Wretched Quotes - Page 2

• When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.

  Blaise Pascal

  Atheist, Mean, Sleep

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• I often wish for the end of the wretched remnant of my life; and that wish is a rational one; but then the innate principle of self-preservation, wisely implanted in our natures, for obvious purposes, opposes that wish, and makes us endeavour to spin out our thread as long as we can, however decayed and rotten it may be.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Death, Self, Long

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• For the short-lived bloom and contracted span of brief and wretched life is fast fleeting away! While we are drinking and calling for garlands, ointments, and women, old age steals swiftly on with noiseless step.

  Juvenal

  Drinking, Age, Fleeting

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• Nothing lies on our hands with such uneasiness as time. Wretched and thoughtless creatures! In the only place where covetousness were a virtue we turn prodigals.

  Joseph Addison

  Time, Lying, Hands

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• Wretched are those who are vindictive and spiteful.

  Pope Francis

  Spiteful, Vindictive, Malicious

  "New pope's role during Argentina's military era disputed" by Jonathan Watts and Uki Goni, www.theguardian.com. March 15, 2013.

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• Hope is necessary in every condition. The miseries of poverty, of sickness, or captivity, would, without this comfort, be insupportable; nor does it appear that the happiest lot of terrestrial existence can set us above the want of this general blessing; or that life, when the gifts of nature and of fortune are accumulated upon it, would not still be wretched, were it not elevated and delighted by the expectation of some new possession, of some enjoyment yet behind, by which the wish shall at last be satisfied, and the heart filled up to its utmost extent.

  Samuel Johnson

  Heart, Blessing, Filled Up

  Samuel Johnson (1804). “The Beauties of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: Consisting of Maxims and Observations, Moral, Critical, and Miscellaneous : to which are Now Added, Biographical Anecdotes of the Doctor, Selected from the Works of Mrs. Piozzi, His Life, Recently Published by Mr. Boswell, and Other Authentic Testimonies : Also His Will, and the Sermon He Wrote for the Late Doctor Dodd”, p.222

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• Let us not only scatter benefits, but even strew flowers for our fellow-travellers, in the rugged ways of this wretched world.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Flower, Generosity, Way

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• Look not to yourselves! You are by nature wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked. Look simply unto Jesus.

  J. C. Ryle

  Jesus, Naked, Looks

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• A wretched child Is he who does not return his parents' care.

  Euripides

  Children, Parent, Doe

  Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides (1958). “The complete Greek tragedies”

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• When you're away, I'm restless, lonely, wretched, bored, dejected; only here's the rub, my darling dear, I feel the same when you're near.

  Samuel Hoffenstein

  Love, Lonely, Bored

  Samuel Hoffenstein (1954). “Complete Poetry”

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• Most People are wretched more by the Fears of what may come, than what they endure at present. ... a manifest Contradiction to good Sense; for who, with the right use of that, wou'd lose the Enjoyment of a present Comfort, to lament a Misfortune only in Supposition; which ten to one never comes to pass.

  Eliza Haywood

  Fear, People, Live In The Moment

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• Consider then, O man! whether there can be anything more wretched and poor, more naked and miserable, than man when he dies, if he be not clothed with Christ's righteousness, and enriched in his God.

  Johann Arndt

  Men, Naked, Miserable

  Johann Arndt (1868). “True Christianity: A Treatise on Sincere Repentance, True Faith, the Holy Walk of the True Christian, Etc”, p.52

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• It is in vain that a man of sound mind and cool temper understands the condition of such a wretched being... He can no more communicate his own wisdom to him than a healthy man can instil his strength into the invalid by whose bedside he is seated.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Men, Healthy, Mind

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “The Sorrows of Young Werther: Top Classic of German”, p.24, 谷月社

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• Sparta must be regarded as the first völkisch state. The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed children, in short, their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more human than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject.

  Adolf Hitler

  Children, Sick, Insanity

  "Hitler's Secret Book". Grove Press softcover book, 1961.

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• Love, love, love - all the wretched cant of it, masking egotism, lust, masochism, fantasy under a mythology of sentimental postures.

  Germaine Greer

  Love, Sexy, Lust

  Germaine Greer (1972). “The female eunuch”

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• How sick one gets of being "good," how much I should respect myself if I could burst out and make everyone wretched for twenty-four hours; embody selfishness.

  Alice James

  Sick, Selfishness, Twenties

  Alice James (1934). “Her Brothers Her Journal”

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• Oall the creatures that creep and breathe on earth, there is none more wretched than man.

  Homer

  Men, Earth, Breathe

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• Sick in the world's regard, wretched and low.

  William Shakespeare

  Sick, Despair, World

  William Shakespeare (2009). “Henry IV”, p.101, Palgrave Macmillan

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• Why was this heart of mine formed with so much sensibility! Or why not my fortune adapted to its impulses! Tenderness without a capacity of relieving only makes the man who feels it more wretched than the object which sues for assistance.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Heart, Men, Compassion

  Oliver Goldsmith (1834). “The miscellaneous works of Oliver Goldsmith, M.B.: with a biographical memoir of the author, written expressly for this edition”, p.325

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• I am to consider the many advantages arising from a frequent use of oaths, curses, and imprecations. In the first place, this genteel accomplishment is a wonderful help to discourse; as it supplies the want of good sense, learning, and eloquence. The illiterate and stupid, by the help of oaths, become orators; and he, whose wretched intellects would not permit him to utter a coherent sentence, by this easy practice, excites the laughter, and fixes the attention, of a brilliant and joyous circle.

  Mary Collyer

  Laughter, Stupid, Practice

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• What a wretched lot of old shrivelled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind - the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship.

  George Eliot

  Cute, Friendship, Faith

  George Eliot (2016). “George Eliot's Life, Complete: Top Novelist Focus”, p.134, 谷月社

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• O wretched is the dame, to whom the sound,
  "Your lord will soon return," no phrase brings.

  Charles Robert Maturin

  Wife, Sound, Dames

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• We come to the nations pretending to escape persecution, we the most deadly persecutors in all the wretched annals of man.

  Samuel Roth

  Men, Pretending, Persecution

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• And when April like an over-lustful lover leaped upon the lush flanks of the Downs there would be yet another child in the wretched hut down on Nettle Flitch Field, where Meriam housed the fruits of her shame.

  Stella Gibbons

  Children, Fruit, Would Be

  Stella Gibbons (1977). “Cold comfort farm”, Penguin (Non-Classics)

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• In his wretched life of less than twenty-seven years Abel accomplished so much of the highest order that one of the leading mathematicians of the Nineteenth Century could say without exaggeration, "Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for five hundred years." Asked how he had done all this in the six or seven years of his working life, Abel replied, "By studying the masters, not the pupils."

  Eric Temple Bell

  Seven Years, Order, Abel

  Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”

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