Wretched Quotes - Page 16

• The wretched Artist himself is alternatively the lowest worm that ever crawled when no fire is in him; or the loftiest God that ever sand when the fire is going.

  Caitlin Thomas

  Art, Fire, Sand

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• Mankind may amuse themselves with theoretic systems of liberty... but we can only discern its true value by the practical and wretched effects of slavery.

  Mercy Otis Warren

  Liberty, Slavery, May

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• My first few weeks in America are always miserable, because the tastes I am cursed with are all of a kind that cannot be gratified here, and I am not enough in sympathy with our gross public to make up for the lack on the aesthetic side. One's friends are delightful; but we are none of us Americans, we don't think or feel as the Americans do, we are the wretched exotics produced in a European glass-house, the most displaced and useless class on earth!

  Edith Wharton

  Thinking, Class, America

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• If God be my friend, I cannot be wretched.

  Ovid

  God, My Friends, Ifs

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• Day, night, late, early,
  At home, abroad, alone, in company,
  Waking or sleeping, still my care hath been
  To have her match'd; and having now provided
  A gentleman of princely parentage,
  Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train'd,
  Stuff'd, as they say, with honourable parts,
  Proportion'd as one's thought would wish a man-
  And then to have a wretched puling fool,
  A whining mammet, in her fortune's tender,
  To answer 'I'll not wed, I cannot love;
  I am too young, I pray you pardon me'!

  William Shakespeare

  Home, Sleep, Night

  William Shakespeare, George Steevens, Isaac Reed, Samuel Johnson (1813). “The Plays of William Shakspeare: In Twenty-one Volumes. With the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators. To which are Added Notes”, p.184

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• There are but three ways for the populace to escape its wretched lot. The first two are by the routes of the wine-shop or the church; the third is by that of the social revolution.

  Mikhail Bakunin

  Wine, Two, Church

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• I am a restless soul hungry perhaps wretched.

  Bob Dylan

  Soul, Hungry, Restless

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• We turn our backs on nature; we are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies have a smell of the office clinging to them, and the blood that trickles from them is the color of printer's ink.

  Albert Camus

  Blood, Color, Smell

  Albert Camus (2012). “The Myth of Sisyphus: And Other Essays”, p.189, Vintage

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• Nothing is more detestable to the physical anthropologist than... the wretched habit of cremating the dead. It involves not only a prodigal waste of costly fuel and excellent fertilizer, but also the complete destruction of physical historical data. On the other hand, the custom of embalming and mummification is most praiseworthy and highly to be recommended.

  Earnest Hooton

  Hands, Data, Historical

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• I am surrounded by some sort of wretched specters, not by people. They torment me as can torment only senseless visions, bad dreams, dregs of delirium, the drivel of nightmares and everything that passes down here for real life.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Dream, Real, People

  Vladimir Nabokov (2012). “Invitation to a Beheading”, p.29, Penguin UK

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• This wretched brain gave way, and I became a wreck at random driven, without one glimpse of reason or heaven.

  Thomas Moore

  Heaven, Brain, Glimpse

  Thomas Moore (1842). “Lalla Rookh: An Oriental Romance”, p.90

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• Lying on stained, wretched sheets with a bleeding virgin We could plan a murder Or start a religion.

  Jim Morrison

  Lying, Bleeding, Murder

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• Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.

  Oscar Wilde

  Wise, Philosophy, Men

  Oscar wilde (1943). “The Happy Prince and Other Tales (Illustrated)”, p.14, LCI

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• Anyone who does not see the vanity of the world is very vain himself. So who does not see it, apart from young people whose lives are all noise, diversions, and thoughts for the future? But take away their diversion and you will see them bored to extinction. Then they feel their nullity without recognizing it, for nothing could be more wretched than to be intolerably depressed as soon as one is reduced to introspection with no means of diversion.

  Blaise Pascal

  Mean, Vanity, People

  Blaise Pascal (2008). “Human Happiness”, Penguin Group USA

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• He looked resigned, as though he knew that wretched door--to where? Home? Heaven? Peace?--would never open, and at the same time he seemed resolved, ready to do his bit even though he couldn't possibly know what sacrifices that would require. Had he been kept here, too--in a place he didn't belong, serving in a war in which he hadn't enlisted, to rescue sparrows and soldiers and shopgirls and Shakespeare? To tip the balance?

  Connie Willis

  War, Home, Sacrifice

  Connie Willis (2010). “All Clear”, p.635, Spectra

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• I turn to right and left, in all the earth I see no signs of justice, sense or worth: A man does evil deeds, and all his days Are filled with luck and universal praise; Another's good in all he does - he dies A wretched, broken man whom all despise.

  Abolqasem Ferdowsi

  Men, Evil, Broken

  Abolqasem Ferdowsi (2006). “Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings”, p.289, Penguin

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• When the rich and well-established, who should be generous, are instead spiteful and cruel, they make their behavior wretched and base in spite of their wealth and position. When the intellectually brilliant, who should be reserved, instead show off, they are ignorant and foolish in their weakness in spite of their brilliance.

  Zicheng Hong

  Ignorant, Taoism, Weakness

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• A socialist is just someone who is unable to get over his or her astonishment that most people who have lived and died have spent lives of wretched, fruitless, unremitting toil.

  Terry Eagleton

  People, Toil, Astonishment

  Terry Eagleton (1991). “Ideology: An Introduction”, p.82, Verso

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• My wretched dragon is perplexed.

  William Butler Yeats

  Inspirational, Life, Dragons

  William Butler Yeats (2000). “The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats”, p.148, Wordsworth Editions

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• Under Bernie Sanders, Western workers would definitely do much better, but the rest of the world, the "wretched of the Earth" would still have to pay the bill.

  Andre Vltchek

  World, Earth, Pay

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness... and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

  Blaise Pascal

  Sports, Men, Play

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• It was a somber place, haunted by old jokes and lost laughter. Life, as I discovered, holds no more wretched occupation than trying to make the English laugh.

  Malcolm Muggeridge

  Laughter, Laughing, Trying

  Malcolm Muggeridge, Ian Hunter (2003). “The Very Best of Malcolm Muggeridge”, p.133, Regent College Publishing

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• I think the biggest mistake I made was this wretched ability to see both sides of an argument.

  John Major

  Mistake, Thinking, Sides

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• The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.

  Samuel Johnson

  Strong, Compassion, Principles

  Samuel Johnson (1836). “Johnsoniana; or supplement to Boswell; being Anecdotes and sayings of Dr. Johnson, etc”, p.108

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• My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it's bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad.

  Jack Kerouac

  Wisdom, Eye, Mad

  Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.256, Penguin

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