#pair

The clear awareness of having been born into a losing struggle need not lead one into despair. I do not especially like the idea that one day I shall be tapped on the shoulder and informed, not that the party is over but that it is most assuredly going on—only henceforth in my absence. (It's the second of those thoughts: the edition of the newspaper that will come out on the day after I have gone, that is the more distressing.) Much more horrible, though, would be the announcement that the party was continuing forever, and that I was forbidden to leave. Whether it was a hellishly bad party or a party that was perfectly heavenly in every respect, the moment that it became eternal and compulsory would be the precise moment that it began to pall. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#atheism #death #despair #eternal-life #heaven

It’s awful, telling it like this, isn’t it? As though we didn’t know the ending. As though it could have another ending. It’s like watching Romeo drink poison. Every time you see it you get fooled into thinking his girlfriend might wake up and stop him. Every single time you see it you want to shout, You stupid ass, just wait a minute and she’ll open her eyes! Oi, you, you twat, open your eyes, wake up! Don’t die this time! But they always do. ↗

— Elizabeth Wein

#despair #irony #romeo-and-juliet #death

I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture — a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. It’s maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it’s not these things, quite. It’s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that I’m small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. It’s wanting to jump overboard. ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#banality #death #despair #dread #ennui

Death, he felt, was only a kind of warning rather than a desperate and permanent end. ↗

— László Krasznahorkai

#despair #warnings #death

Between the desire And the spasm, Between the potency And the existence, Between the essence And the descent, Falls the Shadow. ↗

— T.S. Eliot

#despair #life #philosophy #poetry #death

Your shadow is bought and paid for, and your death will not remit that payment. You can go shadowless into the shadowless world, and your death will only be one last dark thing on my long dark road. It will hurt me but I do not care. It is all but over. ↗

— Erin Bow

#danger #death #despair #evil #trade

Oh dire, dreadful death, you drag your heels. Why dawdle and draw back? You drown my heart. ↗

— Simon Armitage

#death-wish #depression #despair #grief #king-arthur

I was glad to be made aware that “Veimke” (jeune fille au pair), is subject to natural law, and can be made fat, by such things as poor diet, and alcohol. ↗

— Roman Payne

#au-pair #diet #germans #humor #humour

I go dreaming into the future, where I see nothing, nothing. I have no plans, no idea, no project, and, what is worse, no ambition. Something – the eternal ‘what’s the use?’ – sets its bronze barrier across every avenue that I open up in the realm of hypothesis. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#depression #despair #perseverance #dreams

The days passed in a dream. I pictured our reunion again and again, played it out in my mind over and over until I’d almost worn a groove in my thoughts, so deep that it seemed the only thing I could think of was our reunion. Anticipation is a gift. Perhaps there is none greater. Anticipation is born of hope. Indeed it is hope’s finest expression. In hope’s loss, however, is the greatest despair. ↗

— Steven L. Peck

#despair #hope #longing #loss #love