Wretched Quotes - Page 18

• When we realize that we are both wretched and beautiful, we are freed up to see others the same way.

  Shane Claiborne

  Beautiful, Way, Realizing

  Shane Claiborne (2008). “The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical”, p.166, Zondervan

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• Ah, music! What a beautiful art! But what a wretched profession!

  Georges Bizet

  Beautiful, Art, Profession

  As quoted in "An Encyclopedia of Quotations about Music" (1981) by Nat Shapiro, p. 115, August 3, 1867.

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• Although I never lack the presence and plain image of my own wretched
  infirmity, yet seeing sin so manifestly abounds in all estates, I am
  compelled to thunder out the threatenings of God against the obstinate
  rebels.

  John Knox

  Rebel, Sin, Threatening

  John Knox (1842). “Writings of the Rev. John Knox: Minister of God's Word in Scotland”

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• They wouldn't be heroes if they were infallible, in fact they wouldn't be heroes if they weren't miserable wretched dogs, the pariahs of the earth, besides which the only reason to build up an idol is to tear it down again.

  Lester Bangs

  Dog, Hero, Idols

  Lester Bangs (2013). “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: The Work of a Legendary Critic: Rock'N'Roll as Literature and Literature as Rock 'N'Roll”, p.253, Anchor

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• What happens is that your wretched memory remembers the words and forgets what's behind them

  Augusto Roa Bastos

  Memories, Remember, Forget

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• The Thames is a wretched river after the Mersey and the ships are not like Liverpool ships and the docks are barren of beauty ... it is a beastly hole after Liverpool; for Liverpool is the town of my heart and I would rather sail a mudflat there than command a clipper out of London

  John Masefield

  Heart, Rivers, London

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• But it is only in epic tragedies that gloom is unrelieved. In real life tragedy and comedy are so intermingled that when one is most wretched ridiculous things happen to make one laugh in spite of oneself.

  Georgette Heyer

  Real, Epic, Laughing

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• It is pleasing to reflect that results so beneficial, not only to the States immediately concerned, but to the harmony of the Union, will have been accomplished by measures equally advantageous to the Indians. What the native savages become when surrounded by a dense population and by mixing with the whites may be seen in the miserable remnants of a few Eastern tribes, deprived of political and civil rights, forbidden to make contracts, and subjected to guardians, dragging out a wretched existence, without excitement, without hope, and almost without thought.

  Andrew Jackson

  Rights, Political, Unions

  United States. President (1829-1837 : Jackson), Andrew Jackson (1835). “Annual Messages, Veto Messages, Proclamation, & C”, p.80

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• Is one of the fairest portions of the globe to remain in a state of nature, the haunt of a few wretched savages, when it seems destined by the Creator to give support to a large population and to be the seat of civilization?

  William Henry Harrison

  Civilization, Giving, Support

  "The History of Indiana, from Its Earliest Exploration by Europeans, to the Close of the Territorial Government, in 1816". Book by John Brown Dillon, www.esquire.com. 1859.

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• There was something alike terrifying and piteous in the spectacle of these frail old morsels of humanity consecrating their last flickering energies to the task of making each other wretched. Hatred seemed to be the one faculty which had survived in undiminished vigor where all else was dropping into ordered and symmetrical decay.

  Hector Hugh Munro

  Hatred, Humanity, Decay

  Saki, Hector Hugh Munro (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of Saki (Illustrated)”, p.474, Delphi Classics

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• Never keep a line of retreat: it is a wretched invention.

  Fridtjof Nansen

  Lines, Retreat, Invention

  Quoted in Listener, 14 Dec. 1939 See Calonne 1; Santayana 14; Trollope 3

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• A dinner! How horrible! I am to be made the pretext for killing all those wretched animals and birds, and fish! Thank you for nothing. Now if it were to be a fast instead of a feast; say a solemn three days' abstention from corpses in my honour, I could at least pretend to believe that it was disinterested. Blood sacrifices are not in my line

  George Bernard Shaw

  Believe, Sacrifice, Animal

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• I mean not to accuse any one, but to take the shame upon myself, in common, indeed, with the whole parliament of Great Britain, for having suffered this horrid trade to be carried on under their authority. We are all guilty—we ought all to plead guilty, and not to exculpate ourselves by throwing the blame on others; and I therefore deprecate every kind of reflection against the various descriptions of people who are more immediately involved in this wretched business.

  William Wilberforce

  Mean, Reflection, People

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• He promoted the education of the parish clergy and wrote: He seems to me a very foolish man, and very wretched, who will not increase his understanding while he is in the world, and ever wish and long to reach that endless life where all shall be made clear.

  Alfred the Great

  Life, Education, Men

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• Where does the ego get its energy? The ego feeds off your desire to be something else. You are poor and you want to be rich - the ego is absorbing energy, its life-breath. You are ignorant and you want to become a wise one - the ego is absorbing energy. You are a wretched nobody and you want to become powerful - the ego is absorbing energy.

  Rajneesh

  Wise, Powerful, Ego

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• Ah! Wretched and too solitary he who loves not his own company.

  Abraham Cowley

  Life, Solitary, Company

  Abraham Cowley, Thomas Sprat (1826). “Prose works of Abraham Cowley ; including his essays in prose and verse”, p.134

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• What misery to live in this world! We are like men whose enemies are at the door, who must not lay aside their arms, even while sleeping or eating, and are always in dread lest the foe should enter the fortress by some breach in the walls. O my Lord and my all! How canst thou wish us to prize such a wretched existence?

  Teresa of Avila

  Life, Wall, Sleep

  St. Teresa of Avila (1921). “The Interior Castle, or the Mansions”, p.4, Library of Alexandria

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• In a few wretched buildings, we created a whole new industry with international significance.

  Edwin Land

  Building, Significance, International

  "Insisting on the Impossible: The Life of Edwin Land" by Victor K. McElheny, (p. 198), 1998.

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• Man's wretched state, That floures so fresh at morne, and fades at evening late.

  Edmund Spenser

  Men, Evening, States

  Edmund Spenser (1805). “The works of Edmund Spenser, with notes by H.J. Todd”, p.26

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• The wretched beings depicted by Millet touch us profoundly because he loved them profoundly. They have nothing in common with vulgar ugliness. Beauty will always remain the highest aim of art.

  Jules Breton

  Beauty, Art, Common

  Jules Breton (1891). “The Life of an Artist: Art and Nature”

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• Assuredly whatsoever things are fabled to exist in deep Acheron, these all exist in this life. There is no wretched Tantalus, fearing the great rock that hangs over him in the air and frozen with vain terror. Rather, it is in this life that fear of the gods oppresses mortals without cause, and the rock they fear is any that chance may bring.

  Lucretius

  Rocks, Air, Atheism

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• No prince had lived in those wretched hovels, no red-robed bishops, only farmers and laborers whose stories no one had written down, and now they were lost, buried under wild thyme and fast growing spurge.

  Cornelia Funke

  Thyme, Bishops, Stories

  Cornelia Funke (2011). “Inkheart”, p.116, Scholastic Inc.

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• In the north we could not hope to keep the worst and poorest servant for a single day in the wretched discomfort in which our negro servants are forced habitually to live.

  Fanny Kemble

  Worst, Servant, Discomfort

  Fanny Kemble (1961). “Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839”, p.101, University of Georgia Press

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• Christianity in the West, opens up a perspective of depth into what it means to be a self. And that depth of the self is something that is experienced in the sight of God. So that the great thinkers of self and subjectivity are Paul and Augustine. They look at the self from the perspective of God and they find themselves wretched and interesting. Constituted by conflictual desires.

  Simon Critchley

  Mean, Sight, Self

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• When the rich and well-established, who should be generous, are instead spiteful and cruel, they make their behavior wretched and base in spite of their wealth and position. When the intellectually brilliant, who should be reserved, instead show off, they are ignorant and foolish in their weakness in spite of their brilliance.

  Zicheng Hong

  Ignorant, Taoism, Weakness

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