Misfortune Quotes
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In misfortune, which friend remains a friend?
Euripides -
...she thought it was the misfortune of poetry, to be seldom safely enjoyed by those who enjoyed it completely; and that the strong feelings which alone could estimate it truly, were the very feelings which ought to taste it but sparingly.
Jane Austen
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Most People are wretched more by the Fears of what may come, than what they endure at present. ... a manifest Contradiction to good Sense; for who, with the right use of that, wou'd lose the Enjoyment of a present Comfort, to lament a Misfortune only in Supposition; which ten to one never comes to pass.
Eliza Haywood -
What would you not have accomplished if you had been free?" "Possibly nothing at all; the overflow of my brain would probably, in a state of freedom, have evaporated in a thousand follies; misfortune is needed to bring to light the treasures of the human intellect. Compression is needed to explode gunpowder. Captivity has brought my mental faculties to a focus; and you are well aware that from the collision of clouds electricity is produced — from electricity, lightning, from lightning, illumination.
Alexandre Dumas -
Should I be grateful or should I curse the fact that despite all misfortune I can still feel love, an unearthly love but still for earthly objects.
Franz Kafka -
When Opportunity came, the person didn't realize it because it came in the form of misfortune.
Napoleon Hill -
It seems the misfortune of one can plow a deeper furrow in the heart than the misfortune of millions.
Kirby Larson -
Examine the life of the best and most productive men and nations, and ask yourselves whether a tree which is to grow proudly skywards can dispense with bad weather and storms. Whether misfortune and opposition, or every kind of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, distrust, severity, greed, and violence do not belong to the favourable conditions without which a great growth even of virtue is hardly possible?
Friedrich Nietzsche
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Events are never absolute, their outcome depends entirely upon the individual. Misfortune is a stepping stone for a genius, a piscina for a Christian, a treasure for a man of parts, and an abyss for a weakling.
Honore de Balzac -
Opportunities are sometimes disguised as misfortune.
Katrina Mayer -
A big book is a big misfortune.
Callimachus -
When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.
Albert Camus -
The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune.
Plutarch -
Teaching and research are not to be confused with training for a profession. Their greatness and their misfortune is that they are a refuge or a mission.
Claude Levi-Strauss
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The arousing from sleep, after a recent misfortune, is a bitter moment; the mind at first habitually recurs to its previous tranquility, but is soon depressed by the thought of the contrast that awaits it.
Alessandro Manzoni -
I don't regard Jews as a class. I regard them as a privileged misfortune.
William Joyce -
Some dire misfortune to portend, no enemy can match a friend.
Jonathan Swift -
The most hateful human misfortune is for a wise man to have no influence.
Herodotus -
And what shall he suffer who slays him who of all men, as they say, is his own best friend? I mean the suicide, who deprives himself by violence of his appointed share of life. Not because the law of the state requires him. Nor yet under the compulsion of some painful and inevitable misfortune which has come upon him. Nor because he has had to suffer from irremediable and intolerable shame, but who from sloth or want of manliness imposes upon himself an unjust penalty.
Plato -
In misfortune we usually regain the peace that we were robbed of through fear of that very misfortune.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
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Covetousness is the greatest misfortune. One who does not know what is enough will never have enough.
Lao Tzu -
Christianity remains to this day the greatest misfortune of humanity.
Friedrich Nietzsche -
To doubt is a misfortune, but to seek when in doubt is an indispensable duty. So he who doubts and seeks not is at once unfortunate and unfair.
Blaise Pascal -
We exaggerate misfortune and happiness alike. We are never as bad off or as happy as we say we are.
Honore de Balzac