quotations about misery
The wretched hasten to hear of their own miseries.
SENECA THE YOUNGER
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Hercules Oetaeus
Misery is a veil through which the world can see our errors, but seldom discover our virtues.
WILLIAM OCCAM
attributed, Day's Collacon
A little misery sweetens existence. It is the salt that makes it palatable and wholesome.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Here is a thing which the more you fear and avoid it the nearer you approach to it, and this is misery; the more you flee from it the more miserable and restless you will become.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery.
C. S. LEWIS
The Magician's Nephew
There is a lightness, a lightening, that comes along with misery: vast portions of your life are shorn off, suddenly ignorable.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit at Rest
Misery pulls away the brackets of life leaving you to free fall.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.
W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM
Of Human Bondage
It is a consolation of human life that the sick forget what it is like to feel well, or the miserable to be happy.
CYRIL CONNOLLY
The Condemned Playground
Misery appears to improve the intellect, but this is only because it dismisses fear.
ARTHUR HELPS
Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd
No misery is unlooked for by men, for we find good fortune lasting only for a day.
DIPHILUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Letters to a Young Poet
We are apt to measure the happiness or misery of the world by that portion of either which has fallen to our lot.
NORMAN MACDONALD
Maxims and Moral Reflections
But misery still delights to trace
Its semblance in another's case.
WILLIAM COWPER
The Castaway
All that was really there was still more misery -- oh yes! as much of that as you like.
EMILE ZOLA
Germinal
Ah how shameless -- the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone they say come all their miseries yes but they themselves with their own reckless ways compound their pains beyond their proper share.
HOMER
The Odyssey
Misery travels free through the whole world!
FRIEDRICH SCHILLER
Wallenstein's Tod
All of which misery I saw, part of which I was.
VIRGIL
Aeneid
Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. Unfortunately the happiness is there. There is always the chance (about eight hundred and fifty to one) that another heart will come to mine. I can't help hoping, and keeping faith, and loving beauty.
T. H. WHITE
Ghostly, Grim and Gruesome
Misery's fine -- as long as you know you can get out of it when you want to.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
Ping Pong