Wretched Quotes

• For the wretched one night is like a thousand; for someone faring well death is just one more night.

  Sophocles

  Good Night, Thousand, Wells

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• Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices, there are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even.

  Oscar Wilde

  Writing, Men, Hands

  Oscar Wilde, Russell Jackson, Joseph Bristow, Ian Small (2000). “The Complete Works of Oscar Wilde: The picture of Dorian Gray : the 1890 and 1891 texts”, p.293, Oxford University Press on Demand

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• Is life so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands which are too small, your vision which is muddled? You are the one who must grow up.

  Dag Hammarskjold

  Life, Growing Up, Attitude

  "Know Your Limits - Then Ignore Them". Book by John Mason, 2000.

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• Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore, send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

  Emma Lazarus

  Inspirational, Freedom, Tired

  "The New Colossus" l. 10 (1883).

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• Death is easier than a wretched life; and better never to have born than to live and fare badly.

  Aeschylus

  Literature, Easier, Born

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• Better times perhaps await us who are now wretched

  Virgil

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• Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Ignorance, Eye, Mislead Us

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• Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt.

  Plautus

  Men, Mind, Guilt

  "Mostellaria". Play by Plautus, Act III. 1. 13,

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• Even the most wretched individual of our present society could not exist and develop without the cumulative social efforts of countless generations.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Effort, Generations, Individual

  Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin (1953). “The Political Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism”, Free Pr

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• There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.

  Andrew Carnegie

  Inspirational, Money, Life And Love

  Andrew Carnegie (1968). “Miscellaneous Writings of Andrew Carnegie”

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• How wretched is the person who hangs on by the favors of the powerful.

  Robert Burns

  Powerful, Favors, Persons

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• Indeed, wretched the man whose fame makes his misfortunes famous.

  Lucius Accius

  Men, Fame, Misfortunes

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• The wretched and miserable should turn to their Saviour first, yet they do not hope in Him until all other hope is exhausted.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Firsts, Exhausted, Miserable

  "The Count of Monte Cristo".

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• War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality.

  John McCain

  Peace, War, Reality

  John McCain's Speech to the American Red Cross "Promise of Humanity" Conference, www.mccain.senate.gov. May 6, 1999.

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• Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.

  Emma Lazarus

  Tired, Civilization, Urbanization

  "The New Colossus" l. 10 (1883).

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• I have known sorrow and learned to aid the wretched.

  Virgil

  Sorrow, Aids, Known

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• I saw the abyss of my misery; whatever there is of good in me is Yours, O Lord. But because I am so small and wretched, I have a right to count on Your boundless mercy.

  Mary Faustina Kowalska

  Saws, Misery, Mercy

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• Much more wretched than lackof health inthe body, it is to dwell with a soul that is not healthy, but corrupt.

  Plato

  Healthy, Soul, Body

  Gorgias, 479b (translated byWR M Lamb,1967).

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• To deny people of their human rights is to challenge their very humanity. To impose on them a wretched life of huger and deprivation is to dehumanize them. But such has been the terrible fate of all black persons in our country under the system of apartheid.

  Nelson Mandela

  Inspiring, Country, Fate

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• Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity.

  Frantz Fanon

  Generations, Missions, Betray

  Frantz Fanon (2007). “The Wretched of the Earth”, p.41, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.

  Blaise Pascal

  Atheist, Mean, Sleep

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• The basic confrontation which seemed to be colonialism versus anti-colonialism, indeed capitalism versus socialism, is already losing its importance. What matters today, the issue which blocks the horizon, is the need for a redistribution of wealth. Humanity will have to address this question, no matter how devastating the consequences may be.

  Frantz Fanon

  Block, What Matters, Issues

  Frantz Fanon (2007). “The Wretched of the Earth”, p.17, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest

  Francis Bacon

  Kindness, Kids, Caring

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• For a colonized people the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.

  Frantz Fanon

  Land, People, Essentials

  Frantz Fanon (1968). “The Wretched of the Earth”

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• These wretched babies don't come until they are ready.

  Queen Elizabeth II

  Baby, Pregnancy, Ready

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