quotations about misery
You begin to see that you yourself, innocent, upright you, have contributed and do contribute to the misery of the world. Which will never end because we're what we are.
JAMES BALDWIN
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Another Country
We often see misery dwelling in the midst of splendor, whilst real happiness is found in humbler stations.
HERODOTUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
To be caught happy in a world of misery was for an honest man the most despicable of crimes.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
To the Lighthouse
Misery's fine -- as long as you know you can get out of it when you want to.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
Ping Pong
Perhaps it may be found more easy to forget those tempers we learnt in misery.
EDMUND LAW
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Unpopular Essays
But all these were things he could not want, because they were things he could not have, and wanting what you could not have led to misery and madness.
CASSANDRA CLARE
Clockwork Prince
Thou art not born to misery; the Almighty never called any of His creatures into existence to render them unhappy; yet man may be wretched from his own follies and vices; his reason may yield to the wild impulses of tumultuous passion; then man is wretched, and every seeming good is perverted into misery.
CONRAD GESSNER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Bartleby, the Scrivener
Meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
Every misery that I miss is a new mercy.
IZAAK WALTON
The Complete Angler
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
Misery makes sport to mock itself.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Richard II
All of which misery I saw, part of which I was.
VIRGIL
Aeneid
I hate all pain,
Given or received; we have enough within us
The meanest vassal as the loftiest monarch,
Not to add to each other's natural burden
Of mortal misery.
LORD BYRON
Sardanapalus
But O yet more miserable!
Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave.
JOHN MILTON
Samson Agonistes
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
I don't reckon misery loves any damn thing at all.
BRUCE MACHART
The Wake of Forgiveness
There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.
VICTOR HUGO
Les Misérables