C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Despondency

Sorrow comes soon enough without despondency, It does a man no good to carry around a lightning-rod to attract trouble.

Aughey.

Open your heart to sympathy, but close it against despondency. The flower which opens to receive the dew shuts against the rain.

Aughey.

All day the darkness and the cold
Upon my heart have lain,
Like shadows on the winter sky,
Like frost upon the pane.

Whittier.

The recollection of one upward hour
Hath more in it to tranquilize and cheer
The darkness of despondency, than years
Of gayety and pleasure.

Percival.

No thought within her bosom stirs,
But wakes some feeling dark and dread;
God keep thee from a doom like hers,
Of living when the hopes are dead.

Phœbe Cary.

Some persons depress their own minds, despond at the first difficulty; and conclude that making any progress in knowledge, farther than serves their ordinary business, is above their capacities.

Locke.

My heart is very tired—my strength is low—
My hands are full of blossoms pluck’d before
Held dead within them till myself shall die.

Mrs. Browning.

To believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. How many feasible projects have miscarried through despondency, and been strangled in their birth by a cowardly imagination.

Jeremy Collier.

Despondency is not a state of humility; on the contrary, it is the vexation and despair of a cowardly pride—nothing is worse; whether we stumble or whether we fall, we must only think of rising again and going on in our course.

Fénelon.

Life is a warfare; and he who easily desponds deserts a double duty—he betrays the noblest property of man, which is dauntless resolution; and he rejects the providence of that All-Gracious Being who guides and rules the universe.

Jane Porter.

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