Miserable Quotes - Page 33

• Alaska's chief attractions are: (a) its small and insignificant human population, thanks to the miserable climate; and (b) its large and magnificent wildlife population, thanks to (a). Both of these attractions are being rapidly diminished, however, by (c) the Law of Growth and Space-Age Sleaze.

  Edward Abbey

  Law, Space, Alaska

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.57, RosettaBooks

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• Americans were convinced in their own minds that they were very miserable, and those who think so are so. There is nothing so easy as to persuade people that they are badly governed. Take happy and comfortable people and talk to them with the art of the evil one, and they can soon be made discontented with their government, their rulers, with everything around them, and even with themselves.

  Thomas Hutchinson

  Art, Thinking, Government

  Thomas Hutchinson (2010). “The Diary and Letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson”, p.18, Applewood Books

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• But I married a guy who treated me very badly, but I was happy. I was miserable, so I was happy.

  Lynn Johnston

  Guy, Married, Treated

  Interview with Tom Heintjes, cartoonician.com. 1994.

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• Me miserable! Which way shall I fly
  Infinite wrath and infinite despair?
  Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell;
  And in the lowest deep a lower deep,
  Still threat'ning to devour me, opens wide,
  To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.

  John Milton

  Wrath, Heaven, Suffering

  'Paradise Lost' (1667) bk. 4, l. 73

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• It is not every man who can be exquisitely miserable, any more than exquisitely happy.

  James Boswell

  Men, Every Man

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• I had wanted simply to convey to the reader by way of concrete example that life holds a potential meaning under any conditions, even the most miserable ones. And I thought that if the point were demonstrated in a situation as extreme as that in a concentration camp, my book might gain a hearing. I therefore felt responsible for writing down what I had gone through, for I thought it might be helpful to people who are prone to despair.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Life, Book, Writing

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.8, Beacon Press

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• If an offender has committed murder, he must die. In this case, no possible substitute can satisfy justice. For there is no parallel between death and even the most miserable life, so that there is no equality of crime and retribution unless the perpetrator is judicially put to death.

  Immanuel Kant

  Justice, Murder, Crime

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• It is good to be charitable; but to whom? That is the point. As to the ungrateful, there is not one who does not at last die miserable.

  Jean de La Fontaine

  Ungrateful, Doe, Lasts

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• You cannot go around and keep score. If you keep score on the good things and the bad things, you'll find out that you're a very miserable person. God gave man the ability to forget, which is one of the greatest attributes you have. Because if you remember everything that's happened to you, you generally remember that which is the most unfortunate.

  Hubert H. Humphrey

  Men, Remembers Everything, Miserable Person

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• My whole life has been merely a succession of miserable and unsuccessful denials of feelings or reason.

  Mikhail Lermontov

  Feelings, Denial, Reason

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• It's easy to be miserable. Being happy is tougher - and cooler.

  Thom Yorke

  Easy

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• Everyone tries to create a world he can live in, and what he can't use he often can't see. But the real world is already created, and if your fabrication doesn't correspond, then even if you feel noble and insist on there being something better than what people call reality, that better something needn't try to exceed what, in its actuality, since we know it so little, may be very surprising. If a happy state of things, surprising; if miserable or tragic, no worse than what we invent.

  Saul Bellow

  Real, Often Can, People

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• Writing is a miserable, awful business. Stay with it. It is better than anything in the world.

  Ann Patchett

  Writing, World, Awful

  Ann Patchett (2013). “This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage”, p.60, A&C Black

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• I don't watch my own films very often. I become so jittery and ready to cry... and miserable. I think it's awful.

  Ingmar Bergman

  Thinking, Watches, Awful

  "Bergman 'depressed' by own films". news.bbc.co.uk. April 10, 2004.

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• You can't do anything for a person who is stuck between being happy and being miserable. All you can do is get trapped in the middle, and anyone in the middle just gets squished.' -Grandma

  Jack Gantos

  Grandma, Middle, Stuck

  Jack Gantos (2002). “What Would Joey Do?”, p.65, Macmillan

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• An infallible way to make your child miserable is to satisfy all his demands.

  Henry Home, Lord Kames

  Children, Demand, Way

  Henry Home (lord Kames.) (1818). “Introduction to the art of thinking, to which is prefixed an original life of the author”, p.55

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• A mother! What are we worth really? They all grow up whether you look after them or not. That poor miserable brat of his is growing up, and I certainly licked the hide off her; and she's seen marriage at its worst, and now she's dreaming about 'supermen' and 'great men'. What is the good of doing anything for them?

  Christina Stead

  Mother, Dream, Art

  Christina Stead (2016). “The Man Who Loved Children”, p.286, Head of Zeus

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• If we mistake God's silence for indifference, we are the most miserable of people. If we give up when we no longer understand, we reject His caring, steadfast love and cut ourselves off from our only real hope.

  Sheila Walsh

  Hope, Encouragement, Giving Up

  Sheila Walsh (1999). “Life is Tough, But God is Faithful: How to See God's Love in Difficult Times”, p.1938, Thomas Nelson Inc

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• The best way to live a miserable life is to pay attention to what other people are saying about you.

  Paulo Coelho

  Life, People, Attention

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• The point is that petty, frustrating crap like this is exactly where the work of choosing comes in. Because the traffic jams and crowded aisles and long checkout lines give me time to think, and if I don't make a conscious decision about how to think and what to pay attention to, I'm going to be pissed and miserable every time I have to food-shop, because my natural default-setting is the certainty that situations like this are really all about me, about my hungriness and my fatigue and my desire to just get home.

  David Foster Wallace

  Home, Thinking, Giving

  "'Plain Old Untrendy Troubles and Emotions'". www.theguardian.com. September 19, 2008.

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• Smile first thing in the morning. Get it over with.

  W. C. Fields

  Smile, Morning, Cynical

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• Pain and guilt can't be taken away with the wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!

  William Shatner

  Pain, Taken, Cynical

  "Fictional character: James T. Kirk". "Star Trek V: The Final Frontier", 1989.

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• What if I told you insane was working fifty hours a week in some office for fifty years at the end of which they tell you to p*ss off; ending up in some retirement village hoping to die before suffering the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time? Wouldn't you consider that to be insane?

  Steve Buscemi

  Retirement, Years, Office

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• Hippy, you think everything is a conspiracy. Everything is!

  Ed Harris

  Thinking, Cynical, Conspiracy

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• Sex is the last refuge of the miserable.

  Quentin Crisp

  Funny, Sarcastic, Sex

  "The Naked Civil Servant". Biography, Comedy, Drama, www.imdb.com. 1975.

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