Misery Quotes

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  I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition.

  Martha Washington

  Inspirational, Motivational, Happiness

  123 Copy quote

• Somehow the anticipation of pain can be even more troubling, more a misery than the pain itself.

  Joanne Harris

  Pain, Anticipation

  Joanne Harris (2001). “Five Quarters of the Orange”

  5 Copy quote

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• Secrecy is for the happy,--misery, hopeless misery, needs no veil; under a thousand suns it dares act openly.

  Friedrich Schiller

  Needs, Veils, Sun

  7 Copy quote

• How we are born to invent our own miseries!

  Sophia Lee

  Born

  4 Copy quote

• Problems are inevitable. Misery is a choice.

  Ann Landers

  Choices, Problem, Inevitable

  21 Copy quote

• But there are no absolutes in human misery and things can always get worse

  Cormac McCarthy

  Humans, Absolutes

  Cormac McCarthy (2010). “Suttree”, p.448, Pan Macmillan

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• Avoidable human misery is more often caused not so much by stupidity as by ignorance, particularly our ignorance about ourselves.

  Carl Sagan

  Stupid, Ignorance, Science

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.50, Ballantine Books

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• Misery motivates, not utopia.

  Karl Marx

  Fear, Atheism, Utopia

  30 Copy quote

• Why was I born, if just to live in misery

  Noah

  Emo, Born, Ifs

  11 Copy quote

• Kids; 10 seconds of joy, 30 years of misery

  Tom Arnold

  Kids, Years, Joy

  7 Copy quote

• When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

  Eleanor Roosevelt

  Forgiveness, Peace, Honesty

  Eleanor Roosevelt (2007). “The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers: The human rights years, 1945-1948”, Charles Scribner's Sons

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• They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody?

  Princess Diana

  Sadness, Poverty, Compromise

  40 Copy quote

• Companions, in misery and worse, that is what we all are, and to try to change this substantially avails us nothing.

  Franz Liszt

  Trying, Companion

  11 Copy quote

• All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

  Blaise Pascal

  Inspirational, Peace, Hipster

  65 Copy quote

• My misery is reaching epidemic proportions.

  Libba Bray

  Epidemics, Reaching, Proportion

  Libba Bray (2010). “A Great and Terrible Beauty”, p.12, Simon and Schuster

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• If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world.

  Mercedes Lackey

  Love, Regret, Sadness

  Mercedes Lackey (2004). “Exile's Valor”, p.106, Penguin

  41 Copy quote

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• Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.

  Honore de Balzac

  Lying, Worry, Anticipation

  12 Copy quote

• wanting what you could not have led to misery and madness

  Cassandra Clare

  Madness, Clockwork Prince, Tessa Gray

  Cassandra Clare (2013). “Clockwork Prince”, p.244, Simon and Schuster

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• Fate finds for every man; his share of misery.

  Euripides

  Sadness, Fate, Men

  Euripides (2013). “Euripides V: Bacchae, Iphigenia in Aulis, The Cyclops, Rhesus”, p.155, University of Chicago Press

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• Take away the miseries and you take away some folks' reason for living.

  Toni Cade Bambara

  Life, Personality, Reason

  Toni Cade Bambara (2011). “The Salt Eaters”, p.16, Vintage

  18 Copy quote

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• It is equally important to investigate wellness as it is to study misery.

  Sonja Lyubomirsky

  Important, Wellness, Study

  12 Copy quote

• History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man.

  Washington Irving

  Men, History, Calendars

  1809 A History of NewYork, bk.4, ch.1.

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• Under miserable conditions of life, any vision of the possibility of better things makes the present misery more intolerable, and spurs those who suffer to the most energetic struggles to improve their lot, and if these struggles only immediately result in sharper misery, the outcome is sheer desperation.

  Emma Goldman

  Struggle, Suffering, Vision

  Emma Goldman (2015). “Anarchism: Top Crime Collections”, p.46, 谷月社

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• Ay! idleness! the rich folks never fail
  To find some reason why the poor deserve
  Their miseries.

  Robert Southey

  Poverty, Reason Why, Failing

  Robert Southey (1854). “Ballads, metrical tales and other poems”, p.141

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• Man little knows what calamities are beyond his patience to bear till he tries them; as in ascending the heights of ambition, which look bright from below, every step we rise shows us some new and gloomy prospect of hidden disappointment; so in our descent from the summits of pleasure, though the vale of misery below may appear, at first, dark and gloomy, yet the busy mind, still attentive to its own amusement, finds, as we descend, something to flatter and to please. Still as we approach, the darkest objects appear to brighten, and the mortal eye becomes adapted to its gloomy situation.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Disappointment, Ambition, Eye

  Oliver Goldsmith (1854). “The Works of Oliver Goldsmith: Poetical works. Dramas. The vicar of Wakefield”, p.376

  19 Copy quote

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