Life is the tragedy,' she said bitterly. 'You know how they categorize Shakespeare's plays, right? If it ends with a wedding, it's a comedy. And if it ends with a funeral, it's a tragedy. So we're all living tragedies, because we all end the same way, and it isn't with a goddamn wedding.
Realizing the seriously ruthless, venomous habits and agendas of evil always instills a more fierce passion and longing for a closer God. Men, out of pride, may claim their own authorities over what constitutes good and evil; they may self-proclaim a keen knowledge of subjective morality through religion or science. But that is only if they are acknowledging the work of evil as a cartoon-like, petty little rain cloud in the sky that merely wants to dampen one's spirits. On the contrary, a man could be without a doubt lit with the strength, the peace, and the knowledge of the gods, his gods, but when or if the devils grow weary in unsuccessful attempts to torment him, they begin tormenting his loved ones, or, if not his loved ones, anyone who may attempt to grasp his philosophies. No matter how godly he may become, God is, in the end, his only hope and his only grace for the pressures built around him - it is left up to a higher authority and a more solid peace and a wider love to eclipse not just one's own evils but all evils for goodness to ultimately matter. If all men were gods, each being would dwell in a separate prison cell, hopeless, before finally imploding into nothingness.
Man was born for society. However little He may be attached to the World, He never can wholly forget it, or bear to be wholly forgotten by it. Disgusted at the guilt or absurdity of Mankind, the Misanthrope flies from it: He resolves to become an Hermit, and buries himself in the Cavern of some gloomy Rock. While Hate inflames his bosom, possibly He may feel contented with his situation: But when his passions begin to cool; when Time has mellowed his sorrows, and healed those wounds which He bore with him to his solitude, think you that Content becomes his Companion? Ah! no, Rosario. No longer sustained by the violence of his passions, He feels all the monotony of his way of living, and his heart becomes the prey of Ennui and weariness. He looks round, and finds himself alone in the Universe: The love of society revives in his bosom, and He pants to return to that world which He has abandoned. Nature loses all her charms in his eyes: No one is near him to point out her beauties, or share in his admiration of her excellence and variety. Propped upon the fragment of some Rock, He gazes upon the tumbling waterfall with a vacant eye, He views without emotion the glory of the setting Sun. Slowly He returns to his Cell at Evening, for no one there is anxious for his arrival; He has no comfort in his solitary unsavoury meal: He throws himself upon his couch of Moss despondent and dissatisfied, and wakes only to pass a day as joyless, as monotonous as the former.
I want to encourage you by letting you know that there’s hope for you and your situation whatever you are dealing with. God is intimately involved with every detail of your future and His desire is for you to be an overcomer.
Although I'm an atheist, I try not to crap all over people's belief in God. It may be nothing more than a placebo, a fairy tale that gives the hopeless hope, but sometimes a little hope is all people need to get through the day. Imagine a unit of soldiers under heavy enemy fire. They are told by their superiors to hold their position, even in the face of overwhelming fire power. The soldiers are being told that reinforcements are on the way, and that thought alone gives them the hope and courage to continue fighting, even if ultimately the reinforcements never arrive. I think some people simply need to believe that God is sending them reinforcements, to get through another day.
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.
Why does a human body become deceased?The reason is that as long as the human body is not free from suffering, mind cannot be happy. If a man lacks enthusiasm, either his body or mind is in a deceased condition.... Now what saps the enthusiasm in man? If there is no enthusiasm, life becomes drudgery - a mere burden to be dragged. Nothing can be achieved if there is no enthusiasm. The main reason for this lack of enthusiasm on the part of a man is that an individual looses the hope of getting an opportunity to elevate himself. Hopelessness leads to lack of enthusiasm. The mind in such cases becomes deceased.... When is enthusiasm created? When one breaths an atmosphere where one is sure of getting the legitimate reward for one's labor, only then one feels enriched by enthusiasm and inspiration.
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.
They want us to be afraid. They want us to be afraid of leaving our homes. They want us to barricade our doors and hide our children. Their aim is to make us fear life itself! They want us to hate. They want us to hate 'the other'. They want us to practice aggression and perfect antagonism. Their aim is to divide us all! They want us to be inhuman. They want us to throw out our kindness. They want us to bury our love and burn our hope. Their aim is to take all our light! They think their bricked walls will separate us. They think their damned bombs will defeat us. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that my soul and your soul are old friends. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that when they cut you I bleed. They are so ignorant they don’t understand that we will never be afraid, we will never hate and we will never be silent for life is ours!
It is ignorance that is at times incomprehensible to the wise; for instance, he may not see 'the positive person' or 'the negative person' in such a black and white way as many people do. A wise man may not understand it because, as a catalyst of wisdom, but not always wise in his own eyes, even he can learn from and give back to fools. To think that an individual has absolutely nothing to offer to the table is counter-intuitively what the wise man considers to be 'the ignorance of hopelessness'.
Putting your time in at the office; dutifully spawning your two point five; smiling politely at your retirement party; then chewing on your bedsheet and choking on your canned peaches at the nursing home. It was better never to have been born-never to have wanted anything, never to have hoped for anything.
So much can change from one day to the next, but the one thing that always remains the same is God. Stay focused on Him. In God We Trust.
Why do you feel so powerless? Go spend an hour with ants. Each of those black specks you see is a life. One whole life that you can save, take, or affect in some way. You have the power to make so many lives better. It is within you. Don’t lose sight of that.
If we throw blankets over our children's dreams, we darken their world and extinguish their desire to live.
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
I made a sorry face in response to such strong insistence, but I couldn’t believe him. Fantasies were exactly that..…..fantasies. Whimsy. Wishes. Mere castles in the sky without foundation or substance. Dreams didn’t come true. To believe so would be to believe falsely, to surrender to madness, to give in to an unreliable hope that would crush me once again as it always, always did!
Hopeful people are more easily controlled, but the volume must be managed. Too much hope leaves a person emboldened and resistant. Too little leaves them disabled and useless. But just the right amount of hope subjugates them. They cradle it like a dying ember, and they'll do anything to keep the wind from extinguishing it. They'll serve.
You have the freedom and the ability to decide what to do with your life, and that includes learning how to welcome happiness again. It's a conscious choice we each have to make, to emerge from the embers of profound loss and hopelessness, to become the fire that warms us, lights our path, all of it. We can embody that warmth and light.
There are some of you here today who feel like dead people. It is as if you are already six feet under, staring up at the top of your own locked coffin. This morning Jesus wants to set you free. You simply have to let go of the key and pass it through the little hole, where you see a tiny shaft of light.
We all go through hard times in life. It’s a part of being alive and it's the reality we all have to deal with. There are times we forget our value as a person because we are so blinded with these thoughts of loneliness, emptiness and ego. Somewhere along the road we become numbed with all the frustrations and dissatisfaction. But life itself isn't always about darkness and sadness, Life is also filled with colors and that makes it beautiful. Along this path of darkness there's always light waiting to be seen by our daunted hearts. Our heart is gifted to see this light. It may be hiding behind those circumstances that we encounter; in a stranger we just met at an unexpected place; a family who has been always there but you just ignored because of your imperfect relationship with them; it might be a long time friend you have or a friend you just met. Open your heart and you will see how blessed you are to have them all in your life. Sometimes they are the light that shines your path in some dark phases of life. Don't lose hope
[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
So one must be resigned to being a clock that measures the passage of time, now out of order, now repaired, and whose mechanism generates despair and love as soon as its maker sets it going? Are we to grow used to the idea that every man relives ancient torments, which are all the more profound because they grow comic with repetition? That human existence should repeat itself, well and good, but that it should repeat itself like a hackneyed tune, or a record a drunkard keeps playing as he feeds coins into the jukebox...
Good gods are scarce because the majority of gods are created by evil men
Why do religious believers hate unbelievers? The feel threatened by them, they feel besieged by them. Religions consider themselves as separate tribes in their own rights and feel like unbelievers will one day overrun their strongholds
Every word that comes after "And the Lord told me. . . “is a pious lie
Give me something to worship whatever.” Cries the human soul
Spiritual leaders, priests and prophets are lamps burning in the dark, seeking meaning for humanity.
Science cannot disprove god. Science studies the things that are. The eternal question is who or what made them to be
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.
Can really anybody put his hand on his heart and profess to know beyond doubt what happens on the other side of this life?
Once you believe that god is not a private property of anybody, you are on your way to becoming a new messiah. Maybe your own if not the world's
Theology is like assuming that there is a black cat in a dark room where in fact there is no black cat, and endeavoring to study the cat's properties and how it may have evolved from its ancestors.
The eyes of god are upon you, I mean the eyes of society. We are prisoners of societies in which we live
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.
If you believe that God is good and that He loves you without regard to whom you are or what you do, you will worship Him wholeheartedly. You will praise him with thanksgiving. If you believe He is angry against you, you will come to him with fear and trying to appease his anger. And you don't know when His anger will be over. Such a god keeps you in a perpetual psychological anguish. That is the typical kind of god we usually worship. That is the typical god approved by authority.
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
God has not yet revealed himself to no one in no unclear terms. Religions are attempts to find him on that level they are all equal
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.
Much terror in religion is not the will of god, it is created by power hungry clerics who thirst for absolute power and claim it for god. God does not seek power, he is already powerful.
No one knows what god thinks of anything. He only knows and no one can claim to penetrate into his mysteries. Those who do that are liars and must be avoided at all costs
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
All religions are "revealed" and "inspired". After all nothing happens without the "will" of god.
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.
An atheist is a disappointed true believer he is an angry and hungry soul who has failed to find a real god to whom he can anchor his hope
When you have doubts about God, the right position to take is agnosticism, atheism is outright arrogance
All religions are guesswork
My gut instinct is that these heavens and hells exist nowhere else except in our hearts and minds
Don’t curse the gods you will feel shame when you have to call on them for help
God is powerful. Even those who claim not to believe in him fear him. Though their mouths may confess to disbelieve in him, their hearts yearn for him.
All atheists will go to heaven. If god exists, not believing in him does not take him away and he cannot justly condemn those who seek him earnestly and cannot find him. He would even reward their earnest search for him.
He is an atheist anyone who does not believe in my god and the wrath of god is upon him; I am in my right to meet that wrath on him," thunders the fanatic
You can't have it both ways. Either you believe in my god or you go to hell
An atheist is someone who is disappointed in his search of god. He is a man who strongly needed god but couldn't find him. Atheism is a cry of despair
I know what is going on in the heart of an atheist. Deep anguish that there is nothing beyond, nothing to live for, nothing to give him hope. I know because I endured the same predicament.
After losing faith, even an atheist feels a yawning void in his soul that needs filling; there is nothing imaginable that he can fill with it. It was all along meant to be filled with the sacred, with the unknown and unknowable power. That's the curse or blessing of humanity
I am as silent as death. Do this: Go to your bedroom. Your nice, safe, warm bedroom that is not a glass coffin behind a morgue door. Lie down on your bed not made of ice. Stick your fingers in your ears. Do you hear that? The pulse of life from your heart, the slow in-and-out from your lungs? Even when you are silent, even when you block out all noise, your body is still a cacophony of life. Mine is not. It is the silence that drives me mad. The silence that drives the nightmares to me. Because what if I am dead? How can someone without a beating heart, without breathing lungs live like I do? I must be dead. And this is my greatest fear: After 301 years, when they pull my glass coffin from this morgue, and they let my body thaw like chicken meat on the kitchen counter, I will be just like I am now. I will spend all of eternity trapped in my dead body. There is nothing beyond this. I will be locked within myself forever. And I want to scream. I want to throw open my eyes wake up and not be alone with myself anymore, but I can't. I can't.
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.
Sometimes I reach the highest heights of hope, at other times I reach the deepest of despair. Sometimes I am happy, at other times I am sad. At some point I am a believer, and at some other time an unbeliever. Sometimes I love, some other times I hate. That’s what it means to be human.
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.
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.
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door — Only this, and nothing more."Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.Eagerly I wished the morrow; — vainly I had sought to borrowFrom my books surcease of sorrow — sorrow for the lost Lenore —For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore — Nameless here for evermore.And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtainThrilled me — filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door —Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door; — This it is, and nothing more."Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly your forgiveness I implore;But the fact is I was napping, and so gently you came rapping,And so faintly you came tapping, tapping at my chamber door,That I scarce was sure I heard you"— here I opened wide the door; — Darkness there, and nothing more.Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before;But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, "Lenore?"This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, "Lenore!" — Merely this, and nothing more.Back into the chamber turning, all my soul within me burning,Soon again I heard a tapping somewhat louder than before.Surely," said I, "surely that is something at my window lattice:Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore —Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore; — 'Tis the wind and nothing more."Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore;Not the least obeisance made he; not a minute stopped or stayed he;But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door —Perched upon a bust of Pallas just above my chamber door — Perched, and sat, and nothing more.Then this ebony bird beguiling my sad fancy into smiling,By the grave and stern decorum of the countenance it wore.Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, thou," I said, "art sure no craven,Ghastly grim and ancient raven wandering from the Nightly shore —Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."Much I marveled this ungainly fowl to hear discourse so plainly,Though its answer little meaning— little relevancy bore;For we cannot help agreeing that no living human beingEver yet was blest with seeing bird above his chamber door —Bird or beast upon the sculptured bust above his chamber door, With such name as "Nevermore.
You speak rather poorly of God when praising Him, or when wanting to praise Him, only during that which you perceive to be your highest of moments. That is many a reason behind unbelief altogether: the failed attempt to control God, to lower His standards to one's own level of understanding in doubt of His foresight and omniscience, His goodness and power. He wants to know if you are faithful enough to praise Him even when, to you, all seems lost.
Our Ancestors knew that healing comes in cycles and circles.One generation carries the pain so that the next can live and heal.One cannot live without the other, each is the other's hope, meaning & strength.
The circles of shame are vicious. Painful feelings of shame help cause people to be depressed and suicidal, these in turn become shameful aspects of the self. Being angry does not necessarily cause more anger, being envious does not necessarily cause more envy (though once we envy, we can also envy someone's lack of envy), but, in our culture at least, shame (and envy and self-pity) are things to be ashamed about. The two common feelings of suicide are hopelessness and powerlessness; each is shameful, and this additional experience of shame adds pain on pain. A man who despairs because he feels his prospects of having a family are hopeless also feels he will never lose the feeling of shame over being wifeless and childless. To be powerless to change one's life in ways that others can is cause to feel ashamed of one's powerlessness.
When your situation seems pathless and hopeless, this happens just because your mind is not talented enough to find a hope and to create a path!
How can I be strong when I do not know my own mind? I am lost.""That's not true. You are not lost. It's just that your own thoughts are being kept from you, or hidden away. But the mind is strong. It survives, even without thought. Even with everything taken away, it holds a seed-- your self. You must believe in your own powers.
To love at a distance and without hope; never to possess; to dream chastely of pale charms and impossible kisses extinguished on the waxen brow of death: ah, that is something like it. A delicious straying away from the world, and never the return. As only the unreal is not ignoble and empty, existence must be admitted to be abominable. Yes, imagination is the only good thing which heaven vouchsafes to the skeptic and pessimist, alarmed by the eternal abjectness of life.
I don’t want anything else bad to happen,” she whispered, her voice choked with tears. “I’m so sick to death of bad things happening, of seeing bad things that happened in the past! And I’m guilty of so many things. I’m sorry that I killed Mrs. Matthias and wrecked her stupid greenhouse back in the Eighties and I’m sorry I left you here alone while I went around the world.”“I wasn’t alone though, I knew you were doing what you wanted to do and that you were still alive, so I wasn’t really alone, I knew you were still there somewhere,” Alecto told her. His damaged smile and downcast, sorrowful eyes were draped in the shadow of the night, saving Mandy the trouble of seeing.
At cocktail parties, I played the part of a successful businessman's wife to perfection. I smiled, I made polite chit-chat, and I dressed the part. Denial and rationalization were two of my most effective tools in working my way through our social obligations. I believed that playing the roles of wife and mother were the least I could do to help support Tom's career.During the day, I was a puzzle with innumerable pieces. One piece made my family a nourishing breakfast. Another piece ferried the kids to school and to soccer practice. A third piece managed to trip to the grocery store. There was also a piece that wanted to sleep for eighteen hours a day and the piece that woke up shaking from yet another nightmare. And there was the piece that attended business functions and actually fooled people into thinking I might have something constructive to offer.I was a circus performer traversing the tightwire, and I could fall off into a vortex devoid of reality at any moment. There was, and had been for a very long time, an intense sense of despair. A self-deprecating voice inside told me I had no chance of getting better. I lived in an emotional black hole.p20-21, talking about dissociative identity disorder (formerly multiple personality disorder).
No person, collection of people, institution, government or organization of any kind can in any way promise to meet all of my needs for no person, collection of people, institution, government or organization possesses the array of resources necessary to do that. And so, I am left with the reality that either there is a God who can meet all of my needs, or I’ve been stranded in an existence that created me with needs that the existence itself cannot meet.
My hope is that tomorrow will be fine, but, if tomorrow doesn't go well, I shall still hope to be fine tomorrow!
I no longer follow the voices of the sane. I follow the ill because they see farther, feel much more and change what the sane will not. This is the paradox of philosophers---trying to understand mass delusion among great people that have faith and knowledge, yet they can’t graduate from their institutions of religious theology to apply the knowledge they have gained for the shifting of Zion---- from words to action; from comfort to uncomfortable; from self serving to self giving; from competition to supporting; to tradition to unity; from bias to acceptance; from me to us.
To live for the hope of something isn’t really living at all, and so, like a child putting away its toys and picking up a tool, he marched to Lyca’s bathroom, to shower off the stench of failure, soap up the death of hope, then wash away the ashes of his love for Daphne.
There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly-entered road of apprenticeship to Joe.
No reflection was to be allowed now, not one glance was to be cast back; not even one forward. Not one thought was to be given either to the past or the future. The first was a page so heavenly sweet, so deadly sad, that to read one line of it would dissolve my courage and break down my energy. The last was an awful blank, something like then world when the deluge was gone by.
The back of the church was raised up from the ground. Tossed in among its supports were what looked like moldering bones.My heart ached so much for these poor souls, neglected even after death, I turned away to head back, but managed only a few burdened steps.I drew up abruptly and froze.An old, worn marker, standing off by itself, grabbed at my heart.It was Edgar Alan Poe.He fit in so perfectly there. Maybe I did, too. His sorrow and pain ate through me as I stood, head lowered. Can’t even death let us step away from our darkness? It was like he was scratching a warning into the dirt with his finger, and meant it specifically for me. Don’t wait around for sermons to wash you clean, he seemed to say, for death or drugs to close your eyes. God won’t come roaring in with fresh troops to drive away the darkness we’ve walled our own souls up in. He didn’t put us there; we’ll have to dig ourselves out.I looked at my own life as I stood there, feeling buried alive, like some of his characters.But unlike his characters I had caught a flash of hope.
It wasn't that she was sad—sadness had very little to do with it, really, considering that most of the time, she felt close to nothing at all. Feeling required nerves, connections, sensory input. The only thing she felt was numb. And tired. Yes, she very frequently felt tired.
I never knew You lived so close to the floor,but every time I am bowed down,crushed by this weight of grief,I feel Your hand on my head,Your breath on my cheek,Your tears on my neck.You never tell me to pull myself together,to stem the flow of many years.You simply stay by my sidefor as long as it takes,so close to the floor.
I am not ascare to die. I am only ascare that after death I be alone. Maybe because of suicide, I go to the hell? If hell all hot and crowded and noiseful, like Christian minister on TV say, then I not care because it will be just like India. But if hell cold and quiet, with lot of snow and leaf-empty trees, and people who smile with string-thin lips, then I ascare. Because it seems so much like my life in Am'rica.
Suicidal pain includes the feeling that one has lost all capacity to effect emotional change. The agony is excruciating and looks as if it will never end. There is the feeling of having been beaten down for a very long time. There are feelings of agitation, emptiness, and incoherence. 'Snap out of it and get on with your life,' sounds like a demand to high jump ten feet.
There is absolutely no worse death curse than the humdrum daily existence of the living dead.
It ended by my almost believing (perhaps actually believing) that this was perhaps my normal condition. But at first, in the beginning, what agonies I endured in that struggle! I did not believe it was the same with other people, and all my life I hid this fact about myself as a secret. I was ashamed (even now, perhaps, I am ashamed): I got to the point of feeling a sort of secret abnormal, despicable enjoyment in returning home to my corner on some disgusting Petersburg night, acutely conscious that that day I had committed a loathsome action again, that what was done could never be undone, and secretly, inwardly gnawing, gnawing at myself for it, tearing and consuming myself till at last the bitterness turned into a sort of shameful accursed sweetness, and at last—into positive real enjoyment! Yes, into enjoyment, into enjoyment! I insist upon that. I have spoken of this because I keep wanting to know for a fact whether other people feel such enjoyment? I will explain; the enjoyment was just from the too intense consciousness of one’s own degradation; it was from feeling oneself that one had reached the last barrier, that it was horrible, but that it could not be otherwise; that there was no escape for you; that you never could become a different man; that even if time and faith were still left you to change into something different you would most likely not wish to change; or if you did wish to, even then you would do nothing; because perhaps in reality there was nothing for you to change into.And the worst of it was, and the root of it all, that it was all in accord with the normal fundamental laws of over-acute consciousness, and with the inertia that was the direct result of those laws, and that consequently one was not only unable to change but could do absolutely nothing. Thus it would follow, as the result of acute consciousness, that one is not to blame in being a scoundrel; as though that were any consolation to the scoundrel once he has come to realise that he actually is a scoundrel.
An event of great agony is bearable only in the belief that it will bring about a better world. When it does not, as in the aftermath of another vast calamity in 1914-18, disillusion is deep and moves on to self-doubt and self-disgust.
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.
Shhh,” Mr. Winston whispered into her hair. “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.” He said it over and over again, just as the boy had done when she was at her most helpless. He rocked her with each stanza of the hypnotic prayer, and she melted into his arms, letting him be her strength as she cried into his chest.“I couldn’t keep her,” she finally mustered, wiping her nose against his scratchy flannel. “Shhh…” he repeated. He kissed the top of her head and then stood. With surprising strength, the elderly man lifted her as if she weighed nothing, bringing her to the car. He opened the car door with one hand, sat her in the front seat, and then buckled her in like she was a child. Exhausted, Maddie didn’t fight him or try to do it on her own. She needed someone else to be in charge for a while. She needed to be taken care of.
We began our hospital visits: one day Susan, one day me, everyday The Big Hoom. On one of these visits, she told me about the tap that opened at my birth and the lack drip filling her up, and it tore a hole in my heart. If this was what she could manage with a single sentence, what did thirsty years of marriage do to The Big Hoom?
You don´t have to let it linger Within the palm of your hand, The tip's already in your finger:All beginning comes to an end.
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.
There are times when you don't belong and you think you're going to kill yourself. Once I went to a hotel. Later that night I made a plan. The plan was I would leave my family when my second child was born. And that's what I did. I got up one morning, made breakfast, went to the bus stop, got on a bus. I'd left a note. I got a job in a library in Canada. It would be wonderful to say you regretted it. It would be easy. But what does it mean? What does it mean to regret when you have no choice? It's what you can bear. There it is. No-one's going to forgive me. It was death. I chose life." -Laura Brown-
Sad truth is. . . we all end up alone on some death bed. Yeah? No way to take anybody else's place and no way we can be lying on the same one.”I was at the edge of the white-wed cloth. My shoes filled with concrete, as did my head, looking at the empty shell of what was once a woman full of wonder.“Any way to make someone feel not so alone?” she asked. “The only thing anyone can ever do is help someone feel a little less lonely before they get there.”“How does someone do that?” “Memories. Help create memories. Better ones. Ones to replace the old.
I have no idea what to do, and everything is starting to feel dangerously hopeless. Hopelessness is not an emotion to be indulged. On the heels of hopelessness comes defeat, and even though everything seems pointless and impossible, I still want to win. Underneath my confusion and utter, bone-crushing fatigue, even though I don't know much of anything at all, I still know I want to win.
If you have ever felt hopeless hang on The night you’re enduring may seem long but there is joy coming in the morning. Incredible changes are going to take place in your life as you begin to relinquish your past and renew your present.
The contemplation of suicide, however brooding and painful it might be, is an essential act that may ascend toward something other than what was originally thought of as an end itself, that is, to hastily commit the act without the pleasure of justifying. Like a spiritual meditation, the contemplation of suicide involves a meticulous process of intellectual and emotional planning over some dark and unbearable sleepless nights. Once the thought of suicide has already been decided upon, it becomes irreversible that no amount of justification can change the decision to consummate the act. But life itself is already an act of suicide, to invoke the French-Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran. So why rush, there’s always a romantic way—a particular time or place—to die. (Danny Castillones Sillada, The Pain and the Pleasure of Contemplating Suicide)
To the bankrupt poet, to the jilted lover, to anyone who yearns to elude the doubt within and the din without, the tidal strait between Manhattan Island and her favorite suburb offers the specious illusion of easy death. Melville prepared for the plunge from the breakwater on the South Street promenade, Whitman at the railing of the outbound ferry, both men redeemed by some Darwinian impulse, maybe some epic vision, which enabled them to change leaden water into lyric wine. Hart Crane rejected the limpid estuary for the brackish swirl of the Caribbean Sea. In each generation, from Washington Irving’s to Truman Capote’s, countless young men of promise and talent have examined the rippling foam between the nation’s literary furnace and her literary playground, questioning whether the reams of manuscript in their Brooklyn lofts will earn them garlands in Manhattan’s salons and ballrooms, wavering between the workroom and the water. And the city had done everything in its power to assist these men, to ease their affliction and to steer them toward the most judicious of decisions. It has built them a bridge.
All's well that ends well.''Assuming there's an end somewhere,' Aomame said.Tamaru formed some short creases near his mouth that were faintly reminiscent of a smile. 'There has to be an end somewhere. It's just that nothing's labeled "This is the end." Is the top rung of a ladder labeled "This is the last rung. Please don't step higher than this'?"Aomame shook her head.'It's the same thing,' Tamaru said.Aomame said, 'If you use common sense and keep your eyes open, it becomes clear enough where the end is.'Tamaru nodded. 'And even if it doesn't' -- he made a falling gesture with his finger -- 'the end is right there.
I do not view suicide as wicked, just terribly sad. There is only one death, but it is like a stone cast into a pond - the ripples stretch far. Such an act must leave a burden of sorrow, guilt, shame and confusion on an entire family. A natural death, such as my father suffered, is hard enough to deal with. A decision to end one's life must be still more devastating for those left behind. I cannot imagine the degree of hopelessness someone must feel to contemplate such an act.
When I was in the Navy, everyone fell under the purview of “navy gray”. It is the military’s way of reminding its enlisted personnel that they are all equal. Man or woman, black or white, young or old, everyone was navy gray. With God's grace I can proudly say a better understanding of this concept has helped me ameliorate disputes, mend fences that appeared hopeless and find light in the midst of darkness.
I have given up on speech with the Rev; there is no use explaining that you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help. My trust, even down in that dark place I carry, is that some person will come running. And then finally the way through grief is grieving.
The train bore me away, through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs. This was March, but the weather had been horribly cold and everywhere there were mounds of blackened snow. As we moved slowly through the outskirts of the town we passed row after row of little grey slum houses running at right angles to the embankment. At the back of one of the houses a young woman was kneeling on the stones, poking a stick up the leaden waste-pipe which ran from the sink inside and which I suppose was blocked. I had time to see everything about her—her sacking apron, her clumsy clogs, her arms reddened by the cold. She looked up as the train passed, and I was almost near enough to catch her eye. She had a round pale face, the usual exhausted face of the slum girl who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever-seen. It struck me then that we are mistaken when we say that ‘It isn’t the same for them as it would be for us,’ and that people bred in the slums can imagine nothing but the slums. For what I saw in her face was not the ignorant suffering of an animal. She knew well enough what was happening to her—understood as well as I did how dreadful a destiny it was to be kneeling there in the bitter cold, on the slimy stones of a slum backyard, poking a stick up a foul drain-pipe.
it seemed that the pain of their physical illness at times was less than the misery of their poverty ridden existence, the unending wait in the queues and the feeling of hopelessness and abandonment by your own system was enough to rob them of their will power to fight any disease.
What in the name of reason does this nation expect of a people, poorly trained and hard pressed in severe economic competition, without political rights, and with ludicrously inadequate common-school facilities? What can it expect but crime and listlessness, offset here and there by the dogged struggles of the fortunate and more determined who are themselves buoyed by the hope that in due time the country will come to its senses?
….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!
Hope is when we have a beautiful vision of something and a positive emotion to go along with it. When our world comes crashing down, when we are trapped in a deep, dark, despairing hopelessness, we need a bigger perspective. Hope comes when we reflect on all that we hold dearand true, when we acknowledge a higher power, when we acknowledge God in our lives and begin to see what He has planned for our lives.
Despair is not for the living but for those unable to rise and continue; they are the only souls with a right to it. It is an end where breath and strength and will have vanished, leaving no way to persevere. To sink into the abyss that is despair is to suffer an existence far worse than death; therefore, cling to its enemy, our ally—hope. For life goes on, and we must not live in despair. We must not.
To thee, to thee, my fire! Thou hast been burning in my heart all these futile years. If my life were a piece of gold it would come out of its trial brighter, but it is a trodden turf of grass, and nothing remains of it but this handful of ashes.
He waited for the black, terrible anger as though for some beast out of the night. But it did not come to him. His bowels seemed weighted with lead, and he walked slowly and lingered against fences and the cold, wet walls of buildings by the way. Descent into the depths until at last there was no further chasm below. He touched the solid bottom of despair and there took ease.
Some people never have any luck. All at once, as though a thick veil had been whisked aside, he clearly saw the wretchedness―the bottomless, monotonous wretchedness―of his existence. The wretchedness which had been, which was, and which was yet to come. His last days indistinguishable from the first, with nothing ahead of him or behind him or around him, nothing in his heart, nothing anywhere.
You’ve had many ordeals in the past. During these ordeals, life seemed unbearable. You may have collapsed from the exhaustion of hopelessness and curled into a fetal position. Regardless of how difficult this new ordeal may be, as with the others, this too will be overcome. It will make you stronger.
(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")
Nothing is more excruciating than hopelessly longing for lost love.
If America and the Western world continue in their state of unconscious hopelessness, lack of faith and of fortitude, it is predictable that they will not be able to resist the temptation of the big bang by nuclear weapons, which would end all problems - overpopulation, boredom, and hunger - since it would do away with all life.
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!
You must never travel on the road of hopelessness because that road is deprived of any kind of light!
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
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.
I am no fun at all. In fact, I am anti-fun. Not as in anti-violence, but as in anti-matter. I am not so much against fun - although I suppose I kind of am - as I am the opposite of fun. I suck the fun out of a room. Or perhaps I'm just a different kind of fun; the kind that leaves on bereft of hope; the kind of fun that ends in tears.
For several years Quinn had been having the same conversations with this man, whose name he did not know. Once, when he had been in the luncheonette, they had talked about baseball, and now, each time Quinn came in, they continued to talk about it. In the winter, the talk was of trades, predictions, memories. During the season, it was always the most recent game. They were both Mets fans, and the hopelessness of that passion had created a bond between them.
Before I shall have become a man again I shall probably exist as a park, a sort of natural park in which people come to rest, to while away the time. What they say or do will be of little matter, for they will bring only their fatigue, their boredom, their hopelessness.