Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

S. Austin Allibone, comp. Prose Quotations from Socrates to Macaulay. 1880.

Despair

A speculative despair is unpardonable, where it is our duty to act.

There are situations in which despair does not imply inactivity.

Despair is like froward children, who, when you take away one of their playthings, throw the rest into the fire for madness. It grows angry with itself, turns its own executioner, and revenges its misfortunes on its own head. It refuses to live under disappointments and crosses, and chooses rather not to be at all, than to be without the thing which it hath once imagined necessary to its happiness.

Despair makes a despicable figure, and is descended from a mean original. It is the offspring of fear, laziness, and impatience. It argues a defect of spirit and resolution, and oftentimes of honesty too. After all, the exercise of this passion is so troublesome, that nothing but dint of evidence and demonstration should force it upon us. I would not despair unless I knew the irrevocable decree was passed, I saw my misfortune recorded in the book of fate, and signed and sealed by necessity.

He that despairs, degrades the Deity, and seems to intimate that He is insufficient, or not just to His word; and in vain hath read the Scriptures, the world, and man.

One sign of despair is the peremptory contempt of the condition which is the ground of hope; the going on not only in terrors and amazement of conscience, but also boldly, hopingly, and confidently, in wilful habits of sin.

Despair is the thought of the unattainableness of any good, which works differently in men’s minds; sometimes producing uneasiness or pain, sometimes rest and indolency.

No man’s credit can fall so low but that, if he bear his shame as he should do, and profit by it as he ought to do, it is in his own power to redeem his reputation. Therefore let no man despair that desires and endeavours to recover himself again.

He that despairs measures Providence by his own little contracted model.

As the hope of salvation is a good disposition towards it, so is despair a certain consignment to eternal ruin.

It is impossible for that man to despair who remembers that his helper is omnipotent.