Wretched Quotes - Page 12

Whatever we give to the wretched, we lend to fortune.

Seneca the Younger

Giving, Charity, Philanthropy

"Troades", 697 in "Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations" by Jehiel Keeler Hoyt, (pp. 595-596), 1922.

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The Spartan, smiting and spurning the wretched Helot, moves our disgust. But the same Spartan, calmly dressing his hair, and uttering his concise jests, on what the well knows to be his last day, in the pass of Thermopylae, is not to be contemplated without admiration.

Thomas B. Macaulay

Moving, Hair, History

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Let a man choose what condition he will, and let him accumulate around him all the goods and gratifications seemingly calculated to make him happy in it; if that man is left at any time without occupation or amusement, and reflects on what he is, the meagre, languid felicity of his present lot will not bear him up. He will turn necessarily to gloomy anticipations of the future; and unless his occupation calls him out of himself, he is inevitably wretched.

Blaise Pascal

Happiness, Men, Occupation

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To hear complaints is wearisome alike to the wretched and the happy.

Samuel Johnson

Happiness, Complaints

Samuel Johnson, Abraham Raimbach, Robert Smirke (1819). “Rasselas”, p.133

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It was nothing, but it was Adam Parrish's nothing. How he hated and loved it. How proud he was of it, how wretched it was.

Maggie Stiefvater

Proud, Adam, Hated

Maggie Stiefvater (2013). “The Dream Thieves (The Raven Cycle, Book 2)”, p.55, Scholastic Inc.

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Wretched unfair, it is,” he remarked. “Of the three of us, I’m the one who’s always collected the rare and unusual, yet you two managed to snag the world’s most unusual women. First you, Crispin, with the only living half-breed, who then turned into an even more unusual vampire. And now you, Charles, have bagged a shape-shifter. Thought you were joking when you said Denise was the kitty. I’m simply green with jealousy

Jeaniene Frost

Two, Vampire, Three

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Sometimes words are not enough. There are some circumstances so utterly wretched that I cannot describe them in sentences or paragraphs or even a whole series of books.

Daniel Handler

Book, Sometimes, Enough

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We need to fall, and we need to be aware of it; for if we did not fall, we should not know how weak and wretched we are of ourselves, nor should we know our Maker's marvellous love so fully.

Julian of Norwich

Fall, Needs, Weak

Julian Of Norwich (1998). “Revelations of Divine Love”, p.201, Penguin UK

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I shouldn't care what you suffered. I care nothing for your sufferings. Why shouldn't you suffer? I do! Will you forget me? Will you be happy when I am in the earth? Will you say twenty years hence, "That's the grave of Catherine Earnshaw? I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past. I've loved many others since: my children are dearer to me than she was; and, at death, I shall not rejoice that I am going to her: I shall be sorry that I must leave them!" Will you say so, Heathcliff?

Emily Bronte

Children, Sorry, Past

"Wuthering Heights". Book by Emily Brontë, 1847.

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..there is nothing worse than the feeling that no one cares whether we exist or not, that no one is interested in what we have to say about life, and that the world can continue turning without our awkward presence. I began to imagine how many millions of people were, at that moment, feeling utterly useless and wretched—however rich, charming, and delightful they might be—because they were alone that night, as they were yesterday, and as they might well be tomorrow.

Paulo Coelho

Night, Yesterday, People

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I felt once more how simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. Nothing else.

Nikos Kazantzakis

Happiness, Wine, Simple

Nikos Kazantzakis, Carl Wildman (1953). “Zorba the Greek”, p.80, Simon and Schuster

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Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.

James Madison

Men, Ideas, People

James Madison, David B. Mattern (1997). “James Madison's "Advice to My Country"”, p.24, University of Virginia Press

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And what have you laymen made of hell? A kind of penal servitude for eternity, on the lines of your convict prisons on earth, to which you condemn in advance all the wretched felons your police have hunted from the beginning - enemies of society, as you call them. You're kind enough to include the blasphemers and the profane. What proud or reasonable man could stomach such a notion of God's justice? And when you find that notion inconvenient it's easy enough for you to put it on one side. Hell is not to love any more, Madame. Not to love any more!

Georges Bernanos

Men, Justice, Police

Georges Bernanos, Rémy Rougeau (2002). “The Diary of a Country Priest”, p.163, Da Capo Press

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An acquired taste, this dense Jabberwocky-ish word salad is a political allegory about a populace that's been pharmaceutically duped into believing its wretched world is wonderful.

Manohla Dargis

Believe, Political, World

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Is demum miser est, cuius nobilitas miserias nobilitat. Indeed, wretched the man whose fame makes his misfortunes famous.

Publius Attius Varus

Men, Fame, He Man

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There is an ancient saying, famous among men, that thou shouldst not judge fully of a man's life before he dieth, whether it should be called blest or wretched.

Sophocles

Life, Men, Judging

"Women of Trachis". Play by Sophocles. "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations", 10th edition, 1919.

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But when one masters this wretched desire, which is so hard to overcome, then one's sorrows just drop off, like a drop of water off a lotus.

Gautama Buddha

Buddhist, Justice, Water

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When one is overcome by this wretched, clinging desire in the world, one's sorrows increase like grass growing up after a lot of rain.

Gautama Buddha

Buddhist, Growing Up, Rain

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Whom shall I call on? Who will share with me The wretched happiness of staying alive?

Sergei Yesenin

Love, Alive, Share

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Men are less hesitant about harming someone who makes himself loved than one who makes himself feared because love is held together by a chain of obligation which, since men are wretched creatures, is broken on every occasion in which their own interests are concerned; but fear is sustained by dread of punishment which will never abandon you.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Love Is, Men, Broken

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I can see clothes of silk, if materials that do not hide the body, nor even one's decency, can be called clothes. ... Wretched flocks of maids labor so that the adulteress may be visible through her thin dress, so that her husband has no more acquaintance than any outsider or foreigner with his wife's body.

Seneca the Younger

Husband, Clothes, Wife

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Wretched men cringe before tyrants who have no power, the victims of their trivial hopes and fears. They do not realise that anger is hopeless, fear is pointless and desire all a delusion. He whose heart is fickle is not his own master, has thrown away his shield, deserted his post, and he forges the links of the chain that holds him.

Boethius

Heart, Men, Tyrants

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In making our decisions, we must use the brains that God has given us. But we must also use our hearts which He also gave us. A man who has not learned to say, No -who is not resolved that he will take God's way, in spite of every dog that can bay or bark at him, in spite of every silvery choice that woos him aside-will be a weak and a wretched man till he dies.

Alexander MacLaren

God, Dog, Heart

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By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise.

Adolf Hitler

People, Heaven, Historical

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If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid of it and take another; strike out for yourself; don't listen to the shriek of your relations...don't be afraid of public opinion in the shape of the neighbours in the next house, when all the world is before you new and shining, and everything is possible, if you will only be energetic and independent and seize opportunity by the scruff of the neck.

Elizabeth von Arnim

Independent, Opportunity, Shining

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