Wretched Quotes - Page 13

• There is a cheap literature that speaks to us of the need of escape. It is true that when we travel we are in search of distance. But distance is not to be found. It melts away. And escape has never led anywhere. The moment a man finds that he must play the races, go the Arctic, or make war in order to feel himself alive, that man has begin to spin the strands that bind him to other men and to the world. But what wretched strands! A civilization that is really strong fills man to the brim, though he never stir. What are we worth when motionless, is the question.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Strong, War, Distance

  22 Copy quote

• O how wretched is that poor man that hangs on princes favors! There is betwixt that smile we would aspire to, that sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, more pangs and fears than wars or women have, and when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, never to hope again.

  William Shakespeare

  Sweet, War, Fall

  'Henry VIII' (1613) act 3, sc. 2, l. 352

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Reading, Thinking, Years

  Thomas Jefferson (2010). “The Works of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence and Papers, 1808-1816”, p.514, Cosimo, Inc.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I saw no cause for their unhappiness, but I was deeply affected by it. If such lovely creatures were miserable, it was less strange that I, an imperfect and solitary being, should be wretched.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Lovely, Saws, Causes

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1869). “Frankenstein, or, The Modern Prometheus”, p.87

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Jesus was not sent here to teach the people to build magnificent churches and temples amidst the cold wretched huts and dismal hovels. He came to make the human heart a temple, and the soul an altar, and the mind a priest.

  Khalil Gibran

  Jesus, Heart, People

  75 Copy quote

• To be a woman condemned to a wretched and disgraceful punishment is no impediment to beauty, but it is an insurmountable obstacle to power. Like all persons of real genius, her ladyship well knew what accorded with her nature and her means. Poverty disgusted her -subjection deprived her of two-thirds of her greatness. Her ladyship was only a queen amongst queens: the enjoyment of satisfied pride was essential to her sway. To command beings of an inferior nature, was, to her, rather a humiliation than a pleasure.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Queens, Real, Mean

  5 Copy quote

• We men are wretched things.

  Homer

  Men

  "Troy". www.imdb.com. 2004.

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Perhaps all a Tsaritsa is is a beautiful cold girl in the snow, looking down at someone wretched, and not yielding.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Beautiful, Girl, Snow

  Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “Deathless”, p.85, Macmillan

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I wonder now whether inner coldness and desolation may not be the pre-condition for making the world believe, by a kind of fraudulent showmanship, that one's own wretched heart is still aglow.

  W. G. Sebald

  Believe, Heart, World

  W. G. Sebald (2016). “The Rings of Saturn”, p.51, New Directions Publishing

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• Had any poet adequately described the wretched ugliness of a loved one turned inside out with grief?

  Kate Morton

  Grief, Poet, Loved Ones

  Kate Morton (2010). “The Kate Morton Collection: The House at Riverton and The Forgotten Garden”, p.887, Simon and Schuster

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• My good works, however wretched and imperfect, have been made better and perfected by Him Who is my Lord: He has rendered them meritorious. As to my evil deeds and my sins, He hid them at once. The eyes of those who saw them, He made even blind; and He has blotted them out of their memory.

  Teresa of Avila

  Memories, Eye, Evil

  Saint Teresa (of Avila) (1962). “Life of Saint Teresa: Written by Herself”

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Faustus: Stay, Mephistopheles, and tell me, what good will my soul do thy lord? Mephistopheles: Enlarge his kingdom. Faustus: Is that the reason he tempts us thus? Mephistopheles: Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris. (It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery)

  Christopher Marlowe

  Soul, Comfort, Kingdoms

  37 Copy quote

• Eleanor went to her room "where she was free to think and be wretched.

  Jane Austen

  Thinking, Rooms, Eleanor

  5 Copy quote

• You suck, surprising no one!!!! If bad was a boot, you'd fit it!!!! You're a stupid poo-poo head! I had sexual relations with your mother! Your mother was not that good in bed! You, sir, are a wretched soul! I am rubber, you are glue!

  Bryan Lee O'Malley

  Mother, Stupid, Soul

  4 Copy quote

• Oh dear... it really is rather disillusioning. When one's friends marry for money they are wretched, when they marry for love it is worse. What is the proper thing to marry for, I should like to know?

  Nancy Mitford

  Should, Dear, Knows

  Nancy Mitford (2013). “Christmas Pudding and Pigeon Pie”, p.162, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• So to the wretched writer I should like to say that there’s one body only whose request for your caresses is not vulgar, is not unchaste, untoward, or impolite: the body of your work itself; for you must remember that your attentions will not merely celebrate a beauty but create one; that yours is love that brings it own birth with it, just as Plato has declared, and that you should therefore give up the blue things of this world in favor of the words which say them

  William H. Gass

  Plato, Giving Up, Writing

  William H. Gass (2014). “On Being Blue: A Philosophical Inquiry”, p.89, New York Review of Books

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.

  Jacques Barzun

  Writing, Race, Political

  7 Copy quote

• Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life.

  Jack Kerouac

  Sweet, Children, Father

  Jack Kerouac (2007). “Road Novels 1957-1960”

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• How can you frighten a man whose hunger is not only in his own cramped stomach but in the wretched bellies of his children? You can't scare him--he has known a fear beyond every other.

  John Steinbeck

  Children, Men, Wrath

  John Steinbeck (2016). “The Grapes of Wrath”, p.190, Hamilton Books

  36 Copy quote

  Show source

• Listlessness to everything, but brooding sorrow, was the night that fell on my undisciplined heart. Let me look up from it - as at last I did, thank Heaven! - and from its long, sad, wretched dream, to dawn.

  Charles Dickens

  Dream, Heart, Night

  Charles Dickens (2015). “David Copperfield: Classic English Literature”, p.790, 谷月社

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Why did you want to go and distract me like that? I was quite in my element and everything.' Conall laughed. 'Someone has to keep you off balance; otherwise you'll end up ruling the empire. Or at least ordering it into wretched submission.

  Gail Carriger

  Balance, Elements, Want

  4 Copy quote

• Success has always been the greatest liar - and the "work" itself is a success; the great statesman, the conqueror, the discoverer is disguised by his creations, often beyond recognition; the "work," whether of the artist or the philosopher, invents the man who has created it, who is supposed to have create it; "great men," as they are venerated, are subsequent pieces of wretched minor fiction

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Liars, Artist, Men

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.408, Modern Library

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The most paradoxical aspect of neurotic shame is that it is the core motivator of the superachieved and the underachieved, the star and the scapegoat, the righteous and the wretched, the powerful and the pathetic.

  John Bradshaw

  Stars, Powerful, Shame

  John Bradshaw (2010). “Healing the Shame that Binds You”, p.34, Health Communications, Inc.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• How much can we ever know about the love and pain in another's heart? How much can we hope to understand those who have suffered deeper anguish, greater deprivation, and more crushing disappointments than we ourselves have known? Even if the world's rich and powerful were to put themselves in the shoes of the rest, how much would they really understand the wretched millions suffering around them? So it is when Orhan the novelist peers into the dark corners of his poet friend's difficult and painful life: How much can he really see?

  Orhan Pamuk

  Crush, Pain, Powerful

  Orhan Pamuk (2011). “Snow”, p.266, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• It is a wretched thing that the young men of today are so contriving and so proud of their material posessions. Men with contriving hearts are lacking in duty. Lacking in duty, they will have no self-respect.

  Yamamoto Tsunetomo

  Heart, Men, Self

  Miyamoto Musashi, Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Inazo Nitobe (2010). “Honor: Samurai Philosophy of Life - The Essential Samurai Collection; The Book of Five Rings, Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai, Bushido: The Soul of Japan.”, p.59, Bottom of the Hill

  14 Copy quote

  Show source