#Misery Quotes

“War is no strife To the dark house and the detested wife.”

“O wretched state! o bosom black as death!”

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

“O, how wretched is that poor man that hangs on princes' favors.”

“The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”

“If there were reason for these miseries, then into limits could I bind my woes. If the winds rages, doth not the sea wax mad, threat'ning the welkin with its big-swoll'n face? And wilt though have a reason for this coil? I am the sea. Hark how her sighs doth blow. She is the weeping welkin, I the earth.”

“Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.”

“Miserable people focus on what they hate about their life. Happy people focus on what they love about their life.”

“Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all.”

“What is more miserable than discontent?”

“There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision, and for whom the lighting of every cigar, the drinking of every cup, the time of rising and going to bed every day, and the beginning of every bit of work, are subjects of express volitional deliberation.”

“Doing nothing is happiness for children and misery for old men.”

“He who has not the spirit of this age, has all the misery of it.”

“The miserable's name is Man; he is agonizing in all climes, and he is groaning in all languages.”

“I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all.”

“Joie est mon caractere, C'est la faute a Voltaire; Misere est mon trousseau C'est la faute a Rousseau. [Joy is my character, 'Tis the fault of Voltaire; Misery is my trousseau 'Tis the fault of Rousseau.] - Gavroche”

“Dogs, monkeys, and parrots are a thousand times less miserable than we are.”

“Idleness, pleasure, what abysses! To do nothing is a dreary course to take, be sure of it. To live idle upon the substance of society! To be useless, that is to say, noxious! This leads straight to the lowest depth of misery.”

“To be caught happy in a world of misery was for an honest man the most despicable of crimes.”

“There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.”

“War has been avoided from a due sense of the miseries, and the demoralization it produces, and of the superior blessings of a state of peace and friendship with all mankind.”

“...there is a point when the unfortunate and the infamous are associated and confused in a word, a mortal word, les miserables”

“I should like to know which is worse: to be ravished a hundred times by pirates, and have a buttock cut off, and run the gauntlet of the Bulgarians, and be flogged and hanged in an auto-da-fe, and be dissected, and have to row in a galley -- in short, to undergo all the miseries we have each of us suffered -- or simply to sit here and do nothing?' That is a hard question,' said Candide.”

“A society that admits misery, a humanity that admits war, seem to me an inferior society and a debased humanity; it is a higher society and a more elevated humanity at which I am aiming - a society without kings, a humanity without barriers.”

“Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.”

“Whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all. Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race; the moment has at length arrived for tearing off that rag, and for replacing, upon the naked limbs of the Man-People, the sinister fragment of the past with the grand purple robe of the dawn.”

“Ignorance is death, knowledge is life. Life is of very little value, if it is a life in the dark, groping through ignorance and misery.”

“With everything we do in life we identify ourselves. Here is a man who says harsh words to me. I feel anger coming on me. In a few seconds anger and I are one, and then comes misery. Attach yourselves to the Lord and to nothing else, because everything else is unreal. Attachment to the unreal will bring misery. There is only one Existence that is real, only one Life in which there is neither object nor [subject].”

“Weakness is constant strain and misery: weakness is death.”

“All misery and pain come from attachment.”

“The animal man lives in the senses. If he does not get enough to eat, he is miserable; or if something happens to his body, he is miserable. In the senses both his misery and his happiness begin and end.”

“Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvellous work. It is fear that is the great cause of misery in the world. It is fear that is the greatest of all superstitions. It is fear that is the cause of all our woes, and it is fearlessness that brings heaven even in a moment. Therefore, "arise, awake and stop not until the goal is reached.”

“I fervently wish no misery ever came near anyone; yet it is that alone that gives us an insight into the depths of our lives, does it not? In our moments of anguish, gates barred forever seem to open and let in many a flood of light.”

“It is fear that is the greatest cause of misery in the world.”

“The weak have no place here, in this life or any other life. Weakness leads to slavery. Weakness leads to all kinds of misery, physical and mental. Weakness is death.”

“The general desire of men to live by their heads rather than their hands, and the strong allurements of great cities to those who have any turn for dissipation, threaten to make them here, as in Europe, the sinks of voluntary misery.”

“Bold words and bolder deeds are what we want. Awake, awake, great ones! The world is burning with misery. Can you sleep?”

“We get caught. How? Not by what we give but by what we expect. We get misery in return for our love: not from the fact that we love but from the fact that we want love in return. There is no misery where there is no want. Desire, want, is the father of all misery. Desires are bound by the laws of success and failure. Desires must bring misery.”

“There may be a million microbes of misery floating about us. Never mind! They dare not approach us, they have no power to get a hold on us, until the mind is weakened.”

“The progress of the world means more enjoyment and more misery too.”

“Such is the strength of the burden of habit. Here I have the power to be but do not wish it. There I wish to be but lacks the power. On both grounds, I'm in misery.”

“It is perfectly possible to get what you think you want and be miserable. It's possible too, to never get it but deeply enjoy the process of trying. In this world, there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”

“Misery and poverty are so absolutely degrading, and exercise sucha paralysing effect over the nature of men, that no class is ever really conscious of its own suffering. They have to be told of it by other people, and they often entirely disbelieve them.”

“Dear little Swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery.”

“We have already discovered the fact that fear is the chief reason for poverty and failure and misery that takes on a thousand different forms. We have already discovered the fact that the man who masters fear may march on to successful achievement in practically any undertaking, despite all efforts to defeat him.”

“If misery loves company, misery has company enough.”

“The more weapons of violence, the more misery to mankind. The triumph of violence ends in a festival of mourning.”

“The remembrance of past misery is sweet.”

“Happiness perches on misery. Misery crouches beneath happiness.”

“Misery is what happiness rests upon. Happiness is what misery lurks beneath.”