misery Quotes

“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.”

“You don’t always want to be miserable on my birthday, do you?”

Since there is always more misery in the depths than compassion in the heights, everything was given, so to speak, before it was received

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.

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

He was never without misery, and never without hope.

“But I will not stand in front of your happiness. I will not even stand in front of misery that you choose for yourself.”

“In their very great misery they had become insensible to the bite of the lash or the bruise of the club.”

″‘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?‘”

“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”

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?

“It would be very sad, were I to relate all the misery and privations which the poor little duckling endured during the hard winter;”

“Stop making love to your misery, It eats away at you like a vulture!

“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.”

“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.”

“If peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a loss of perspective.”

“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.”

“Before the truth sets you free, it tends to make you miserable.”

″‘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.‘”

“What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.”

“No greater grief than to remember days Of joy, when mis’ry is at hand!”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Put that chalk down. I can’t afford to break it.”

“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.”

“Alas, alas, what misery to be wise When wisdom profits nothing!”

“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.”

“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?”

“For death is gain to him whose life, like mine, Is full of misery.”

“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? ”

“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.”

“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.”

“Do not draw back, for we will mourn with thee; O, could our mourning case thy misery!”

“All goes to show that marriage is a misery and a woe”

“I drink out of desperation. Life is too dreary to endure. The misery, loneliness, crampedness - they’re heartbreaking.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Loud, heap miseries upon us yet entwine our arts with laughters low!”

“Sitting around miserable all day won’t make you any happier.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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. ”

″ ‘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.’ ”

″‘Let us all die bravely, and at once,’ said Robin, ‘rather than go on dying slowly in this miserable way.‘”

“The misery is compounded when they discover that Removes are not even allowed to play netball.”

And then there’s Eeyore. And Eeyore is so miserable anyhow that he wouldn’t mind about this.

“Good night,” she said, a little awkwardly, but not unkindly. Anne’s white face and big eyes appeared over the bedclothes with a startling suddenness. “How can you call it a good night when you know it must be the very worst night I’ve ever had?” she said reproachfully.

“My present happiness equals my past misery,” said the count.

Tell the angel who will watch over your future destiny, Morrel, to pray sometimes for a man, who, like Satan, thought himself for an instant equal to God, but who now acknowledges with Christian humility that God alone possesses supreme power and infinite wisdom. Perhaps those prayers may soften the remorse he feels in his heart. As for you, Morrel, this is the secret of my conduct towards you. There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of living.

My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning:

“All sinners would be miserable in heaven.”

We spent as much money as we could, and got as little for it as people could make up their minds to give us. We were always more or less miserable, and most of our acquaintance were in the same condition. There was a gay fiction among us that we were constantly enjoying ourselves, and a skeleton truth that we never did. To the best of my belief, our case was in the last aspect a rather common one.

I was greatly dejected and distressed, but in an incoherent wholesale sort of way. As to forming any plan for the future, I could as soon have formed an elephant. When I opened the shutters and looked out at the wet wild morning, all of a leaden hue; when I walked from room to room; when I sat down again shivering, before the fire, waiting for my laundress to appear; I thought how miserable I was, but hardly knew why, or how long I had been so, or on what day of the week I made the reflection, or even who I was that made it.

“Whatever he may pretend, he wishes to provoke Edgar to desperation: he says he has married me on purpose to obtain power over him; and he sha’n’t obtain it—I’ll die first! I just hope, I pray, that he may forget his diabolical prudence and kill me!”

Because misery and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it.

Miss Linton, I shall enjoy myself remarkably in thinking your father will be miserable: I shall not sleep for satisfaction.

“He says she hates me and wants me to die, that she may have my money; but she shan’t have it: and she shan’t go home! She never shall!—she may cry, and be sick as much as she pleases!”

Mr. Heathcliff, you have nobody to love you; and, however miserable you make us, we shall still have the revenge of thinking that your cruelty arises from your greater misery.

“They say anything. They’re in, and they know they can’t get out. But they didn’t like it when they began—you’d find out—it’s always misery!

There are a hundred thousand mothers who are living in misery and squalor, struggling to earn enough to feed their little ones!

“I wish the end was come, I wish I was dead.”

“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.”

“God forgive me, I simply rejoiced at her death. Though I don’t know which of them would have caused most misery to the other—he to her or she to him,”

“But Joe’s spirits had gone down almost beyond resurrection. He was so homesick that he could hardly endure the misery of it. The tears lay very near the surface.”