“What we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope.”
George Eliot
more infosource: Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1873), 173.
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medium: fiction
“I no longer plumb the depths of despair. My sadness has become a springboard. In the past I used to think that I would always be sad, but now I know that those moments too are part of life’s ebb and flow and that all is well. This is a sign of confidence, of very great confidence, even in myself. I have gradually come to realize that I am going to manage my life properly.”
Etty Hillesum
more infosource: diary entry dated January 11, 1942, in Etty Hillesum: An Interrupted Life, the Diaries, 1941-1943 and Letters from Westerbork (New York: Picador, 1996), 83.
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category: confidence, despair, sadness
medium: diary
“You know what a thorough sufferer I can be. I not only hit bottom, I walk for miles and miles on it.”
Saul Bellow
more infosource: letter to Pascal Covici, dated November 10, 1959, in Saul Bellow: Letters (New York: Viking, 2010), 184.
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category: depression, despair, suffering
medium: letter
notes: Pascal Covici was a book editor and publisher who edited prominent writers, including Saul Bellow, John Steinbeck, and Arthur Miller
“Did it not see me through all my times of trouble and despair?”
Henry Miller
more infosource: description of his bicycle, “My Best Friend,” in My Bike & Other Friends (Santa Barbara, CA: Capra Press, 1978), 105–110.
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category: bicycle, despair, friendship, trouble
medium: essay
“I never knew despair could lie.”
Mary Karr
more infosource: The Liars’ Club (New York: Penguin Books, 2005), 10th anniversary edition, 320.
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category: depression, despair, lie
medium: memoir
despair