Woe Quotes

• Talk happiness. The world is sad enough without your woe.

  Orison Swett Marden

  Happiness, Laughter, Christian Inspirational

  Orison Swett Marden (2016). “The Miracle of Right Thought”, p.76, FV Éditions

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• I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it - keep going, keep going come what may.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Woe Is Me, Looks, May

  Vincent van Gogh, Victoria Charles (2014). “Vincent van Gogh”, p.126, Parkstone International

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• Come Sleep! Oh Sleep, the certain knot of peace, the baiting-place of wit, the balm of woe, the poor man's wealth, the prisoner's release, the indifferent judge between the high and low.

  Philip Sidney

  Peace, Sleep, Insomnia

  'Astrophel and Stella' (1591) sonnet 39

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• A faith is a necessity to a man. Woe to him who believes in nothing.

  Victor Hugo

  Faith, Wisdom, Believe

  Victor Hugo, Charles Edwin Wilbour (1862). “Cosette”, p.134

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• Oh, I am very weary, Though tears no longer flow; My eyes are tired of weeping, My heart is sick of woe.

  Anne Bronte

  Tired, Heart, Eye

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2014). “Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell”, p.169, The Floating Press

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• Sainthood emerges when you can listen to someone's tale of woe and not respond with a description of your own.

  Andrew Mason

  Listening, Saint, Description

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• The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all other woes of mankind, is wisdom. Teach a man to read and write, and you have put into his hands the great keys of the wisdom box. But it is quite another thing to open the box.

  Thomas Huxley

  Writing, Men, Hands

  Thomas Henry Huxley, Cyril Bibby (1971). “T. H. Huxley on Education”, p.85, Cambridge University Press

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• Too oft is transient pleasure the source of long woes.

  Christoph Martin Wieland

  Long, Pleasure, Source

  "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, p. 600-02, Oberon, II, 52, 1922.

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• Woes and wonders of power, that tonic hell, synthesis of poison and panacea.

  Emile M. Cioran

  Poison, Synthesis, Wonder

  "History and Utopia". Book by Emile M. Cioran, 1960.

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• Woe, woe, woe... in a little while we shall all be dead.
  Therefore let us behave as though we were dead already.

  Raymond Chandler

  Death, Dying, Littles

  Raymond Chandler, Dorothy Gardiner, Kathrine Sorley Walker (1977). “Raymond Chandler Speaking”, p.184, Univ of California Press

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• But our energy woes are in many ways the result of classic market failures that can only be addressed through collective action, and government is the vehicle for collective action in a democracy.

  Sherwood Boehlert

  Government, Democracy, Energy

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• You go to the hospital your wife's in labor and you're doing the thing, and then it's very disorienting and scary and you beat yourself up and you go through a whole period of 'woe is me' and then you realize that this a gift, this child is the light, and if you can nourish that light and just let it shine, you have an opportunity to get closer to what I think is God.

  John C. McGinley

  Children, Opportunity, Thinking

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• Woe to us if we get our satisfaction from the food in the kitchen and the TV in the den and the sex in the bedroom with an occasional tribute to the cement blocks in the basement!

  John Piper

  Sex, Block, Kitchen

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• Love is a sickness full of woes, all remedies refusing.

  Samuel Daniel

  Love Is, Sickness, Plant

  Samuel Daniel (1718). “The Poetical Works of Mr. Samuel Daniel, Author of the English History: To which is Prefix'd, Memoirs of His Life and Writings”, p.105

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• I cannot love as I have loved,
  And yet I know not why;
  It is the one great woe of life
  To feel all feeling die.

  Philip James Bailey

  Life, Woe Is Me, Woe Unto

  Philip James Bailey (1857). “Festus: a poem”, p.265

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• Woe to that nation whose literature is disturbed by the intervention of power. Because that is not just a violation against "freedom of print," it is the closing down of the heart of the nation, a slashing to pieces of its memory.

  Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

  Memories, Freedom, Heart

  Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's Nobel lecture in literature delivered only to the Swedish Academy, www.nobelprize.org. 1970.

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• In recounting our woes, we often soothe them.

  Pierre Corneille

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  Teach me to feel another's woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

  Alexander Pope

  Helping Others, Woe Is Me, Volunteer

  'The Universal Prayer' (1738)

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• A leader is one who, out of madness or goodness, volunteers to take upon himself the woe of the people. There are few men so foolish, hence the erratic quality of leadership in the world.

  John Updike

  Leadership, Men, People

  John Updike (2012). “The Coup: A Novel”, p.172, Random House

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• The sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love.

  Pearl Bailey

  Love, Life, Heartbreak

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• What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page, And be alone on earth, as I am now.

  Lord Byron

  Life, Birthday, Time

  'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage' (1812-18) canto 2, st. 98

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• Woe to him that claims obedience when it is not due; woe to him that refuses it when it is.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Obedience, Claims, Refuse

  Thomas Carlyle (2014). “The Selected Works of Thomas Carlyle”, p.228, Lulu.com

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• Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.

  Will Durant

  Education, Men, Faster

  Will Durant (2012). “Story of Philosophy”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

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• Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.

  Khalil Gibran

  Equality, And Love, Generations

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• Ninety per cent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves - so how can we know anyone else?

  Sydney J. Harris

  Real, Knowing, People

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