"Oftentimes. when people are miserable, they will want to make other people miserable, too. But it never helps."
— Lemony Snicket (The Blank Book)

"He did not care if she was heartless, vicious and vulgar, stupid and grasping, he loved her. He would rather have misery with one than happiness with the other."
— W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage)

"What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music? "
— Nick Hornby

"You don't want to loose your old friend - the misery - You have invested too much into false - Hence the fear to be exposed -to be true - to be naked as you are "
— Osho

"Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it."
— Boethius

"Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

"You can't hide from misery."
— House M.D.

"Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove."
— Jeremy Bentham

"People talk about the courage of condemned men walking to the place of execution: sometimes it needs as much courage to walk with any kind of bearing towards another person's habitual misery."
— Graham Greene (The Heart of the Matter)

"Now, comrades, what is the nature of this life of ours? Let us face it: our lives are miserable, laborious,
and short."
— George Orwell

"Love stole the gossip of my heart and whispered it into the ears of Misery"
— Ashley Dornack

"
Some days when my face was broken out just a little too much for me to take, and I looked in despair at the way my fashionless clothes hung on my thin body, my heart just couldn't take another noticeless passage through my school day and I went to agonize alone in the park."
— Calpernia Addams

"He is wretched indeed, who goes up and down in the world, without a God to take care of him, to be his guide and protector, and to bless him in his affairs [. . .] That unconverted men are without God shows that they are liable to all manner of evil [. . .] liable to the power of the devil, to the power of all manner of temptation [. . .] to be deceived and seduced into erroneous opinions [. . .] to embrace damnable doctrines [. . .] to be given up of God to judicial hardness of heart [. . .] to commit all manner of sin, and even the unpardonable sin itself. They cannot be sure they shall not commit that sin. They are liable to build up a false hope of heaven, and so to go hoping to hell [. . .] to die senseless and stupid, as many have died [. . .] to die in such a case as Saul and Judas did, fearless of hell. They have no security from it. They are liable to all manner of mischief, since they are without God. They cannot tell what shall befall them, nor when they are secure from anything. They are not safe one moment. Ten thousand fatal mischiefs may befall them, that may make them miserable forever. They, who have God for their God, are safe from all such evils. It is not possible that they should befall them. God is their covenant God, and they have his faithful promise to be their refuge.

[from "Natural Men in a Dreadful Condition"]"
— Jonathan Edwards (The Works of Jonathan Edwards)

"Be again, be again. (Pause.) All that old misery. (Pause.) Once wasn't enough for you."
— Samuel Beckett (Krapp's Last Tape)

"It is a strange
world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and
troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them
all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry
bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall, all
dance together to the music that he make with that
smileless mouth of him.
Ah, we men and women
are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different
ways. Then tears come, and like the rain on the ropes,
they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too
great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the
sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to
go on with our labor, what it may be.’"
— Bram Stoker (Dracula)

"But then he returned and our life went on. Three days gone. A week. I measured the time in the faint waning of my consciousness of my misery, and wondered if this would one day be enough: simply not to be consciously miserable anymore."
— Sue Miller (While I Was Gone)

"And then there are always clever people about to promise you that everything will be all right if only you put yourself out a bit... And you get carried away, you suffer so much from the things that exist that you ask for what can't ever exist. Now look at me, I was well away dreaming like a fool and seeing visions of a nice friendly life on good terms with everybody, and off I went, up into the clouds. And when you fall back into the mud it hurts a lot. No! None of it was true, none of those things we thought we could see existed at all. All that was really there was still more misery-- oh yes! as much of that as you like-- and bullets into the bargain!"
— Emile Zola ل زولا