Browsing Topic Best Misery Quotes

There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery.

Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.

There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery.

Prayer is an earnest and familiar talking with God, to whom we declare all our miseries, whose support and help we implore and desire in our adversities, and whom we laud and praise for our benefits received. So that prayer contains the exposition of our sorrows, the desire of God’s defence, and the praising of His magnificent name, as the Psalms of David clearly do teach.

For real happiness, for real lasting stable happiness, one has to make a journey deep within oneself and see that one gets rid of all the unhappiness and misery stored in the deeper levels of the mind.

Anarchism is the abolition of exploitation and oppression of man by man, that is, the abolition of private property and government; Anarchism is the destruction of misery, of superstitions, of hatred. Therefore, every blow given to the institutions of private property and to the government, every exaltation of the conscience of man, every disruption of the present conditions, every lie unmasked, every part of human activity taken away from the control of the authorities, every augmentation of the spirit of solidarity and initiative, is a step towards Anarchism.

Remember, no more effort is required to aim high in life, to demand abundance and prosperity, than is required to accept misery and poverty.

A person who’s happy will make others happy; a person who has courage and faith will never die in misery.

Religion is based … mainly upon fear … fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand. My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.

Chastity is a monkish and evangelical superstition, a greater foe to natural temperance even than unintellectual sensuality; it strikes at the root of all domestic happiness, and consigns more than half of the human race to misery.

There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.

Actual happiness always looks pretty squalid in comparison with the over-compensations for misery.

The white man’s happiness cannot be purchased by the black man’s misery.

Look at your own experiences; your bliss from success never lasts, nor does your misery from failure

I haven’t a single friend; I must live alone. But well I know that God is nearer to me than to the others of my art; I associate with Him without fear, I have always recognized and understood Him, and I have no fear for my music, it can meet no evil fate. Those who understand it must become free from all the miseries that the others drag with them.

Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclined to severity. Witness conquerors and monks! It is mediocrity alone, and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.

Do nothing in a depressed mood, nor as one afflicted, nor as thinking that you are in misery, for no one compels you to that.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

Prayer is helplessness casting itself on Power, infirmity leaning on Strength, misery reaching to Mercy, and a prisoner clamoring for Relief.

Speciesism is a failure to empathize with those outside one’s group. In general, speciesists simply disregard the myriad nonhumans whom humans intentionally hurt and kill. Who cares if millions of mice and rats are vivisected? They’re ‘only rodents’. What does it matter if billions of chickens live in misery until they die in pain and fear? They’re ‘just chickens’. They aren’t human, so they don’t count. Victimizers lack empathy for their victims, but absence of empathy doesn’t justify victimization, whether the victims are human or nonhuman.

I am against conversion (to Buddhism). In my speech at UN, the first thing I said was that I am for conversion, but not from one organised religion to another, but from misery to happiness, from bondage to liberation.

The only conversion involved in Vipassana is from misery to happiness, from bondage to liberation.

This misery that I am suffering is of my own doing, and that very thing proves that it will have to be undone by me alone.

Misery is when you live only for yourself. Happy is when you live for others.

Problems are inevitable. Misery is a choice.

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so.

Plainly, this unwillingness to give ground even on unimportant disagreements is the symptom of some deepseated insecurity, as was my one-time fondness for making teasing remarks (which I amended when I read Anthony Powell’s matter-of-fact observation that teasing is an unfailing sign of misery within) and as is my very pronounced impatience. The struggle, therefore, is to try and cultivate the virtuous side of these shortcomings: to be a genial host while only slightly whiffled, for example, or to be witty at the expense of one’s own weaknesses instead of those of other people.

To drink for pleasure may be a distraction, but to drink from misery is always a danger.

It is a basic human need that everyone wants to live a happy life. For this, one has to experience real happiness. The so-called happiness that one experiences by having money, power, and indulging in sensual pleasures is not real happiness. It is very fragile, unstable and fleeting. For real happiness, for lasting stable happiness, one has to make a journey deep within oneself and get rid of all the unhappiness stored in the deeper levels of the mind. As long as there is misery at the depth of the mind all attempts to feel happy at the surface level of the mind prove futile.

Rather than converting people from one organised religion to another organised religion, we should try to convert people from misery to happiness, from bondage to liberation and from cruelty to compassion.

The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.

We are inclined to call things by the wrong names. We call prosperity ‘happiness’, and adversity ‘misery’ eventhough adversity is the school of wisdom and often the way to eternal happiness.

The character structure of modern man, who reproduces a six-thousand-year-old patriarchal authoritarian culture is typified by characterological armoring against his inner nature and against the social misery which surrounds him. This characterolgical armoring of the character is the basis of isolation, indigence, craving for authority, fear of responsibility, mystic longing, sexual misery, and neurotically impotent rebelliousness.