Popular quotes about Misery! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 58
If money doesn't come with misery, then it's not at all interesting and it's not at all fair. It seems if you have all this money, and no misery, you're really in a world of unalloyed happiness, and that seems to violate some deep principle of universal justice. We tend to live in a culture now where people have unbelievable, inconceivable amounts of money without any kind of remorse.
Lawrence DouglasA special form of misery had begun to oppress him of late. There was nothing poignant, nothing acute about it; but there was a feeling of permanence, of eternity about it; it brought a foretaste of hopeless years of this cold leaden misery, a foretaste of an eternity "on a square yard of space.
Fyodor DostoevskyMisery needs your conspiracy; it needs your help. Without your resistance misery cannot survive.
AdyashantiIf you take racism away from certain people - I mean, vitriolic racism as well as the sort of social racist - if you take that away, they may have to face something really terrible, misery, self-misery, and deep pain about who they are.
Toni MorrisonUnder miserable conditions of life, any vision of the possibility of better things makes the present misery more intolerable, and spurs those who suffer to the most energetic struggles to improve their lot, and if these struggles only immediately result in sharper misery, the outcome is sheer desperation.
Emma GoldmanYou have to take the responsibility totally, that it is you who decides either to be in misery or to be in blessing. If you want misery, have more desires. If you want a blissfulness, then learn the art - even for few moments - of being desireless, and you will be surprised. Even for a few moments, if you are desireless, all anguish, all anxiety disappears. And you are so contented, so fulfilled, that you cannot ask for more. Your blessing is so much that you can only say that you bless the whole existence. Still it will be there. It is so much; it is overflowing.
RajneeshHAPPY EVER AFTER is a concept I'll never believe in. I would be content to sample some little taste of happiness today, tonight, right now. Though I know without a doubt that tomorrow will come saturated with pain. Life is like that. At least my life. And honestly, I cant think of anyone whose life is any different. The price tag for joy is misery. [...]
Ellen HopkinsArt thou in misery, brother? Then I pray Be comforted. Thy grief shall pass away. Art thou elated? Ah, be not too gay; Temper thy joy: this, too, shall pass away. Art thou in danger? Still let reason sway, And cling to hope: this, too, shall pass away. Tempted art thou? In all thine anguish lay One truth to heart: this, too, shall pass away. Do rays of loftier glory round thee play? Kinglike art thou? This, too, shall pass away! Whate'er thou art, wher'er thy footsteps stray, Heed these wise words: This, too, shall pass away.
Paul Hamilton HayneHe [man] abuses equally other animals and his own species, the rest of whom live in famine, languish in misery, and work only to satisfy the immoderate appetite and the still more insatiable vanity of this human being who, destroying others by want, destroys himself by excess.
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de BuffonPlacing "amicable" and "separation" together creates an oxymoron - we don't usually decide to end a partnership until the very sight of our soon-to-be ex fills us with disgust, misery, agony or a combination of all three.
Mariella FrostrupWhen you are deep in misery, you reach out to those who can help, people who can understand.
Piper KermanThe world where you would go hand in hand with the flower maiden has neither perfect happiness nor joy nor life. This is because it also does not contain perfect sadness nor misery nor death. What lies in waiting is a paradise for wolves alone, the unclean humans are no more...come with me Cheza, it is time.
Keiko NobumotoAnd as we are - the world is. That is, if we are greedy, envious, competitive, our society will be competitive, envious, greedy, which brings misery and war. The State is what we are.
Jiddu Krishnamurti... bringing up daughters for nothing but marriage, mingles poison in the cup of domestic life, is traitorous to the virtue of both sexes, for neither suffers alone--is adverse to the happiness, to the development of conscience and to religion, and introduces to the dwellings of wretchedness and despair. The result of this degradation is pride, intemperance, licentiousness--nay, every vice, misery, and degradation.
Harriot Kezia HuntIt is not only poverty that torments the Negro; it is the fact of poverty amid plenty. It is a misery generated by the gulf between the affluence he sees in the mass media and the deprivation he experiences in his everyday life.
Martin Luther King, Jr.There were several parallels between Jonestown and Escuela Caribe. Both places used isolation to control a large group of people and censored their communication with the outside world so their loved ones wouldn't know about the rampant physical abuse and misery of the residents. I think the worst fallout, in both cases, was the living in constant fear, witnessing other residents get assaulted and worrying that you'd be next. That's where Post Traumatic Stress Disorder comes from.
Julia ScheeresThose who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.
Alain de BottonMistrusts sometimes come over one's mind of the justice of God. But let a real misery come again, and to whom do we fly? To whom do we instinctively and immediately look up?
Benjamin HaydonO witches, O misery, O hate, to you has my treasure been entrusted! I contrived to purge my mind of all human hope. On all joy, to strangle it, I pounced with the strength of a wild beast. I called to the plagues to smother me in blood, in sand, misfortune was my God.
Arthur RimbaudI always take abroad with me one really good soft pillow--to me it makes all the difference between comfort and misery.
Agatha ChristieI learned early about the misery and dangers of life, and about the afterlife, about the external punishment which awaited the children of sin in Hell.
Edvard MunchI hate England and its hopelessness. I hate [Arnold] Bennett's resignation. Tragedy ought really to be a great big kick at misery.
D. H. LawrenceA sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. If they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.
Thomas CarlyleIf you feel depressed you shouldn't go out on the street because it will show on your face and you'll give it to others. Misery is a communicable disease.
Martha GrahamMy experience working in the Grameen Bank has given me faith; an unshakable faith in the creativity of human beings. It leads me to believe that humans are not born to suffer the misery of hunger and poverty. They suffer now as they did in the past because we turn our heads away from this issue.
Muhammad YunusHuman beings have a drive for security and safety, which is often what fuels the spiritual search. This very drive for security and safety is what causes so much misery and confusion. Freedom is a state of complete and absolute insecurity and not knowing. So, in seeking security and safety, you actually distance yourself from the freedom you want. There is no security in freedom, at least not in the sense that we normally think of security. This is, of course, why it is so free: there's nothing there to grab hold of.
AdyashantiReligion is based ... mainly upon fear ... fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.
Bertrand RussellBirth leads to death, death precedes birth. So if you want to see life as it really is, it is rounded on both the sides by death. Death is the beginning and death is again the end, and life is just the illusion in between. You feel alive between two deaths; the passage joining one death to another you call life. Buddha says this is not life. This life is dukkha - misery. This life is death.
RajneeshLatin Americans have gotten tired of the Washington consensus - a neoliberalism that has aggravated misery and poverty.
Hugo ChavezPeople go to church for the same reasons they go to a tavern: to stupefy themselves, to forget their misery, to imagine themselves, for a few minutes anyway, free and happy.
Mikhail BakuninAt the heart of our desires is eternal happiness without the slightest hint of misery. You could say that we are pleasure seekers; however, seeking pleasure from the objects of our five senses produces fleeting moments of pleasure whereas, pleasure of one's self, a soul, is eternal and ever-increasing pleasure.
Terry Cole-WhittakerWe get richer and richer in filthier and filthier communities until we reach a final state of affluent misery - crocus on a garbage heap.
John W. GardnerIt is indeed probable that more harm and misery have been caused by men determined to use coercion to stamp out a moral evil than by men intent on doing evil.
Friedrich August von HayekHow dare you? How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault? It's not right, it's utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain?
Stephen FryThe state of inequality between individuals and between nations not only still exists; it is increasing. It still happens that side by side with those who are wealthy and living in plenty there exist those who are living in want, suffering misery and often actually dying of hunger; and their number reaches tens, even hundreds of millions.
Pope John Paul IIWhat came first โ the music or the misery? Did I listen to the music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to the music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person?
Nick HornbyFrom the moment I told her about my dad, it was as if her whole body sighed in relief. As if someone elseโs misery comforted her, made her feel as if she wasnโt alone.
Simone ElkelesIf man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust, and, in short, of coming eventually to hopeless misery. He would break down, at last, as every good fortune, as every dynasty, as every civilization does. In place of this we have death.
Charles Sanders PeirceNearly all our powerful men in this age of the world are unbelievers; the best of them in doubt and misery; the worst in reckless defiance; the plurality, in plodding hesitation, doing, as well as they can, what practical work lies ready to their hands.
John RuskinYou pile of stones, you waste, you desolation, I'll stuff you with misery till it comes out of your eyes. I'll change your heart into green grass, and all you love into a sheep. I'll turn you into a bad poet with dreams.
Peter S. BeagleThere are words to paint the misery of love, but none to paint its happiness.
Letitia Elizabeth LandonMarriages that made out of love (so-called "love-matches") have error as their father and misery (necessity) as their mother.
Friedrich NietzscheMan hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, and don't have any kids yourself.
Philip LarkinGod, the bitter misery that reading works into this world! Everybody knows that - everbody who IS everybody. All the best minds have been off reading for years. Look at the swing La Rouchefoucauld took at it. He said that if nobody had ever learned to read, very few people would be in love. Good for you, La Rouchefoucauld; nice going, boy. I wish Iโd never learned to read.
Dorothy Parker