#miser

I wish I could hate you," he said. His voice was light, his mouth curved in an unconcerned half smile, his eyes sick with misery. "I want to hate you. I try to hate you. It would be so much easier if I did hate you. Sometimes I do hate you and then I see you and I... ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#misery

wanting what you could not have led to misery and madness ↗

— Cassandra Clare

#clockwork-prince #infernal-devices #madness #misery #tessa-gray

That summer, Titanic fever gripped Kabul. People smuggled pirated copies of the film from Pakistan- sometimes in their underwear. After curfew, everyone locked their doors, turned out the lights, turned down the volume, and reaped tears for Jack and Rose and the passengers of the doomed ship. If there was electrical power, Mariam, Laila, and the children watched it too. A dozen times or more, they unearthed the TV from behind the tool-shed, late at night, with the lights out and quilts pinned over the windows. At the Kabul River, vendors moved into the parched riverbed. Soon, from the river's sunbaked hollows, it was possible to buy Titanic carpets, and Titanic cloth, from bolts arranged in wheelbarrows. There was Titanic deodorant, Titanic toothpaste, Titanic perfume, Titanic pakora, even Titanic burqas. A particularly persistent beggar began calling himself "Titanic Beggar." "Titanic City" was born. It's the song, they said. No, the sea. The luxury. The ship. It's the sex, they whispered. Leo, said Aziza sheepishly. It's all about Leo. "Everybody wants Jack," Laila said to Mariam. "That's what it is. Everybody wants Jack to rescue them from disaster. But there is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is dead. ↗

— Khaled Hosseini

#misery #war #heroism

A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour. ↗

— P.G. Wodehouse

#misery #moroseness #subconscious #humor

Le suprême bonheur de la vie, c'est la conviction qu'on est aimé; aimé pour soi-même, disons mieux, aimé malgré soi-même. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#love #love

…to cause constellations of victories to flash forth at each instant from the zenith of the centuries, to make the French Empire a pendant to the Roman Empire, to be the great nation and to give birth to the grand army, to conquer the world twice, by conquest and by dazzling, that is sublime; and what greater thing is there?’ ‘To be free’, said Combeferre. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#hugo #les-miserables #love

I think that age as a number is not nearly as important as health. You can be in poor health and be pretty miserable at 40 or 50. If you're in good health, you can enjoy things into your 80s. ↗

— Bob Barker

#enjoy #good #good health #health #i

Nothing need be apprehended from this miserable adventurer. ↗

— Louis Bonaparte

#apprehended #miserable #need #nothing

Human misery is too great for men to do without faith. ↗

— Heinrich Heine

#faith #great #human #misery #too

Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain. ↗

— Aldous Huxley

#any #ever #human #human activity #importance