Popular quotes about Misfortune! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 4
He said that those who have endured some misfortune will always be set apart but that it is just that misfortune which is their gift and which is their strength.
Cormac McCarthyOn the third day after someone dies, the soul comes back to settle scores. In my mother's case, this would be the first day of the lunar new year. And because it is the new year, all debts must be paid, or disaster and misfortune will follow.
Amy TanAlthough the sinner does not believe in Hell, he shall nevertheless go there if he has the misfortune to die in mortal sin.
Anthony Mary ClaretThe Jewish nation dares to display an irreconcilable hatred toward all nations, and revolts against all masters; always superstitious, always greedy for the well-being enjoyed by others, always barbarous - cringing in misfortune and insolent in prosperity.
VoltaireIt is the misfortune of all miscellaneous political combinations, that with the purest motives of their more generous members are ever mixed the most sordid interests and the fiercest passions of mean confedes.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron LyttonAnyone who's ever had the misfortune of seeing me interact with house pets knows I have a wickedly strong paternal instinct bordering on the maternal.
Jim GoadHorror is a feeling that cannot last long; human nature is incapable of supporting it. Sadness, whether it be from bereavement, or disappointment, or misfortune of any kind may linger on through life
James De MilleNo one likes to feel helpless. We find it psychologically unbearable and inside ourselves we may try to make ourselves part author of our misfortune rather than simply the recipient of it.
Susie OrbachNo excuses and no sob stories. Life is full of excuses if you're looking. I have no time to gripe over misfortune. I don't waste time looking back.
Junior SeauIt seems unfortunate that strong people are usually so disagreeable and overbearing that no one cares for them. In fact, to be different from your fellow creatures is always a misfortune.
L. Frank BaumO! useful may it be to have shewn, that, though the vicious can sometimes pour affliction upon the good, their power is transient and their punishment certain; and that innocence, though oppressed by injustice, shall, supported by patience, finally triumph over misfortune!And, if the weak hand, that has recorded this tale, has, by its scenes, beguiled the mourner of one hour of sorrow, or, by its moral, taught him to sustain itโthe effort, however humble, has not been vain, nor is the writer unrewarded.
Ann RadcliffeThe wisest were just the poor and simple people. They knew the war to be a misfortune, whereas those who were better off, and should have been able to see more clearly what the consequences would be, were beside themselves with joy.
Erich Maria RemarqueWhat ever the course of our lives, we should recieve them as the highest gift from the hand of God, in which equally reposed the power to do nothing whatever for us. Indeed, we should accept misfortune not only in thanks, but in infinite gratitude to Providence, which by such means detaches us from an excessive love for Earthly things and elevates our minds to the celestial and divine.
Galileo GalileiExamine 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?
Friedrich NietzscheA source of permanent, accessible pleasure, our genitals exist. The god who created our misfortune, who made us short-lived, vain and cruel, has also provided this form of meagre compensation. If we couldn't have sex from time to time, what would life be? A futile struggle against joints that stiffen, caries that form. All of which, moreover, is as uninteresting as humanly possible - the collagen which makes muscles stiffen, the appearance of microbic cavities in the gums.
Michel HouellebecqTo remedy the frequent distresses of the common people, the poor laws of England have been instituted; but it is to be feared that though they may have alleviated a little the intensity of individual misfortune, they have spread the general evil over a much larger surface.
Thomas MalthusLittle minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.
Washington IrvingExcitement and depression, fortune and misfortune, pleasure and pain are storms in a tiny private, shell-bound realm - which we take to be the whole of existence. Yet we can break out of this shell and enter a new world.
Eknath EaswaranI saw a poet chase a butterfly in a meadow. He put his net on a bench where a boy sat reading a book. It's a misfortune that it is usually the other way round.
Karl KrausMisfortune occurs or can occur to anyone, of any sort of character. The eudaimonic has more resources to avoid it (being in autonomous control of his appetites and assumptions) and more resources to deal with it if it occurs (being better able to put it in perspective and maintain his own evenness of self-mastery). Tragedy as a dramatic form is meant to foster the ethos of sophrosyne or moderation, "nothing to excess"; it nurtures a sense of distance from the dominant illusions and delusions that may infect even aristoi.
Kenny SmithThey were glued down, every last one of them. A packet of souls. Was it fate?Misfortune?Is that what glued them down like that?Of course not.Let's not be stupid.It probably had more to do with the hurled bombs, thrown down by humans hiding in the clouds.
Markus ZusakThe provision of health care facilities must be accepted as a social responsibility. It is not that an individual who has the misfortune to be inflicted with some particular disease is solely responsible for searching the facilities to cure his illness. This is a social responsibility which is accepted by governments all over the world. This is part and parcel of the organization of individuals into societies. It is a measure of the degree of civilization.
Toh Chin ChyeOne likes people much better when they're battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.
Virginia WoolfJoy, anger, sorrow, happiness, find no place in that man's breast; for to him all creation is ONE. And all things being thus united in ONE, his body and limbs are but as dust of the earth, and life and death, beginning, and end, are but as night and day, and cannot destroy his peace. How much less such trifles as gain or loss, misfortune or good fortune?
ZhuangziTruly generous men are always ready to become sympathetic when their enemyโs misfortune surpasses the limits of their hatred.
Alexandre DumasPoverty, first of all was never a misfortune for me; it was radiant with sunlight.. I owe it to my family, first of all, who lacked everything and who envied practically nothing.
Albert CamusThe great misfortune of the modern English is not at all that they are more boastful than other people (they are not); it is that they are boastful about those particular things which nobody can boast of without losing them.
Gilbert K. ChestertonThe brutal soldiers satisfied their sensual appetites without consulting either the inclination or the duties of their female captives; and a nice question of casuistry was seriously agitated, Whether those tender victims, who had inflexibly refused their consent to the violation which they sustained, had lost, by their misfortune, the glorious crown of virginity. There were other losses indeed of a more substantial kind and more general concern.
Edward GibbonI will love you as misfortune loves orphans, as fire loves innocence, and as justice loves to sit and watch while everything goes wrong.
Daniel HandlerThere is no greater offence than harbouring desires. There is no greater disaster than discontent. There is no greater misfortune than wanting more.
LaoziIt is a misfortune for a science to be born too late when the means of observation have become too perfect. That is what is happening at this moment with respect to physical chemistry; the founders are hampered in their general grasp by third and fourth decimal places.
Henri PoincareNo-one is exempt from speaking nonsense โ the only misfortune is to do it solemnly.
Michel de MontaigneThere is no security in a good disposition if the support of good principles--that is to say, of religion, of Christian faith--be wanting. It may be soured by misfortune, it may be corrupted by wealth, it may be blighted by neediness, it may lose all its original brightness, if destitute of that support.
Robert SoutheyCan 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?
Victor HugoAmericans were people who wanted to leave every place better than they found it, to leave every man more of a man than they found him. ... Americans could open doors to almost all that was admirable - it was their misfortune, not their fault, that movies and victrolas and advertisements squeezed in when they opened the door.
Stella BensonDon't reward bad behavior. It is one of the first rules of parenting. During the financial cataclysm of 2008, we said it differently. When we bailed out banks that had created their own misfortune, we called it a 'moral hazard,' because the bailout absolved the bank's bad acts and created an incentive for it to make the same bad loans again.
Eliot SpitzerNurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Max EhrmannEnvy is a mistake that just keeps on giving. Obviously we suffer a little when some misfortune befalls us, but envy requires us to suffer all good fortune that befalls everyone we know! What a bright prospect that is-downing another quart of pickle juice every time anyone around you has a happy moment!
Jeffrey R. Holland