quotations about misery
I would cling to unhappiness because it was a known, familiar state. When I was happier, it was because I knew I was on my way back to misery. I've never been convinced that happiness is the object of the game. I'm wary of happiness.
HUGH LAURIE
attributed, Inside Inside
The child of misery, baptized in tears!
J. LANGHORNE
The Country Justice
Though the rich of this earth find no difficulty in creating misery, they can't bear to see it.
BERTOLT BRECHT
The Threepenny Opera
There are a good many real miseries in life that we cannot help smiling at, but they are the smiles that make wrinkles and not dimples.
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, SR.
The Poet at the Breakfast Table
People like to talk about other people's misery; it makes them feel their own life is somehow better when it usually isn't.
DAVID BALDACCI
Absolute Power
Mock not any man's misery.
PITTACUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.
EMIL CIORAN
All Gall Is Divided: Aphorisms
Life is not an easy matter.... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.
LEON TROTSKY
Diary in Exile, 1935
Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.
ELIZABETH GILBERT
Eat, Pray, Love
At a certain stage of misery, you'll try anything to explain what's going on with you, even if you know it doesn't explain a thing and it's one failed explanation after another.
PHILIP ROTH
The Humbling
Misery can never be so bitter as eternal felicity is pleasant.
ERASMUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
The comfort derived from the misery of others is slight.
CICERO
Epistles
Pain and misery always hit the spot
Knowing you can't lose what you haven't got
DEPECHE MODE
"Lilian"
I stumbled out into the courtyard to try to flee my misery, but of course we can never flee the misery that is within us.
ARTHUR GOLDEN
Memoirs of a Geisha
And truly the very fact of existing is by some natural spell so pleasant, that even the wretched are, for no other reason, unwilling to perish; and, when they feel that they are wretched, wish not that they themselves be annihilated, but that their misery be so.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
When we are in misery then springs up a reverence of the gods; the prosperous seldom approach the sacred altar.
SILIUS ITALICUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
He was at last permitted to take off the halter of misery. He had hardly the heart to undress himself.
ROMAIN ROLLAND
Jean-Christophe
Fire tries gold, misery tries brave men.
SENECA THE YOUNGER
De Providentia
Misery knows none but equals.
PAUL HERVIEU
Les Tenailles
It is because of their corrupt thoughts
That creatures go to Misery.
GAUTAMA BUDDHA
Iti-Vuttaka