Category: DESPONDENCY

  • From The Screwtape Letters—a fictional work written from a senior demon’s perspective, advising a junior tempter.

    And Nothing is very strong: strong enough to steal away a man’s best years not in sweet sins but in a dreary flickering of the mind over it knows not what and knows not why, in the gratification of curiosities so feeble that the man is only half aware of them, in drumming of fingers and kicking of heels, in whistling tunes that he does not like, or in the long, dim labyrinth of reveries that have not even lust or ambition to give them a relish, but which, once chance association has started them, the creature is too weak and fuddled to shake off.

    The Screwtape Letters
    C. S. Lewis

  • The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me,

    The Trouble With Being Born
    Emil Cioran

  • God dwells in those who have abhorred the world, and even themselves, and who have carried the cross. He feeds their souls with a joy that enriches them and makes them grow noticeably. Among those who accept this celestial joy are a few to whom God reveals His heavenly secrets. He also shows them their celestial positions while they are still in the body. Such people have boldness before Him and He gives them all that they ask for. They are gifted with talents and help people. In every generation, some people have reached that status. And the coming generations will continue to have examples of such people, not only among men, but also among women. Each one of them will be an example to his or her generation and condemn it, because these people struggled until they became perfect.

    —St. Anthony the Great

  • Let us then give diligent heed to the study of the Scriptures. For if you do this the Scripture will expel your despondency and engender pleasure, extirpate vice and make virtue take root, and in the tumult of life it will save you from suffering like those who are tossed by troubled waves. The sea rages but you sail on with calm weather for you have the study of the Scriptures for your pilot; for this is the cable which the trials of life do not break asunder. Now events themselves bear witness that I lie not.

    Saint John Chrysostom
    HOMILY TWO, After Eutropios, having been found outside the church, was taken captive
    On the Vanity of Riches

  • You felt you were Christ’s companion; that He was using you, and there was a constant interchange of holy fellowship between Him and you. But for some reason which you cannot understand the morning light has died out of your life, and instead of your sitting with Christ upon the throne, in the conscious enjoyment of fellowship with Him, you have been brought down into the very dust of neglect and forsakenness; and for a long time now you have been saying, “My God, my God! Why hast Thou forsaken me?” You cannot imagine why. The probability is, that in your case it is not the result of any sin on your part, or of any neglect of your duties, but because God is desirous of ascertaining whether you love Him for the light of His face or for Himself.

    The Gift of Suffering
    by F.B. Meyer

  • But God does not listen to such entreaty; rather, instead of consolation he sends boredom, and instead of light, darkness. Right there, halfway along our road, we don’t know whether we are going backwards or forwards.

    Letters from the Desert
    by Carlo Carretto

  • It is awful to want to go away and to want to go nowhere.

    —Sylvia Plath

  • Two years ago we were both unhappy where we were and demanded a change. Two years later, we feel the same. Something is wrong. Something is making us miserable. Only now I’m starting to realize that it’s not our situation, not the job or the commute or living back home, it’s our inability to stomach the misery that is inherent in life.

    Lauren Martin, Enduring Bad Days: Using Sport Mentality To Combat The Work Week

  • Was I capable of being happy in solitude? I didn’t think so. Was I capable of being happy in general? That’s the kind of question, I think, that is best not asked.

    Serotonin: A Novel by Michel Houellebecq

  • God forms character in obscurity. Right now you might feel forgotten. Do not despise the hidden season. Hidden years are not wasted years.

    —Fr. Paul Girguis