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Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some
Charles Dickens
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Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.
Plato
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We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.
Honore de Balzac
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Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields which have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes
Victor Hugo
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Misfortune is never mournful to the soul that accepts it; for such do always see that every cloud is an angel's face.
Lydia M. Child
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Man's great misfortune is that he has no organ, no kind of eyelid or brake, to mask or block a thought, or all thought, when he wants to
Paul Valery
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It has been my misfortune to be engaged in more battles than any other general on the other side of the Atlantic; but there was never a time during my command when I would not have chosen some settlement by reason rather than the sword.
Ulysses S. Grant
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It is the nature of mortals to kick a fallen man.
Aeschylus
Quotes , Source: Agamemnon (884), (adapted)
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The consciousness of good intention is the greatest solace of
misfortunes.
[Lat., Conscientia rectae voluntatis maxima consolatio est rerum
incommodarum.]
Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero)
Quotes , Source: Epistles (V, 4)
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He went like one that hath been stunn'd,
And is of sense forlorn:
A sadder and a wiser man,
He rose the morrow morn.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Quotes , Source: The Ancient Mariner (pt. VII, last stanza)
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Most of our misfortune are more supportable than the comments of
our friends upon them.
Charles Caleb Colton
Quotes , Source: Lacon (p. 238)
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By speaking of our misfortunes we often relieve them.
[Fr., A raconter ses maux souvent on les soulage.]
Pierre Corneille
Quotes , Source: Polyeucte (I, 3)
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I was a stricken deer that left the herd
Long since.
William Cowper
Quotes , Source: Task (bk. III, l. 108)
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Fallen, fallen, fallen, fallen,
Fallen from his high estate,
And welt'ring in his blood;
Deserted at his utmost need,
By those his former bounty fed;
On the bare earth expos'd he lies,
With not a friend to close his eyes.
John Dryden
Quotes , Source: Alexander's Feast (l. 77)
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When Misfortune is asleep, let no one wake her.
[Lat., Quando la mala ventura se duerme, nadie la despierte.]
John Dryden
Quotes , Source: Alexander's Feast (l. 77)
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But strong of limb
And swift of foot misfortune is, and, far
Outstripping all, comes to every land,
And there wreaks evil on mankind, which prayers
Do afterwards redress.
Homer ("Smyrns of Chios")
Quotes , Source: The Iliad (bk. IX, l. 625), (Bryant's translation)
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One more unfortunate
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death!
Thomas Hood
Quotes , Source: Bridge of Sighs
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Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care;
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young and so fair!
Thomas Hood
Quotes , Source: Bridge of Sighs
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Let us be of good cheer, however, remembering that the
misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.
James Russell Lowell
Quotes , Source: Democracy and Addresses--Democracy
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It is pleasant, when the sea runs high, to view from land the
great distress of another.
[Lat., Suave mari magno, turbantibus aequora ventis
E terra magnum alterius spectare laborum.]
Lucretius (Titus Lucretius Carus)
Quotes , Source: De Rerum Natura (II, 1)
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Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wreck'd.
John Milton
Quotes , Source: Paradise Regained (bk. II, l. 228)
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Whoever has fallen from his former high estate is in his calamity
the scorn even of the base.
[Lat., Quicumque amisit dignitatem pristinam
Ignavis etiam jocus est in casu gravi.]
Phaedrus (Thrace of Macedonia)
Quotes , Source: Fables (I, 21, 1)
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