Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Misery
Levis est consolatio ex miseria aliorum.
The comfort derived from the misery of others is slight.
Cicero—Epistles. VI. 3.
Horatio looked handsomely miserable, like Hamlet slipping on a piece of orange-peel.
Dickens—Sketches by Boz. Horatio Sparkins. (Omitted in some editions).
The worst of misery
Is when a nature framed for noblest things
Condemns itself in youth to petty joys,
And, sore athirst for air, breathes scanty life
Gasping from out the shallows.
George Eliot—The Spanish Gypsy. Bk. III.
Grim-visaged, comfortless despair.
Gray—Ode on Eton College.
There are a good many real miseries in life that we cannot help smiling at, but they are the smiles that make wrinkles and not dimples.
Holmes—The Poet at the Breakfast Table. III.
This, this is misery! the last, the worst,
That man can feel.
Homer—Iliad. Bk. XXII. L. 106. Pope’s trans.
That to live by one man’s will became the cause of all men’s misery.
Richard Hooker—Ecclesiastical Polity. Bk. I. Ch. X. 5.
Il ne se faut jamais moquer des misérables,
Car qui peut s’assurer d’être toujours heureux?
We ought never to scoff at the wretched, for who can be sure of continued happiness?
La Fontaine—Fables. V. 17.
The child of misery, baptized in tears!
J. Langhorne—The Country Justice. Pt. I. L. 166.
But O yet more miserable!
Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave.
Milton—Samson Agonistes. L. 101.
And bear about the mockery of woe
To midnight dances and the public show.
Pope—To the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady. L. 57.
Frei geht das Unglück durch die ganze Erde!
Misery travels free through the whole world!
Schiller—Wallenstein’s Tod. IV. 11. 31.
Ignis aurum probat, misera fortes viros.
Fire tries gold, misery tries brave men.
Seneca—De Providentia. V.
Miserias properant suas
Audire miseri.
The wretched hasten to hear of their own miseries.
Seneca—Hercules Œtæus. 754.
Grim and comfortless despair.
Comedy of Errors. V. I. 80.
Misery makes sport to mock itself.
Richard II. Act II. Sc. 1. L. 85.
Meagre were his looks,
Sharp misery had worn him to the bones.
Romeo and Juliet. Act V. Sc. 1. L. 40.
Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.
Tempest. Act II. Sc. 2. L. 40.
Quæque ipse misserrima vidi, et quorum pars magna fui.
All of which misery I saw, part of which I was.
Vergil—Æneid. L. 5.