29 Misery Quotes

Fate often puts all the material for happiness and prosperity into a man's hands just to see how miserable he can make himself with them.

No small misery is caused by overworked and unhappy people, in the dark views which they necessarily take up themselves, and force upon others, of work itself.

There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.

What am I in the eyes of most people - a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person - somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then - even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart. That is my ambition, based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me. I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages, in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.

What is so painful about that time is that nothing was disastrous. It was all wrong, ugly, unhappy and coloured with cynicism, but nothing was tragic, there were no moments that could change anything or anybody. From time to time the emotional lightning flashed and showed a landscape of private misery, and then - we went on dancing.

But now well democracy has shown us that what is evil are the grosses tetes, the big heads, all big heads are greedy for money and power, they are ambitious that is the reason they are big heads and so they are at the head of the government and the result is misery for the people. They talk about cutting off the heads of the grosses tetes but now we know that there will be other grosses tetes and the will be all the same. (New York: Liveright, 1970, p. 28)

That's what misery is, Nothing to have at heart. It is to have or nothing. It is a thing to have, A lion, an ox in his breast, To feel it breathing there. Corazon, stout dog, Young ox, bow-legged bear, He tastes its blood, not spit. He is like a man In the body of a violent beast. Its muscles are his own... The lion sleeps in the sun. Its nose is on its paws. It can kill a man.

The United States seems destined by Providence to plague the American continent with misery in the name of liberty. (1829)

By what right, moreover, could a Christian or a Marxist accuse me, for example, of pessimism? I was not the one to invent the misery of the human being or the terrifying formulas of divine malediction.

A still small voice spake unto me, 'Thou art so full of misery, Were it not better not to be?' Then to the still small voice I said; 'Let me not cast in endless shade What is so wonderfully made.'

Change isn't easy, Micky. Changing the way you live means changing the way you think. Changing the way you think means changing what you believe about life. That's hard, sweetie. When we make our own misery, we sometimes cling to it even when we want so bad to change, because the misery is something we know. The misery is comfortable.

'I've got a few good friends, a big house and I can go wherever I want whenever I want... but the more money you make the more miserable you get. It just so happens that I have a lot of money.'

Among all creatures that breathe on earth and crawl on it there is not anywhere a thing more dismal than man is.

France is miserable because it is filled with Frenchmen, and Frenchmen are miserable because they live in France.

Christians talk about the horror of sin, but they have overlooked something. They keep talking as if everyone were a great sinner, when the truth is that nowadays one is hardly up to it. There is very little sin in the depths of the malaise. The highest moment of a malaisian's life can be the moment when he manages to sin like a proper human (Look at us, Binx--my vagabond friends as good as cried out to me--we're sinning! We're succeeding! We're human after all!) [citation needed]

Ah! Whither, whither shall I fly, A poor unhappy Maid; To hopeless Love and Misery By my own Heart betray'd?

So I'm askin -- before I lay me down to sleep/Before you judge me, look at all the shit you did to me, my misery

Where is the end to all my misery, is there a close?/I suppose that's why I murder my foes, when thugs cry

France is miserable because it is filled with Frenchmen, and Frenchmen are miserable because they live in France.

The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief... So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies.

The sense of unhappiness is so much easier to convey than that of happiness. In misery we seem aware of our own existence, even though it may be in the form of a monstrous egotism: this pain of mine is individual, this nerve that winces belong to me and to no other. But happiness annihilates us: we lose our identity.