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“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

“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, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

“What is the point of roaming the world when it's the same misery everywhere?”
― Elif Shafak, The Forty Rules of Love

“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, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“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, Revenge

“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, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“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, A Happy Death

“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, The Complete Stories

“The cup of life was poisoned forever, and although the sun shone upon me, as upon the happy and gay of heart, I saw around me nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by no light but the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon me.”
― Mary Shelley, Frankenstein: The 1818 Text

“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, Dark and Stormy Knights

“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, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable.”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

“I repeat, whether we be Italians or Frenchmen, misery concerns us all.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“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, Les Misérables

“Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris.”
― Christopher Marlowe, Dr. Faustus

“Dwell in the past, worry about the future and find misery in the present.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman, Veterans of the Psychic Wars

“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, At the Back of the North Wind

“Nobody wants to be alone in misery. Cara experienced no shame in admitting that need. Not only did she not want to suffer alone, she demanded co-suffering from all who dared love her.”
― Christa Parravani, Her

“Thus God's work and His eyes are in the depths, but man's only in the height.”
― Martin Luther, Sermon on the Mount and the Magnificat

“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, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

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

“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, Volt

“Първият (Борис), излязъл от низините, съзнаваше опасността от бунта на гладните и разбираше, че привилегията на ситите беше несигурна и заплашена. Вторият (Костов), израсъл в охолство, считаше тази привилегия за естествена и не мислеше, че човек трябва да разваля спокойствието си с грозни и безогледни действия срещу работниците.”
― Dimitar Dimov, Тютюн

“In misery it is great comfort to have a companion.”
― John Lyly, Euphues and His England, the Plays

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

“Yes, happiness is dependent upon misery. For we all feel a swell of happiness after our circumstances improve from a misery recently suffered.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

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

“Misery and poverty of a nation is associated with the conscious of its people not leaders.”
― M.F. Moonzajer

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

“When we oppose oppression, we lift our hands from the collective reins that empower such oppression.”
― Bryant McGill, Voice of Reason