Life is about making mistakes. If you don’t take chances, blindfolded and frightened as you are, you’re not really living, are you? Heartache makes you stronger. Misery is the stuff of good poetry. You’re denying yourself much more than the bad...
Perhaps they thought they could bring to this valley only those things they loved, leaving behind all ugliness. We are not, however, a species that can choose the baggage with which it must travel. In spite of our best intentions, we always find that...
Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing that God or Satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will did it. I have no broken your heart - you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse ...
The melancholy comes over me, the dismal misery of not knowing where I am, or perhaps losing any sense of who I am, as if the mist is bringing about an evaporation of identity, all the certainties of the self leaching away into the cloud.
Thoughts and sorrows seem to have remained on the other side of the mountains. Between tormented men and hateful deeds, a person has to think and sorrow so much! Back there it is so difficult and so desperately important to find a reason for staying ...
I could see it on the faces of people as they passed. I would smile to share my joy, but it was AS IF I upset them with my happiness. In Confusion they would reply with a negative remark. Hoping it would spark a new chain of negative thoughts in me b...
What are the gifts given to we who live Below?" "Long life, health, strength, and happiness." "What is the curse of those who live Above?" "Short life, illness, weakness, and misery." "Is this fair?" "It is fair. It is as the gods decreed at the time...
(Just to give you an idea, Proust's reply was 'To be separated from Mama.') I think that the lowest depth of misery ought to be distinguished from the highest pitch of anguish. In the lower depths come enforced idleness, sexual boredom, and/or impote...
Every man should make his son or daughter learn some useful trade or profession, so that in these days of changing fortunes of being rich today and poor tomorrow they may have something tangible to fall back upon. This provision might save many perso...
None could guess my confusion, my host of deluded illusions and elusive delusions! A mantle of marble hiding a crumbling core of sandstone. See how they stare at me, wondering, all wondering, at my secret wellspring of wisdom...' Let's kill him,' Cro...
Guilt and misery shrink, by a natural instinct, from public notice: they court privacy and solitude: and even in their choice of a grave will sometimes sequester themselves from the general population of the churchyard, as if declining to claim fello...
Nobody has ever taken a photograph of something they want to forget. We can build a wall of happy Kodak moments around ourselves, a wall of our Christmases, birthdays, baby showers and weddings, but we can never forget that celluloid film is see-thro...
In Whom is the Universe, Who is in the Universe, Who is the Universe; in Whom is the Soul, Who is in the Soul, Who is the Soul of Man; knowing Him—and therefore the Universe—as our Self, alone extinguishes all fear, brings an end to misery and le...
It's possible that I would have been better suited to being a penguin keeper. Starting out, I thought being a writer would enable me to work in isolation. Maybe my life would be less of a misery if I weren't in a deadline-driven profession, but I don...
Why couldn't my heart have picked him? Life would have been so much easier." "Because hearts are ornery, sneaky little bastards, designed to cause misery. They want what they want, and they don't give a damn about what would make life easier or harde...
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...
One of the ultimate ironies of eternity is that the adversary, who is miserable precisely because he has no physical body, invites and entices us to share in his misery through the improper use of our bodies. The very tool he does not have and cannot...
To those peoples in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required - not because the Communists may be doing it, not becau...
Once poverty is gone, we'll need to build museums to display its horrors to future generations. They'll wonder why poverty continued so long in human society - how a few people could live in luxury while billions dwelt in misery, deprivation and desp...
The moment-when I could no longer face myself in the mirror-wasn't easily explained; nor was the oppressive misery I experienced once I finally became the person I was meant to be but then realized with terrific horror how much I still hated her.
Tavi spent an eternity in misery, longing for death to bring sweet release from the unrelenting torment. The others gathered at the side of his bunk on the ship, keeping a deathwatch over him. "I don't see what all the drama is about," Demos said, hi...
