Wretched Quotes - Page 3

• Life is a wretched gray Saturday, but it has to be lived through.

  Anthony Burgess

  Life, Friday, Sunday

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• Government ought to be as much open to improvement as anything which appertains to man, instead of which it has been monopolized from age to age, by the most ignorant and vicious of the human race. Need we any other proof of their wretched management, than the excess of debts and taxes with which every nation groans, and the quarrels into which they have precipitated the world?"

  Thomas Paine

  Men, Race, Ignorant

  Thomas Paine (1995). “Thomas Paine: Collected Writings: Common Sense / The American Crisis / Rights of: (Library of America #76)”, p.595, Library of America

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• One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.

  Jean de la Bruyere

  Love, Life, Ifs

  "Of The Heart". "Characters", Book by Jean De La Bruyère, www.ourcivilisation.com. 1688.

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• All good men wish the entire abolition of slavery, as soon as it can take place with safety to the public, and for the lasting good of the present wretched race of slaves. The only possible step that could be taken towards it by the convention was to fix a period after which they should not be imported.

  Oliver Ellsworth

  Taken, Men, Race

  15 Copy quote

• No matter how tired or wretched I am, a pussycat sitting in a doorway can divert my mind.

  Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

  Tired, Cat, Mind

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• Consider the Koran... this wretched book was sufficient to start a world-religion, to satisfy the metaphysical need of countless millions for twelve hundred years, to become the basis of their morality and of a remarkable contempt for death, and also to inspire them to bloody wars and the most extensive conquests. In this book we find the saddest and poorest form of theism. Much may be lost in translation, but I have not been able to discover in it one single idea of value.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  War, Book, Years

  "The World as Will and Representation" by Arthur Schopenhauer, translated by E. Payne, Vol. II, Ch. XVII, 1958.

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• A wretched soul, bruised with adversity, We bid be quiet when we hear it cry; But were we burdened with light weight of pain, As much or more we should ourselves complain.

  William Shakespeare

  Pain, Adversity, Light

  William Shakespeare, William Dodd (1854). “The Beauties of Shakespeare. [By W. Dodd.]”, p.19

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• We see many who are struggling against adversity who are happy, and more although abounding in wealth, who are wretched.

  Tacitus

  Struggle, Adversity, Wealth

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• I like nonfiction books about people with wretched lives.

  David Sedaris

  Book, People, Fiction And Nonfiction

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• I regarded finding I had a form of Alzheimer's as an insult, and I decided to do my best to marshal any kind of forces that I could against this wretched disease. I have posterior cortical atrophy or PCA. They say, rather ingenuously, that if you have Alzheimer's it's the best form of Alzheimer's to have.

  Terry Pratchett

  Alzheimer's, Disease, Insult

  "'A butt of my own jokes': Terry Pratchett on the disease that finally claimed him". www.theguardian.com. March 14, 2015.

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• As a matter of policy, increasing taxes on the most economically productive group, which already generates 60 percent of the nation's federal revenues, during a sustained period of economic doldrums is a wretched idea.

  John Podhoretz

  Ideas, Matter, Groups

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• I was about 12 or 13 years old. I picked up the Bible and read it from cover to cover one weekend ,just as if it were a novel, very rapidly, and I've never gotten over the shock of it. The miracles, the inconsistencies, the improbabilities, the impossibilities, the wretched history, the sordid sex, the sadism in it - the whole thing shocked me profoundly.

  Madalyn Murray O'Hair

  Sex, Weekend, Years

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• Mother Teresa was the very embodiment of saintliness: white-clad, sad-eyed, ascetic and often photographed with the wretched of the earth.

  Steven Pinker

  Mother, White, Earth

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• Man's greatness is great in that he knows himself wretched. A tree does not know itself wretched. It is then being wretched to know oneself wretched; but it is being great to know that one is wretched.

  Blaise Pascal

  Greatness, Men, Tree

  "Selections from The Thoughts".

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• Every stone here sweats with suffering, I know that. I have never looked at them without a feeling of anguish. But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness. That is the face you are asked to see.

  Albert Camus

  Heart, Sweat, Darkness

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• Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.

  Voltaire

  Journey, Hiking, Thought Provoking

  Francois Voltaire (1977). “The Portable Voltaire”, p.109, Penguin

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• Then to side with Truth is noble when we share her wretched crust, Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 't is prosperous to be just; Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands aside, Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified.

  James Russell Lowell

  Truth, Men, Bravery

  James Russell Lowell (1871). “The poetical works of James Russell Lowell”, p.66

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• Do you hear the people sing Lost in the valley of the night? It is the music of a people Who are climbing to the light. For the wretched of the earth There is a flame that never dies. Even the darkest night will end And the sun will rise.

  Victor Hugo

  Night, Light, Climbing

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• To live without experiencing some shame and blushes of admiration would surely be a wretched life.

  Gregor Mendel

  Sadness, Misery, Admiration

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• I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.

  Eugene V. Debs

  Money, Women, Order

  Statement to the Court, delivered 14 [or 18] September 1918, Federal Court of Cleveland, Ohio

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• God is more powerful than anybody's past, no matter how wretched. He can make us forget - not by erasing the memory but by taking the sting and paralyzing effect out of it

  Jim Cymbala

  Memories, Powerful, Past

  Jim Cymbala (2010). “Fresh Wind Fresh Fire: What Happens When God's Spirit Invades the Hearts of His People”, p.136, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Man was not intended to live alone... marriage is the best cure for that wretched lingering over one's work. I think I must feel more settled than you all. I would immensely like to see you all married like myself and anchored.

  John Everett Millais

  Marriage, Wedding, Men

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• Hope is the best possession. None are completely wretched but those who are without hope. Few are reduced so low as that.

  William Hazlitt

  Hope, Lows, Hoping For The Best

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.1468, Delphi Classics

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• In his wretched life of less than twenty-seven years Abel accomplished so much of the highest order that one of the leading mathematicians of the Nineteenth Century could say without exaggeration, "Abel has left mathematicians enough to keep them busy for five hundred years." Asked how he had done all this in the six or seven years of his working life, Abel replied, "By studying the masters, not the pupils."

  Eric Temple Bell

  Seven Years, Order, Abel

  Eric Temple Bell (1938). “The queen of the sciences”

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• nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Heart, Talking, Utterance

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2016). “THE SORROWS OF YOUNG WERTHER (Literary Classics Series): Historical Romance Novel”, p.29, e-artnow

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