Misery Quotes - Page 24

• If you love a Dream Woman ... let her stay the divine Woman of the Dream. To awaken and clasp flesh and blood, no matter how delicately tender, and find that love has sped at the dawn is a misery too deep for tears.

  William John Locke

  Dream, Blood, Tears

  William John Locke (19??). “The Belovd Vagabond”, p.289, Library of Alexandria

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• Certainly I believe that God gave us life for happiness, not misery. Humanity, I am sure, will never be made lazy or indifferent by an excess of happiness. Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose. Happiness should be a means of accomplishment, like health, not an end in itself.

  Helen Keller

  Believe, Mean, Self

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• If humans did not manufacture some of their own to appear like better people, people would not aspire to be someone else. They would stop dreaming. And if people didn't dream, they would be awake to discover the wonderful misery of being. There are no singular great people. There is only a small percentage of people manufactured to look significant, for the purpose of creating the feeling of mass insignificance.

  Craig Stone

  Dream, Creating, People

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• There really is no time for wallowing in the miseries of life: we don’t have all the time in the world, we have all the world, and not enough time.

  Craig Stone

  Enough Time, World, Wallowing

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• The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief... So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies.

  Emma Goldman

  Pregnancy, America, Class

  "Mother Earth" Journal, 1911.

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• God doth not promise here to man that HeWill free him quickly from his misery;But in His own time, and when He thinks fit,Then He will give a happy end to it.

  Robert Herrick

  Men, Thinking, Giving

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• I think there's a core of real anger or misery inside every true stand-up comic.

  Scott Raab

  Real, Thinking, Comic

  "Sarah Silverman: The ESQ+A". Interview with Scott Raab, www.esquire.com. July 5, 2012.

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• The most horrible wickedness and cruelties, and the greatest miseries that have troubled the human race began with this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. ... It would be far, far better for us to let a thousand devils roam the world, and publicly preach the doctrine of devils (if there were such a thing, which there isn't), than to let one impostor and monster such a Moses, Joshua, Samuel or the Bible prophets come speaking the so-called word of God, and causing men to believe it.

  Thomas Paine

  Believe, Men, Race

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• Sorrow is never more sorrowful than when it jests at its own misery.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Sorrow, Sorrowful

  Christian Nestell Bovee (1862). “Intuitions and Summaries of Thought”, p.209

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• Wealth hath never given happiness, but often hastened misery.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Wealth, Given

  Martin Farquhar Tupper (1857). “Complete poetical works: containing: Proverbial philosophy, A thousand lines, Hactenus, Geraldine, and miscellaneous poems. With a portrait of the author”, p.85

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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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• Here is a thing which the more you fear and avoid it the nearer you approach to it, and this is misery; the more you flee from it the more miserable and restless you will become.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Miserable, Restless, Approach

  Leonardo Da Vinci (2015). “Thoughts on Art and Life: "Behind the Genius"”, p.95, eKitap Projesi

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• If the Soul sees, after death , what passes on this earth , and watches over the welfare of those it loves, then must its greatest happiness consist in seeing the current of its beneficent influences widening out from age to age, as rivulets widen into rivers, and aiding to shape the destinies of individuals, families, States, the World; and its bitterest punishment, in seeing its evil influences causing mischief and misery , and cursing and afflicting men, long after the frame it dwelt in has become dust, and when both name and memory are forgotten.

  Albert Pike

  Memories, Destiny, Men

  Albert Pike (1932). “Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry”, p.134, Lulu.com

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• We can put women on Prozac and they will think they are happy, even though they are not. Disturbed animals in the zoo are given Prozac too, which rather suggests that misery is a response to unbearable circumstances rather than constitutional.

  Germaine Greer

  Zoos, Thinking, Animal

  "The Whole Woman". Book by Germaine Greer, 1999.

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• One can make one's life a complete misery, worrying about burglaries and shipwrecks, but ask anyone, anyone you know ... earth-shattering disasters and fabulous inheritances all seems to take place exclusively in the newspapers.

  Jean Anouilh

  Worry, Inheritance, Earth

  Jean Anouilh (1991). “The rehearsal or Love punished”, Methuen

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• No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery.

  Bertrand Russell

  Pain, Believe, Men

  Bertrand Russell, John Greer Slater, Peter Köllner (1996). “A Fresh Look at Empiricism: 1927-42”, p.217, Psychology Press

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• It is a consolation of human life that the sick forget what it is like to feel well, or the miserable to be happy.

  Cyril Connolly

  Sick, Forget, Miserable

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• The zest for life of those unusual men and women who make a great zealous success of living is due more often in good part to the craftiness and pertinacity with which they manage to overlook the misery of others. You can watch them watch life beat the stuffing out of the faces of their friends and acquaintances, although they themselves seem to outwit the dense delays of social custom, the tedious tick-tock of bureaucratic obfuscation, accepting loss and age and change and disappointment without suffering punctures in their stomach lining.

  Edward Hoagland

  Life, Disappointment, Loss

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• I am a strange compound of weakness and resolution! However, if I must suffer, I will endeavour to suffer in silence. There is certainly a great defect in my mind my wayward heart creates its own misery Why I am made thus I cannot tell; and, till I can form some idea of the whole of my existence, I must be content to weep and dance like a child long for a toy, and be tired of it as soon as I get it.

  Mary Wollstonecraft

  Children, Tired, Heart

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• I have suffered more from my bad dancing than from all the misfortunes and miseries of my life put together.

  Walter Savage Landor

  Dancing, Together, Misfortunes

  Walter Savage Landor, Marguerite Blessington (Countess of), John Francis Mariani (1973). “The letters of Walter Savage Landor to Marguerite, Countess of Blessington”

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• No small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself.

  John Ruskin

  Dark, Views, People

  John Ruskin (1907). “The Religion of Ruskin: The Life and Works of John Ruskin; a Biographical and Anthological Study”

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• It is a strange feeling for a girl when first she finds the power put into her hand of influencing the destiny of another to happiness or misery. She is like a magician holding for the first time a fairy wand, not having yet had experience of its potency.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Girl, Women, Destiny

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1835). “Lodore”, p.61

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• What is called chance is the instrument of Providence and the secret agent that counteracts what men call wisdom, and preserves order and regularity, and continuation in the whole, for ... I firmly believe, notwithstanding all our complaints, that almost every person upon earth tastes upon the totality more happiness than misery; and therefore if we could correct the world to our fancies, and with the best intentions imaginable, probably we should only produce more misery and confusion.

  Horace Walpole

  Believe, Men, Order

  Horace Walpole (1904). “The letters of Horace Walpole: fourth earl of Orford”

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• Those that have wealth must be watchful and wary,
  Power, alas! naught but misery brings!

  Thomas Haynes Bayly

  Wealth, Alas

  "I'd be a Butterfly". "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations", 10th edition, 1919.

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• What misery to live in this world! We are like men whose enemies are at the door, who must not lay aside their arms, even while sleeping or eating, and are always in dread lest the foe should enter the fortress by some breach in the walls. O my Lord and my all! How canst thou wish us to prize such a wretched existence?

  Teresa of Avila

  Life, Wall, Sleep

  St. Teresa of Avila (1921). “The Interior Castle, or the Mansions”, p.4, Library of Alexandria

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