Misery Quotes - Page 33

• For what mission can be greater than that of giving to the world hours of exaltation in which it may forget the misery of the present, the cares of everyday life and lose itself in the eternally pure world of harmony. . .

  Lotte Lehmann

  Giving, Everyday, Exaltation

  Lotte Lehmann (2013). “More Than Singing: The Interpretation of Songs”, p.17, Courier Corporation

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• It is entirely wrong to think that we have done, or can do, good to the world, or to think that we have helped such and such people. It is a foolish thought, and all foolish thoughts bring misery. We think that we have helped some man and expect him to thank us, and because he does not, unhappiness comes to us. Why should we expect anything in return for what we do? Be grateful to the man you help, think of him as God. Is it not a great privilege to be allowed to worship God by helping our fellow men?

  Swami Vivekananda

  Grateful, Men, Thinking

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “Karma Yoga: The Yoga of Action”, p.40, Advaita Ashrama

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• The sacrifice to Legba was completed; the Master of the Crossroads had taken the loas' mysterious routes back to his native Guinea.
  Meanwhile, the feast continued. The peasants were forgetting their misery: dance and alcohol numbed them, carrying away their shipwrecked conscience in the unreal and shady regions where the savage madness of the African gods lay waiting.

  Jacques Roumain

  Taken, Sacrifice, Alcohol

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• You always want someone to hate in order to feel justified in your own misery. Hatred is the true primordial passion. It is love that's abnormal. That is why Christ was killed: he spoke against nature. You don't love someone for your whole life - that impossible hope is the source of adultery, matricide, betrayal of friends ... But you can hate someone for your whole life - provided he's always there to keep your hatred alive. Hatred warms the heart.

  Umberto Eco

  Betrayal, Hate, Passion

  Umberto Eco (2011). “The Prague Cemetery”, p.355, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Human beings have a drive for security and safety, which is often what fuels the spiritual search. This very drive for security and safety is what causes so much misery and confusion. Freedom is a state of complete and absolute insecurity and not knowing. So, in seeking security and safety, you actually distance yourself from the freedom you want. There is no security in freedom, at least not in the sense that we normally think of security. This is, of course, why it is so free: there's nothing there to grab hold of.

  Adyashanti

  Spiritual, Distance, Thinking

  "Freedom and the Unknown". www.adyashanti.org. 2002.

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• While the Second World War brought about untold misery and suffering, it was also a time when the world witnessed extraordinary bravery. Through the collective, heroic efforts of countless men and women, victory was claimed over tyranny and evil.

  Sam Kutesa

  War, Men, Evil

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• You yourself create all your misery, hour after hour, day after day. You think the goal justifies the means, even the vile means. You are wrong: The goal is in the path on which you arrive at it. Every step of today is your life of tomorrow. No great goal can be reached by vile means. That you have proven in every social revolution. The vileness or inhumanity of the path to the goal makes you vile or inhuman, and the goal unattainable.

  Wilhelm Reich

  Mean, Thinking, Goal

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• Marriages that made out of love (so-called "love-matches") have error as their father and misery (necessity) as their mother.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Love, Marriage, Mother

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• I gulp down my pleasures, chew over my miseries.

  Mason Cooley

  Pleasure

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• Self-inflicted misery smirks under its crown of thorns.

  Mason Cooley

  Self, Smirk, Crowns

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• Unhappiness is too common to call for special measures.

  Mason Cooley

  Special, Common, Unhappiness

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• The Ordinary Life: the misery seems planned, the happiness accidental.

  Mason Cooley

  Happiness, Ordinary, Routine

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• The joy resulting from the diffusion of blessings to all around us is the purest and sublimest that can ever enter the human mind, and can be conceived only by those who have experienced it. Next to the consolations of divine grace, it is the most sovereign balm to the miseries of life, both in him who is the object of it, and in him who exercises it.

  Beilby Porteus

  Exercise, Blessing, Joy

  Beilby Porteus (1823). “Works of the Right Reverend Beilby Porteus, late Bishop of London: with his life”, p.13

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• there is ten times more in the world than would maintain all in yet unknown luxury. Yet how much misery there is in our midst; not because there is not enough, but owing to the misdirection of it.

  Ernestine Rose

  Luxury, World, Owing

  Ernestine Louise Rose (2008). “Mistress of herself: speeches and letters of Ernestine L. Rose, early women's rights leader”, The Feminist Press at CUNY

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• Many men ridicule the idea that it can be scientifically handled. They tell us the unemployed have always been with us, and always must be. It is the oldest reason in the world for tolerating injustice and misery.

  Ida Tarbell

  Men, Ideas, World

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• The man who has learned to triumph over sorrow wears his miseries as though they were sacred fillets upon his brow; and nothing is so entirely admirable as a man bravely wretched.

  Seneca the Younger

  Grief, Men, Sorrow

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• False fancy brings real misery.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Real, Fancy

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• I know that we often tremble at an empty terror; yet the false fancy brings a real misery.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Real, Fancy, Anticipation

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• The blindness of men is the most dangerous effect of their pride; it seems to nourish and augment it; it deprives them of knowledge of remedies which can solace their miseries and can cure their faults.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Pride, Men, Faults

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• There is an excess both in happiness and misery above our power of sensation.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Happiness, Power, Excess

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• Men's happiness and misery depends altogether as much upon their own humor as it does upon fortune.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Happiness, Humor, Men

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• Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclined to severity. Witness conquerors and monks! It is mediocrity alone, and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.

  Baron de Montesquieu

  Men, Inspire, Mixtures

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• Some have said that it is not the business of private men to meddle with government--a bold and dishonest saying, which is fit to come from no mouth but that of a tyrant or a slave. To say that private men have nothing to do with government is to say that private men have nothing to do with their own happiness or misery; that people ought not to concern themselves whether they be naked or clothed, fed or starved, deceived or instructed, protected or destroyed.

  Cato the Younger

  Men, Tyrants, People

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• Give nobly to indigent merit, and do not refuse your charity even to those who have not merit but their misery.

  Lord Chesterfield

  Giving, Charity, Merit

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• The last faint spark
  In the self-murdered heart, the wounds of the sad uncomprehending
  dark,
  The wounds of the baited bear,--
  The blind and weeping bear whom the keepers beat
  On his helpless flesh . . . the tears of the hunted hare.

  Edith Sitwell

  Heart, Dark, Self

  Dame Edith Sitwell (1952). “Selected Poems”

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