MISERY quotes
A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.
The true recipe for a miserable existence is to quarrel with Providence.
The misery of human life is made up of large masses, each separated from the other by certain intervals. One year the death of a child; years after, a failure in trade; after another longer or shorter interval, a daughter may have married unhappily; in all but the singularly unfortunate, the integral parts that compose the sum total of the unhappiness of a man's life are easily counted and distinctly remembered.
Small miseries, like small debts, hit us in so many places, and meet us at so many turns and corners, that what they want, in weight, they make up in number, and render it less hazardous to stand the fire of one cannon ball, than a volley composed of such a shower of bullets.
It is often better to have a great deal of harm happen to one than a little: a great deal may rouse you to remove what a little will only accustom you to endure.
There are a good many real miseries in life that we cannot help smiling at but they are the smiles that make wrinkles and not dimples.
Twins, even from the birth, are misery and man.
Misery is caused for the most part, not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the corrosion of less visible evils, which canker enjoyment, and undermine security. The visit of an invader is necessarily rare, but domestic animosities allow no cessation.
If misery be the effect of virtue, it ought to be reverenced; if of ill-fortune, to be pitied; and if of vice, not to be insulted, because it is, perhaps, itself a punishment adequate to the crime by which it was produced; and the humanity of that man can deserve no panegyric who is capable of reproaching a criminal in the hands of the executioner.
We should pass on from crime to crime, heedless and remorseless, if misery did not stand in our way, and our own pains admonish us of our folly.
If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself; about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay you, what people think of you; and then to you nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch; you will make sin and misery for yourself out of everything God sends you; you will be as wretched as you choose.
A tree does not know itself to be miserable. It is true that it is misery indeed to know one's self to be miserable; but then it is greatness also. In this way all man's miseries go to prove his greatness. They are the miseries of a mighty potentate, of a dethroned monarch.
Notwithstanding the sight of all the miseries which wring us and threaten our destruction, we have still an instinct that we cannot repress, which elevates us above our sorrows.
As small letters hurt the sight, so do small matters him that is too much intent upon them: they vex and stir up anger, which begets an evil habit in him in reference to greater affairs.
Misery so little appertains to our nature, and happiness so much so, that we lament over that which has pained us, but leave unnoticed that which has rejoiced us.
Man is only miserable so far as he thinks himself so.
No scene of life but teems with mortal woe.
Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.
Half the misery in the world comes of want of courage to speak and to hear the truth plainly, and in a spirit of love.
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