Wretched Quotes - Page 7

• 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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• 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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• 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

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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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• The fancies that take their monstrous birth from the spinelessness and boredom of usurped wealth bring in their wake every defect ... and though rich men's crimes escape the law, protected as they are by the cowardice of governments and people, Nature, more real than society, sets her anarchic example by abandoning the wretched time servers of Capital to the shame and madness of the worst aberrations.

  Jean Lorrain

  Real, Men, Law

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• Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.

  Adolf Hitler

  Clever, Lying, Rise To Power

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• He who cares only for himself in youth will be a very niggard in manhood, and a wretched miser in old age.

  Josiah Johnson Hawes

  Age, Who Cares, Youth

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• Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving. It is a self-existent principle inherent in the divine nature and appears to us as a self-caused propensity to pity the wretched, spare the guilty, welcome the outcast, and bring into favor those who were before under just disapprobation. Its use to us sinful men is to save us and make us sit together in heavenly places to demonstrate to the ages the exceeding riches of God's kindness to us in Christ Jesus.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Jesus, Kindness, Men

  Aiden Wilson Tozer (1975). “The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God: Their Meaning in the Christian Life”

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• You see me here, you gods, a poor old man, As full of grief as age; wretched in both.

  William Shakespeare

  Grief, Men, Age

  'King Lear' (1605-6) act 2, sc. 4, l. [275]

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• If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself, about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay you, what people think of you; and then to you nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch; you will make sin and misery for yourself out of everything God sends you; you will be as wretched as you choose.

  Charles Kingsley

  Respect, Thinking, People

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• Sick in the world's regard, wretched and low.

  William Shakespeare

  Sick, Despair, World

  William Shakespeare (2009). “Henry IV”, p.101, Palgrave Macmillan

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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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• We come to the nations pretending to escape persecution, we the most deadly persecutors in all the wretched annals of man.

  Samuel Roth

  Men, Pretending, Persecution

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• Oh dear... it really is rather disillusioning. When one's friends marry for money they are wretched, when they marry for love it is worse. What is the proper thing to marry for, I should like to know?

  Nancy Mitford

  Should, Dear, Knows

  Nancy Mitford (2013). “Christmas Pudding and Pigeon Pie”, p.162, Vintage

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• I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.

  Nikos Kazantzakis

  Happiness, Wine, Simple

  Nikos Kazantzakis, Carl Wildman (1953). “Zorba the Greek”, p.80, Simon and Schuster

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• Jesus was not sent here to teach the people to build magnificent churches and temples amidst the cold wretched huts and dismal hovels. He came to make the human heart a temple, and the soul an altar, and the mind a priest.

  Khalil Gibran

  Jesus, Heart, People

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• I saw no cause for their unhappiness, but I was deeply affected by it. If such lovely creatures were miserable, it was less strange that I, an imperfect and solitary being, should be wretched.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Lovely, Saws, Causes

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1869). “Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus”, p.87

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• ..there is nothing worse than the feeling that no one cares whether we exist or not, that no one is interested in what we have to say about life, and that the world can continue turning without our awkward presence. I began to imagine how many millions of people were, at that moment, feeling utterly useless and wretched—however rich, charming, and delightful they might be—because they were alone that night, as they were yesterday, and as they might well be tomorrow.

  Paulo Coelho

  Night, Yesterday, People

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• I shouldn't care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn't you suffer? I do! Will you forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty years hence, "That's the grave of Catherine Earnshaw? I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past. I've loved many others since: my children are dearer to me than she was; and, at death, I shall not rejoice that I am going to her: I shall be sorry that I must leave them!" Will you say so, Heathcliff?

  Emily Bronte

  Children, Sorry, Past

  "Wuthering Heights". Book by Emily Brontë, 1847.

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  We need to fall, and we need to be aware of it; for if we did not fall, we should not know how weak and wretched we are of ourselves, nor should we know our Maker's marvellous love so fully.

  Julian of Norwich

  Fall, Needs, Weak

  Julian Of Norwich (1998). “Revelations of Divine Love”, p.201, Penguin UK

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• Sometimes words are not enough. There are some circumstances so utterly wretched that I cannot describe them in sentences or paragraphs or even a whole series of books.

  Daniel Handler

  Book, Sometimes, Enough

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• Wretched unfair, it is,” he remarked. “Of the three of us, I’m the one who’s always collected the rare and unusual, yet you two managed to snag the world’s most unusual women. First you, Crispin, with the only living half-breed, who then turned into an even more unusual vampire. And now you, Charles, have bagged a shape-shifter. Thought you were joking when you said Denise was the kitty. I’m simply green with jealousy

  Jeaniene Frost

  Two, Vampire, Three

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• It was nothing, but it was Adam Parrish's nothing. How he hated and loved it. How proud he was of it, how wretched it was.

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Proud, Adam, Hated

  Maggie Stiefvater (2013). “The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, Book 2)”, p.55, Scholastic Inc.

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