Quotes About Misfortune

As Oscar Wilde once said, "To lose one cell phone may be regarded as a misfortune; to go through seventy looks like carelessness.

But it was an unrefrigerated world. And everything ended badly.

Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft armchair, you will say to yourself: perhaps it will amuse me. And after you have read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for your own insensitivity, accusing him of wild exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is not a fiction. All is true.

It is the child of avarice, the brother of inequity, and father of mischief. It has been the ruin of many worthy families, the loss of many a man's honor, and the cause of suicide. To all those who enter the list, it is equally fascinating. The successful gamester pushes his good fortune till it is overtaken by a reverse. The losing gamester, in hopes of retrieving past misfortunes, goes on from bad to worse."37 Washington

if Clinton was taken prisoner "it would be our misfortune, since the British government could not find another commander so incompetent to send in his place.

He had suffered many personal misfortunes in marriage and exercised woefully bad judgment.

Wrong place," Reacher said. "Wrong time, wrong reasons, wrong methods, wrong approach, wrong leadership. No real backing, no real will to win, no coherent strategy.

So much darkness made her uneasy. There was definitely a weight pushing down on the world. Misfortune was always hovering close around people's shoulders. But she would fight it off, and keep fighting with all her might. Otherwise she would be annihilated by this nameless, all-reaching gloom which she couldn't figure out or map.

Unfortunately, in 1861, when he was forty, Buckle caught typhus while traveling in Damascus. Offered the services of a local physician, he refused because the man was French, and so he died.

Most of all it has taught me to appreciate the absence of bad luck, the absence of events that might have brought us down, and the absence of the disease, war, famine, and accident that have not—or have not yet—befallen us.

appreciate the absence of bad luck, the absence of events that might have brought us down, and the absence of the disease, war, famine, and accident that have not—or have not yet—befallen us.

The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance

That disillusionment, moreover, like all other vogues, having had its beginning in the higher strata of society, had descended to the lower, where it was being worn threadbare, and that, now, those who were really and truly bored strove to conceal their misfortune as if it were a vice.

An actual misfortune is almost always less painful to him than his fear of it, just as, of course, his actual experience of joys is almost always less stirring than his hopes and anticipations of them.

And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.

Of course it does. Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the overcompensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery. And, of course, stability isn't nearly so spectacular as instability. And being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.

Being contented has none of the glamour of a good fight against misfortune, none of the picturesqueness of a struggle with temptation, or a fatal overthrow by passion or doubt. Happiness is never grand.

Misfortune is needed to bring light to the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental facilities to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced - from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination.

when the man would be responsible for everything he speaks in vain. -He's responsible when that, which he speaks in vain, causes a misfortune.

My present fortune is a compensation for my former misfortune.

The problem, he thought, was that so much humour involved misfortune of one sort or another, and now that same human misfortune was out of bounds - interdicted by self-appointed guardians of sensitivity. There was somebody to be offended by everything, he though, which left little room for laughter.

She had brought all of this on herself, and so she had, in a sense, got what she deserved. But, even so, she had a soul like everyone else, and one should not crow over the defeat even of those who richly deserve to be defeated. That was dangerous, because then you yourself might get what you deserve for reveling in the misfortunes of another.

They say that misfortune is a good school. Yes, true. But happiness is the best university.