what is quiet desparation?

Answer 1

loss of hope and surrender to despair, thats the definition of desperation.

Quiet desperation, is, I guess, not complaining, crying, yelling, screaming about it all, but bearing it in silence, keeping it to yourself.

Answer 2

when someone is lead by quiet desperation he/she is Silent but Deadly, someone I would not like to make angry.
Or the other term that is widely used is he/she is in despair and holds it in and gets ulcers. The silent type that keeps going out of desparation to succeed in a project. Like everyday people worrying about their rent and their next paycheck.

Answer 3

Good question. Quiet desperation is when you've been running on empty---or fumes--- for a long time, praying for the tide to turn, seeing life pass you by, going through the motions. Little reason to feel hopeful that things will ever be different.

The song that I think best captures the meaning of quiet desperation is by, Simply Red. It's called, "Holding Back The Years."

It goes, "Holding back the years. Thinking of the fear I've had for so long. When somebody hears, listen to the fear that's gone. Strangled by the wishes of pater. Hoping for the arms of mater. Get to me sooner or later. (Chorus: I'll keep holding on. I'll keep holding on...I'll keep holding on...so tight."

Answer 4

Henry David Thoreau spoke of "lives of quiet desperation" (it's spelled with an "e" in the middle, not an "a") in his classic work "Walden" published in 1854:

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

What he meant was that the day-to-day rat race to conform, to succeed in material ways was not the path to happiness, and we should not try to be what we are not. As in this quote, also from "Walden":

"A living dog is better than a dead lion. Shall a man go and hang himself because he belongs to the race of pygmies, and not be the biggest pygmy that he can? Let every one mind his own business, and endeavor to be what he was made. 'Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

He also put it this way:
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

To escape the fate of quiet desperation, Thoreau said:
“If one advances confidently in the direction of one's dreams, and endeavors to live the life which one has imagined, one will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

Although he did not use the phrase "quiet desperation," the poet T.S. Eliot described that state brilliantly in his groundbreaking opus, "The Waste Land", published in 1922. The following quote shows a mass of demoralized, resigned wage earners on their way to work in London:

"Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
To where Saint Mary Woolnoth Kept the hours
With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine."

More recently, Pink Floyd used the phrase in their song "Time" in the 1970's: "Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way. The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say." The lyrics (full version at source below) reflect a life of missed opportunities and disillusionment.

In summary, the phrase or state of quiet desperation is most often a description of a life of conformity, a stiff-upper-lip misery, of sadly settling for the ordinary instead of a deeper, more contemplative life attuned to one's true self.

Did I just do your homework for you or are you really curious?

Answer 5

Okay, so this is not a well-thought-out, multiple references comment like that guy's up there, but I think I know.

Quiet desperation is getting yourself caught in a cycle of self-degradation, it's turning over your shoulder and thinking that no one out there is going to get you out of this: being alone and under fire -- your own-- and crying out desperation, quietly, because you are just as afraid of rescue as you are of sinking deeper. Either will not help you, both are painful. Knowing that this will end either with your shame or your ruin.

Answer 6

Henry David Thoreau coined the phrase in his book "Walden":

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."

Thoreau was a critic of Western society and an advocate of "natural religion" and transcendentalism.

I think he meant to use it to to describe those of us who are live unfulfilled lives as part of Western society, and as a justification for his own idealized lifestyle.

Answer 7

It's not common in the freakin' USA, I will tell you that.
Most urban Americans lead lives of NOISY desperation!

Answer 8

The life most of us live. Paycheck-to-paycheck. I always think of the fiddler on the roof, one slip and it's all over.

Answer 9

Suffering in silence.

Answer 10

A desire to know the truth