Misery Quotes - Page 26

• The offence is what is improperly called the death of an infant, who has ceased to be, before knowing what existence is, a result of a nature not to give the slightest inquietude to the most timid imagination; and which can cause no regrets but to the very person who, through a sentiment of shame and pity, has refused to prolong a life begun under the auspices of misery.

  Jeremy Bentham

  Regret, Knowing, Giving

  Jeremy Bentham, Etienne Dumont (1871). “Theory of Legislation”, p.265

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• On the spiritual path, all the dreck and misery is transformed, maybe not that same day, but still transformed into spiritual fuel or insight.

  Anne Lamott

  Spiritual, Fuel, Path

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• The poverty of the incapable, the distresses that come upon the imprudent, the starvation of the idle, and those shoulderings aside of the weak by the strong, which leave so many "in shallows and in miseries," are the decrees of a large, far-seeing benevolence.

  Herbert Spencer

  Strong, Poverty, Weak

  Herbert Spencer (2016). “The Man versus the State: Great Essays”, p.73, VM eBooks

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• Behind the steps that Misery treads Approaching Comfort view: The hues of bliss more brightly glow Chastised by sabler tints of woe, And blended form, with artful strife, The strength and harmony of life.

  Thomas Gray

  Views, Comfort, Hue

  Thomas Gray (1825). “The works of Thomas Gray,: containing his poems and correspondence, with memoirs of his life and writings”, p.178

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• Man's own form in space - his body - was a private prison; and that it was because of this imprisoning misery - because he was hungry and overworked and went to a horrid place called home late at night in the rain, and his bones ached and his head was heavy.

  Willem de Kooning

  Rain, Home, Night

  "Abstract Expressionist Painting in America". Book by William C. Seitz, p. 135, 1983.

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• Where consequence ceases, there folly, restlessness and misery begin.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Folly, Cease, Consequence

  "Aphorisms on man. Translated from the original manuscript of the Rev. John Caspar Lavater, citizen of Zuric. ; [One line from Juvenal]" by Johann Kaspar Lavater, 1790.

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• Oh we will all fry together when we fry. We'll be french fried potatoes by and by. There will be no more misery When the world is our rotisserie, Yes, we will all fry together when we fry.

  Tom Lehrer

  Together, World, Potatoes

  Song: We Will All Go Together when We Go

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• I view tea drinking as a destroyer of health, an enfeebler of the frame, an en-genderer of effeminancy and laziness, a debaucher of youth and maker of misery for old age. Thus he makes that miserable progress towards that death which he finds ten or fifteen years sooner than he would have found it if he had made his wife brew beer instead of making tea.

  William Cobbett

  Drinking, Beer, Views

  "Cottage Economy". Book by William Cobbett, 1821.

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• Their [the Jews] rotten and unbending stiffneckedness deserves that they be oppressed unendingly and without measure or end and that they die in their misery without the pity of anyone.

  John Calvin

  Rotten, Pity, Ends

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• Nevertheless, our constant efforts to lower our estimate of the present world should not lead us to hate life or to be ungrateful toward God. For this life, though it is full of countless miseries, deserves to be reckoned among the divine blessings which should not be despised. Therefore, if we discover nothing of God's goodness in it, we are already guilty of no small ingratitude toward him.

  John Calvin

  Hate, Blessing, Effort

  John Calvin, Henry Van Andel (2004). “Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life”, p.72, Baker Books

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• Exhibitions of minority art are often intended to make the minority itself more aware of its collective experience. Reinforcing the common memory of miseries and triumphs will, it is expected, strengthen the unity of the group and its determination to achieve a better future. But emphasizing shared experience as opposed to the artist's consciousness of self (which includes his personal and unshared experience of masterpieces) brings to the fore the tension in the individual artist between being an artist and being a minority artist.

  Harold Rosenberg

  Art, Determination, Memories

  "Art and Other Serious Matters". Book by Harold Rosenberg. Chapter: "Being Outside", p. 273, 1985.

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• The so-called Real World. Human misery and sadness. Blind politics and general cruelty.

  Tanith Lee

  Real, Sadness, World

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• Worry is discounting possible future sorrows so that the individual may have present misery.

  William George Jordan

  Worry, Sorrow, May

  William George Jordan (1899). “The Kingship of Self-control: Individual Problems and Possibilities ...”

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• To prevent the recurrence of misery is, alas! beyond the power of man.

  Thomas Malthus

  Men, Recurrence, Alas

  Thomas Malthus (2015). “An Essay on the Principle of Population: Illustrated”, p.48, eKitap Projesi

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• Politicians need human misery. ... Government's a disease masquerading as its own cure.

  L. Neil Smith

  Government, Needs, Disease

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• All present life is but an interjection, An'Oh!'or 'Ah!'of joy or misery, Or a 'Ha! ha!'or 'Bah!'a yawn or 'Pooh!' Of which perhaps the latter is most true.

  Robert Byron

  Joy, Life Is, Latter

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• First impressions of mediaeval life are usually coloured by the courtly romances of Malory and his later refiners. Chaucer brings us down to reality, but his people belong to a prosperous middle-class world, on holiday and in holiday mood. Piers Plowman stands alone as a revelation of the ignorance and misery of the lower classes, whose multiplied grievances came to a head in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381.

  William Langland

  Holiday, Ignorance, Reality

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• The world was sick, and the ills from which it was suffering were mainly due to the perversion of man, his inability to live at peace with himself. The microbe was no longer the main enemy; science was sufficiently advanced to be able to cope with it admirably. If it were not for such barriers as superstition, ignorance, religious intolerance, misery and poverty.

  Brock Chisholm

  Religious, Ignorance, Men

  "Public health, a progressive science". Monthly Bulletin of the Philippine Health Service, 24, 1948.

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• I'm fascinated by the period that goes from the Industrial Revolution to right after World War II. There's something about that period that's epic and tragic. There's a point after the industrial period where it seems like humanity's finally going to make it right. There were advances in medicine and technology and education. People are going to be able to live longer lives; literacy is starting to spread. It seemed like finally, after centuries of toiling and misery, that humanity was going to get to a better stage. And then what happens is precisely the contrary. Humanity betrays itself.

  Carlos Ruiz Zafon

  War, Epic, Technology

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• It is to labor, and to labor only, that man owes everything possessed of exchangeable value. Labor is the talisman that has raised him from the condition of the savage: that has changed the desert and the forest into cultivated fields; that has covered the earth with cities, and the ocean with ships; that has given us plenty, comfort, and elegance, instead of want, misery, and barbarism.

  John Ramsay McCulloch

  Ocean, Men, Cities

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• Anarchists know that a long period of education must precede any great fundamental change in society, hence they do not believe in vote begging, nor political campaigns, but rather in the development of self-thinking individuals. We look away from government for relief, because we know that force (legalized) invades the personal liberty of man, seizes upon the natural elements and intervenes between man and natural laws; from this exercise of force through governments flows nearly all the misery, poverty, crime and confusion existing in society.

  Lucy Parsons

  Believe, Exercise, Men

  "The Principles of Anarchism". A Lecture by Lucy E. Parsons, lucyparsons.org.

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• The slippers of the mortal Earth, now touched the chest of the Moon. Oh, it is shameful that the misery of hunger is still continuing as it was in the past.

  Manmohan Acharya

  Past, Moon, Earth

  "Song of the Bumblebee". 2008.

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• There is a strain in Marx of the cleric, of the vulgar moralist. He paints the capitalist and the bourgeois as incarnations of evil; it is they who are responsible for the woes of mankind. The dismissal of the individual's responsibility for his own misery is the quintessence of clericalism.

  John Carroll

  Responsibility, Evil, Woe

  John Carroll (2010). “Break-Out from the Crystal Palace: The Anarcho-Psychological Critique: Stirner, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky”, p.64, Taylor & Francis

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• We are born in this world to lose as well as to gain, to have happiness as well as misery. Enrich your mind by understanding this and improve, gaining stability thereby.

  Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha

  Persistence, Understanding, Mind

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• We make very little progress when we strive to conquer baser instincts in a good mood. However, vast strides are possible when we are miserable and work with ourselves to replace our misery with joy and understanding.

  Sivaya Subramuniyaswami

  Joy, Understanding, Growth

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