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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Problems are inevitable. Misery is a choice.

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.

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

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.

He who doesn’t have the spirit of his time, has all its misery.

If God made the world, I would not be that God, for the misery of the world would break my heart.

Pain is inevitable. Misery is optional

There is winning and there is misery.

The misery we inflict on sentient beings slackens our human evolution.

So great is the compassion excited in Mary by our misery, and such is the love that she bears us, that she prays constantly, and relaxes not her efforts in our behalf.

With the introduction of agriculture mankind entered upon a long period of meanness, misery, and madness, from which they are only now being freed by the beneficent operation of the machine.

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

The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way. Greed has poisoned men’s souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

No scene in sacred history ever gladdens the soul like the scene on Calvary. Nowhere does the soul find such consolation as on that very spot where misery reigned, where woe triumphed, where agony reached its climax.

To those who can hear me, I say, do not despair. The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress.