Misery Quotes - Page 5

Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race.

Generally the rational brain can override the emotional brain, as long as our fears don’t hijack us. (For example, your fear at being flagged down by the police can turn instantly to gratitude when the cop warns you that there’s an accident ahead.) But the moment we feel trapped, enraged, or rejected, we are vulnerable to activating old maps and to follow their directions. Change begins when we learn to "own" our emotional brains. That means learning to observe and tolerate the heartbreaking and gut-wrenching sensations that register misery and humiliation. Only after learning to bear what is going on inside can we start to befriend, rather than obliterate, the emotions that keep our maps fixed and immutable.

Only you could be more important than what I wanted...what I needed. What I want and what I need is to be with you, and I know I'll never be strong enough to leave again.

She gave him a strange maternal grin.For the first time, clearly, the thought surfaced in Paul Sheldon’s mind: I am introuble here. This woman is not right.

This is an ode to life.The anthem of the world.For as there are billionsof different stars thatmake up the skyso, too, are there billions of different humans thatmake up the Earth.Some shine brighter but all are made ofthe same cosmic dust.O the joy of beingin life with all these people!I speak of differencesbecause they are there.Like the different organsthat make up our bodies.Earth, itself, is one large body.Listen to how it howlswhen one human isin misery.When one kills another, the Earth feels the pang in itschest. When one orgasms, the Earth craves a cigarette.Look carefully,these animals are beauty spots that make the Earth’s face lovelier and more loveable.These oceans are the Earth’s limpid eyes. These trees, its hair.This is an ode to life.The anthem of the world.I will no longer speak of differences, for the similaritiesare larger. Look even closer. There may bedistances between our limbs butthere are no spaces betweenour hearts. We long to be one.We long to be in nature andto run wild with its wildlife.Let us celebrate life and living, for it is sacrilegious to be ungrateful.Let us play and be playful, for it is sacrilegiousto be serious.Let us celebrate imperfectionsand make existenceproud of us, for tomorrow isdeath, and this is an ode to life. The anthem of the world.

What greater evil could you wish a miser than long life?

The false world is full of illusions and misery.

Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.

Anesthesia was discovered. Do you know what it means to relieve man of his pain and suffering? Anesthesia is the most humane of all of man's accomplishments, and what a merciful accomplishment it was. For this great discovery we are indebted to Dr. W. T. G. Morton.Do you know that the religionists opposed the use of anesthesia on the ground that God sent pain as a punishment for sin, and it was considered the greatest of sacrileges to use it—just think of it, a sin to relieve man of his misery! What a monstrous perversion! This one instance alone should convince you of the difference in believing in God or not.No believer in God would have spent his energies to discover anesthesia. He would have been in mortal fear of the wrath of his God for interfering with his 'divine plan,' of making man suffer for having eaten of the fruit of the 'Tree of Knowledge.'The very crux of the matter is in this one instance. Man seeks to relieve his fellow man from the suffering of disease and the pangs of mental agony. The believers in God are content that man's suffering is ordained, and therefore he accepts life and its trials and tribulations as a penance for living.The fear of the wrath of God has been a stumbling block to progress.

I am a solitary wave in the dark and desolate sea: and the sparkling glass I drank was drugged with misery.

Why wait to forgive and let go only after you have sufficiently wallowed in your despair? Why not forgive and let go now?

I'm tired of being responsible for other people's misery. I can't even put up with my own.

Misery loves good company, so if you are surrounded with drama, gossip and fools you may want to consider that you are presently at risk of becoming one of them.

I am glad you are happy--but I never believe much in happiness. I never believe in misery either. Those are things you see on the stage or the screen or the printed page, they never really happen to you in life.

Why are we miserable, when there is music?

Understand this first and foremost that you are the center of your existence; nobody else is responsible. No matter how burdensome it feels, but you alone are responsible. If you accept this truth all sorrow will soon disappear. Because once it is clear that I am making this game, how long will it take you to destroy it?

Those were the three words seldom asked to her.Yet, she knew they hold a healing power in them; For they bring a million thoughts to the mind and more to the soul; For the answer is far deeper than what is simply said on the face.She understood, so she asked him what was seldom asked to her,"How are you?

People are always ashamed of the misery that has befallen them, as though it were an act of divine retribution for a long-forgotten sin of theirs

If peace comes from seeing the whole,then misery stems from a loss of perspective.We begin so aware and grateful. The sun somehow hangs there in the sky. The little bird sings. The miracle of life just happens. Then we stub our toe, and in that moment of pain, the whole world is reduced to our poor little toe. Now, for a day or two, it is difficult to walk. With every step, we are reminded of our poor little toe.Our vigilance becomes: Which defines our day—the pinch we feel in walking on a bruised toe, or the miracle still happening?It is the giving over to smallness that opens us to misery. In truth, we begin taking nothing for granted, grateful that we have enough to eat, that we are well enough to eat. But somehow, through the living of our days, our focus narrows like a camera that shutters down, cropping out the horizon, and one day we’re miffed at a diner because the eggs are runny or the hash isn’t seasoned just the way we like.When we narrow our focus, the problem seems everything. We forget when we were lonely, dreaming of a partner. We forget first beholding the beauty of another. We forget the comfort of first being seen and held and heard. When our view shuts down, we’re up in the night annoyed by the way our lover pulls the covers or leaves the dishes in the sink without soaking them first.In actuality, misery is a moment of suffering allowed to become everything. So, when feeling miserable, we must look wider than what hurts. When feeling a splinter, we must, while trying to remove it, remember there is a body that is not splinter, and a spirit that is not splinter, and a world that is not splinter.

She deigned to asked me how ice queens reproduce. I grinned, and her mother looked horrified.“We procreate by way of ice cubes, of course. We put them in our nests and let them incubate for the period of about four months, and when the temperature is right, we put them out to roost and let them flake off into billions of snowflakes, rather like tadpoles breaking in droves from their eggs. And that, child,” I said, with a simulacrum of glee, “is how winter is born.”“Does it hurt?”“No more than the approach of Monday does to most of the world. It is a natural process, you understand, but it is dreadful hard work.

Hold it right there. The only agreement we ever had was that you intended to make me as miserable as possible, and I intended to courageously make the best of an intolerable situation like valiant Southern women have always done.

When you are deep in misery, you reach out to those who can help, people who can understand.

Maybe awful things is how God speaks to us, Vernon thought, trudging up the lightless tunnel. Maybe folks don’t trust in good things no more. Maybe awful things is all God’s got to remind us he’s alive. Maybe war is God come to life in men. Vernon pushed on toward the light of day. He stepped out onto the ledge and into the heat, and it felt like leaving a theater after the matinee had shown a sad film, the glare of sunshine after the darkness far too real to suffer.

Misery teaches you the value of joy. It reveals to you the gravitas of human life.

It'd felt good to be part of an "us," with the same thoughts, the same feelings, the same miseries.

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more.

You see, Mersualt, all the misery and cruelty of our civilisation can be measured by this one stupid axiom: happy nations have no history.

You are too kind, and I am unused to it. For your own sake, do not stroke my misery. It knows not how to respond, but with a vicious bite.

It doesn’t matter whether you are looking for a reason to be happy or sad, you will always find it.

Either enjoy happiness or enjoy misery. The choice is yours.

I had to ask myself why I'm continuing to engage in behavior I knew hurt. What was my payoff? Did it confirm my belief I was not enough? Did I think I needed to suffer? Did I think I could save him? Why not save myself instead? What a miserable realization that I knew all of this yet failed to take action.

Misery is a river of tears that whispers my name in a constant hiss.

Pain and suffering are inevitable in our lives, but misery is an option

Misery suffered did not justify misery to come.

Despite all the sadness, violence and misery, I still believe in universal peace, goodness, and beauty of humanity.

But somebody else had spoken Snape’s name, quite softly.“Severus . . .”The sound frightened Harry beyond anything he had experienced all evening. For the first time, Dumbledore was pleading.Snape gazed for a moment at Dumbledore, and there was revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of his face.“Severus . . . please . . .”Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore.t”A jet of green light shot from the end of Snape’s wand and hit Dumbledore squarely in the chest. Harry’s scream of horror never left him; silent and unmoving, he was forced to watch as Dumbledore was blasted into the air. For a split second, he seemed to hang suspended beneath the shining skull, and then he fell slowly backward, like a great rag doll, over the battlements and out of sight.

A little misery, at times, makes one appreciate happiness more.

It was hope that was the problem. Hoping feelings wouldn't be hurt, hoping love would blossom, that was painful. But committing yourself to misery, that was just a dead feeling. It was pulling the Band-Aid and embracing the pain.

The misery and greatness of this world: it offers no truths, but only objects for love. Absurdity is king, but love saves us from it.

At times we feel outnumbered in our attempts to improve the world—to brighten and beautify, to preserve and heal and do what’s best for humanity. Selfless efforts can start to feel beleaguering, discouraging, even pointless with so little support. It is at these times I remind myself that I would rather be the last Good Samaritan standing than to join the ranks of selfish multitudes creating misery.

You are young, and in love," said Primus. "Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.

The misery of the moment.

Love is responsible for nearly every kind of insanity in the world though greed, vanity, and pure meanness contribute their portion to general misery.

«I’ve never been to a funeral until today. I see dazzling arrangements of red, yellow, and purple flowers with long, green stems. I see a stained-glass window with a white dove, a yellow sun, a blue sky. I see a gold cross, standing tall, shiny, brilliant. And I see black. Black dresses. Black pants. Black shoes. Black bibles. Black is my favorite color. Jackson asked me about it one time.“Ava, why don’t you like pink? Or yellow? Or blue?” ”I love black,” I said. ”It suits me.” ”I suit you,” he said. I’m not so sure I love black anymore.And then, beyond the flowers, beneath the stained-glass window, beside the cross, I see the white casket. I see red, burning love disappear forever. As we pull away, my eyes stay glued to the casket. It’s proof that sometimes life does not go on. I look around. If tears could bring him back, there’d be enough to bring him back a hundred times. That’s not what I’m thinking. I’m thinking, I hate good-byes. It’s like I was a garden salad with a light vinaigrette, and Jackson was a platter of seafood Cajun pasta. Alone, we were good. Together, we were fantastic.Memories might keep him alive. But they might kill me.»

So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not. they err who would assert that invariable this is owing to the inherent selfishness of the human heart. It rather proceeds from a certain hopelessness of remedying excessive and organic ill. To a sensitive being, pity is not seldom pain. An when at last it is perceived that such pity cannot lead to effectual succor, common sense bides the soul be rid of it.

Are you what is called a lucky man? Well, you are sad every day. Each day has its great grief or its little care...Hardly one day in a hundred of unbroken joy and sunshine. And you are of that small number who at lucky! As for the other men, stagnant night is upon them.

And then, a strangely comforting thought trickled through me—I had nothing, so I could do anything now. Anything I wanted. I had nothing left to lose.

All that hatred down there," he said, "all that hatred and misery and love. It's a wonder it doesn't blow the avenue apart.

The dead person once had a life! This is a misery?

People talk about the courage of condemned men walking to the place of execution: sometimes it needs as much courage to walk with any kind of bearing towards another person's habitual misery.

The reason authors almost always put a dedication on a book is, because their selfishness even horrifies themselves in the end.

Sometimes he wondered if he did these things just to test himself. To see if the feelings had gone. But they had not. When he saw her, he wanted to be with her; when he was with her, he ached to touch her; when he touched even her hand, he wanted to embrace her. He wanted to feel her against him the way he had in the attic. He wanted to know the taste of her skin and the smell of her hair. He wanted to make her laugh. He wanted to sit and listen to her talk about books until his ears fell off. But all these things he could not want, because they were things he could not have, and wanting what you could not have led to misery and madness.

Sometimes it's hard not to let other people's misery seep into your own bones.

Bored with the same type of misery over and over and over again.

It is better to stay single and wait for the one that makes sense then to marry someone that makes absolutely no sense. The moment you settle is when the one person that makes all the sense in the world shows up and Satan sits back and enjoys your spiritual meltdown.

When a fine old carpet is eaten by mice, the colors and patterns of what's left behind do not change,' wrote my neighbor and friend, the poet Jane Hirschfield, after she visited an old friend suffering from Alzheimer's disease in a nursing home. And so it was with my father. His mind did not melt evenly into undistinguishable lumps, like a dissolving sand castle. It was ravaged selectively, like Tintern Abbey, the Cistercian monastery in northern Wales suppressed in 1531 by King Henry VIII in his split with the Church of Rome. Tintern was turned over to a nobleman, its stained-glass windows smashed, its roof tiles taken up and relaid in village houses. Holy artifacts were sold to passing tourists. Religious statues turned up in nearby gardens. At least one interior wall was dismantled to build a pigsty.I've seen photographs of the remains that inspired Wordsworth: a Gothic skeleton, soaring and roofless, in a green hilly landscape. Grass grows in the transept. The vanished roof lets in light. The delicate stone tracery of its slim, arched quatrefoil windows opens onto green pastures where black-and-white cows graze. Its shape is beautiful, formal, and mysterious. After he developed dementia, my father was no longer useful to anybody. But in the shelter of his broken walls, my mother learned to balance her checkbook, and my heart melted and opened. Never would I wish upon my father the misery of his final years. But he was sacred in his ruin, and I took from it the shards that still sustain me.

I, a miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to enjoyment.

If you are miserable you grow in misery and if you are joyful you grow in joy.

When you feel unsatisfied in your life, you must immediately take action to change your perspective, thoughts, and activity. If you stay longer than necessary in your unhappy state you will find yourself sinking deeper and deeper into misery. Fortunately, no matter how deep you fall into dissatisfaction you will always be able to change your life for the better through positive action.

But somebody else had spoken Snape’s name, quite softly.“Severus . . .”The sound frightened Harry beyond anything he had experienced all evening. For the first time, Dumbledore was pleading.Snape gazed for a moment at Dumbledore, and there was revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of his face.“Severus . . . please . . .”Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumble