quotations about misery
Misery pulls away the brackets of life leaving you to free fall.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
The wretched hasten to hear of their own miseries.
SENECA THE YOUNGER
Hercules Oetaeus
Misery's fine -- as long as you know you can get out of it when you want to.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
Ping Pong
Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Unpopular Essays
No misery is unlooked for by men, for we find good fortune lasting only for a day.
DIPHILUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
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? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Letters to a Young Poet
All of which misery I saw, part of which I was.
VIRGIL
Aeneid
I don't reckon misery loves any damn thing at all.
BRUCE MACHART
The Wake of Forgiveness
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
Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. Unfortunately the happiness is there. There is always the chance (about eight hundred and fifty to one) that another heart will come to mine. I can't help hoping, and keeping faith, and loving beauty.
T. H. WHITE
Ghostly, Grim and Gruesome
But misery still delights to trace
Its semblance in another's case.
WILLIAM COWPER
The Castaway
We often see misery dwelling in the midst of splendor, whilst real happiness is found in humbler stations.
HERODOTUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
But O yet more miserable!
Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave.
JOHN MILTON
Samson Agonistes
Misery makes sport to mock itself.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Richard II
I would cling to unhappiness because it was a known, familiar state. When I was happier, it was because I knew I was on my way back to misery. I've never been convinced that happiness is the object of the game. I'm wary of happiness.
HUGH LAURIE
attributed, Inside Inside
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
Meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
Mock not any man's misery.
PITTACUS
attributed, Day's Collacon
There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.
VICTOR HUGO
Les Misérables