Desperation

(250 votes)   There exists, at the bottom of all abasement and misfortune, a last extreme which rebels and joins battle with the forces of law and respectability in a desperate struggle, waged partly by cunning and partly by violence, at once sick and ferocious, in which it attacks the prevailing social order with the pin-pricks of vice and the hammer-blows of crime.

Victor Hugo
1802-1885, French Poet, Dramatist, Novelist

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(157 votes)   Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape.

William S. Burroughs
1914-1997, American Writer

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(136 votes)   My interest in desperation lies only in that sometimes I find myself having become desperate. Very seldom do I start out that way. I can see of course that, in the abstract, thinking and all activity is rather desperate.

Willem De Kooning
1904-, Dutch-born American Artist

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(126 votes)   She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.

Oscar Wilde
1856-1900, British Author, Wit

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(124 votes)   What is most original in a man's nature is often that which is most desperate. Thus new systems are forced on the world by men who simply cannot bear the pain of living with what is. Creators care nothing for their systems except that they be unique. If Hitler had been born in Nazi Germany he wouldn't have been content to enjoy the atmosphere.

Leonard Cohen
1934-, Canadian-born American Musician, Songwriter, Singer

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(112 votes)   The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Henry David Thoreau
1817-1862, American Essayist, Poet, Naturalist

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