Wretchedness Quotes - Page 2

• The great have private feelings of their own, to which the interests of humanity and justice must curtsy. Their interests are so far from being the same as those of the community, that they are in direct and necessary opposition to them; their power is at the expense of OUR weakness; their riches of OUR poverty; their pride of OUR degradation; their splendour of OUR wretchedness; their tyranny of OUR servitude.

  William Hazlitt

  Pride, Justice, Community

  William Hazlitt (2015). “Delphi Collected Works of William Hazlitt (Illustrated)”, p.411, Delphi Classics

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• When we hear complaints of the wretchedness or vanity of human life, the proper answer to them would be that there is hardly any one who at some point or other has not been in love. If we consider the high abstraction of this feeling, its depth, its purity, its voluptuous refinement, even in the meanest breast, how sacred and how sweet it is, this alone may reconcile us to the lot of humanity. That drop of balm turns the bitter cup to a delicious nectar.

  William Hazlitt

  Love, Sweet, Vanity

  William Hazlitt (1871). “The Round Table. A collection of Essays ... By W. H. and Leigh Hunt”, p.507

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• Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of the earth is multiform.

  Matt LeBlanc

  Earth, Misery, Manifold

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• We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery.-Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably awaits them, if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Justice, Humanity, Honor

  Bernard Mayo, Thomas Jefferson (1988). “Jefferson Himself: The Personal Narrative of a Many-Sided American”, p.55, University of Virginia Press

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• Christ pitied because He loved, because He saw through all the wretchedness, and darkness, and bondage of evil; that there was in every human soul a possibility of repentance, of restoration; a germ of good, which, however stifled and overlaid, yet was capable of recovery, of health, of freedom, of perfection.

  Arthur Penrhyn Stanley

  Recovery, Evil, Perfection

  "Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers" by Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, (p. 58), 1895.

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• Mythological subjects always new. Modern subjects difficult because of the absence of the nude and the wretchedness of modern costume.

  Eugene Delacroix

  Costumes, Absence, Modern

  "Journal of Delacroix". Book by Hubert Wellington, translated by Lucy Norton, p.338, 1980.

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• This merely formal conceiving of the facts of one's own wretchedness is at the same time a departure from them--placing them in the object. It is not idle, therefore, to observe reflexively that in that very Thought, one has separated himself from them, and is no longer that which empirically he still sees himself to be.

  William Ernest Hocking

  Facts, Departure, Formal

  William Ernest Hocking, Ph.D. (1912). “The Meaning of God in Human Experience”

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• The problem for a Paracelsian physician like me is that I see diseases as disguises in which people present me with their wretchedness.

  Robertson Davies

  People, Physicians, Disease

  Robertson Davies (1996). “The Cunning Man”, Penguin Group USA

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• I promise to crush Israel and return it to the humiliation and wretchedness of the Koran.

  Anwar Sadat

  Crush, Israel, Promise

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• Tobacco is a culture productive of infinite wretchedness.

  Thomas Jefferson

  President, Culture, Infinite

  Thomas Jefferson, Andrew M. Allison (1983). “The Real Thomas Jefferson”, Natl Center for Constitutional

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• Past happiness augments present wretchedness.

  Publilius Syrus

  Happiness, Past, Past Happiness

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• Love is not always blind and there are few things that cause greater wretchedness than to love with all your heart someone who you know is unworthy of love.

  W. Somerset Maugham

  Love, Heart, Who You Know

  W. Somerset Maugham (1954). “Mr. Maugham Himself”

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• All acts suppose certain dispositions, and habits of mind and heart, which may be in themselves states of enjoyment or of wretchedness, and which must be fruitful in other consequences besides those particular acts.

  John Stuart Mill

  Heart, Mind, May

  John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, John Troyer (2003). “The Classical Utilitarians: Bentham and Mill”, p.258, Hackett Publishing

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• What a misfortune it isto be bornawoman!? Why seek for knowledge, which can prove only that our wretchedness is irremediable? If a ray of light break in upon us, it is but to make darkness more visible; to show usthenew limits, the Gothic structure, theimpenetrable barriers of our prison.

  Maria Edgeworth

  Light, Darkness, Rays

  1806 Leonora, letter 1.

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• It is indeed strange that with all the knowledge we have gained in the past hundred years we preserve and practice the methods of an ancient and barbarous world in our dealing with crime. So long as this is observed and exercised there can be no change except to heap more cruelties and more wretchedness upon those who are the victims of our foolish system.

  Clarence Darrow

  Past, Practice, Years

  Clarence Darrow (2015). “The Story of My Life”, p.93, Lulu.com

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• It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility

  George Santayana

  Men, Easy, Unhappiness

  George Santayana (1934). “Little essays drawn from the writings of George Santayana”, p.85, Рипол Классик

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• Without the knowledge of our wretchedness, the knowledge of God creates pride. With it, the knowledge of God creates despair. The knowledge of Christ offers a third way, because in him we find both God and our wretchedness.

  Blaise Pascal

  Hope, Pride, Despair

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• You had better all die - die immediately, than live as slaves and entail your wretchedness upon your posterity.

  Henry Highland Garnet

  Slave, Dies, Posterity

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• If a [democratic] society displays less brilliance than an aristocracy, there will also be less wretchedness; pleasures will be less outrageous and wellbeing will be shared by all; the sciences will be on a smaller scale but ignorance will be less common; opinions will be less vigorous and habits gentler; you will notice more vices and fewer crimes.

  Alexis de Tocqueville

  Ignorance, Vices, Aristocracy

  "Democracy in America". Book by Alexis de Tocqueville. Introduction, 1835.

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• What a mistake those who do not hope make! Judas made a huge blunder the day in which he sold Christ for 30 denarii, but he made an even bigger one when he thought that his sin was too great to be forgiven. No sin is too big: any wretchedness, however great, can always be enclosed in infinite mercy.

  Pope John Paul I

  Mistake, Sin, Infinite

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• Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us.

  Pema Chodron

  Inspire, Needs

  Pema Chodron (2008). “The Pocket Pema Chodron”, p.71, Shambhala Publications

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• To set one's name to a work gives no one a title to be remembered, for who knows how many of the best of men have gone without a trace? The iniquity of oblivion blindly scatters her poppyseed and when wretchedness falls upon us one summer's day like snow, all we wish for is to be forgotten.

  W. G. Sebald

  Summer, Fall, Men

  W. G. Sebald (2016). “The Rings of Saturn”, p.18, New Directions Publishing

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• I envy the poet. He is encouraged toward drunkenness and wallows with nubile wenches while the painter must endure wretchedness and pain for his art.

  Rembrandt

  Art, Pain, Envy

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• Every child has the spirit of creation. The rubbish of life often exterminates the spirit through plague and a souls own wretchedness.

  Peter Paul Rubens

  Children, Soul, Rubbish

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• The purpose of the whole [the Comedy] and of this portion [the Paradiso] is to remove those who are living in this life from the state of wretchedness, and to lead them to the state of blessedness.

  Dante Alighieri

  Life, Work, Purpose

  "The Divine Comedy".

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