Wretched Quotes - Page 15

• It makes me so desperately sad to witness just how unforgivably wretched our world has become.

  Ralph Steadman

  Our World, World, Witness

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• Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched.

  Victor Hugo

  Grief, Sorrow, Radiance

  Victor Hugo (2000). “Les Mis??rables”, p.167, Modern Library

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• Alas, I have studied philosophy, the law as well as medicine, and to my sorrow, theology; studied them well with ardent zeal, yet here I am, a wretched fool, no wiser than I was before.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Philosophy, Medicine, Here I Am

  Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (2011). “Faust”, p.31, Bantam Classics

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• Thou hast seen many sorrows, travel-stained pilgrim of the world, But that which hath vexed thee most, hath been the looking for evil; And though calamities have crossed thee, and misery been heaped on thy head, Yet ills that never happened, have chiefly made thee wretched.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Life, Evil, Sorrow

  Martin Farquhar Tupper (1839). “Proverbial philosophy: a book of thoughts and arguments”, p.27

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• From ignorance our comfort flows, the only wretched are the wise

  Samuel Johnson

  Wise, Ignorance, Comfort

  Samuel Johnson (1805). “A Dictionary of the English Language: In which the Words are Deduced from Their Originals, and Illustrated in Their Different Significations, by Examples from the Best Writers, to which are Prefixed a History of the Language, and an English Grammar”, p.692

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• Show me one couple unhappy merely on account of their limited circumstances, and I will show you ten who are wretched from other causes.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Marriage, Couple, Unhappy

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Henry Nelson Coleridge (1851). “Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge”, p.32

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• Fear drives the wretched to prayer

  Seneca the Younger

  Prayer

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• It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideals which have been instilled in them, and each time they come into contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Truth, Real, Youth

  W. Somerset Maugham (2013). “The Essential W. Somerset Maugham Collection”, p.1614, eBookIt.com

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• Most wretched men Are cradled into poetry by wrong: They learn in suffering what they teach in song.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Song, Learning, Men

  'Julian and Maddalo' (1818) l. 544

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• The whole of life is as music and in order to study life we must study it as music. It is not only study, it is also practice which makes man perfect. If someone tells me that a certain person is miserable or wretched or distressed, my answer will be that he is out of tune.

  Hazrat Inayat Khan

  Men, Study Life, Order

  Hazrat Inayat Khan “The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan: The Smiling Forehead”, Library of Alexandria

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• It is not a terrible thing to a wretched soul, when it shall lie roaring perpetually in the flames of hell, and the God of mercy himself shall laugh at them; when...God shall mock them instead of relieving them; when none in heaven or earth can help them but God, and he shall rejoice over them in their calamity

  Richard Baxter

  Lying, Flames, Laughing

  Richard Baxter (1847). “The Practical Works of Richard Baxter; with a Preface, Giving Some Account of the Author, and of this Edition of His Practical Works; an Essay on His Genius, Works, and Times ...”

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• It's such a nice change to get to play a wretched, shallow, mergers-and-acquisitions woman. My true colors come out.

  Sigourney Weaver

  Nice, Color, Play

  "New Again: Sigourney Weaver". Interview with Christopher Durang, www.interviewmagazine.com. July 9, 2012.

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• Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person - ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it. It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

  James A. Baldwin

  Country, Ignorance, Men

  "No Name in the Street". Book by James A. Baldwin, 1972.

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• I have learned never to underestimate the capacity of the human mind and body to regenerate - even when prospects seem most wretched. The life force may be the least understood force on earth.

  Norman Cousins

  Mind, Body, Earth

  Norman Cousins (2016). “Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration”, p.16, Open Road Media

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• The room shall speak, it must catch me up and hold me, I want to feel that I belong here, I want to hearken and know when I go back to the front line that the war will sink down, be drowned utterly in the great home-coming tide, know that it will then be past for ever, and not gnaw us continually, that it will have none but an outward power over us...Nothing stirs; listless and wretched, like a condemned man, I sit there and the past withdraws itself. And at the same time I fear to importune it too much, because I do not know what might happen then. I am a soldier, I must cling to that.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  War, Home, Past

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• Some of you...have never read a Patrick O'Brian novel. I beseech you to start now. Start with Master and Commander, which should be available in paperback from your nearest bookseller. And if he-or she-does not have a copy, then beat the wretched fellow.

  Kevin Myers

  Doe, Masters, Brian

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• My virginity, that from my childhood kept me company, is heavier than I can endure to bear. Forgive me, Cupid, for thou art god, and I a wretched creature: I have sinn'd; but be thou merciful, and grant that yet I may enjoy what thou wilt have me love!

  Francis Beaumont

  Art, Forgive Me, Childhood

  Francis Beaumont (1750). “The Works of Mr. Francis Beaumont and Mr. John Fletcher: In Ten Volumes. Collated with All the Former Editions, and Corrected. With Notes Critical and Explanatory”, p.435

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• Faith is a fruit, work, or gift of the Spirit of God, whereby a poor soul is enabled through the mighty operation of God, in a sense of its sins and wretched estate to lay hold on the righteousness, blood, death, resurrection, ascension, intercession, and coming again of the Son of God which was crucified without the gates of Jerusalem, for eternal life.

  John Bunyan

  Son, Blood, Gifts Of The Spirit

  John Bunyan, George Offor (1862). “The Whole Works of John Bunyan: Accurately Reprinted from the Authors Own Editions ; Wth Editorial Prefaces, Notes, and Life of Bunyan”, p.134

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• We are never either so wretched or so happy as we say we are.

  Honore de Balzac

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• The average Christian is so cold and so contented with His wretched condition that there is no vacuum of desire into which the blessed Spirit can rush in satisfying fullness.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Christian, Blessed, Average

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• Everything that is loved, if it is not loved for His sake then this love is nothing but distress and punishment. Every action that is not performed for His sake then it is wasted and severed. Every heart that does not reach Him is wretched; veiled from achieving its success and happiness.

  Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

  Heart, Love Is, Punishment

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• I am inside someone
  who hates me. I look
  out from his eyes. Smell
  what fouled tunes come in
  to his breath. Love his
  wretched women.

  Amiri Baraka

  Hate, Eye, Smell

  Amiri Baraka (2015). “S O S: Poems 1961-2013”, p.67, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both...Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both.

  Pema Chodron

  Life, Life Is, Glorious

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• America is a new kind of society that produces a new kind of human being. That human being—confident, self-reliant, tolerant, generous, future-oriented—is a vast improvement over the wretched, servile, fatalistic and intolerant human being that traditional societies have always produced.

  Dinesh D'Souza

  Self, America, Improvement

  Dinesh D'Souza (2012). “What's So Great About America”, p.140, Regnery Publishing

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• The people with very hard problems are understood by God. He knows what wretched machines they are trying to drive. Some day he will fling them away and give those people new ones; then they may astonish everyone, for they learned their driving in a hard school. Some of the last will be first and some of the first will be last.

  C. S. Lewis

  Inspirational, School, People

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