Quotes About Misfortune

... But all the feelings that evoke in us the joy or the misfortune of a real person are only produced in us through the intermediary of an image of that joy or that misfortune; the ingeniousness of the first novelist was in understanding that, in the apparatus of our emotions, since the image is the only essential element, the simplification which consists of purely and simply suppressing the factual characters is a definitive improvement.

Misery and misfortune is all one; and of misfortune fortune hath only the gift.

Good luck in most cases comes through the misfortune of others.

..but it seemed to him that the tie between husband and wife, if breakable in prosperity, should be indissoluble in misfortune.

Atra gulai un ilian tauthr ono un atra ono waise skolir fra rauthr. - Let luck and happiness follow you and may you be shielded from misfortune.

Whether you call my heart affectionate, or you call it womanish: I confess, that to my misfortune, it is soft.

Any real New Yorker is a you-name-it-we-have-it-snob whose heart brims with sympathy for the millions of unfortunates who through misfortune, misguidedness or pure stupidity live anywhere else in the world.

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.

A man convinced of his own merit will accept misfortune as an honor, for thus can he persuade others, as well as himself, that he is a worthy target for the arrows of fate.

It 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.

It is a misfortune that necessity has induced men to accord greater license to this formidable engine, in order to obtain liberty, than can be borne with less important objects in view; for the press, like fire, is an excellent servant, but a terrible master.

I do not myself believe there is any misfortune. What men call such is merely the shadowside of a good.

The lack of power to take joy in outdoor nature is as real a misfortune as the lack of power to take joy in books

When I feel overwhelmed by misfortune, the greatest joy that the Lord can give me is to go to the altar, to put my forehead against it (as on the day of my ordination to the priesthood), and to feel the presence of the only reality. Not only does calm return, but my body seems to be annihilated; the only true life begins, the life of that which is intangible.

Insofar as he makes use of his healthy senses, man himself is the best and most exact scientific instrument possible. The greatest misfortune of modern physics is that its experiments have been set apart from man, as it were, physics refuses to recognize nature in anything not shown by artificial instruments, and even uses this as a measure of its accomplishments.

The subconscious mind will translate into its physical equivalent a thought impulse of a negative or destructive nature, just as readily as it will act upon thought impulses of a positive or constructive nature. This accounts for the strange phenomenon which so many millions of people experience, referred to as "misfortune" or "bad luck."

As a rule, I don't like to laugh at the misfortune of others. The exception to that rule is if it's really, really funny.

Victory is for them, not for us. We have not made profit out of our country's misfortune. Victory does not bring us luck.

My misfortune is my ability to see both sides even of the fundamental religious question.

It is the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoy it completely.

Opportunity beckons more surely when misfortune comes upon a person than it ever does when that person is riding the crest of a wave of success. It sharpens a person's wits, if that person will let it, enabling him or her to see more clearly and evaluate situations with a more knowledgeable judgment.

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock during a thunderstorm.

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.

My figures come and go, suggested by fortune or misfortune. I try to fix them divested of their apparent accidental quality.

It is just as often a great misfortune to be the child of the rich as it is to be the child of the poor. Wealth has its misfortunes. Too much, too great opportunity and advantage given to a child has its misfortunes.

The day of my departure at length arrived. Clerval spent the last evening with us. He had endeavoured to persuade his father to permit him to accompany me and to become my fellow student, but in vain. His father was a narrow-minded trader, and saw idleness and ruin in the aspirations and ambition of his son. Henry deeply felt the misfortune of being debarred from a liberal education. He said little, but when he spoke I read in his kindling eye and in his animated glance a restrained but firm resolve not to be chained to the miserable details of commerce.

The 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.

It's one thing to be a high achiever; it's quite another to privately sneer at your girlfriend's friends after feigning friendliness because they have the "misfortune" to drive a bus for a living.

Even convicts, with whom I have spent some time, are not won over in any other way. Whenever I happened to speak sharply to them, I spoiled everything; on the contrary, when I praised them for their resignation and sympathized with them in their sufferings; when I told them they were fortunate to have their purgatory in this world, when I kissed their chains, showed compassion for their distress, and expressed sorrow for their misfortune, it was then that they listened to me, gave glory to God, and opened themselves to salvation.

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.

Helen Keller became deaf, dumb, and blind shortly after birth. Despite her greatest misfortune, she has written her name indelibly in the pages of the history of the great. Her entire life has served as evidence that no one is ever defeated until defeat has been accepted as reality.

To 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.

Happy nations have no history. History is the study of mankind's misfortune.

This is the age of insincerity. The movies had the misfortune to come along in the twentieth century, and because they appeal to the masses there can be no sincerity in them.

Men cling to life even at the cost of enduring great misfortune.

If those millions squandered on designing missionaries had been deposited in funds for the support of yourselves, when old age, misfortune, or sickness (from which none are exempt,) overtakes you, or for the distressed of your race, what a heaven of happiness you would have created on earth: ye would now be an ornament to your sex, and ages to come would call you blessed. But it is in vain to try - a priest-ridden female is lost to reason. Why? because she has surrendered her reason to the ... missionaries ... the orthodox; they are the grand deceivers.

Great good nature without prudence is a great misfortune.

One of the advantages or disadvantages of the way in which we live in these modern days is that we are ceasing to feel. That is to say we do not permit ourselves to be affected by either death or misfortune, provided these natural calamities leave our own persons unscathed.

It is a misfortune, inseparable from human affairs, that public measures are rarely investigated with that spirit of moderation which is essential to a just estimate of their real tendency to advance or obstruct the public good; and that this spirit is more apt to be diminished than prompted, by those occasions which require an unusual exercise of it.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

Failure in life does not matter; the greatest misfortune is standing still.

Joy, 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?

There is nothing more difficult than tactical maneuvering. The difficult consists in turning the devious into the direct, and misfortune into gain. Thus, to take a long and circuitous route after enticing the enemy out of the way, and though starting after him to contrive to reach the goal before him, shows knowledge of the artifice of deviation.

How would you feel if you had no fear? Feel like that. How would you behave toward other people if you realized their powerlessness to hurt you? Behave like that. How would your react to so-called misfortune if you saw its inability to bother you? React like that. How would you think toward yourself if you knew you were really all right? Think like that.

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

There is no misfortune, but to bear it nobly is good fortune.

There is no greater offence than harbouring desires. There is no greater disaster than discontent. There is no greater misfortune than wanting more.

... the English think of an opinion as something which a decent person, if he has the misfortune to have one, does all he can to hide.