These misery quotes will inspire you. Misery is a state of suffering and wants that is the result of poverty or affliction or a cause or source of great distress or discomfort.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging misery quotes, misery sayings, and misery proverbs.
Famous Misery Quotes
- “I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition.” ~ Martha Washington
- “When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt
- “I have learned now that while those who speak about one’s miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more.” ~ C. S. Lewis
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“Misery is a communicable disease.” ~ Martha Graham
- “There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.” ~ Alexandre Dumas
- “Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.” ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” ~ Winston Churchill
- “Choose your life’s mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90 percent of all your happiness or misery.” ~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
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“I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.” ~ Anne Frank
- “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
- “The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.” ~ Carlos Castaneda
- “While money can’t buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.” ~ Groucho Marx
- “The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.” ~ Winston Churchill
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“As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.” ~ Blaise Pascal
- “If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.” ~ Charles Darwin
- “The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
- “Our principles are the springs of our actions. Our actions, the springs of our happiness or misery. Too much care, therefore, cannot be taken in forming our principles.” ~ Red Skelton
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“If misery loves company, misery has company enough.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
- “I was in misery, and misery is the state of every soul overcome by friendship with mortal things and lacerated when they are lost. Then the soul becomes aware of the misery which is its actual condition even before it loses them.” ~ Saint Augustine
- “Writers remember everything…especially the hurts. Strip a writer to the buff, point to the scars, and he’ll tell you the story of each small one. From the big ones you get novels. A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember the story of every scar. Art consists of the persistence of memory.” ~ Stephen King
- “Nothing is miserable unless you think it so.” ~ Boethius
- “In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can’t build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death.” ~ Anne Frank
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“We ought never to scoff at the wretched, for who can be sure of continued happiness?” ~ Jean de La Fontaine
- “Renunciation – that is the great fact we all, individuals and classes, have to learn. In trying to avoid it we bring misery to ourselves and others.” ~ Beatrice Webb
- “Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of the earth is multiform.” ~ Matt LeBlanc
- “We can never flee the misery that is within us.” ~ Arthur Golden
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“He who desires anything but God deceives himself, and he who loves anything but God errs miserably.” ~ Philip Neri
- “Communities tend to be guided less than individuals by conscience and a sense of responsibility. How much misery does this fact cause mankind! It is the source of wars and every kind of oppression, which fill the earth with pain, sighs and bitterness.” ~ Albert Einstein , Pain and misery quotes
- “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.” ~ John Calvin
- “Misery loves company.” ~ John Ray
- “Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.” ~ Russell Baker
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“But O yet more miserable! Myself my sepulcher, a moving grave.” ~ John Milton
- “That he delights in the misery of others no man will confess, and yet what other motive can make a father cruel?” ~ Joseph Addison
- “What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.” ~ Saint Augustine
- “To the eyes of a miser a guinea is more beautiful than the sun, and a bag worn with the use of money has more beautiful proportions than a vine filled with grapes.” ~ William Blake
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“The law was made for one thing alone, for the exploitation of those who don’t understand it, or are prevented by naked misery from obeying it.” ~ Bertolt Brecht
- “To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn’t everything.” ~ Albert Camus
- “I’ve led this empty life for over forty years and now I can pass that heritage on and ensure that the misery will continue for at least one more generation.” ~ Larry David , Life is a misery quotes
- “Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you’ve made is worth the misery of having to review it.” ~ Federico Fellini
- “It is almost impossible for anyone, even the most ineffective among us, to continue to choose misery after becoming aware that it is a choice.” ~ William Glasser
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“There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision.” ~ William James
- “I have no doubt but that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate wherever the Government assumes a freer aspect,& the laws favor a subdivision of property.” ~ James Madison
- “The superior power of population cannot be checked without producing misery or vice.” ~ Thomas Malthus
- “While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.” ~ Karl Marx
- “My school days were the happiest days of my life; which should give you some indication of the misery I’ve endured over the past twenty-five years.” ~ Paul Merton
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“So far I haven’t really been prominent enough to get critical attention focused on me. So, of course, I fully expect bad reviews, but I will be wracked with misery as a result.” ~ Emily Mortimer
- “Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every stage of human history than any other single idea.” ~ Madalyn Murray O’Hair
- “One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love – any love – reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.” ~ Cesare Pavese
- “The happiness and misery of men depend no less on temper than fortune.” ~ Francois de La Rochefoucauld
- “The agony of my feelings allowed me no respite; no incident occurred from which my rage and misery could not extract its food.” ~ Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
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“Evil is always devising more corrosive misery through man’s restless need to exact revenge out of his hate.” ~ Ralph Steadman
- “Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
- “The miserable have no other medicine But only hope.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap that so much misery is caused in the world.” ~ William Cobbett
- “Trifles make up the happiness or the misery of mortal life.” ~ Alexander Smith
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“Misery, mutilation, destruction, terror, starvation and death characterize the process of war and form a principal part of the product.” ~ Lewis Mumford
- “It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.” ~ George Eliot
- “Given the amount of unjust suffering and unhappiness in the world, I am deeply grateful for, sometimes even perplexed by, how much misery I have been spared.” ~ Dennis Prager
- “This hunger for profits causes great misery for the people.” ~ Walter Ulbricht
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“The misery in war-torn Afghanistan is reminiscent of images from the Thirty Years’ War.” ~ Jurgen Habermas
- “A soul that is reluctant to share does not as a rule have much of its own. Miserliness is here a symptom of meagerness.” ~ Eric Hoffer
- “A misery is not to be measure from the nature of the evil but from the temper of the sufferer.” ~ Joseph Addison
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“I am as comfortless as a pilgrim with peas in his shoes – and as cold as Charity, Chastity or any other Virtue.” ~ Lord Byron
- “Do not discourage your children from hoarding, if they have a taste to it; whoever lays up his penny rather than part with it for a cake, at least is not the slave of gross appetite; and shows besides a preference always to be esteemed, of the future to the present moment.” ~ Samuel Johnson
- “My life has run from misery to happiness.” ~ Loretta Lynn
