misery

We get richer and richer in filthier and filthier communities until we reach a final stage of affluent miseryöa crocus on a garbage heap.

—Gardner,JohnWilliam

Amid the wreck and the misery of nations it is our just exaltation that we have continued superior to all that ambition or despotism could effect; and our still higher exaltation ought to be that we provide not only for our own safety but hold out a prospect for nations now bending under the yoke of tyranny of what the exertions of a free people can effect.

—Pitt,William known as  theYounger

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.

—Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam

Equality of condition is incompatible with civilization, and is found only to exist in those communities that are but slightly removed from the savage state. In practice, it can only mean a common misery.

—Cooper,James Fenimore

But thesouls of therighteous are inthehand of God, and there shall no torment touch them. In the sight of the unwise they seemed to die: and their departure is taken for misery, And their going from us to be utter destruction: but theyare in peace. For though they be punished in the sight of men, yet is their hope full of immortality. And having beena little chastised,theyshall be greatly rewarded: for God proved them, and found them worthy for himself.

—Bible (Apocrypha)

   Friends love misery, in fact. Sometimes, especially if we aretooluckyor toosuccessfulor toopretty, ourmisery is the only thing that endears us to our friends.

—Jong, Erica ne¤  e Mann

Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained.

—Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of

So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating heartsand living affections,onlyassomany things belonging tothemasteröso long asthefailure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless miseryand toilöso long is it impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best-regulated administration of slavery.

—Stowe, Harriet (Elizabeth) ne¤  e Beecher

Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as earlyas you can, And don't have any kids yourself.

—Larkin, Philip Arthur

Man that isbornof a womanhath but a short timeto live, and is full of misery.

—Book of Common Prayer

And Isaid,My strengthand my hope isperished fromthe L: Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall.

—Bible (Old Testament)

But say That death be not one stroke, as I supposed, Bereaving sense, but endless misery From this day onward, which I feel begun Both in me, and without me, and so last To perpetuity; ay me, that fear Comes thund'ring back with dreadful revolution On my defenceless head; both Death and I Am found eternal, and incorporate both, Nor I on my part single, in me all Paradise Lost Posterity stands cursed: fair patrimony That I must leave ye, sons; O were I able To waste it all myself, and leave ye none!

—Milton,John

Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.

—Drabble, Margaret

   The misery of us, that are born great, We are forced to woo because none dare woo us.

—Webster,John

For she was suffering that misery peculiar to the young, that they are going to be cheated by circumstances out of the full life every nerve and instinct is clamouring for.

—Lessing, Doris May ne¤  e Tayler

All the immediate checks to populationöseem to be resolvable into moral restraint, vice and misery.

—Malthus,Thomas Robert

Depend upon it, said he, that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery, there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

—Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson

   He nursed the feelings these dull scenes produce, And loved to stop beside the opening sluice; Where the small stream, confined in narrow bound, Ran with a dull, unvaried, sad'ning sound; Where all presented to the eye or ear, Oppressed the soul! with misery, grief, and fear.

—Crabbe, George

But pain is perfect misery, the worst Of evils, and excessive, overturns All patience.

—Milton,John

All other parts remaining as they were, And they, so perfect in their misery, Not once perceive their foul disfigurement, But boast themselves more comely than before And all their friends, and native home forget To roll with pleasure in a sensual sty.

—Milton,John

It would be hard to find a single instance of a direct assault by positive effort upon poverty, vice, and misery which has not either failed or, if it has not failed directly and entirely, has not entailed other evils greater than the one which it removed.

—Sumner,William Graham

Los servidores acumulan los privilegios de la miseria†conservan los instrumentos de la venganza porque van acumulando en sus manos a¤  speras y verrugosas esa otra mitad de sus patrones, la mitad in u¤ til, descartada, lo sucio y lo feo que ellos†les han ido entregando con el insulto de cada enagua gastada que les regalan. Servants accumulate the privileges of misery† They save up the instruments of vengeance because their coarse warty hands collect, bit by bit, that other side of their employersöthe useless, discarded side, the filth and the sordidness that†they've been putting into their servants' hands with the insult of each shabby skirt they gave them.

—Dostoevsky, Fyodor Mikhailovich

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

—Washington Bailey

The lower still I fall, only supreme In misery; such joy ambition finds.

—Milton,John

Nessun maggior dolore, Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria. There is no greater pain than to remember a happy time when one is in misery. 252

—Dante Alighieri originally Durante

   Resolve to be thyself: and know, that he Who finds himself, loses his misery.

—Arnold, Matthew