Enjoy the present, bid defiance to the future, laugh at all those reasonable beings who exercise their reason to avoid the misfortunes which they fear, destroying at the same time the pleasure that they might enjoy.
Helping those who have been struck by unforeseeable misfortunes is fundamentally different from making dependency a way of life.
With no matter what human being, taken individually, I always find reasons for concluding that sorrow and misfortune do not suit him; either because he seems too mediocre for anything so great, or, on the contrary, too precious to be destroyed.
It is a great misfortune to be alone, my friends; and it must be believed that solitude can quickly destroy reason.
I feel exquisite pleasure in dwelling on the recollections of childhood, before misfortune had tainted my mind, and changed its bright visions of extensive usefulness into gloomy and narrow reflections upon self.
Sex gets people killed, put in jail, beaten up, bankrupted, and disgraced, to say nothing of ruined - personally, politically, and professionally. Looking for sex can lead to misfortune, and if you get lucky and find it, it can leave you maimed, infected, or dead. Other than that, it's swell: the great American pastime. ... You probably won't see it on a bumper sticker, but sex kills.
I have never been able to be so allured by the prospect of advantages or so terrified by misfortunes, swayed by honours or fettered by affection, nay not even so smitten by the fear of death, as to enter upon marriage.
We ought, in humanity, no more to despise a man for the misfortunes of the mind than for those of the body, when they are such as he cannot help; were this thoroughly considered we should no more laugh at a man for having his brains cracked than for having his head broke.
It's dangerous to start attributing your fortunes to luck and your misfortunes to fate.
The fact that God has prohibited despair gives misfortune the right to hope all things, and leaves hope free to dare all things.
Hidden in all good fortune is misfortune. And in all misfortune is good fortune. It's never going to stay the same as long you are in the world or unless you die while you are alive and become an enlightened Zen Master. But those people don't exist. When you study their lives, you find that they had the same struggles as the rest of us. It's not so much about being able to always have calm. Calmness isn't just the absence of noise or troubles. It's being able to find calm within yourself when other stuff is going on.
The diamond of character is revealed by the concussion of misfortune, as the splendor of the precious jewel of the mine is developed by the blows of the lapidary.
The fact is, people who don't have any misfortunes are very irritating to their neighbours. No opportunities for popping in with condolences and new-laid eggs. No visits to the afflicted. No opportunities for the milk of human kindness to flow. Naturally it doesn't.
Some souls are ennobled and elevated by seeming misfortunes, which then become blessings in disguise.
Contentment travels rarely with fortune, but follows virtue even in misfortune.
Misfortune comes to people who live only on the memory of their past grandeur.
Misfortunes should always be expected.
Every wind is fare when we are flying from misfortune.
If those millions squandered on designing missionaries had been deposited in funds for the support of yourselves, when old age, misfortune, or sickness (from which none are exempt,) overtakes you, or for the distressed of your race, what a heaven of happiness you would have created on earth: ye would now be an ornament to your sex, and ages to come would call you blessed. But it is in vain to try - a priest-ridden female is lost to reason. Why? because she has surrendered her reason to the ... missionaries ... the orthodox; they are the grand deceivers.
We feel a kind of bittersweet pricking of malicious delight in contemplating the misfortunes of others.
The simple circumstantial narrative (did such a narrative exist) of the ruin of a single town, of the misfortunes of a single family, might exhibit an interesting and instructive picture of human manners; but the tedious repetition of vague and declamatory complaints would fatigue the attention of the most patient reader.
The fabric of a mighty state, which has been reared by the labours of successive ages, could not be overturned by the misfortune of a single day, if the fatal power of the imagination did not exaggerate the real measure of the calamity.
The brutal soldiers satisfied their sensual appetites without consulting either the inclination or the duties of their female captives; and a nice question of casuistry was seriously agitated, Whether those tender victims, who had inflexibly refused their consent to the violation which they sustained, had lost, by their misfortune, the glorious crown of virginity. There were other losses indeed of a more substantial kind and more general concern.
The misfortune to be born when I was, where I was. That was a piece of bad luck.
To lead a blameless life you must curb your passions , and whatever misfortune may befall you cannot be ascribed by anyone to want of good luck, or attributed to fate; these words are devoid of sense, and all fault will rightly fall on your own head.
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