Misery

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You may be assured of this that very dreadful calamities are coming upon you, calamities that shall carry nothing of support nor comfort in them, but all misery, misery in time, misery to eternity, misery in your outward afflictions, misery in your inward frame and temper of mind, misery in this world, misery in hell. You have not a single instance of misery only coming upon you, but miseries. The ruin of your church and nation is at hand; and there will come a day of wrath, when riches shall not profit men, but all the wicked shall be destroyed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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 ”

“ You know that human misery has been crowded there in masses, without air to breathe, or such light as God gives to his meanest animal. You think of this till the hollows of the mountains seem gorged with groans, and the cry of suffering souls comes up through the very pores of the earth, making the wild flowers tremble beneath the doleful misery that grew desperate beneath their roots. ”

“ I must be pardoned for giving these distressing details; but how otherwise can I depict the misery, moral and physical, which we are enduring? And with it all, I dare not venture to hope that we have reached the climax of our sufferings. ”

“ Misery, and shame, and horror, and a vain yearning to hide myself from all human eyes, and weep out my life in secret, overcame me. Then, these subsided; and ONE THOUGHT slowly arose in their stead—arose, and cast down before it every obstacle of conscience, every principle of education, every care for the future, every remembrance of the past, every weakening influence of present misery, every repressing tie of family and home, every anxiety for good fame in this life, and every idea of the next that was to come. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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—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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ MISERY his heart hath broken—
Misery is mystery!
Let the sad one lonely be;
As the Ancients shunned the token
Of a lightning-blasted tree.
II.
Breathe no word, his doom is spoken—
Misery is mystery!
By its scathing lightning fated,
Human hearts are consecrated,
For a higher destiny.
[Pg 110]
FAREWELL
LET mine eyes the parting take,
Which my faint lips never can;
Moments such as these might break
Even the sternest heart of man.
Mournfully doth Joy's eclipse,
Shroud in grief Love's sweetest sign;
Cold the pressure of thy lips,
Cold the hand that rests in mine. ”

“ You have only to go on to the common here, or any other common or town in England, to see too much of them—enough to break one’s heart if—, but I will not hurry on too fast in what I have to say. What I want to make you recollect is, that misery is here round us, in us. A great deal which we bring on ourselves; and a great deal more misery which we do not, as far as we can see, bring on ourselves; but which comes, nevertheless, and lets us know plainly enough that it is close to us. Every man and woman of us have their sorrows. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Who is it that lives in an atmosphere of perpetual strife and loud quarrellings? "Whose is groaning?"—that sustained sigh of desponding and irremediable misery. "Whose are causeless wounds?"—not only the bruise and the gash which result from furious sparrings or unforeseen falls, but also wounds of the spirit, self-loathing, and shame, the thought of what might have been, the realization of a ruined home, and of suffering wife and little ones, and the conviction that the evil can now never be undone. ”

“ Soon, misery will beget on imagination a thousand shapes of woe, which he will not be able to rule, direct, or even distinguish from real presences—a whole world of miserable contradictions and cold-fever-dreams. ”

“ 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? ”

“ Now we are alive, fighting and struggling, hoping, despairing, suffering and rejoicing, weeping and laughing; that is life. We have climbed to the heights of joy, and we have descended into the depths of misery. ”

“ What forms of human misery and degradation presented themselves during one short walk which I once took there with a friend employed upon a mission of mercy!
Disease in its most frightful form, panting to inhale a little fresh air. Squalid misery, the result of the gin-shop—decent misery ready to starve. Women shut up in one room with great heartless, brutal, disobedient boys—sickness resting untended upon its solitary bed. Wailing infants—scolding mothers—human nature under its most abject and degraded forms. No thrift, no economy, no attempt at cleanliness and order. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Let every one, then, who thinks with pain on all these great evils, so horrible, so ruthless, acknowledge that this is misery. And if any one either endures or thinks of them without mental pain, this is a more miserable plight still, for he thinks himself happy because he has lost human feeling. ”

“ On the contrary, should I not be the most wretched of mortals? Would not this self-knowledge be pure living torment? And yet the misery springs entirely out of the sin. There is nothing arbitrary or wanton in the suffering. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But through the heart
Should jealousy its venom once diffuse,
'Tis then delightful misery no more,
But agony unmixed, incessant gall,
Corroding every thought, and blasting all
Love's Paradise. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ but now misery has come home, and men appear to me as monsters thirsting for each other’s blood. ”

“ Before them love flies aghast, and the tenderest emotions of the heart fall withered. Could the annals of human misery be fairly written, it might appear that not all the lusts and crimes which are daily blazoned to the eye have wrought such wide-spread misery, have inflicted such general unhappiness, as these sins of temper, so common in their operation that they pass almost unrebuked, but so wide-spread in their effects that their havoc is discovered in every feature of our social life. ”

“ Sense of pleasure we may well Spare out of life perhaps, and not repine, But live content, which is the calmest life: But pain is perfect misery, the worst Of evils, and, excessive, overturns All patience. ”

“ 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! ”

“ 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 ”

“ Nothing, perhaps, has impressed me so deeply as the clear view I have of almost all, if not quite the whole, of the suffering I have witnessed being the consequence of vice or ignorance. But when my heart has sickened at the sight, and at the thought of so much gratuitous pain, it has grown strong again in the reflection that, if unnecessary, this misery is temporary,—that the true ground of mourning would be if the pain were not from causes which are remediable. ”

“ Some have wandered about the earth with pictures of bliss in their imagination, and with hearts that shrank sensitively from the idea of pain and woe, yet have studied all varieties of misery that human nature can endure. ”

“ No artificial torture,—not even the perpetual water-drop,—can cause an equal amount of misery;—of misery which there are few to describe, as most who have felt it in an extraordinary degree are soon numbered in the class of those who can no more give an account of any thing. ”

“ But indeed I have met with what men usually style great misfortunes, or evils, though I never so named them. Like every mortal, I have had my share of what is called human misery. The weight of a sudden load has sometimes, for a moment, staggered me and pressed me down, as is the case with others. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The sight of human misery softens the heart, and makes it better: it checks the pride of health and prosperity, and the distress it occasions is amply compensated by the consciousness of doing your duty, and by the secret endearment which nature has annexed to all our sympathetic sorrows. ”