Miser

“ I'll have some more.'
"The miser once more dipped the ladle in the hot water and offered it again to the beggar, who quaffed the contents unflinchingly.
"'You see, bad tongues say I'm a miser, but it's all slander; for when I like a fellow, I'd give him the shirt off my back, and I like you, Old Nor. ”

“ Contemplate the indolent child of wealth, behold him a prey to the lassitude of unmeasured enjoyment, corroded by the satiety which always follows his exhausted pleasures. View the miser with an emaciated countenance, the consequence of his own penurious disposition, whose callous heart is inaccessible to the calls of misery, groaning over the accumulating load of useless treasure, which at the expense of himself, he has laboured to amass. ”

“ Is it a satisfaction to you to know that you put the finishing stroke to my misery—a misery that I can't shake off—that haunts me—paralyzes me? You have your husband, your wealth, your pleasure. You sold yourself for these things. ”

“ What evil greater than a life like mine!
DAPHNE.
For shame, support your misery like a man;
Live on in misery; nay, with future bliss
Contrast it, and convert it to your pleasure.
Who never suffers, never can enjoy ”

“ The result of all that wealth had been to create a new form of misery, an envious, jealous form of misery, much more cruel than the former one, for it filled the heart with a ferment of hatred, a passion for destruction. ”

“ Young man, boast not of your fortune, praise not your wealth! I, Misery, have known people who were wiser and richer than you, but I, Misery, have outwitted them. When a great misfortune befell them, they struggled with me unto their death; they were worsted by their luckless plight,—could not get away from me, Misery, until they took their abode in the grave, and I covered them for ever with the earth. ”

“ Misery—even smiling misery—has nothing of gaiety; and it is Misery, or her shame-faced sister Want, who drives hither that crowd of people differing so greatly from one another by their costume, age, sex, and position. ”

“ I have seen wickedness triumphant, proud, rich, self-sufficient; and I have seen men and women struggling almost against hope—save that one blessed anchor of the human soul, the expectation of a joyful resurrection. I have seen untold misery such as you cannot conceive, and I have seen what is far worse than misery, human souls carried on to ruin by the mad thirst for pleasure. O sad earth! ”

“ The miser, starving his brother's body, starves also his own soul, and at death shall creep out of his great estate of injustice, poor and naked and miserable. ”

“ Must it ever be thus,—that the source of our happiness must also be the fountain of our misery? The full and ardent sentiment which animated my heart with the love of nature, overwhelming me with a torrent of delight, and which brought all paradise before me, has now become an insupportable torment,—a demon which perpetually pursues and harasses me. ”

“ At that time, doubtless, when they succeed in pushing their own misery, in fact, all misery, into the consciousness of the happy: so that the latter begin one day to be ashamed of their happiness, and perchance say to themselves when they meet, "It is a shame to be happy; there is too much misery!" ”

“ Yet there lay, underneath his own gloomy agony, a remote consciousness of collateral affliction, such as is frequently experienced by those who may be drawn, by some temporary and present pleasure, from the contemplation of their misery. ”

“ But of her far keener suffering, for the loss she had sustained, little shew was made; for real misery delights not in reproaches and complaints. It is like charity and love—silent, long suffering and mild. ”

“ But it is far from that; he drinks misery, and he tastes happiness; he mows misery, and he gleans happiness; he journeys in misery, he does but walk in happiness; and, which is worst, his misery is positive and dogmatical, his happiness is but disputable and problematical: all men call misery misery, but happiness changes the name by the taste of man. ”

“ It is amusing, if a person could forget the distress which occasions the scene, to observe one of these men producing an old stocking, or a long black leathern purse—or a calf-skin pocket-book with the hair on, and counting down, as if he gave out his heart's blood drop by drop, the specific sum, uttering, at the same time, a most lugubrious history of his own poverty, and assuring the poor wretch he is fleecing, that if he (the miser) gives way to his good nature, he must ultimately become the victim of his own benevolence. ”

“ Would I could foresee a term to our misery!—Who but yourself shall find a remedy for our misfortunes? Shall we delay, until time brings to light that which is now a secret, and the affront we have received entail on us a shame more intolerable than death itself? ”

“ And to herself she cries,
"Oh misery! oh misery!
Oh woe is me! oh misery!"
At all times of the day and night
This wretched Woman thither goes;
And she is known to every star,
And every wind that blows ”

“ No other principle, or passion, hath for its end the misery of our fellow-creatures. But malice and revenge meditates evil itself; and to do mischief, to be the author of misery, is the very thing which gratifies the passion: this is what it directly tends towards, as its proper design. ”

“ But go down to that miserable lane, where men mothered by Misery and sired by Crime, where the sons of Poverty and the daughters of Wretchedness, are huddled thick together, and you see this Demon of Intemperance in all his ugliness. ”

“ Is misery and vice so consonant to man’s nature that he will hug it to his heart? But when the wretched one in bondage beholds the emancipation near, will he not endure his misery awhile with hope and patience, then spring to his preserver’s arms, and start into a man? ”

“ MISERY. Thou shalt forget thy misery, and remember it as waters that pass away.—Job, xi. 16.
To every purpose there is time and judgment, therefore the misery of man is great upon him.—Ecclesiastes, viii. ”

“ The three days that I passed in this place I reckon the most unhappy of my life; for surely it is the height of human misery to be oppressed with alienation of mind, and to be conscious of the affliction. ”

“ If I have a Child in the Indies, and dream he is dead, am I to be miserable till a Letter from him convinces me of my Folly? If I am about engaging in an Affair, of itself not only innocent but laudable, am I to put it off because it is an unlucky Day? or because a senseless, withered Hag shakes her Head over a Dish of Coffee-grounds, am I to fear that Destruction is coming upon me? No, no; all these are Instruments of Misery, which nobody must meddle with who claims being a rational Creature. Superstition and Happiness are incompatible, as every Day’s Experience proves. ”

“ Human misery has at last found tongues and pens to make itself heard and felt. It appeals to our feelings and our understandings, to our sympathies and fears. Its wails melt us to pity, its ravings terrify us, its woes sicken us. ”

“ How faint a word to express the misery of that bruised reed; misery so dark that a blind worm like myself is occasionally tempted to exclaim, Better had the world never been created than that one so kind, so harmless, and so mild, should have undergone such intolerable woe! ”

“ Charnel-houses of sin and lust—sloughs of despond and regret—excess of passion offset by lack of power—dread, despair, hopelessness, shame and desperation, making a picture of misery scarcely to be conceived by any but those unfortunate beings who in the thoughtless, careless heyday of youth, or the reckless reliance on more mature vigor, have weakened, emasculated and enslaved themselves by indulgences and excesses that have borne fruit of misery, disease and desperation in after years. ”

“ What, have you no regard for a man in misery? Have you no pity, though he cry in bitterness of his soul? Help, help, for the Lord's sake? O, pray for, and pity those wounds and vexations of spirit, which no man feels but he that is thus wounded. ”

“ Each of you goes through a foolish, innocent routine, with a clear conscience and the applause of the poor multitude; and the result is misery, misery, misery. Not random misery, here and there, such as you harmless creatures might chance on by the way, but a fearful consistent scheme of deeply-calculated, universal misery—a thing of hellish contrivance, worthy of the fiery genius of the sulphur pit. ”

“ I will tell thee, therefore, my crimes, that thou mayst know thy own felicity, lest, ignorant it means nothing but innocence, thou shouldst lose it, unconscious of its value. Listen then to me, and learn what Misery is! Guilt is alone the basis of lasting unhappiness;—Guilt is the basis of mine, and therefore I am a wretch for ever! ”

“ Why have all men, I ask, in all ages, complained incessantly of the miseries of life?... They have no just reason, says one: these complaints proceed only from their discontented, repining, anxious disposition...And can there possibly, I reply, be a more certain foundation of misery, than such a wretched temper? ”

“ Mere human feelings of pity, sympathy with my too visible agitation, superadded to something of perhaps reverence for the blighting misery that was now opening its artillery upon me—for misery has a privilege, and everywhere is felt to be a holy thing—had combined to procure for me some attention and some indulgence hitherto. ”

“ Not 'cause he's troubled, but 'tis sweet to see Those Cares and Fears, from which ourselves are free. Creech.
If we are in Affliction, the Representation of the like Miseries makes our own more supportable. In both these Cases, the Pleasure arises from the Comparison, a Principle to which great Part of the Misery and Felicity of human Life is owing. It is commonly said, that no Body is miserable but by Comparison; and it may be as truly said, that no Body is happy but by Comparison. ”

“ Who can count the misery caused by one selfish, one imperious tyrant, whose victims dare not, or will not, complain; the crouching child, the trembling, submissive, broken-hearted, yet even still the loving wife? ”

“ THE WILDERNESS
"Misery loves company," they say. How true and yet how false! The miserable seek society as they take to drink, that they may forget their sorrow; but those who are sore hurt, with a pain that cannot be forgotten, a grief that will not be put aside, creep away to die, or to be alone, until the cruel wound is healed. ”

“ Misery cries out to me from the kerb-stone, despair passes me by in the ways; I discern limbs laden with fetters impalpable, but not imponderable; I hear the shaking of invisible lashes, I see men dabbled with their own oozing life. ”

“ Happiness and misery are the names of two extremes, the utmost bounds whereof we know not ; ”

“ It is hard to tell, whether you hurt a man's character most by calling him a knave or a coward, and whether a beastly glutton or drunkard be not as odious and contemptible, as a selfish, ungenerous miser. ”

“ There is no just impression in regard to the real poverty and wretchedness of your condition. ¶ That thou art wretched. The word wretched we now use to denote the actual consciousness of being miserable, as applicable to one who is sunk into deep distress or affliction. ”

“ The painful sensation immediately arising from a scene of misery, is so much softened and alleviated by the reflex sense of self-approbation attending virtuous sympathy, that we find, on the whole, a very exquisite and refined pleasure remaining, which makes us desirous of again being witnesses to such scenes, instead of flying from them with disgust and horror. ”

“ Is it the universality of human misery that gives us a false support? Is it, as the most misanthropical of philosophers has declared, that there is comfort for each man in the sorrows of his fellow-creatures? ”

“ It is not occasionally that he has heard from trembling lips the tale of woe, and seen its painful and often hideous signs. It has been with him an almost every day occurrence. Misery on every hand has made its appeal to him. ”

“ I have known a casual word spoken by a vicious servant, plant the seeds of vice in a young and previously-innocent mind, which have afterwards produced a harvest of misery, desolation, and remorse, in the bosom of a happy and virtuous family. ”

“ I have been told that the great never know what misery is; that they fly from the knowledge of it. But I will teach the duke what misery is; I will paint to him, in all the writhing agonies of death, what misery is; I will cry aloud in wailings that shall creep through the very marrow of his bones, what misery is ”

“ Who utter the deepest complaints against the evils of life? They who are most distinguished by its blessings. Youth and genius are amongst the most clamorous of the complainants. I hope and believe that misery is not so miserable as it appears. I have suffered, and I know the alleviations which attend each species of suffering I have endured ”