence of life, and all that life carries in its train.

It's funny how despair can soon become an old companion

Here's the difficulty about suicide: it is an act of ambition that can be committed only when one has passed beyond ambition.

I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.

Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war.

I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

I've been to those places where it's 'poor, pitiful me.'

I think to be driven to want to kill must be such a terrible burden.