concept

misery Quotes

51 of the best book quotes about misery
01
Share
“What came first - the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person? ”
Nick Hornby
author
High Fidelity
book
music
misery
listening
feelings
natural selection
melancholy
personal change
miserable
concepts
02
Share
“Humans were so circular; they lived the same slow cycles of joy and misery over and over, never learning. Every lesson in the universe had to be taught billions of times, and it never stuck.”
03
Share
“Miss Polly looked at the forlorn little gray bunch of neglected misery in Pollyanna’s arms, and shivered: Miss Polly did not care for cats—not even pretty, healthy, clean ones.”
Miss Polly Harrington
character
cats
misery
dislike
healthy
concepts
04
Share
Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don’t know what work these conditions are doing inside you?
05
Share
″‘Here, we have two choices. To be together and miserable or to be together and happy. Mija, we have each other and Abuelita will come. How would she want you to behave? I choose to be happy. So which will you choose?‘”
06
Share
“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”
07
Share
“It would be very sad, were I to relate all the misery and privations which the poor little duckling endured during the hard winter;”
08
Share
“There is nothing more to be said or to be done tonight, so hand me over my violin and let us try to forget for half an hour the miserable weather and the still more miserable ways of our fellowmen.”
09
Share
“I hate these goddamn freaks. They’ve been grinding us down for the best part of two and a half thousand years. They’ve been responsible for more misery than any other organization in history. You know they won’t even let their adherents practice birth control, for Christ’s sake.”
10
Share
“You don’t always want to be miserable on my birthday, do you?”
11
Share
“Stop making love to your misery, It eats away at you like a vulture!
12
Share
“Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it, or else, for ever and ever, the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves.”
13
Share
“Alas, alas, what misery to be wise When wisdom profits nothing!”
14
Share
“Thus then I answer: since thou hast not spared To twit me with my blindness—thou hast eyes, Yet see’st not in what misery thou art fallen.”
15
Share
“I have heard men say that seeing is believing; but I should say that feeling is believing; for much as I had seen before, I never knew till now the utter misery of a cab-horse’s life.”
16
Share
“And if When born to misery, as born I was, I met my sire, not knowing whom I met or what I did, and slew him, how canst thou With justice blame the all-unconscious hand?”
17
Share
“For death is gain to him whose life, like mine, Is full of misery.”
Sophocles
author
Antigone
character
death
misery
gains
concepts
18
Share
“In actuality, misery is a moment of suffering allowed to become everything. So, when feeling miserable, we must look wider than what hurts. When feeling a splinter, we must, while trying to remove it, remember there is a body that is not splinter, and a spirit that is not splinter, and a world that is not splinter.”
19
Share
“All goes to show that marriage is a misery and a woe”
20
Share
″‘Oh darling,’ Brett said, ‘I’m so miserable.’ I had that feeling of going through something that has all happened before. ‘You were happy a minute ago.‘”
21
Share
“So, surrender to sleep at last. What a misery, keeping watch through the night, wide awake -- you’ll soon come up from under all your troubles.”
Homer
author
hoping
work
sleeping
night
misery
concepts
22
Share
“What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.”
23
Share
“If peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a loss of perspective.”
24
Share
“Ah how shameless -- the way these mortals blame the gods. From us alone, they say, come all their miseries, yes, but they themselves, with their own reckless ways, compound their pains beyond their proper share.”
25
Share
“Do not draw back, for we will mourn with thee; O, could our mourning case thy misery!”
26
Share
“Before the truth sets you free, it tends to make you miserable.”
27
Share
“This miserable fate Suffer the wretched souls of those, who liv’d Without or praise or blame, with that ill band Of angels mix’d, who nor rebellious prov’d Nor yet were true to God, but for themselves Were only.”
28
Share
“No greater grief than to remember days Of joy, when mis’ry is at hand!”
29
Share
“But length of days with an evil heart is only length of misery and already she begins to know it. All get what they want; they do not always like it.”
30
Share
“The foolish children of men do miserably delude themselves in their own schemes, and in their confidence in their own strength and wisdom; they trust to nothing but a shadow.”
31
Share
“We get comfortable with our misery, as we find ways to medicate ourselves, delude ourselves, disassociate our feelings, or get enough distance from the problem that it does not touch us directly.”
32
Share
“Put that chalk down. I can’t afford to break it.”
33
Share
Since there is always more misery in the depths than compassion in the heights, everything was given, so to speak, before it was received
34
Share
So the little girl went on with her little naked feet, which were quite red and blue with the cold. In an old apron she carried a number of matches, and had a bundle of them in her hands. No one had bought anything of her the whole day, nor had anyone given her even a penny. Shivering with cold and hunger, she crept along; poor little child, she looked the picture of misery. The snowflakes fell on her long, fair hair, which hung in curls on her shoulders, but she regarded them not.
35
Share
“There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.”
36
Share
He was never without misery, and never without hope.
Tappman
character
hoping
misery
concepts
37
Share
“But I will not stand in front of your happiness. I will not even stand in front of misery that you choose for yourself.”
38
Share
“In their very great misery they had become insensible to the bite of the lash or the bruise of the club.”
39
Share
“I drink out of desperation. Life is too dreary to endure. The misery, loneliness, crampedness - they’re heartbreaking.”
40
Share
“They all know that it has to be there . . . they all understand that their happiness, the beauty of their city, the tenderness of their friendships, the health of their children, the wisdom of their scholars, the skill of their makers . . . depend wholly on this child’s abominable misery.”
41
Share
“If he would but have named a single relative or friend, I would instantly have written and urged their taking the poor fellow away to some convenient retreat. But he seemed alone, absolutely alone in the universe. A bit of wreck in the mid-Atlantic.”
42
Share
“The bond of common humanity now drew me irresistibly to gloom. A fraternal melancholy! For both I and Bartleby were sons of Adam. I remembered the bright silks and sparkling faces I had seen that day, in gala trim, swanlike sailing down the Mississippi of Broadway; and I contrasted them with the pallid copyist, and thought to myself, Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay, but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.”
43
Share
“Loud, heap miseries upon us yet entwine our arts with laughters low!”
44
Share
“Sitting around miserable all day won’t make you any happier.”
45
Share
“Despite his misery, he realized he had a tasty morsel in his mouth, and his jaw began to quiver. ‘Keep open!’ yelled Doctor De Soto. ‘Wide open!’ yelled his wife.”
46
Share
“The misery is compounded when they discover that Removes are not even allowed to play netball.”
47
Share
“I can remember my mother refusing to go out into the street because she couldn’t stand the sight of all the children begging for bread when she had nothing to give them. Her first worry was for me and my brother, and every slice of bread she gave another child meant one less for us.”
48
Share
“The room was misery and chaos: small babies wailing, parents huddling their bodies round their children to keep them warm enough to breathe. Will rubbed his chill hands together, and tried to feel his feet and his face through the numbness of cold. The room was becoming colder and colder, and from the freezing world outside there was no sound even of the wind. ”
49
Share
″ ‘Dear little swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and women. There is no mystery so great as Misery. Fly over my city, little swallow, and tell me what you see.’ ”
50
Share
“I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them.”
51
Share
″‘Let us all die bravely, and at once,’ said Robin, ‘rather than go on dying slowly in this miserable way.‘”

Recommended quote pages

View All Quotes

Bookroo

Book Clubs

Follow Bookroo