QUOTATION: Despair

It is not sinners, but the wicked who should despair; it is not the magnitude of one’s crime, but contempt of God that dashes one’s hopes.

--St. Peter Damian

QUOTATION: Despairing in Oneself

Beware of despairing about yourself; you are commanded to place your trust in God, and not in yourself.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Despair

It was not the crime of Judas so much as his despair of pardon that brought him to total destruction. He killed himself in despair suffocating himself with a noose. What he did to his body is what happened to his soul. Just as those who pull something tight around their throats kill themselves by driving from their lungs the earthly spirit of air, so to do those who despair of God’s merciful kindness inwardly suffocate themselves and make it impossible for the Holy Spirit to remain in them.

--St. Augustine, Sermon 352

QUOTATION: God's Mercy

The malice of him who abuses the choice graces  of God is so great, and men are so alive to the fact of its deserving His vengeance that the majority of those that fall after having been loaded with special privileges of grace by the good God, remain in evil, not so much because they love evil as because they despair of pardon for a sin so great as theirs. Every sinner, however. must of necessity consider God under the aspect of His mercy. Before His other attributes, His sanctity, His majesty, His justice, he would feel crushed.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Hope and Despair

It is not sinners, but the wicked who should despair; it is not the magnitude of one’s crime, but contempt of God that dashes one’s hopes.

--St. Peter Damian

QUOTATION: Fault-Finding in Oneself

Do not stunt your spiritual life by looking always for you faults. Think of God’s love. Never despair! Not until God ceases to be infinitely good and you begin to be infinitely wicked have you a right to be hopeless.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Do Not Despair

Beware of despairing about yourself; you are commanded to place your trust in God, and not in yourself.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Discouragement

Whatever leads to discouragement, to despair, to trouble, is contrary to charity, which teaches us to make every effort, though with fear and trembling, but never to distrust the goodness of God, who wills all men to be saved, and to come to penance.

--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts

QUOTATION: The Sinner's Despair

The sinner of necessity, as it were, despairs. That is the effect which always follows sinful pleasure, and the second effect is much more certain than the first. Adam and Eve, who fled and doubted of mercy, Cain, who rejected it and exclaimed: "My sin is too great for pardon, " are types of the sinner after his fall. They are discouraged for having been unfaithful; and the majority of sinners who put off their conversion are held back by despair " It is impossible for me to be pardoned. I have too deeply offended God!" The day on which they would weep, they would be converted.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: How Do The Pious Fall?

And the pious, why do they fall? Because they, too, despair. They are discouraged by their falls. They have not succeeded. That is not what they were hoping for. The demon fills their soul with diffidence. That is his best secret for entering into the soul and ruining it. May this sentiment never rule in yours!

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: The Two Thieves

Two criminals were crucified with Christ.
One was saved – do not despair.
One was not – do not presume.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: God's Mercy

A sinner cannot outrage the Deity more than by despairing of Divine mercy on account of the number and enormity of his crimes; for God's clemency is far greater than the iniquity and guilt of an entire world . . . Of God's mercy never despair.

--Venerable Louis de Blois

QUOTATION: The Temptation to Despair

Any temptation to despair is not of God, and you need to remember that the enemy wants you to despair. Know your enemy. He's not handing you roses, he's handing you hell. So be careful of any kind of despair. Those temptations come directly from the liar, the enemy who was a liar from the beginning. He cannot give truth. He cannot give beauty. He can't give you anything that is good. He wants to take that good away from you. The only thing he can do to a human being is to encourage him to despair -- what a waste of time it is to listen to a liar. Listen to the Lord, pray for the grace to overcome the temptation, and keep moving.

-- Mother Angelica