Misery quotes
512 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"When the church hears the cry of the oppressed it cannot but denounce the social structures that give rise to and perpetuate the misery from which the cry arises."
"There must be something rotten in the very core of a social system which increases its wealth without diminishing its misery"
"Success can also cause misery. The trick is not to be surprised when you discover it doesn't bring you all the happiness and answers you thought it would."
"People prefer the certainty of misery to the misery of uncertainty"
"The main vice of capitalism is the uneven distribution of prosperity. The main vice of socialism is the even distribution of misery."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside misery — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"While money can't buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery."
"Misery don't call ahead. That's why you have to stay awake - otherwise it just walks on in your door."
"Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries."
"If God made the world, I would not be that God, for the misery of the world would break my heart."
"Egotism is the source and summary of all faults and miseries."
"We walk by faith. We don't stay still, drowning in our misery."
"Indulgence in resentment and vengeance will only further increase miseries to oneself and others in this life and in lives to come."
"They say it is better to be poor and happy than rich and miserable, but how about a compromise like moderately rich and just moody?"
"Talk therapy turns hysterical misery to mundane unhappiness."
"Money does not buy you happiness, but lack of money certainly buys you misery."
"Misery, anger, indignation, discomfort-those conditions produce literature. Contentment-never. So there you are."
"Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery, and in such a world hopes could only be irrational."
"Misery motivates, not utopia."
"Nothing is miserable unless you think it so."
"The nearer we are to God, the less we will have occasions to cry or weep. The further we are from God, the more will long faces come. The more we know God, the more misery vanishes."
"... 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.)"
"For there is no one so great or mighty that he can avoid the misery that will rise up against him when he resists and strives against God."
"As peace is of all goodness, so war is an emblem, a hieroglyphic, of all misery."
"There is no credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covetousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the moral misery and the intellectual destitution of mankind."
"What is the point of roaming the world when it's the same misery everywhere?"
