#misery

There's so much light in Broughty Ferry. I think the humour in Glasgow is darker, because it's much more gloomy, there's a perpetual misery there. ↗

— Brian Cox

#darker #ferry #glasgow #gloomy #humour

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it. ↗

— Samuel Johnson

#depend #disagreeable #him #his #man

To add to our misery and despair, a bloated aristocracy has sent to China - the greatest and oldest despotism in the world - for a cheap working slave. ↗

— Denis Kearney

#aristocracy #bloated #cheap #china #despair

Maybe it's the music that enables them to function like that, to always take everything as it comes and never complain about the misery, hardship or injustice. ↗

— Wim Wenders

#always #comes #complain #enables #everything

Renunciation - that is the great fact we all, individuals and classes, have to learn. In trying to avoid it we bring misery to ourselves and others. ↗

— Beatrice Webb

#bring #classes #fact #great #individuals

I thought I saw him for what he was-or what I thought he was. And he was talented, no doubt about that. But, he thought his talent was based on misery and that if he became happy it would just go. He believed that. ↗

— Fay Wray

#based #became #believed #doubt #go

If peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a loss of perspective. We begin so aware and grateful. The sun somehow hangs there in the sky. The little bird sings. The miracle of life just happens. Then we stub our toe, and in that moment of pain, the whole world is reduced to our poor little toe. Now, for a day or two, it is difficult to walk. With every step, we are reminded of our poor little toe. Our vigilance becomes: Which defines our day—the pinch we feel in walking on a bruised toe, or the miracle still happening? It is the giving over to smallness that opens us to misery. In truth, we begin taking nothing for granted, grateful that we have enough to eat, that we are well enough to eat. But somehow, through the living of our days, our focus narrows like a camera that shutters down, cropping out the horizon, and one day we’re miffed at a diner because the eggs are runny or the hash isn’t seasoned just the way we like. When we narrow our focus, the problem seems everything. We forget when we were lonely, dreaming of a partner. We forget first beholding the beauty of another. We forget the comfort of first being seen and held and heard. When our view shuts down, we’re up in the night annoyed by the way our lover pulls the covers or leaves the dishes in the sink without soaking them first. In actuality, misery is a moment of suffering allowed to become everything. So, when feeling miserable, we must look wider than what hurts. When feeling a splinter, we must, while trying to remove it, remember there is a body that is not splinter, and a spirit that is not splinter, and a world that is not splinter. ↗

— Mark Nepo

#enlightenment #happiness #joy #mark-nepo #misery

That’s what love is like: mother of the greatest bliss and stepmother of the most tragic misery. ↗

— Stefanos Livos

#happiness #love #misery #mother #sadness

Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, and don't have any kids yourself. ↗

— Philip Larkin

#coastal #deepens #early #get #hands

Pain and sorrow and misery have a right to our assistance: compassion puts us in mind of the debt, and that we owe it to ourselves as well as to the distressed. ↗

— Joseph Butler

#compassion #debt #distressed #mind #misery