Misfortune Quotes

“Studies on the phenomenon indicate that a person with a high tolerance for pain is likely to also have above-average capacity to cope with the stress of a job layoff or a cancer diagnosis, and this same person is more likely as well to have experienced a moderate amount of psychological trauma in his or her past. It would appear that a certain amount of misfortune is needed to toughen the mind against suffering and hardship, but excessive trauma leaves scar tissue.”
― Matt Fitzgerald, How Bad Do You Want It? Mastering the Psychology of Mind over Muscle

“A man once made it a reproach that I should be so happy, and told me everybody has crosses, and that we live in a vale of woe. I mentioned moles as my principal cross, and pointed to the huge black mounds with which they had decorated the tennis–court, but I could not agree to the vale of woe, and could not be shaken in my belief that the world is a dear and lovely place, with everything in it to make us happy so long as we walk humbly and diet ourselves. He pointed out that sorrow and sickness were sure to come, and seemed quite angry with me when I suggested that they too could be borne perhaps with cheerfulness. ‘And have not even such things their sunny side?’ I exclaimed. ‘When I am steeped to the lips in diseases and doctors, I shall at least have something to talk about that interests my women friends, and need not sit as I do now wondering what I shall say next and wishing they would go.’ He replied that all around me lay misery, sin, and suffering, and that every person not absolutely blinded by selfishness must be aware of it and must realise the seriousness and tragedy of existence. I asked him whether my being miserable and discontented would help any one or make him less wretched; and he said that we all had to take up our burdens. I assured him I would not shrink from mine, though I felt secretly ashamed of it when I remembered that it was only moles, and he went away with a grave face and a shaking head, back to his wife and his eleven children. I heard soon afterwards that a twelfth baby had been born and his wife had died, and in dying had turned her face with a quite unaccountable impatience away from him and to the wall; and the rumour of his piety reached even into my garden, and how he had said, as he closed her eyes, ‘It is the Will of God.’ He was a missionary.”
― Elizabeth von Arnim, The Solitary Summer

“Twere best, if anything is best in evil times.
What's soonest done, is best, when all is ill.”
― Sophocles

“I know how lucky I am, stupid with luck, crammed with it, stumbling drunk. I wake sometimes in the dark terrified by my life’s precariousness, its thready breath.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“There are misfortunes that make you spring up and rush to save yourself, but, there are others that are too bad for this, for they leave nought to do. Then a stillness falls on the soul, like the stillness of a rabbit when the stoat looks hotly upon it and it knows that there is no more to be done.”
― Mary Webb, Precious Bane

“All this shows a very mediocre idea of oneself - always imputing misfortune to some objective cause.
Once it has been exorcized by causes, misfortune is no longer a problem: it becomes susceptible of a causal solution and, above all, it originates elsewhere - in original sin, in history, in the social order, or in natural perversion. In short, it originates in an objectivity into which we exile it the better to be rid of it. Once again, this bespeaks very little pride and self-respect.
In the past, what struck you down was your destiny, your personal fatum. You didn't look for some 'objective' cause of this or some attenuating circumstance, which would amount to saying we have no part in what happens to us. There is something humiliating in that.
The intelligence of evil begins with the hypothesis that our ills come to us from an evil genius that is our own.
Let us be worthy of our 'perversity' of our evil genius, let
us measure up to our tragic involvement in what happens to us (including good fortune).
In a word, let us not be imbeciles, for imbecility in the literal sense lies in the superficial reference to misfortune and exemption from evil.
This is how we make imbeciles of the victims themselves, by confining them to their condition of victim. And by the compassion we show them we engage in a kind of false advertising for them.
We take no account of what degree of choice and defiance, of connivence with oneself, of - unconscious or quasi-deliberate - provocative relation to evil there may be in AIDS, in drug-taking, in suffering and alienation, in voluntary servitude - in this acting-out in the fatal zone.
It is the same with suicide, which is always ascribed to depressive motivations with no account taken of an originality of, an original will to commit, the act itself (Canetti speaks in the same way of the interpretation of dreams as a violence done to dreams that takes no account of their literalness).
So, the understanding of misfortune is everywhere substituted for the intelligence of evil. Now, unlike the former, this latter rests on the rejection of the presumption of innocence. By contrast with that understanding, we are all presumptive wrongdoers - but not responsible ones, for, in the last instance, we do not have to answer for ourselves - that is the business of destiny or of the divinity.
For the act we commit, it is right we should be dealt with - and indeed punished - accordingly. We are never innocent of that act in the sense of having nothing to do with it or being victims of it. But this does not mean we are answerable for it either, as that would suppose we were answerable for ourselves, that we were invested with total power over ourselves, which is a subjective illusion.
It's a good thing we don't possess that power or that responsibility. A good thing we are not the causes of ourselves - that at least confers some degree of innocence on us. For the rest, we are forever complicit in what we do, even if we are not answerable to anyone.
So we are both irresponsible and without excuses.
Never explain, never complain.”
― Jean Baudrillard, The Intelligence of Evil or the Lucidity Pact

“Any blessing or achievement turns to be a curse if it's not accompanied by efforts to increase and enlarge inner capacity to handle it.”
― Dr. Lucas D. Shallua

“I’ve gotten the short end of so many sticks that I could start a bonfire.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Coming face to face with Ugliness can be a misfortune or a blessing. We can imitate it and be one with it; or we can feel repugnance and appreciate the Beauty once and for all!”
― Giannis Delimitsos, A PHILOSOPHICAL KALEIDOSCOPE: Thoughts, Contemplations, Aphorisms

“To retrieve the ill consequences of a foolish conduct, and by struggling manfully with distress to subdue it, is one of the noblest efforts of wisdom and virtue. Whoever, therefore, calls such a man fortunate, is guilty of no less impropriety in speech than he would be who should call the statuary or the poet fortunate who carved a Venus or who writ an Iliad.”
― Henry Fielding

“Sometimes we receive gifts that lead us to misfortune
and sometimes we take poisons that make us stronger.”
― Augusto Branco

“Stones are just stones and rain is just rain and misfortune is just bad luck. Some things are simply more rare than others, and that’s why there are locks.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“In a world full of entitled victims, greed perverts the occurrence of misfortune, and the trivialization of tragedy becomes the status quo.”
― V.J. Cole, The Modern Ignoramus

“If misfortune come against us we must fight with her; we must cast her aside, and still go on to find out that which it is our nature to desire.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

“Lack of change is not a sign of misfortune, it's a sign of inaction.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Shape of A Human: Our America Their America

“We must be ready... to take the rough with the smooth. We must have spirits so constant that we can derive from misfortune added strength, and if we are cheered by victory, we are also inspired to greater efforts by rebuffs. We cannot tell how long the road will be. We only know that it will be stony, painful, and uphill, and that we shall march along it to the end.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“Ignominy has always been the younger sister of misfortune.”
― Franz Werfel, Jeremias, höret die Stimme

“I know how to handle misfortune,
how to take bad news,
I can minimize injustice,
lighten up God's absence,
or pick the widow's veil that suits your face.”
― Wisława Szymborska, View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems

“One misfortune may be chance; two might be divine punishment. Three is a plan.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, Annihilation

“I hope that real love and truth are stronger in the end than any evil or misfortune in the world...”
― David Copperfield

“Beware who you hurt and anger. Some are neither harmless nor forgiving. The wise would do well to avoid unnecessary misfortune.”
― Wayne Gerard Trotman

“Humans need healthy minds. There are a number of ways to keep your mind healthy. Some examples include intellectual stimulation and challenge, laughter and fun, purpose and achievements. Making these happen will bring your mind into a healthy state as long as you don’t overdo it and stress yourself! Laughing and having a sense of humour can be the best tonic that you can give your mind. Try to see the funny side when things don’t go according to plan. Learning to laugh at misfortune and at your self is a learnt behaviour, a strong Autopilot, and one worth developing.”
― Steve Peters

“In every misfortune if we look harder we will see a fortune packaged within it.”
― Dr. Lucas D. Shallua

“I say no regrets because I think life is such that you need to keep counting the blessings, not the misfortunes. If you keep counting your blessings, you will be a much happier person and it naturally stays with you. My grandmother has given me a happy childhood. Although we were very poor, she provided an environment where I could be happy and free.”
― Olivia Lum

“It was through misfortune that I became the world’s leading expert on High Altitude Observatory Diseases.”
― Steven Magee

“The LORD was with them, there was no misery nor misfortune.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“We don’t develop and acquire courage by taking the smoothest path each time. We develop it by facing misfortune and perilous conditions.”
― RJ Intindola – (Gandolfo) – 1989

“Pursuing impossible goals,
as much as aiming for mediocre goals,
is a recipe for misfortune:
the secret is in balance.”
― Augusto Branco

“You’re crying because you think
I’m going to a better place
I’m crying because I think
I’m leaving to a place
Better than the one I am going to…
Oh, the game of places…
Oh, the winds of misfortune…”
― Louis Yako, أنا زهرة برية [I am a Wildflower]

“Everything is clear to us, that's why it got dark.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, Yet Another New Land