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

You are too kind, and I am unused to it. For your own sake, do not stroke my misery. It knows not how to respond, but with a vicious bite.

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...

I know for a fact that no matter where I go, the memory and the suffering of not being with you will cripple me. I will go to work, fire up my PC, only to...

Ignoring to change your thoughts and beliefs wouldn’t fail to cause your negative mood to remain unchanged.

Well, aren’t you just saying it’s better to be neurotic, sensitive, and miserable than unimaginative, adjusted and content? Is it really better?

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...

i was a prisoner of events

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.)

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.

This is my life,” Mandy declared, smiling sincerely. Alecto just looked concerned and very doubtful as the rain drizzled down the roads and sidewalks, towards the harbour where it fell into the ocean, indistinguishable from...

Sometimes he wondered if he did these things just to test himself. To see if the feelings had gone. But they had not. When he saw her, he wanted to be with her; when he...

So true it is, and so terrible, too, that up to a certain point the thought or sight of misery enlists our best affections; but, in certain special cases, beyond that point it does not....

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...

Don’t miss a chance at happiness because of your past misery.

You can blame people and situations for your misery, hunger, deprivation and illness, but you are the only person can be blamed for your illiteracy.

A face on him as long as a hare’s back leg.

I drink out of desperation. Life is too dreary to endure. The misery, loneliness, crampedness — they’re heartbreaking.[…] What feelings do you suppose a man has when he realizes that he will never know happiness...

Ever since history has been written, ever since philosophy has meditated, misery has been the garment of the human race.

Ya no se trataba sólo de «,Puedes?» para empezar el libro. Por primera vez en muchos años, escuchaba aquella pregunta casi cada día y… estaba descubriendo que podía.

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...

Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world.

There is darkness inside us all. It is true. Inside every human being there is a tremendous and powerful capacity to commit deeds of evil. A force with the power to hurt others, to further...

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!])...

Once you are miserable you are miserable there’s no getting out of misery even if you’ll be succeeded to get out of it,once again it will hunt you down and conquer it will conquer your...

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.

There’s actually a sort of comfort in the belief that things can only get worse. It gives one an appreciation for the here-and-now, knowing that each and every moment may be as good as its...

Don’t regret your despondency in the shadows of evil, for the good light never did anything to erase your misery.

The further you descend into a pit, the darker things appear. You can’t keep digging to find the light.

Be again, be again. (Pause.) All that old misery. (Pause.) Once wasn’t enough for you.

Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself.

I don’t think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that still remains

If happiness shouldn’t make you so miserable, misery shouldn’t make you so happy.

And so the problem remained; lots of people were mean, and most were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

…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...

Misery loves company.

(…) the woman we love ought to swim as slowly as we do, she ought to have no past of her own to look back on happily. But when the illusion of absolute identity vanishes...

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

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.

Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope,...

You’re real though, at least that’s something,” Alecto pointed out, holding his hand out in front of her. Smiling miserably, Mandy took his hand in her own and sat there beside him quietly.

Deep down a broken heart, all the sadness one can bear is misery.

I am a solitary wave in the dark and desolate sea: and the sparkling glass I drank was drugged with misery.

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...

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...

What the government makes to make money is money. They make money by making money—literally printing it. While the private sector has to make money the hard way—by producing a good or service that others...

Do not feel sorry for the bad luck of people, because behind everyone’s misery is their own stupidity and laziness.

The greatest sorrow in the life of a peasant is that his donkey is lost. And the greatest happiness is that he finds it back.

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.

—Me llamo Annie Wilkes, y soy…—Ya lo sé —la interrumpió—. Usted es mi fan número uno.