65 Misery Quotes To Reflect

In the tapestry of human experience, misery weaves its dark threads just as inevitably as joy embellishes it with color. Whether it's through personal struggles, historical events, or universal human dilemmas, the poignant emotions associated with misery have been a rich source of inspiration for literary minds, philosophers, and artists. This curated collection of the top 65 misery quotes serves as a reflection on those somber moments that shape us, offering insight and perhaps a bit of solace to those who traverse the shadows. Each quote is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, echoing the timeless truth that within every pattern of sorrow lies an opportunity for understanding and growth.

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. “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

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

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

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

11. “Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you, --will invite you to add something to the pleasure of others, --or to diminish something of their pains.” - Jeremy Bentham

12. “Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better.” - Rainer Maria Rilke

13. “And then there are always clever people about to promise you that everything will be all right if only you put yourself out a bit... And you get carried away, you suffer so much from the things that exist that you ask for what can't ever exist. Now look at me, I was well away dreaming like a fool and seeing visions of a nice friendly life on good terms with everybody, and off I went, up into the clouds. And when you fall back into the mud it hurts a lot. No! None of it was true, none of those things we thought we could see existed at all. All that was really there was still more misery-- oh yes! as much of that as you like-- and bullets into the bargain!” - Émile Zola

14. “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

15. “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

16. “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

17. “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

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

19. “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

20. “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

21. “Black is the absence of all color. White is the presence of all colors. I suppose life must be one or the other. On the whole, though, I think I would prefer color to its absence. But then black does add depth and texture to color. Perhaps certain shades of gray are necessary to a complete palette. Even unrelieved black. Ah, a deep philosophical question. Is black necessary to life, even a happy life? Could we ever be happy if we did not at least occasionally experience misery?” - Mary Balogh

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

23. “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

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

25. “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

26. “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

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

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

29. “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

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

31. “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

32. “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

33. “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

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

35. “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

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

37. “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

38. “I looked at the woman crying over the doll and felt something else. I was sick of people acting against their own interests. Mooing about how to refinance the slaughterhouse. Putting skylights in the killing pen and pretending the bolt in the brain was a pathway to a better field. I paid my bill. Save your fucking pennies for a gun and a history book, I thought.” - Vanessa Veselka

39. “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

40. “She would be one of those who kneel to their own shadows till feet grow on their knees; then go down on their hands till their hands grow into feet; then lay their faces on the ground till they grow into snouts; when at last they are a hideous sort of lizards, each of which believes himself the best, wisest, and loveliest being in the world, yea, the very centre of the universe. And so they run about for ever looking for their own shadows that they may worship them, and miserable because they cannot find them, being themselves too near the ground to have any shadows; and what becomes of them at last, there is but one who knows.” - George MacDonald

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

42. “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

43. “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

44. “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

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

46. “There is no greater sorrow than to recall in misery the time when we were happy.” - Dante Alighieri

47. “Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.” - Christopher Marlowe

48. “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

49. “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

50. “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

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

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

53. “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

54. “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

55. “When that bastard calls back, you tell him he’s won this round. I’ll marry him. But I don’t take well to being blackmailed, and tell him I intend to spend the rest of my life making him miserable, got that?” - Susan Elizabeth Phillips

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

57. “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

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

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

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

61. “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

62. “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

63. “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

64. “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

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