112 Misery Quotes To Ponder

In life's vast expanse, moments of joy and sorrow intermingle, shaping our experiences and perspectives. While happiness is often celebrated and shared, it is in times of misery that we deeply reflect and grow. Misery, in its various forms, can be an unexpected teacher, offering lessons and insights that only those moments of deep contemplation can provide. In this collection, we have gathered 112 thought-provoking quotes about misery to ponder and perhaps find solace in knowing that even in the darkest times, others have walked similar paths and emerged with wisdom to share.

1. “A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour.” - P.G. Wodehouse

2. “The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die.” - Michel Houellebecq

3. “I am the most miserable person who ever lived," he said... "You are young, and in love," said Primus. "Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.” - Neil Gaiman

4. “There is always more misery among the lower classes than there is humanity in the higher.” - Victor Hugo

5. “Oftentimes. when people are miserable, they will want to make other people miserable, too. But it never helps.” - Lemony Snicket

6. “Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it.” - Boethius

7. “He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other.” - W. Somerset Maugham

8. “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.” - Graham Greene

9. “...But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice... I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can.” - Charles Darwin

10. “I never realized that life could be as difficult for a beautiful woman as it is for a plain one,” he said.“Life can be difficult for everyone,” she replied.“Misery makes no distinction between prince and pauper.” - Patricia Grasso

11. “He is wretched indeed, who goes up and down in the world, without a God to take care of him, to be his guide and protector, and to bless him in his affairs [. . .] That unconverted men are without God shows that they are liable to all manner of evil [. . .] liable to the power of the devil, to the power of all manner of temptation [. . .] to be deceived and seduced into erroneous opinions [. . .] to embrace damnable doctrines [. . .] to be given up of God to judicial hardness of heart [. . .] to commit all manner of sin, and even the unpardonable sin itself. They cannot be sure they shall not commit that sin. They are liable to build up a false hope of heaven, and so to go hoping to hell [. . .] to die senseless and stupid, as many have died [. . .] to die in such a case as Saul and Judas did, fearless of hell. They have no security from it. They are liable to all manner of mischief, since they are without God. They cannot tell what shall befall them, nor when they are secure from anything. They are not safe one moment. Ten thousand fatal mischiefs may befall them, that may make them miserable forever. They, who have God for their God, are safe from all such evils. It is not possible that they should befall them. God is their covenant God, and they have his faithful promise to be their refuge.” - Jonathan Edwards

12. “I would not have traded the delights of my suffering for anything in the world.” - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

13. “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.” - Stephenie Meyer

14. “There was this funny thing of anything could happen now that we realized everything had.” - Raymond Carver

15. “I've learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our disposition and not on our circumstances.” - Martha Washington

16. “[F]or just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.” - Lev Grossman

17. “With certainty, I can predict that there will never be a cure to cancer. The only hope for any of us is to concentrate on cause and prevent the misery.” - Richard Diaz

18. “A face on him as long as a hare's back leg.” - Myles na gCopaleen

19. “I was miserable, of course, for I was seventeen, and so I swung into action and wrote a poem, and it was miserable, for that's how I thought poetry worked: you digested experience and shat literature. [from "Mingus at the Showplace"]” - William Matthews

20. “I have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.” - C. S. Lewis

21. “Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short.” - George Orwell

22. “Although you hadn't asked why, it had less to do with you not noticing than with you not wanting to hear the answer.” - Jodi Picoult

23. “As I railed on and on, I became increasingly energied and excited by my own misery and misanthropy until I reached a kind of orgasm of negativity.'... The Brits don't merely enjoy misery, they get off on it.” - Eric Weiner

24. “But then he returned and our life went on. Three days gone. A week. I measured the time in the faint waning of my consciousness of my misery, and wondered if this would one day be enough: simply not to be consciously miserable anymore.” - Sue Miller

25. “Should the king in exile pretend he is happy there?Should he not seek his own country?His miseries are his ally; they urge him on. Let them grow, if need be. But do not forsake the secret of life; do not despise those kingly desires. We abandon the most important journey of our lives when we abandon desire. We leave our hearts by the side of the road and head off in the direction of fitting in, getting by, being productive, what have you. Whatever we might gain – money, position, the approval of others, or just absence of the discontent self – it’s not worth it.” - John Eldredge

26. “What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? (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 impotence. At the highest pitch, the death of a friend or even the fear of the death of a child.” - Christopher Hitchens

27. “I once spoke to someone who had survived the genocide in Rwanda, and she said to me that there was now nobody left on the face of the earth, either friend or relative, who knew who she was. No one who remembered her girlhood and her early mischief and family lore; no sibling or boon companion who could tease her about that first romance; no lover or pal with whom to reminisce. All her birthdays, exam results, illnesses, friendships, kinships—gone. She went on living, but with a tabula rasa as her diary and calendar and notebook. I think of this every time I hear of the callow ambition to 'make a new start' or to be 'born again': Do those who talk this way truly wish for the slate to be wiped? Genocide means not just mass killing, to the level of extermination, but mass obliteration to the verge of extinction. You wish to have one more reflection on what it is to have been made the object of a 'clean' sweep? Try Vladimir Nabokov's microcosmic miniature story 'Signs and Symbols,' which is about angst and misery in general but also succeeds in placing it in what might be termed a starkly individual perspective. The album of the distraught family contains a faded study of Aunt Rosa, a fussy, angular, wild-eyed old lady, who had lived in a tremulous world of bad news, bankruptcies, train accidents, cancerous growths—until the Germans put her to death, together with all the people she had worried about.” - Christopher Hitchens

28. “Stone me, what a life!” - Tony Hancock

29. “I would cling to unhappiness because it was a known, familiar state. When I was happier, it was because I knew I was on my way back to misery. I've never been convinced that happiness is the object of the game. I'm wary of happiness.” - Hugh Laurie

30. “Only one thing mattered: this was not a Horcrux. Dumbledore had weakened himself by drinking that horrible potion for nothing. Harry crumpled the parchment in his hand and his eyes burned with tears as behind him Fang began to howl.” - J.K. Rowling

31. “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. “Avada Kedavra!”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.” - J.K. Rowling

32. “When we our betters see bearing our woes,We scarcely think our miseries our foes.” - William Shakespeare

33. “The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.” - Bernard Shaw

34. “If there's one thing I've discovered, it's that stifling yourself will only lead to more misery. [...] I polluted all other happiness because I was afraid to let myself create and change. You have to have courage. Real courage to explore, to fail, and to pick yourself back up again.” - Siobhan Vivian

35. “And now I'm right back where I started. Sober and miserable.” - Alyson Noel

36. “One morning, about four o'clock, I was driving my car just about as fast as I could. I thought, 'Why am I out on the highway this time of night?' I was miserable, and it all came to me: 'I'm falling in love with somebody I have no right to fall in love with. I can't fall in love with this man, but it's just like a ring of fire.” - June Carter Cash

37. “Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom.” - Voltaire

38. “That summer, Titanic fever gripped Kabul. People smuggled pirated copies of the film from Pakistan- sometimes in their underwear. After curfew, everyone locked their doors, turned out the lights, turned down the volume, and reaped tears for Jack and Rose and the passengers of the doomed ship. If there was electrical power, Mariam, Laila, and the children watched it too. A dozen times or more, they unearthed the TV from behind the tool-shed, late at night, with the lights out and quilts pinned over the windows.At the Kabul River, vendors moved into the parched riverbed. Soon, from the river's sunbaked hollows, it was possible to buy Titanic carpets, and Titanic cloth, from bolts arranged in wheelbarrows. There was Titanic deodorant, Titanic toothpaste, Titanic perfume, Titanic pakora, even Titanic burqas. A particularly persistent beggar began calling himself "Titanic Beggar.""Titanic City" was born.It's the song, they said.No, the sea. The luxury. The ship.It's the sex, they whispered.Leo, said Aziza sheepishly. It's all about Leo."Everybody wants Jack," Laila said to Mariam. "That's what it is. Everybody wants Jack to rescue them from disaster. But there is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is dead.” - Khaled Hosseini

39. “It is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go on with our labor, what it may be.” - Bram Stoker

40. “Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

41. “Be again, be again. (Pause.) All that old misery. (Pause.) Once wasn't enough for you.” - Samuel Beckett

42. “Unpopular, lonely and loving, Elinor need not trouble, For if she were not so loving, She would not be so miserable.” - Stevie Smith

43. “There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.” - Andrew Schweitzer

44. “From a night of more sleep than she had expected, Marianne awoke the next morning to the same consciousness of misery in which she had closed her eyes.” - Jane Austen

45. “...to return to their 'native soil,' as they say, to the bosom, so to speak, of their mother earth, like frightened children, yearning to fall asleep on the withered bosom of their decrepit mother, and to sleep there for ever, only to escape the horrors that terrify them.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

46. “Life is not an easy matter…. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.” - Leon Trotsky

47. “If no war in heaven, then defeat ain't misery.” - Toba Beta

48. “Money does not buy you happiness, but lack of money certainly buys you misery.” - Daniel Kahneman

49. “Misery is a scar on the soul, that if it begins in childhood, it lasts the whole lifetime. I understand that no two scars are alike, but I also ask myself; even if these scars are not alike, aren’t these things engraved on our souls signed by which we know each other?Aren’t we also alike?” - Bahaa Taher

50. “When you share your misery, it will not diminish. When you fail to share your joy, it diminishes. Share your problems only with the Divine, not with anyone else, as that will only increase the problems. Share your joy with everyone.Listen to others; yet do not listen. If your mind gets stuck in their problems, not only are they miserable, but you also become miserable.” - Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

51. “Bored with the same type of misery over and over and over again.” - Greg Behrendt

52. “I have observed that the prosperity or misery of each people is in direct proportion to its liberties or its prejudices and, accordingly, to the sacrifices or the selfishness of its forefathers. -Juan Crisostomo Ibarra” - Jose Rizal

53. “Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person.” - Alain De Botton

54. “When Annie's treatin, you best be eatin.” - Stephen King

55. “Né avec une âme habituelle, j'en ai demandé une autre à la musique : ce fut le début de malheurs inespérés.” - Emil Cioran

56. “If that type of bad God did exist, then we could go on living in good health. If we could push the responsibility for our misery onto God, then we would have that much more peace of mind, wouldn't we?” - Tatsuhiko Takimoto

57. “Man cannot cherish his existence any longer than life holds out charms to him: when he is wrought upon by painful sensations, or drawn by contrary impulsions, his natural tendency is deranged; he is under the necessity to follow a new route; this conducts him to his end, which it even displays to him as the most desirable good.” - Baron d'Holbach

58. “I don't reckon misery loves any damn thing at all.” - Bruce Machart

59. “Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.” - Emil Cioran

60. “You are young, and in love," said Primus. "Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.” - Neil Gaiman

61. “A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.” - Joseph Addison

62. “No one can usurp the heights...But those to whom the miseries of the worldAre misery, and will not let them rest.” - John Keats

63. “But all these were 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.” - Cassandra Clare

64. “You sensed that you should be following a different path, a more ambitious one, you felt that you were destined for other things but you had no idea how to achieve them and in your misery you began to hate everything around you.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

65. “The next day he woke up feeling like he'd been unshackled from his fat, like he'd been washed clean from his misery, and for a long time he couldn't remember why he felt this way, and then he said her name.” - Junot Diaz

66. “Those places where sadness and misery abound are favoured settings for stories of ghosts and apparitions. Calcutta has countless such stories hidden in its darkness, stories that nobody wants to admit they believe but which nevertheless survive in the memory of generations as the only chronicle of the past. It is as if the people who inhabit the streets, inspired by some mysterious wisdom, relalise that the true history of Calcutta has always been written in the invisible tales of its spirits and unspoken curses.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

67. “I stumbled out into the courtyard to try to flee my misery, but of course we can never flee the misery that is within us.” - Arthur Golden

68. “wanting what you could not have led to misery and madness” - Cassandra Clare

69. “It'd felt good to be part of an "us," with the same thoughts, the same feelings, the same miseries.” - Jennifer Brown

70. “The misery of other people is only an abstraction [...] something that can be sympathized with only by drawing from one's own experiences. But as it stands, true empathy remains impossible. And so long as it is, people will continue to suffer the pressure of their seemingly singular existence.” - Nicole Krauss

71. “The reason authors almost always put a dedication on a book is, because their selfishness even horrifies themselves in the end.” - Stephen King

72. “If God gave you contentment then you would never pursue your life purpose. It is your restlessness that pushes you to take action, change your life and seek more of what you could possibly be.” - Shannon Alder

73. “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.” - James Baldwin

74. “Evangeline's obliviousness was a reason to like her rather than not: I liked least those schoolfellows whose awareness of me invariably caused misery.” - Sonya Hartnett

75. “It's my opinion, with some people, just knowing they are alone, living inside of their own miserable, self hating, dysfunctional mind, with their own immature, insecure, self pitying self is its own revenge. Their existence is their karma.” - Colleen Truscott Fry

76. “Shall each man," cried he, "find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone? I had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn. Man! You may hate, but beware! Your hours will pass in dread and misery, and soon the bolt will fall which must ravish from you your happiness forever. Are you to be happy while I grovel in the intensity of my wretchedness? You can blast my other passions, but revenge remains—revenge, henceforth dearer than light or food! I may die, but first you, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery. Beware, for I am fearless and therefore powerful. I will watch with the wiliness of a snake, that I may sting with its venom. Man, you shall repent of the injuries you inflict.” - Mary Shelley

77. “The art of our necessities is strangeThat can make vile things precious.” - William Shakespeare

78. “I have a dream my life would be. So different from this hell I'm living. So different now from what it seem. Now life has killed the dream I dreamed."*Fantine” - Victor Hugo

79. “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.” - Alan Heathcock

80. “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.” - Rachel Ward

81. “متفرد بصبابتي، متفرد بكآبتي، متفرد بعنائي” - ابن الرومي

82. “ثاو على صخر أصم، وليت لي قلب كهذي الصخرة الصماء” - خليل مطران

83. “وأنت وإن أفردت في دار وحشةفأنا بدار الأنس في وحشة الفرد” - ابن الرومي

84. “There are people who are never content, never appeased, forever dissatisfied—who continually look to what escapes them, convincing themselves that if only they could attain that one desire outside of reach they would be happy.  It seems almost pointless to give to these people because their eyes immediately shift from the gift to stare miserably at the portion held back.  Their wants, demands, expectations, appetites are never satiated, thus they refuse to be happy.  And you cannot make them so.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

85. “No misery compares to staring at a clear night's sky with arms stretched toward a coveted star, wishing on what is forever out of reach.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

86. “Pain and suffering are inevitable in our lives, but misery is an option” - Chip Beck

87. “Our worst misfortunes never happen, and most miseries lie in anticipation.” - Honoré de Balzac

88. “I'm tired of being responsible for other people's misery. I can't even put up with my own.” - Katja Millay

89. “Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.” - C.S. Lewis

90. “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.” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

91. “Dwell in the past, worry about the future and find misery in the present.” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

92. “That’s what love is like: mother of the greatest bliss and stepmother of the most tragic misery.” - Stefanos Livos

93. “Rainy, gloomy, drab, sunless day.  There are times when hope seems entirely clouded over, when looking for the blessings in your circumstances feels like trying to catch a ray of sunshine from six feet under.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

94. “Lucrurile supreme trebuie să aibă o altă origine, una proprie lor, - ele nu ar putea lua naştere din această lume efemeră, înşelătoare, iluzorie şi mizeră, din această harababură de amăgiri şi pofte!” - Friedrich Nietzsche

95. “Thus God's work and His eyes are in the depths, but man's only in the height.” - Martin Luther

96. “Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race.” - Victor Hugo

97. “I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all.” - Victor Hugo

98. “What greater evil could you wish a miser than long life?” - Syrus Publilius

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

100. “I have been in my bed for five weeks, oppressed with weakness and other infirmities from which my age, seventy four years, permits me not to hope release. Added to this (proh dolor! [O misery!]) the sight of my right eye — that eye whose labors (dare I say it) have had such glorious results — is for ever lost. That of the left, which was and is imperfect, is rendered null by continual weeping.” - Galileo Galilei

101. “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.” - Mark Nepo

102. “Moisture falls from the sky, cleansing the world and sustaining precious life. But it's the gloom—the cold, dark air—that receives notice. We fail to see the miracle of raindrops through our own tears.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

103. “Abandoned.The word alone sends shudders down a sensitive spine, troubling the thoughts of pained souls as their hurt swells in ripples. It is a sentence of undesired solitude often pronounced on the innocent, the trusting—administered without warning or satisfactory cause. One day the moon is yours, or so you believe. The next, his countenance transforms from Jekyll to Hyde with no intention of ever turning back, and you are left trampled upon in a deserted street, concealed by dirty fog that squelches all illumination or any hope for future rays of light. It is the worst of mysteries why a beast considered noble would forsake his duty, exhibiting a heart of stone. And all who once looked on him, now turn down their eyes and suffer, beguiled. Some poisons have no antidote, but are slow, silent, torturous ends that curl up the broken body swept into a cold, dark corner. There she is left to drown in her tears—a dying heart.Abandoned.” - Richelle E. Goodrich

104. “For a torture to be effective, the pain has to be spread out; it has to come at regular intervals, with no end in sight. The water falls , drop after drop after drop, like the second hand of a watch, carving up time. The shock of each individual drop is insignificant, but the sensation is impossible to ignore. At first, one might manage to think about other things, but after five hours, after ten hours, it becomes unendurable. The repeated stimulation excites the nerves to a point where they literally explode, and every sensation in the body is absorbed into that one spot on the forehead---indeed, you come to feel that you are nothing but a forehead, into which a fine needle is being forced millimeter by millimeter. You can’t sleep or even speak, hypnotized by a suffering that is greater than any mere pain. In general, the victim goes mad before a day has passed.” - Yoko Ogawa

105. “Love is responsible for nearly every kind of insanity in the world though greed, vanity, and pure meanness contribute their portion to general misery.” - P.N. Elrod

106. “Just resign yourself to the fact that you're going to be miserable so you can finally be happy. (It's a sound theory if you think about it hard enough.)” - Richelle E. Goodrich

107. “I felt so weak and unhappy that I buried my face in the ground: I could not bear the strain of seeing around me the things of the earth. I felt convinced that every movement and every thought was forced, and that one had to be on one's guard against them.” - Franz Kafka

108. “He was dimly angry with himself, he did not know why. It was that he had struck his wife. He had forgotten it, but was miserable about it, notwithstanding. And this misery was the voice of the great Love that had made him and his wife and the baby and Diamond, speaking in his heart, and telling him to be good. For that great Love speaks in the most wretched and dirty hearts; only the tone of its voice depends on the echoes of the place in which it sounds. On Mount Sinai, it was thunder; in the cabman's heart it was misery; in the soul of St John it was perfect blessedness.” - George MacDonald

109. “What is the point of roaming the world when it's the same misery everywhere?” - Elif Shafak

110. “Misery don't call ahead. That's why you have to stay awake - otherwise it just walks on in your door.” - Toni Morrison

111. “The need for gain, and advantage over others, is one of the chief driving forces behind all human misery.” - Bryant McGill

112. “The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable.” - Steven Pressfield