Best Misery Quotes

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

Supreme happiness will be the greatest cause of misery, and the perfection of wisdom the occassion of folly.

Our epoch has been called the century of work. It is in fact the century of pain, misery and corruption.

There is hardly any mental misery worse than that of having our own serious phrases, our own rooted beliefs, caricatured by a charlatan or a hireling.

Extreme happiness invites religion almost as much as extreme misery.

the leading error of the human mind, – the bane of human happiness – the perverter of human virtue … is Religion – that dark coinage of trembling ignorance! It is Religion – that poisoner of human felicity! It is Religion – that blind guide of human reason! It is Religion – that dethroner of human virtue! which lies at the root of all the evil and all the misery that pervade the world!

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.

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

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.

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.

Pain is inevitable. Misery is optional

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

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.

The main vice of capitalism is the uneven distribution of prosperity. The main vice of socialism is the even distribution of misery.

Here is a thing which the more you fear and avoid it the nearer you approach to it, and this is misery; the more you flee from it the more miserable and restless you will become.

I’m the author of my own misery.

My life has run from misery to happiness.

It is misery, you know, unspeakable misery for the man who lives alone and who detests sordid, casual affairs; not old enough to do without women, but not young enough to be able to go and look for one without shame!

Can princes born in palaces be sensible of the misery of those who dwell in cottages?

I think of myself as quite a confused kind of person, because I think there’s so many great things about the world, but there are so many awful things too. I feel very guilty a lot of the time about enjoying my life so much when there are people living in such misery.

If we cannot meet our everyday surroundings with equanimity and pleasure and grow each day in some useful direction, then… life is on the road toward misfortune, misery and destruction.

Every day starts, my eyes open and I reload the program of misery. I open my eyes, remember who I am, what I’m like, and I just go, ‘Ugh’.

Religion urges us to fight evil as contrary to the Divine Law. It urges us to combat abject misery, sin and disease because God is. In His name we can work, as we believe in co-operation with Him, since through Him goodness must ultimately prevail.

Whoever prefers life to death, happiness to suffering, well-being to misery must defend without compromise private ownership in the means of production.

Capitalism, racism and inhuman technocracy quietly develop in their own way. The causes of misery are no longer to be found in the inner attitudes of men, but have long been institutionalized.

Despair puts the last touch not only to our misery but also to our weakness.

I can’t get divorced because I’m a Catholic. Catholics don’t get divorced. They stay together through anger and hatred and festering misery, just like God intended.