Quotes About Misery

And it was them; I knew it clearly. It was them, draining the house, like vampires, of all of its decent energy, of all of its love and life and goodness, draining it all for themselves, feasting on our misery and our broken spirits.

The smarter you are, the more reasons you have to be miserable.

The purposeful restriction of knowledge has been at the heart of untold misery and hardship in this world. Serfs were kept illiterate so as to not jeopardize the feudal system. Slaves were kept in the dark on a variety of subjects so as to not provide them the possibility of escape.

I suppose I should have died right then from pure misery and self-pity, but if those things were fatal, no one would ever make it past thirteen years old.

When this meanness happens in you, you become your own worst stressor. No matter how bad the situation is, your mean attitude amplifies and adds to your misery, usually through the addition of criticism, judgment, and blame.

It occurred to us that she and the girls read secret signs of misery in cloud formations, that despite the discrepancies in their ages something timeless communicated itself between them, as though she were advising the girls in her mumbling Greek, Don't waste your time on life.

she and the girls read secret signs of misery in cloud formations, that despite the discrepancy in their ages something timeless communicated itself between them

Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you, --will invite you to add something to the pleasure of others, --or to diminish something of their pains.

There is no pathos in real misery, no luxury in real grief.

But who wants to be foretold the weather?  It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand. 

Killing the pigeons and putting them out of their misery stubbornly refused to mean the same thing. Palmer thought about misery, and it seemed to him that a shotgun was not the only way to end it. When Palmer was miserable, for example, his mother or father would hold him close and wipe his tears. When Palmer's mother or father put him out of his misery, they did not shoot him, they offered him a cookie. Why then on Pigeon Day did the people bring guns instead of cookies?

I slipped the porter a buck for a whiskey, then another when the train slowed the last five miles, forest, foothills, farms, and finally, Spokane. I couldn't believe how the syphilitic town had metastasized. Smoke seeped from twenty thousand chimneys, pillars to an endless gray ceiling. The city was twice the size of the last time I'd hated being there. A box of misery spilled over the whole river valley.

Pour your scotch on the rocks and drink your misery down. Go home and make love to her and picture me, picture me. Yeah, picture me!

And believing that we are broken is the same as being broken. It means we experience ourselves that way. That perception shapes our reality. It is an illusion we must strive to avoid, as great misery comes from such a belief.

No small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself.

Time has no meaning. I feel as if I have been left in the desert to die and am eagerly awaiting the vultures to begin their work and end my misery.

Our epoch has been called the century of work. It is in fact the century of pain, misery and corruption.

As soon as we identify ourselves with the work we do, we feel miserable; but if we do not identify ourselves with it, we do not feel that misery.

Loveless work, boring work, work valued only because others haven't got even that much, however loveless and boring--this is one of the harshest human miseries.

Nothing good ever comes out of hurry and frustration, only misery.

Misery is the stuff of comedy, if one can just live long enough to get over it.

Poverty, to be picturesque, should be rural. Suburban misery is as hideous as it is pitiable.

There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.

Oftentimes, the First Noble Truth is misquoted as "All life is suffering," but that is an inaccurate and misleading reflection of the Buddha's insight. He did not teach that life is constant misery, nor that you should expect to feel pain and unhappiness at all times. Rather, he proclaimed that suffering is an unavoidable reality of ordinary human existence that is to be known and responded to wisely.