#miserable

I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends' floors, was happy, was miserable. ↗

— Ben Okri

#friends #happy #homeless #i #lived

The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable. ↗

— James A. Garfield

#free #make #miserable #set #truth

Man is only miserable so far as he thinks himself so. ↗

— Jacopo Sannazaro

#himself #man #miserable #only #thinks

Without literature my life would be miserable. ↗

— Naguib Mahfouz

#literature #miserable #my life #without #would

The most beautiful of altars, he said, is the soul of an unhappy creature consoled and thankfing God. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#m-bienvenu #m-welcome #beauty

Before him he saw two roads, both equally straight; but he did see two; and that terrified him--he who had never in his life known anything but one straight line. And, bitter anguish, these two roads were contradictory. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#equality

The book the reader has now before his eyes - from one end to the other, in its whole and in its details, whatever the omissions, the exceptions, or the faults - is the march from evil to good, from injustice to justice, from the false to the true, from night to day, from appetite to conscience, from rottenness to life, from brutality to duty, from Hell to Heaven, from nothingness to God. Starting point: matter; goal: the soul. Hydra at the beginning, angel at the end. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#victor-hugo #life

Marius and Cosette were in the dark in regard to each other. They did not speak, they did not bow, they were not acquainted; they saw each other; and, like the stars in the sky separated by millions of leagues, they lived by gazing upon each other. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#love #stars #strangers #victor-hugo #love

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation which, in the midst of civilization, artificially creates a hell on earth, and complicates with human fatality a destiny that is divine; so long as the three problems of the century - the degradation of man by the exploitation of his labour, the ruin of women by starvation and the atrophy of childhood by physical and spiritual night are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words and from a still broader point of view, so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth, there should be a need for books such as this. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#les-miserables #preface #law

I lost my sense of trust, honesty and compassion. I crashed down and became what I consider an emotional mess. I've never been so miserable in my whole life. I just wanted to go to bed and never get up. ↗

— Shania Twain

#bed #been #compassion #consider #crashed