Misfortunes Quotes - Page 5

• The difference between a misfortune and a calamity is this: If Gladstone fell into the Thames, it would be a misfortune. But if someone dragged him out again, that would be a calamity.

  Benjamin Disraeli

  Differences, Would Be, Politics

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• In the misfortunes of our best friends we always find something not altogether displeasing to us.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Friendship, Best Friend

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• We all have enough strength to endure the misfortunes of others.

  Francois de La Rochefoucauld

  Strength, Enough, Misfortunes Of Others

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• Losing faith is a complicated business and takes time. There are no epiphanies, no "moments of truth." It takes much thought and concentration in the later phases, which thenselves come about through an accumulation of small accidents: examples of general injustice, misfortune falling upon the godly, prayers of one's own unanswered.

  Thomas Pynchon

  Prayer, Fall, Godly

  Thomas Pynchon (2012). “V.”, p.219, Penguin

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• Truly I was born to be an example of misfortune, and a target at which the arrows of adversary are aimed.

  Miguel de Cervantes

  Arrows, Example, Target

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• A person who sets his or her mind on the dark side of life, who lives over and over the misfortunes and disappointments of the past, prays for similar misfortunes and disappointments in the future. If you will see nothing but ill luck in the future, you are praying for such ill luck and will surely get it. (Prentice Mulford)

  Rhonda Byrne

  Disappointment, Dark, Past

  Rhonda Byrne (2008). “The Secret”, p.177, Simon and Schuster

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• Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother's wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women.

  Daniel Handler

  Mother, Women, Numbers

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• It is perhaps the misfortune of my life that I am interested in far too much but not decisively in any one thing; all my interests are not subordinated in one but stand on an equal footing.

  Soren Kierkegaard

  Too Much, Equal, Interest

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• We can only feel sorry for ourselves when our misfortunes are still supportable. Once this limit is crossed, the only way to bear the unbearable is to laugh at it.

  Marjane Satrapi

  Sorry, Laughing, Way

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• No misfortune is so bad that whining about it won’t make it worse. (Apr 2007 Gen Conf)

  Jeffrey R. Holland

  Optimistic, Whining

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• People who have only good experiences aren't very interesting. They may be content, and happy after a fashion, but they aren't very deep. It may seem a misfortune now, and it makes things difficult, but well--it's easy to feel all the happy, simple stuff. Not that happiness is necessarily simple. But I don't think you're going to have a life like that, and I think you'll be the better for it. The difficult thing is to not be overwhelmed by the bad patches. You must not let them defeat you. You must see them as a gift--a cruel gift, but a gift nonetheless.

  Peter Cameron

  Life, Fashion, Simple

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• Consider the black widow spider. It's a timid little beastie, useful and, for my taste, the prettiest of the arachnids, with its shiny, patent-leather finish and its red hourglass trademark. But the poor thing has the fatal misfortune of possessing enormously too much power for its size. So everybody kills it on sight.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Power, Sight, Black

  Robert A. Heinlein (2014). “Stranger in a Strange Land”, p.230, Hachette UK

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• Misfortune does not help us to believe.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Believe, Doe, Helping

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• Desperate? So what? I'm desperate, too!" Fenoglio snapped at her. "My story is foundering in misfortune, and these hands here," he said holding them out to her, "don't want to write anymore! I'm afraid of words Meggie! 'Once they were like honey, now they're poison, pure poison! But what is a writer who doesn't love words anymore? What have I come to? This story is devouring me, crushing me, and I'm it's creator!

  Cornelia Funke

  Crush, Writing, Hands

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• The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.

  Pearl S. Buck

  Blow, Creative, Joy

  "The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters: Insiders Secrets from Hollywood's Top Writers". Book by Karl Inglesias (p. 4), 2001.

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• Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade, and is confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is, after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Inspirational, Sweet, Night

  "The Gulag Archipelago". Book by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, 1974.

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• A man is the sum of his misfortunes. One day you'd think misfortune would get tired but then time is your misfortune

  William Faulkner

  Tired, Men, Thinking

  William Faulkner (2011). “FAULKNER READER”, p.104, Modern Library

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• There is only one real misfortune: to forfeit one's own good opinion of oneself. Lose your complacency, once betray your own self-contempt and the world will unhesitatingly endorse it.

  Thomas Mann

  Respect, Real, Self

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• she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.

  Jane Austen

  Strong, Feelings, Taste

  'Persuasion' (1818) ch. 11

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• Can human nature ever be wholly and radically transformed? Can the man whom God made good be made wicked by man? Can the soul be reshaped in its entirety by destiny and made evil because destiny is evil? Can the heart become misshapen and afflicted with ugly, incurable deformities under disproportionate misfortune, like a spinal column bent beneath a too low roof?

  Victor Hugo

  Heart, Destiny, Men

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• A writer - and, I believe, generally all persons - must think that whatever happens to him or her is a resource. All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. 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, Believe, Writing

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

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• Milton Friedman’s misfortune is that his economic policies have been tried.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Economic, Milton, Policy

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• If you participate in life, you don’t see it clearly: you suffer from it too much or enjoy it too much. The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature. All the misfortunes Providence inflicts on him come from his stubborness in denying that maxim.

  Gustave Flaubert

  Artist, Thinking, Suffering

  Gustave Flaubert, Francis Steegmüller (1980). “The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857”, Belknap Press

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• She was heartily ashamed of her ignorance - a misplaced shame. Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well−informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid. A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.

  Jane Austen

  Ignorance, Vanity, Knowing

  'Northanger Abbey' (1818) ch. 14

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• We must meet reverses boldly, and not suffer them to frighten us, my dear. We must learn to act the play out. We must live misfortune down, Trot!

  Charles Dickens

  Inspirational, Play, Suffering

  Charles Dickens (1992). “David Copperfield”, p.425, Wordsworth Editions

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