quotations about misery
Misery's fine -- as long as you know you can get out of it when you want to.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
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Ping Pong
From time to time the emotional lightning flashed and showed a landscape of private misery, and then -- we went on dancing.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
Man is unhappy because he doesn't know he's happy. It's only that.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Possessed
To be caught happy in a world of misery was for an honest man the most despicable of crimes.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
To the Lighthouse
We often see misery dwelling in the midst of splendor, whilst real happiness is found in humbler stations.
HERODOTUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay; but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Bartleby, the Scrivener
You begin to see that you yourself, innocent, upright you, have contributed and do contribute to the misery of the world. Which will never end because we're what we are.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
There is no people so miserable, but that at some time or other, in some respect or other, they have reason to account themselves happy. And if they would but duly consider how it is with many of their neighbours, they would find it their duty to be thankful, that it is no worse with themselves; for it is some relief to the unfortunate to show them that there are others yet more miserable.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
But all these were things he could not want, because they were things he could not have, and wanting what you could not have led to misery and madness.
CASSANDRA CLARE
Clockwork Prince
Thou art not born to misery; the Almighty never called any of His creatures into existence to render them unhappy; yet man may be wretched from his own follies and vices; his reason may yield to the wild impulses of tumultuous passion; then man is wretched, and every seeming good is perverted into misery.
CONRAD GESSNER
attributed, Day's Collacon
Every misery that I miss is a new mercy.
IZAAK WALTON
The Complete Angler
Life is not an easy matter.... You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.
LEON TROTSKY
Diary in Exile, 1935
Perhaps it may be found more easy to forget those tempers we learnt in misery.
EDMUND LAW
attributed, Day's Collacon
I hate all pain,
Given or received; we have enough within us
The meanest vassal as the loftiest monarch,
Not to add to each other's natural burden
Of mortal misery.
LORD BYRON
Sardanapalus
Misery makes sport to mock itself.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Richard II
And truly the very fact of existing is by some natural spell so pleasant, that even the wretched are, for no other reason, unwilling to perish; and, when they feel that they are wretched, wish not that they themselves be annihilated, but that their misery be so.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God
There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.
VICTOR HUGO
Les Misérables
But O yet more miserable!
Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave.
JOHN MILTON
Samson Agonistes
The child of misery, baptized in tears!
J. LANGHORNE
The Country Justice