Misery Quotes - Page 25

• It depends on education--that holder of the keys which the Almighty hath put into our hands--to open the gates which lead to virtue or to vice, to happiness or misery.

  Philip Sidney

  Education, Keys, Hands

  Sir Philip Sidney, Jane Porter (1807). “Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks”, p.178

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• In certain cases, a man blind from birth may have an operation performed which gives him his sight. The result: frequently misery, confusion, disorientation. The light that illumines the madman is an unearthly light, but I do not believe it is a projection, an emanation from his mundane ego. He is irradiated by a light that is more than he. It may burn him out.

  R. D. Laing

  Believe, Men, Light

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• At a certain stage of misery, you'll try anything to explain what's going on with you, even if you know it doesn't explain a thing and it's one failed explanation after another.

  Philip Roth

  Trying, Stage, Certain

  Philip Roth (2010). “The Humbling”, p.12, Random House

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• You almost had to live through it to really know the gut ripping misery of the depression during the early thirties which led to labor's bloodiest and most violent days.

  Jimmy Hoffa

  Violent, Guts, Labor

  "Hoffa The Real Story" by Jimmy Hoffa, (p. 27), 1975.

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• Complaints bring misery; compliments brings strength.

  Harbhajan Singh Yogi

  Bhajans, Complaining, Compliment

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• To be caught happy in a world of misery was for an honest man the most despicable of crimes.

  Virginia Woolf

  Happiness, Men, World

  Virginia Woolf (2016). “To the Lighthouse”, p.44, Virginia Woolf

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• Misery pulls away the brackets of life leaving you to free fall.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Fall, Leaving, Brackets

  "Written on the Body". Book by Jeanette Winterson, 1992.

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• Misery which, through long ages, had no spokesman, no helper, will now be its own helper and speak for itself.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Long, Age, Speak

  Thomas Carlyle (1872). “The French Revolution: a History”, p.235

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• Misery loves company, particularly when she is herself the hostess, and can give generously of her stores to others.

  John Kendrick Bangs

  Giving, Stores, Company

  John Kendrick Bangs (2015). “The Water Ghost and Others: Bangs Classic Collection”, p.11, 谷月社

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• Mankind, transmitting from generation to generation the legacy of accumulated vengeances, and pursuing with the feelings of duty the misery of their fellow-beings, have not failed to attribute to the Universal Cause a character analogous with their own. The image of this invisible, mysterious Being is more or less excellent and perfect — resembles more or less its original — in proportion to the perfection of the mind on which it is impressed.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  God, Character, Perfect

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1859). “Shelley Memorials: From Authentic Sources : Now First Printed”, p.270

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• Love! dearest, sweetest power! how much are we indebted to thee! How much superior are even thy miseries to the pleasures which arise from other sources!

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Love, Pleasure, Source

  Percy Bysshe Shelley (1915). “The Letters of Percy Bysshe Shelley: Containing Material Never Before Collected”

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• Has knowledge of birth control, so carefully guarded and so secretly practiced by the women of the wealthy class - and so tenaciously withheld from the working women - brought them misery? Rather, has it not promoted greater happiness, greater freedom, greater prosperity and more harmony among them? The women who have this knowledge are the women who have been free to develop, free to enjoy in its best sense, and free to advance the interests of the community.

  Margaret Sanger

  Class, Community, Birth Control

  Margaret Sanger (1922). “Woman, morality, and birth control”

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• Anyone who has read Yeats's wonderful Autobiography will remember his Sligo shabby, shadowed, half country and half sea, full of confused romance, superstition, poverty, eccentricity, unrecognized anachronism, passion and ignorance and the little boy's misery. Yeats was treated well but was bitterly unhappy; he prayed that he would die, and used often to say to himself: "When you are grown up, never talk as grown-up people do of the happiness of childhood.

  Randall Jarrell

  Country, Confused, Passion

  "Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964". Book by Randall Jarrell, "The Development of Yeats's Sense of Reality" (p. 89), 1980.

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• most of the people in a war never fight for even a minute though they bear for years and die forever. They do not fight, but only starve, only suffer, only die: the sum of all this passive misery is that great activity, War.

  Randall Jarrell

  War, Fighting, Years

  "Kipling, Auden & Co: Essays and Reviews 1935-1964". Book by Randall Jarrell, "Poetry in War and Peace" (p. 129), 1980.

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• Despair puts the last touch not only to our misery but also to our weakness.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Despair, Weakness, Lasts

  Jean de La Bruyère, Luc de Clapiers marquis de Vauvenargues (1903). “La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims”

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• The American system demands success, and in order to succeed we must first believe that we can. Yet our society, with its intolerance of failure and poverty, traps millions of people in positions where any kind of success seems impossible to contemplate, and in which failure itself is a kind of passive rebellion against their own misery and the social system which created it in the first place. To succeed it is necessary to accept the world as it is and rise above it.

  Michael Korda

  Believe, Order, People

  "Success!". Book by Michael Korda, 1977.

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• Sinners, hear and consider, if you wilfully condemn your souls to bestiality, God will condemn them to perpetual misery.

  Richard Baxter

  Soul, Gods Will, Intemperance

  Richard Baxter, William Orme (1830). “The practical works of Richard Baxter: with a life of the author and a critical examination of his writings by William Orme”, p.169

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• The character structure of modern man, who reproduces a six-thousand-year-old patriarchal authoritarian culture is typified by characterological armoring against his inner nature and against the social misery which surrounds him. This characterolgical armoring of the character is the basis of isolation, indigence, craving for authority, fear of responsibility, mystic longing, sexual misery, and neurotically impotent rebelliousness.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Character, Responsibility, Men

  "The Function of the Orgasm". Book by Wilhelm Reich, 1927.

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• As I walk through This wicked world Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity, I ask myself Is all hope lost? Is there only pain and hatred, and misery? And each time I feel like this inside, There's one thing I wanna know: What's so funny 'bout Peace, Love, & Understanding?

  Elvis Costello

  Pain, Light, Hatred

  Song: Peace, Love And Understanding

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• He who is himself crossed in love is able from time to time to master his passion, for he is not the creature but the creator of his own misery; and if a lover is unable to control his passion, he at least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings. But he who is loved without reciprocating that love is lost beyond redemption, for it is not in his power to set a limit to that other's passion, to keep it within bounds, and the strongest will is reduced to impotence in the face of another's desire.

  Stefan Zweig

  Love, Passion, Suffering

  "Beware of Pity". Book by Stefan Zweig, 1939.

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• What [Nietzsche] calls slave morality is to him purely spite-morality; and this spite-morality gave new names to all ideals. Thus impotence, which offers no reprisal, became goodness; craven baseness became humility; submission to him who was feared became obedience; inability to assert one's self became reluctance to assert one's self, became forgiveness, love of one's enemies. Misery became a distinction

  Georg Brandes

  Humility, Self, Names

  Georg Brandes (2015). “Friedrich Nietzsche (English Edition)”, p.17, WILLIAM HEINEMANN

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• As far as the physical miseries go, I am sure I will cope. I lived at Eton in the 1950s and I know all about life in uncomfortable quarters.

  Jonathan Aitken

  Eton, Quarters, Uncomfortable

  "A Right Honorable Briton? Hardly, It Turns Out" by Warren Hoge, www.nytimes.com. February 04, 1999.

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• The life of an animal is misery and slavery: that is the plain truth.

  George Orwell

  Animal, Slavery

  David Ball, George Orwell (1984). “George Orwell's Animal Farm”, p.29, Barron's Educational Series

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• But now well democracy has shown us that what is evil are the grosses têtes, the big heads, all big heads are greedy for money and power, they are ambitious that is the reason they are big heads and so they are at the head of the government and the result is misery for the people. They talk about cutting off the heads of the grosses têtes but now we know that there will be other grosses têtes and the will be all the same.

  Gertrude Stein

  Cutting, Democracies Have, Government

  "Paris France". Book by Gertrude Stein, p. 28 (in 1970 edition), 1940.

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• Create all the happiness you are able to create: remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains. And for every grain of enjoyment you sow in the bosom of another, you shall find a harvest in your own bosom; while every sorrow which you pluck out from the thoughts and feelings of a fellow creature shall be replaced by beautiful peace and joy in the sanctuary of your soul.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Beautiful, Pain, Joy

  "Will this man make you happy?" by Stuart Jeffries, www.theguardian.com. June 24, 2008.

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