Misfortunes Quotes - Page 34

• When we are in competition with ourselves, and match our todays against our yesterdays, we derive encouragement from past misfortunes and blemishes. Moreover, the competition with ourselves leaves unimpaired our benevolence toward our fellow men.

  Eric Hoffer

  Encouragement, Past, Yesterday

  Eric Hoffer (1996). “The Passionate State of Mind”

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• It doesn't require much for misfortune to strike in the King's Gambit - one incautious move, and Black can be on the edge of the abyss.

  Anatoly Karpov

  Kings, Moving, Black

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• What Cicero said of men-that they are like wines, age souring the bad, and bettering the good-we can say of misfortune, that it has the same effect upon them.

  Jean Paul

  Wine, Men, Age

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• Excitement and depression, fortune and misfortune, pleasure and pain are storms in a tiny private, shell-bound realm - which we take to be the whole of existence. Yet we can break out of this shell and enter a new world.

  Eknath Easwaran

  Pain, Storm, Break Out

  Eknath Easwaran (2007). “The Dhammapada: (Classics of Indian Spirituality)”, p.66, Nilgiri Press

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• A source of permanent, accessible pleasure, our genitals exist. The god who created our misfortune, who made us short-lived, vain and cruel, has also provided this form of meagre compensation. If we couldn't have sex from time to time, what would life be? A futile struggle against joints that stiffen, caries that form. All of which, moreover, is as uninteresting as humanly possible - the collagen which makes muscles stiffen, the appearance of microbic cavities in the gums.

  Michel Houellebecq

  Sex, Struggle, Gum

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• What a misfortune it is that we should thus be compelled to let our boys schooling interfere with their education!

  Grant Allen

  Education, Boys, Should

  Grant Allen (1894). “Post-prandial Philosophy”

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• All that happens to us, including our humiliations, our misfortunes, our embarrassments, all is given to us as raw material, as clay, so that we may shape our art.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Art, Shapes, May

  "Twenty-four Conversations with Borges, Including a Selection of Poems: Interviews by Roberto Alifano, 1981-1983". Book by Jorge Luis Borges, 1984.

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• Opportunity ... It has a sly habit of slipping in by the back door, and often it comes disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat. Perhaps this is why so many fail to recognize opportunity.

  Napoleon Hill

  Opportunity, Doors, Temporary Defeat

  Napoleon Hill (2015). “Think and grow rich: Brazilian edition”, p.16, CDG Edições e Publicações LTDA

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• Your failures and misfortunes don't threaten other people. . .It's your assets and your successes that are problems for people who derive their self-esteem from being superior.

  Carol S. Dweck

  Wise, Self Esteem, People

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• Misfortune is a fact of nature acceptable to women, especially when it falls on other women.

  John Steinbeck

  Fall, Facts, Acceptable

  John Steinbeck (1961). “The Winter of our Discontent”

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• What passes out of one's mouth passes into a hundred ears. It is a great misfortune not to have sense enough to speak well.

  Desiderius Erasmus

  Ears, Mouths, Speak

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• There were moments when I hated everybody I came across, innocent or guilty, and looked at them as thieves who were robbing me of my life with impunity. The most unbearable misfortune is when you yourself become unjust, malignant, vile; you realize it, you even reproach yourself - but you just can't help it.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Unbearable, Thieves, Unjust

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• Relief of distress or compassion shown to victims of misfortune.
  A blessing that is an act of Divine compassion.

  Noah Webster

  Blessing, Compassion, Relief

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• Tis misfortune that awakens ingenuity, or fortitude, or endurance, in hearts where these qualities had never come to life but for the circumstance which gave them a being.

  William Makepeace Thackeray

  Heart, Quality, Endurance

  William Makepeace Thackeray (1852). “The history of Henry Esmond, esq”, p.50

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• A man once jumped from the top floor of a burning house in which many members of his family had already perished. He managed to save his life; but as he was falling he hit a person standing down below and broke that person's legs and arms. The jumping man had no choice; yet to the man with the broken limbs he was the cause of his misfortune. If both behaved rationally, they would not become enemies.

  Isaac Deutscher

  Fall, Men, Jumping

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• What molting time is to birds, so adversity or misfortune is ... for us humans.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Adversity, Bird, Humans

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• Many girls have not the advantage I have and I [am] very very glad that satan has not geven me boils and many other Misfortunes.

  Marjorie Fleming

  Girl, Satan, Advantage

  1810 'Journal 2' in F Sidgwick (ed) The Complete Marjory Fleming (1934).

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• Great minds always tend to see virtue in misfortune.

  Honore de Balzac

  Mind, Great Minds, Virtue

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• It is a misfortune to pass at once from observation to conclusion, and to regard both as of equal value; but it befalls many a student.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Students, Observation, Equal

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2015). “Maxims and Reflections”, p.173, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

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• Envy is a mistake that just keeps on giving. Obviously we suffer a little when some misfortune befalls us, but envy requires us to suffer all good fortune that befalls everyone we know! What a bright prospect that is-downing another quart of pickle juice every time anyone around you has a happy moment!

  Jeffrey R. Holland

  Mistake, Giving, Envy

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• What a misfortune to be a woman! And yet, the worst misfortune is not to understand what a misfortune it is.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Worst

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• It is not the passion of a mind struggling with misfortune, or the hopelessness of its desires, but of a mind preying on itself, and disgusted with, or indifferent to all other things.

  William Hazlitt

  Struggle, Passion, Mind

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.744, Delphi Classics

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• All of us are prone to excuse our own mediocre performance. We blame our misfortunes, our disfigurements, our so-called handicaps. Victims of our own rationalization, we say silently to ourselves, 'I'm just too weak,' or 'I'm not cut out for better things.' Others soar beyond our meager accomplishments. Envy and discouragement take their toll. .

  Thomas S. Monson

  Cutting, Accomplishment, Envy

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• Those who have had no share in the good fortunes of the mighty Often have a share in their misfortunes.

  Bertolt Brecht

  Share, Fortune, Good Fortune

  Bertolt Brecht (1975). “Grove Press modern drama: six plays”, Grove Press

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• In struggling with misfortunes lies the true proof of virtue.

  William Shakespeare

  Lying, Struggle, Fortitude

  William Shakespeare (2001). “Troilus and Cressida”, p.490, Classic Books Company

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