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Quotes About Misery

As an Anglo-Indian kid in Bolton, I was basically in a minority of one. That was a source of misery, but at the same time, one of the effects of receiving the message that you don't belong to the club is that you watch the club with detachment. The fact that no one quite knew who I was was a major contributory factor in starting to write.
~ Glen Duncan
For a brokenhearted person memories are the vital parts of misery
~ Munia Khan
Must it so be that whatever makes man happy must later become the source of his misery?
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It began with a hello, and ended in hell.
~ Anthony Liccione
The gods granted us misery, in jealousy over the thought that we two, always together, should enjoy our youth, and then come to the threshold of old age.
~ Homer, The Odyssey
As ill-luck would have it.
~ Miguel de Cervantes
Remember, no more effort is required to aim high in life, to demand abundance and prosperity, than is required to accept misery and poverty.
~ Napoleon Hill
Be sure that your definite purpose is constructive; that its attainment will bring hardship and misery to no one; that it will bring you peace and prosperity, then apply, to the limit of your understanding, the principle of self-suggestion for the speedy attainment of this purpose.
~ Napoleon Hill
no more effort is required to aim high in life, to demand abundance and prosperity, than is required to accept misery and poverty.
~ Napoleon Hill
When people get rich, they shed their skin-in-the-game-driven experiential mechanism. They lose control of their preferences, substituting constructed preferences for their own, complicating their lives unnecessarily, triggering their own misery.
~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb
The question remains whether optimizers are unhappy because they are constantly seeking a better deal or if unhappy people tend to optimize out of their misery.
~ Nassim Nicholas Taleb
It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and substance out of whatever realities there are around us, and which were meant by Heaven to be the spirit's joy and nutriment. To the untrue man, the whole universe is false—it is impalpable—it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
Without any effort of his will, or power to restrain himself, he shrieked aloud; an outcry that went pealing through the night, and was beaten back from one house to another, and reverberated from the hills in the background; as if a company of devils, detecting so much misery and terror in it, had made a plaything of the sound and were bandying it to and fro.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
The days of the far off future would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up and bear along with her but never to fling down; for the accumulating days, and added years would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
The manner of the woman was ungracious; but her words were true. They saw that their presence could do nothing towards the alleviation of the misery they witnessed; and they felt that mere curiosity would not authorize a longer intrusion. So soon, therefore, as they had relieved, according to their power, the poverty that seemed to be the least evil of this cottage, they emerged into the open air.
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
Miserable!" exclaimed Rappaccini. "What mean you, foolish girl? Dost thou deem it misery to be endowed with marvellous gifts against which no power nor strength could avail an enemy—misery, to be able to quell the mightiest with a breath—misery, to be as terrible as thou art beautiful? Wouldst thou, then, have preferred the condition of a weak woman, exposed to all evil and capable of none?
~ Nathaniel Hawthorne
I have . . . learnt from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances; we carry the seeds of the one or the other
~ Nathaniel Philbrick
It starts with a mild weeping but soon crescendos into the same tortured sobs as his little brother, both of them wailing in a strange harmony of misery.
~ Neal Shusterman
Good, you're awake. I trust you've healed enough over the past few hours to be a little more coherent, and little less miserable coherent, yes. Less miserable, no. Just a deferent kind of misery
~ Neal Shusterman
Everywhere, Everywhere amazing, how grimly we hold onto our misery, ever defensive, thwarted by the forces. amazing, the energy we burn fueling our anger. amazing, how one moment we can be snarling like a beast, then a few moments later, forgetting what or why. not hours of this or days or months or years of this but decades, lifetimes completely use up, given over to the prettiest rancor and hatred. finally there is nothing here for death to take away.
~ Charles Bukowski
I didn't know if I was unhappy. I felt too miserable to be unhappy.
~ Charles Bukowski
I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.
~ Charles Darwin
If you mean slaves, you only remember what they allowed you to remember. Even if Davis Bend was really as humane as you believe, they kept their misery to themselves, kept it a mystery to you. I promise that's true. Think of it as a great gift, a mark of affection. Their protection of your memory.
~ Charles Frazier
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.
~ Charles Kingsley