Quotes about Despair

In the Bible, Jesus says more than anyone else about Hell. He refers to it as a literal place and describes it in graphic terms. Jesus taught that in Hell the wicked suffer terribly, are fully conscious, retain their desires and memories and reasoning, long for relief, cannot be comforted, cannot leave their torment, and are bereft of hope. The Savior could not have painted a bleaker picture.

There is a difference between tears of hope and tears of hopelessness." —Erwin Lutzer

For many in our high-paced world, despair is not a moment; it is a way of life.

Sartre went so far as to say that the only question he could not answer was why he did not commit suicide.

Keep away, keep away," Hungry Joe screamed. "I said keep away, keep away, you goddam stinking lousy son of a bitch." "At least we found out what he dreams about," Dunbar observed wryly. "He dreams about goddam stinking lousy sons of bitches.

In the morning he stepped from his tent looking haggard, fearful and guilt-ridden, an eaten shell of a human building rocking perilously on the brink of collapse.

Steep'd amid honey'd morphine, my windpipe throttled in fakes of death.

The most remarkable observation one can make about this interface of exilic circumstance and scriptural resource is this: Exile did not lead Jews in the Old Testament to abandon faith or to settle for abdicating despair, nor to retreat to privatistic religion. On the contrary, exile evoked the most brilliant literature and the most daring theological articulation in the Old Testament.

But these matters of life and faith cannot be expressed in the tongues of modernity, for it is this very epistemology that has consigned us to death and despair.

Where there is no speech we must live in despair. And exile is first of all where our speech has been silenced and God's speech has been banished. But the prophetic poet asserts hope precisely in exile.

All hope abandon, ye who enter here!

Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante's hell is the inscription: Leave behind all hope, you who enter here.