Quotes About Misfortune

If we put the emphasis upon the right things, if we live the life that is worth while and then fail, we will survive all disasters, we will out-live all misfortune. We should be so well balanced and symmetrical, that nothing which could ever happen could throw us off our center, so that no matter what misfortune should overtake us, there would still be a whole magnificent man or woman left after being stripped of everything else.

For all of my fortune, there are many with misfortune that need a hand.

Great Fortune brings with it Great misfortune.

Therefore the misfortune which comes to man as a result of the fact that he was a child is that his freedom was first concealed from him and that all his life he will be nostalgic for the time when he did not know it's exigencies.

The misfortune is that although everyone must come to [death], each experiences the adventure in solitude. We never left Maman during those last days... and yet we were profoundly separated from her.

It is a great misfortune to be of use to nobody; scarcely less to be of use to everybody.

the size of a misfortune is not determinable by an outsider’s measurement of it but only by the measurements applied to it by the person specially affected by it.

What a misfortune it is that we should thus be compelled to let our boys schooling interfere with their education!

A mother experiences more than one death, even though she herself will only die once. She fears for her husband; she fears for her children; again she fears for the women and children who belong to her children. ... For each of these-whether for loss of possessions, bodily illness, or undesired misfortune-she mourns and grieves no less than those who suffer.

Encountering sufferings will definitely contribute to the elevation of your spiritual practice, provided you are able to transform calamity and misfortune into the path.

It is not true that fate slips silently into our lives. It steps in through the door that we have opened, and we invite it to enter. No one is strong enough or cunning enough to avert by word or deed the misfortune that is rooted in the iron laws of his character and his life.

Wherever you are, whatever your circumstances may be, whatever misfortune you may have suffered, the music of your life has not gone. It's inside you - if you listen to it, you can play it.

In family life people almost always adjust themselves to misfortune. They make a bed of it and hope makes them accept that bed, however hard it is.

When a country is in harmony with the Tao, the factories make trucks and tractors. When a country goes counter to the Tao, warheads are stockpiled outside the cities. There is no greater illusion than fear, no greater wrong than preparing to defend yourself, no greater misfortune than having an enemy. Whoever can see through all fear will always be safe.

Examine the life of the best and most productive men and nations, and ask yourselves whether a tree which is to grow proudly skywards can dispense with bad weather and storms. Whether misfortune and opposition, or every kind of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, distrust, severity, greed, and violence do not belong to the favourable conditions without which a great growth even of virtue is hardly possible?

Mortals grow swiftly in misfortune.

Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.

It is a misfortune to pass at once from observation to conclusion, and to regard both as of equal value; but it befalls many a student.

The misfortune is, that religious learning is too often rather considered as an act of the memory than of the heart and affections; as a dry duty, rather than a lively pleasure.

It is the Law that any difficulties that can come to you at any time, no matter what they are, must be exactly what you need most at the moment, to enable you to take the next step forward by overcoming them. The only real misfortune, the only real tragedy, comes when we suffer without learning the lesson.

I used to think that you could find peace and it would always be there. And there is a sense of that. But even in the worst moments, catch yourself and remember that within the storm of misfortune there is good fortune. Just get in practice with what they call in Taoism the Wu-wei; the non-action and becoming the observer of it. Just notice and stay at peace with it. I must have admit, that I still have those really disrupting moments.

There are some vile and contemptible men who, allowing themselves to be conquered by misfortune, seek a refuge in death.

When Opportunity came, the person didn't realize it because it came in the form of misfortune.

Great good nature without prudence is a great misfortune.

Opportunity ... It has a sly habit of slipping in by the back door, and often it comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat. Perhaps this is why so many fail to recognize opportunity.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

It is a matter of great satisfaction to me to hope that my children will be in circumstances to receive a good education. Mine was defective and I feel the inconvenience, if not the misfortune of not receiving a classical education. Knowledge is the food of genius, and my son, let no opportunity escape you to treasure up knowledge.

The higher man is distinguished from the lower by his fearlessness and his readiness to challenge misfortune.

The vain man makes a merit of misfortune, and triumphs in his disgrace.

It is a natural propensity to attribute misfortune to someone's malignity.

Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his economic policies have been tried.

I was a lawyer for 10 years, and several of my clients had the misfortune, through no fault of my own, of going to prison. I visited them occasionally.

The common excuse for those bringing misfortune on others is that they desire their good.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, 'This is a misfortune' but 'To bear this worthily is good fortune.'

Misfortune sprinkles ashes on the head of the man, but falls like dew on the heart of the woman, and brings forth [gems] of strength of which she herself had no conscious possession.

Covetousness is the greatest misfortune. One who does not know what is enough will never have enough.

All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune-make for a finer, nobler type of manhood.

my uncle ... had the misfortune to be ever touched in his brain, and, as a convincing proof, married his maid, at an age when he and she both had more occasion for a nurse than a parson.

I don't want names, but you have to have bumped into some pretty nasty artists with pretty big chips on their shoulders. I'd like an anecdote about the most obnoxious personality you had the misfortune of working with, albeit as anonymously as you feel comfortable divulging.

To doubt is a misfortune, but to seek when in doubt is an indispensable duty. So he who doubts and seeks not is at once unfortunate and unfair.

It is no great misfortune to oblige ungrateful people, but an unsupportable one to be forced to be under an obligation to a scoundrel.

Can human nature ever be wholly and radically transformed? Can the man whom God made good be made wicked by man? Can the soul be reshaped in its entirety by destiny and made evil because destiny is evil? Can the heart become misshapen and afflicted with ugly, incurable deformities under disproportionate misfortune, like a spinal column bent beneath a too low roof?

I am bigger than anything that can happen to me. All these things, sorrow, misfortune and suffering, are outside my door. I am in the house and I have the key.

Nothing more unqualified the man to act with prudence than a misfortune that is attended with shame and guilt.

she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.

This great misfortune, to be incapable of solitude.

Fortunately, we can take in only so much misfortune; what exceeds that limit either destroys us or leaves us indifferent.

Adversity is the touchstone of character: it is not in success but in misfortune that hidden powers bear fruit.