Wretched Quotes - Page 5

• It was not nails that held Jesus to that wretched cross; it was his unqualified resolution, out of love for his Father, to do his Father's will-and it was his love for sinners like me.

  D. A. Carson

  Jesus, Father, Unqualified

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• Not only does the proportion of the poor increase with the growth of the city, but their condition becomes more wretched.

  Josiah Strong

  Cities, Growth, Doe

  Josiah Strong (1891). “Our Country, Its Possible Future and Its Present Crisis”

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• The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their "vital interests" are menaced, and think nothing of torturing a man to death: these people are not to be taken seriously when they speak of the "sanctity" of human life, or the "conscience" of the civilized world.

  James A. Baldwin

  Children, Rain, Taken

  "The Devil Finds Work". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1976, reprinted in James A. Baldwin "The Price of the Ticket", 1985.

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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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• 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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• And sometimes when the night is slow The wretched and the meek We gather up our hearts and go A Thousand Kisses Deep.

  Leonard Cohen

  Heart, Kissing, Night

  Song: A Thousand Kisses Deep, Album: Ten New Songs, 2001

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• You had to form for yourself a lucid language for the world, to overcome the battering of experience, to replace everyday life's pain and harshness and wretched dreariness with - no not with certainty but with an ignorance you could live with. Deep ignorance, but still a kind that knew its limits. The limits were crucial.

  Gregory Benford

  Pain, Ignorance, Everyday

  "Timescape". Book by Gregory Benford, 1980.

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• Only a complete moral idiot can believe for an instant that we are fighting against the wretched of the earth. We are fighting, as I said before, against the scum of the earth

  Christopher Hitchens

  Believe, Fighting, Scum Of The Earth

  Simon Cottee, Thomas Cushman, Christopher Hitchens (2008). “Christopher Hitchens and His Critics: Terror, Iraq, and the Left”, p.5064, NYU Press

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• We exhort the compromisers to open their hearts to truth, to free themselves of their wretched and blind circumspection, of their intellectual arrogance, and of the servile fear which dries up their souls and paralyzes their movements. Let us therefore trust the eternal Spirit which destroys and annihilates only because it is the unfathomable and eternal source of all life. The passion for destruction is a creative passion, too!

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Passion, Heart, Intellectual Arrogance

  "The Reaction in Germany" by Mikhail Bakunin (October 1842), signed "Jules Elysard"; as quoted in Mikhail Bakunin "Bakunin on Anarchism" edited and translated by Sam Dolgoff, www.marxists.org. 1971.

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• I have so much pride and love for the songs of The Smiths. However, I must ask you, if you come across any Smiths CDs, don't buy them, because all the money goes to that wretched drummer.

  Steven Morrissey

  Song, Pride, Cds

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• The haggardness of poverty is everywhere seen contrasted with the sleekness of wealth, the exhorted labour of some compensating for the idleness of others, wretched hovels by the side of stately colonnades, the rags of indigence blended with the ensigns of opulence; in a word, the most useless profusion in the midst of the most urgent wants.

  Jean-Baptiste Say

  Rags, Useless, Want

  "A Treatise On Political Economy". Book by Jean-Baptiste Say, p. I, 1932.

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• Nietzsche's ideas and plans: for example, the idea of giving up the whole wretched academic world to form a secular monastic community.

  Karl Jaspers

  Giving Up, Ideas, Community

  Karl Jaspers (1997). “Nietzsche: An Introduction to the Understanding of His Philosophical Activity”, p.61, JHU Press

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• Wretched excess is an unfortunate human trait that turns a perfectly good idea such as Christmas into a frenzy of last-minute shopping.

  Jon Anderson

  Christmas, Perfectly Good, Shopping

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• Call not that man wretched, who whatever else he suffers as to pain inflicted, or pleasure denied, has a child for whom he hopes and on whom he doats.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Children, Pain, Men

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• Faith is the consolation of the wretched and the terror of the happy.

  Luc de Clapiers

  Faith, Terror, Consolation

  Jean de La Bruyère, Luc de Clapiers marquis de Vauvenargues (1903). “La Bruyère and Vauvenargues: Selections from the Characters, Reflexions and Maxims”

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• How wretched are the minds of men, and how blind their understandings.
  [Lat., O miseras hominum menteis! oh, pectora caeca!]

  Lucretius

  Men, Understanding, Mind

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• pg. 231-232: They'd given me a minivan. They could have picked any car and they picked a minivan. A minivan. O God of the Vehicular Justice, why dost thou mock me? Minivan, you albatross around my neck! You mark of Cain! You wretched beast high ceilings and few horsepower!

  John Green

  Graduation, Justice, Car

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• Money is life to us wretched mortals.

  Hesiod

  Money, Mortals

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• Say, ye oppress'd by some fantastic woes,
  Some jarring nerve that baffles your repose;
  Who press the downy couch, while slaves advance
  With timid eye, to read the distant glance;
  Who with sad prayers the weary doctor tease,
  To name the nameless ever-new disease;
  Who with mock patience dire complaints endure,
  Which real pain and that alone can cure;
  How would ye bear in real pain to lie,
  Despised, neglected, left alone to die?
  How would ye bear to draw your latest breath,
  Where all that's wretched paves the way for death?

  George Crabbe

  Prayer, Pain, Real

  George Crabbe, Reginald Heber, Robert Pollok (1857). “The Poetical Works of Crabbe, Heber, and Pollok: Complete in One Volume”, p.15

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• I hit my head against the wall because I don't want to know all the terrible things that I know about. I don't want to feel all these wretched things, but they're in me already. If I don't get rid of them, I'm not ever going to feel anything else.

  Ntozake Shange

  Wall, Want, Terrible

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• Few consider how much we are indebted to government, because few can represent how wretched mankind would be without it.

  Francis Atterbury

  Government, Would Be, Mankind

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• 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

  Bible, Sex, Weekend

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• Advisors are generally brilliant theoreticians but wretched practitioners.

  Francoise Giroud

  Brilliant, Advisors

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• I am to consider the many advantages arising from a frequent use of oaths, curses, and imprecations. In the first place, this genteel accomplishment is a wonderful help to discourse; as it supplies the want of good sense, learning, and eloquence. The illiterate and stupid, by the help of oaths, become orators; and he, whose wretched intellects would not permit him to utter a coherent sentence, by this easy practice, excites the laughter, and fixes the attention, of a brilliant and joyous circle.

  Mary Collyer

  Laughter, Stupid, Practice

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• Is there anything so wretched as to look at a man of fine abilities doing nothing?

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Men, Looks, Doing Nothing

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