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The comfort derived from the misery of others is slight.
[Lat., Levis est consolatio ex miseria aliorum.]
Author: Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero)
Source: Epistles (VI, 3)
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Horatio looked handsomely miserable, like Hamlet slipping on a
piece of orange-peel.
Author: Charles Dickens
Source: Sketches by Boz--Horatio Sparkins, (omitted in some editions)
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The worst of misery
Is when a nature framed for noblest things
Condemns itself in youth to petty joys,
And, sore athirst for air, breathes scanty life
Gasping from out the shallows.
Author: George Eliot (pseudonym of Mary Ann Evans Cross)
Source: The Spanish Gypsy (bk. III)
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Grim-visaged, comfortless despair.
Author: Thomas Gray
Source: Ode on Eton College
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There are a good many real miseries in life that we cannot help
smiling at, but they are the smiles that make wrinkles and not
dimples.
Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
Source: Poet at the Breakfast Table (III)
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This, this is misery! the last, the worst,
That man can feel.
Author: Homer ("Smyrns of Chios")
Source: The Iliad (bk. XXII, l. 106), (Pope's translation)
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That to live by one man's will became the cause of all men's
misery.
Author: Richard Hooker
Source: Ecclesiastical Polity (bk. I, ch. X, 5)
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We ought never to scoff at the wretched, for who can be sure of
continued happiness?
[Fr., Il ne se faut jamais moquer des miserables,
Car qui peut s'assurer d'etre toujours heureux?]
Author: Jean de la Fontaine
Source: Fables (V, 17)
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The child of misery, baptized in tears!
Author: John Langhorne
Source: The Country Justice (pt. I, l. 166)
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But O yet more miserable!
Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave.
Author: John Milton
Source: Samson Agonistes (l. 101)
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And bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances and the public show.
Author: Alexander Pope
Source: To the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady (l. 57)
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Misery travels free through the whole world!
[Ger., Frei geht das Ungluck durch die ganze Erde!]
Author: Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
Source: Wallenstein's Tod (IV, 11, 31)
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Fire tries gold, misery tries brave men.
[Lat., Ignis aurum probat, misera fortes viros.]
Author: Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Source: De Providentia (V)
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The wretched hasten to hear of their own miseries.
[Lat., Miserias properant suas
Audire miseri.]
Author: Seneca (Lucius Annaeus Seneca)
Source: Hercules Oetoeus (754)
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Sweet recreation barred, what doth ensue
But moody and dull melancholy,
Kinsman to a grim and comfortless despair,
And at her heels a huge infectious troop
Of pale distemperatures and foes to life?
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: The Comedy of Errors (Lady Abbess at V, i)
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Meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones;
And in his needy shop a tortoise hung,
An alligator stuffed, and other skins
Of ill-shaped fishes; and about his shelves
A beggarly account of boxes,
Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds,
Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses
Were thinly scattered, to make up a show.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: Romeo and Juliet (Romeo at V, i)
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Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: The Tempest (Trinculo at II, i)
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No, misery makes sport to mock itself.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: The Tragedy of King Richard the Second (Gaunt at II, i)
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All of which misery I saw, part of which I was.
[Lat., Quaeque ipse misserrima vidi, et quorum pars magna fui.]
Author: Virgil or Vergil (Publius Virgilius Maro Vergil)
Source: The Aeneid (l. 5)
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It is seldom that the miserable of the world can help regarding their misery as a wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable.
Author: George Eliot
Source: None
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Friends love misery, in fact. Sometimes, especially if we are too lucky or too successful or too pretty, our misery is the only thing that endears us to our friends.
Author: Erica Jong
Source: None
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The miserable have no other medicine, But only hope.
Author: William Shakespeare
Source: None
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If misery loves company, misery has company enough.
Author: Henry David Thoreau
Source: None
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Maybe men are separated from each other only by the degree of their misery.
Author: Francis Picabia
Source: None
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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.
Author: Graham Greene
Source: None
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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.
Author: C. S. Lewis
Source: None
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Hope is the physician of each misery.
Author: Irish Proverb
Source: None
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There are a good many real miseries in life that we cannot help smiling at, but they are the smiles that make wrinkles and not dimples.
Author: Oliver Wendell Holmes
Source: None
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Man is only miserable so far as he thinks himself so.
Author: Jacopo Sannazaro
Source: None
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He that is down need fear no fall.
Author: John Bunyan
Source: None
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Laugh not once at one's misfortune for one will laugh twice as much at you later.
Author: Kazi Shams
Source: None
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Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.
Author: Addison Mizner
Source: None
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Threescore years and ten is enough; if a man can't suffer all the misery he wants in that time, he must be numb.
Author: Josh Billings
Source: None
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A misery is not to be measured from the nature of the evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.
Author: Joseph Addison
Source: None
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There is no greater grief than to remember days of joy when misery is at hand.
Author: Dante
Source: None
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