Misfortune Quotes, Quotations, and Sayings

43 Misfortune Quotes
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“Misfortune tests friends, and detects enemies”
Dorothy Parker Quotes
“Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many - not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some”
Charles Dickens Quotes
“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 Quotes
“We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.”
Honore de Balzac Quotes
“Life, misfortunes, isolation, abandonment, poverty, are battlefields which have their heroes; obscure heroes, sometimes greater than the illustrious heroes”
Victor Hugo Quotes
“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 Quotes
“Few misfortunes can befall a boy which bring worse consequences than to have a really affectionate mother”
William Somerset Maugham Quotes
“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 Quotes
“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 Quotes
“It is the nature of mortals to kick a fallen man.”
Aeschylus Quotes
Source: Agamemnon (884), (adapted)
“Calamity is man's true touch-stone. - Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher,”
Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher Quotes
Source: Four Plays in One--The Triumph of Honour (sc. 1, l. 67)
“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)
“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)
“Most of our misfortune are more supportable than the comments of our friends upon them.”
Charles Caleb Colton Quotes
Source: Lacon (p. 238)
“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)
“I was a stricken deer that left the herd Long since.”
William Cowper Quotes
Source: Task (bk. III, l. 108)
“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)
“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)
“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)
“One more unfortunate Weary of breath, Rashly importunate, Gone to her death!”
Thomas Hood Quotes
Source: Bridge of Sighs
“Take her up tenderly, Lift her with care; Fashioned so slenderly, Young and so fair!”
Thomas Hood Quotes
Source: Bridge of Sighs
“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
“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)
“Rocks whereon greatest men have oftest wreck'd.”
John Milton Quotes
Source: Paradise Regained (bk. II, l. 228)
“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)