Hopelessness Quotes - Page 4

[I]t takes so little effort and money to get rid of malaria, to bring in clean water, to give people a chance at an education. When you don't have hope, that's when people start to do weird, horrible, violent things. That's at the bottom of it. It's just a question of prioritizing. The funds are t

What is needed is not that a religion be true, meaning that what it claims exist beyond the ink it is written with in a holy book. That is hard to prove. What is important is that a religion be a good system to help us mere mortal deal with our short and troubled life in the universe. Whether what we hope for in the afterlife materializes or not is not important, what is important is that we believe it will materialize and that gives us hope.

Before I go on with this short history, let me make a general observation– the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise. This philosophy fitted on to my early adult life, when I saw the improbable, the implausible, often the "impossible," come true.

Hope is not some thin thing that is subject to the winds of fate, but it is crafted hard by the hands of God.

I often think of death. True. Suicide is a reasonable option. True. My sins are unpardonable.I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I stare at the question. My sins are unpardonable. I leave it blank.

Life ... is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.

In an age of hope men looked up at the night sky and saw “the heavens." In an age of hopelessness they call it simply “space.

Stop counting your losses and start counting your blessings. Only then will you discover that losses are always easier to point out and count than blessings. And that your blessings will always outnumber your losses, for they are truly immeasurable.

I sometimes wish I could spontaneously combust. Burn until nothing but ash is left, to be washed away by the wind and the rain.

At some point, even the greatest misery begins to fade. Life, or what passes for life, plods on in it's own unending weary footsteps, and somehow we plod along with it, if we stay lucky.

Nonviolence is kindling light of love into the dark places and budding trust from the threshold of hopelessness.

Why doesn't the pope convert to Calvinism? Why doesn't the Dalai Lama, convert to Christianity, why doesn't Billy Graham convert to Islam, Why doesn't the Ayatollahs convert to Buddhism, Why isn't Buddhism swept away? Religious leaders know that all religions are equal; they know that no one of them has the monopoly to the knowledge of God. They know that each religion is trying to find the hidden God and that no one religion can claim to have found him beyond doubt. That's why they remain where they are and respect each other.

Man cries, his tears dry up and run out. So he becomes a devil, reduced to a monster.

The stars were only sparks of the fire which devoured us. Should that fire die out one day, there would be nothing left in the sky but dead stars, dead eyes.

If you're struggling today, remember that life is worth living and believe that the best is yet to come. Remember that you are loved, you matter, and never forget that there is always hope.

You take away my golden dreams and my visions of paradise, in its place you wake me up and hand me your reasons and facts and crude reality. You have ruined my life. If I commit murder or hang myself, let the god I used to pray to repay you in full.

My fate is like those envelopes – sealed and tossed aside.

Hope can be a powerful force. Maybe there's no actual magic in it, but when you know what you hope for most and hold it like a light within you, you can make things happen, almost like magic.

The worst of it is that while we continue to sink deeper into the muck and mire that we’ve created, in the very descent itself we ignorantly declare that in reality we are rising. And until desperation has crippled us sufficiently to confess the lie that we are lifting ourselves out of this mess, and until the panic of utter hopelessness has driven us to completely surrender all of the pathetic contrivances that we’ve fashioned that have put us there, we will never realize that God has readied solid ground that stands but a single step away

Sometimes you just gotta hope for the hope of having hope some day.

Behold, we know not anything;I can but trust that good shall fallAt last -- far off -- at last, to all,And every winter change to spring.

He pulled the gun from his waist, running it along my cheek and back down to my lips. I blinked back the tears at sick game. He finally stopped the gun at my temple, my pulse fighting against the pressure of the cold metal of the gun.“Do you think you are a good person, Kendall?”“No, not at all,” I said, swallowing down the misery of my honest answer.“Really?” he asked, one eyebrow lifting in confusion. “Are you afraid to die?”I wished I could spit in his face for making everything so hard. I wished he would just pull the trigger and end it already. But a small part of me was begging and pleading internally that he wouldn’t shoot me.“No, I’m not afraid to die,” I admitted, I closed my eyes and the tears fell quickly. “I’m not afraid of much in life. I’ve seen too much to be scared.”He let out a sigh. I opened my eyes. He pulled the gun away from me.“Well, damn. How the hell am I supposed to kill someone so miserable?”I looked away. Even in death I was pitiful.

When hopeful and hopeless come together, both will learn great things from each other: Hopeful will learn the horror of being hopeless and the hopeless will learn the beauty of being hopeful!

Each mind conceives god in its own way. There may be as many variation of the god figure as there are people in the world

If you cannot reach a state of utter oneness with each other, how do you expect to solve anything? Separate the world will crumble; together the world will thrive.

And, as always, I thank my family who are an amazing network of support.

[A] person whose head is bowed and whose eyes are heavy cannot look at the light.

You can choose to stay strong and keep moving on or you can run, and in the end still make a U-turn..

I threw my hands in the air and said show me something.He said, "if you dare come a little closer".

Give me something to worship whatever.” Cries the human soul

Never be defined by what has happened to you in the past, it was just a life lesson, not a life sentence. ~ Donald Pillai

(visions) of strange cities, of sandy plains, of gigantic ruins, of midnight skies with strange bright constellations, of mountain-passes, of grassy nooks flecked with the afternoon sunshine through the boughs: I was in the midst of such scenes, and in all of them one presence seemed to weigh on me in all these mighty shapes - the presence of something unknown and pitiless. For continual suffering had annihilated religious faith within me: to the utterly miserable - the unloving and the unloved - there is no religion possible, no worship but a worship of devils. And beyond all these, and continually recurring, was the vision of my death - the pangs, the suffocation, the last struggle, when life would be grasped at in vain. ("The Lifted Veil")

Our thoughts and desires are based in hope, but our behaviors are based in fear. This misalignment often causes a feeling of hopelessness and continues the cycle of feeding outdated ideologies and Guru genres offering gimmicks to anesthetize the pain.

Hope is made of air, and wishes. An empty box wrapped in shiny paper.And now Dad wants me to be the ambassador of hope for his foundation. How can I be the ambassador of hope, when hope doesn't change anything? When unrealized hopes only bring pain and despair?

I knew I was catching at straws; but in the wide and weltering deep where I found myself, I would have caught at cobwebs.

A weird time in which we are alive. We can travel anywhere we want, even to other planets. And for what? To sit day after day, declining in morale and hope.

It is easy, when you are young, to believe that what you desire is no less than what you deserve, to assume that if you want something badly enough, it is your God-given right to have it. When I decided to go to Alaska that April, like Chris McCandless, I was a raw youth who mistook passion for insight and acted according to an obscure, gap-ridden logic. I thought climbing the Devils Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams. And I lived to tell my tale.

….Nothing was inevitable. She had not chosen this way. It was her fate. It had been decided since before time began. It had been decided before she began. Nothing could be done. There was no point in trying. It was way too late. The inevitability of nothing was totally supreme, overriding everything. No way out. No way through. She could only accept the unacceptable. She could only endure the unendurable. Nothing was wrong!Nothing was wrong and the wrongness of this awesome nothing seeped from her. Some people, only a few, saw it. Some people, only a few felt it. Some people, only a few, recognised it and in recognising it for what it was, raged against it. Through the nothingness, these few reached out for her.She could not reach back. Through the nothingness, these few fought for her. She could not fight back for herself. Through the nothingness, these few cared for her. She could not care back for herself. Through the nothingness, these few spoke out for her, shattering the frozen silence over and over again. She could not speak out for herself…. “*I hope this may give some comfort to people who need it. There are good, caring people (whether outside or within yourself, if need be) and you do deserve to be cared for and supported as much as anyone else does."From “Nothing”, one of the short stories in “Fight! Rabbit! Fight!

The hope is the best and the worst thing at the same time.

Dad thinks I'm ready to fly around the country as the Ambassador of Hope, but Mom thinks I'm a frail little bird with broken wings.

...he began to fear whether in the presence of far greater events, all his acts would not fade into insignificance, just as a drop of rain disappears into the sea.

When you pray and hope for a change. Don't expect a change to come. Expect the opportunity for a change to come.

Even in the grave, all is not lost.

Don't create unbelief or doubt in people's minds. When you do so you ruin their lives and you have nothing to give them in its place. It's ok if people delude themselves those delusions keep their day running.

When people have tried everything and have discovered that nothing works, they will tend to revert to what they know best—which will often be the tribe, the totem, or the taboo.

He would not now conduct little Nell to the coast; he would not convey her by a steamer to Port Said, would not surrender her to Mr. Rawlinson; he himself would not fall into his father's arms and would not hear from his lips that he had acted like a true Pole! The end, the end! In a few days the sun would shine only upon the lifeless bodies and afterwards would dry them up into a semblance of those mummies which slumber in an eternal sleep in the museums in Egypt

No one at the factory can remember how long we’ve worked here, or how old we are, yet our pace and productivity continues to increase. It seems as if neither the company nor our temporary supervisor will ever be done with us. Yet we are only human beings, or at least physical beings, and one day we must die. This is the only retirement we can expect, even though none of us is looking forward to that time. For we can’t keep from wondering what might come afterward - what the company could have planned for us, and the part our temporary supervisor might play in that plan. Working at a furious pace, fitting together those small pieces of metal, helps keep our minds off such things.

Hope is for people who can't see the Truth.

Spiritual leaders, priests and prophets are lamps burning in the dark, seeking meaning for humanity.

When you have doubts about God, the right position to take is agnosticism, atheism is outright arrogance

It's utter arrogance to think that we can know what god ought to be or do. If we don't understand we must continue our search or recognize our ignorance

Hope is made of air, and wishes. An empty box wrapped in shiny paper.

When surrounded by the ashes of all that I once cherished, despite my best efforts I can find no room to be thankful. But standing there amidst endless ash I must remember that although the ashes surround me, God surrounds the ashes. And once that realization settles upon me, I am what I thought I could never be ... I am thankful for ashes.

[asked if his suicide attempt was a cry for help]No. I told no one. You only cry for help if you believe that there's help to cry for.

There seems to be no hope. But pretending to be hopeful is the only grace we have . . .

You took my heart and you held it in your mouthAnd, with a word all my love came rushing outAnd, every whisper, it's the worst, emptied out by a single wordThere is a hollow in me now...And Every whisper, every sighEats away at this heart of mineAnd there is a hollow in me now.So I put my faith in something unknownI'm living on such sweet nothingBut I'm trying to hope with nothing to holdI'm living on such sweet nothing.