An example I often use to illustrate the reality of vanity, is this: look at the peacock; it's beautiful if you look at it from the front. But if you look at it from behind, you discover the truth... Whoever gives in to such self-absorbed vanity has huge misery hiding inside them.

Our sympathy is cold to the relation of distant misery.

There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.

August used to be a sad month for me. As the days went on, the thought of school starting weighed heavily upon my young frame. That, coupled with the oppressive heat and humidity of my native Washington, D.C., only seemed to heighten the misery.

Religion is the root of so much misery in the world, and I've always thought there is lack of criticism against it.

The period that directly follows the dissolution of a long term relationship is extremely volatile, with emotions running the gamut from misery to elation to relief to terror.

Whenever I am faced with someone spreading negativity in my relationship, I remember the old saying, 'Misery loves company.' I am also reminded to be mindful of the company you keep. Sometimes you cannot see a hater until you are happy. It is then that they demonstrate their negativity.

If we want to reduce poverty and misery, if we want to give to every deserving individual what is needed for a safe existence of an intelligent being, we want to provide more machinery, more power. Power is our mainstay, the primary source of our many-sided energies.

The superior power of population cannot be checked without producing misery or vice.

Human misery is too great for men to do without faith.

My suggestion is that there's no way out of the human condition. Sex, death, marriage, children, parents, illness. There's no way out. They're a misery, all of them.

What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.

Misery is the company of lawsuits.

The purposeful restriction of knowledge has been at the heart of untold misery and hardship in this world. Serfs were kept illiterate so as to not jeopardize the feudal system. Slaves were kept in the dark on a variety of subjects so as to not provide them the possibility of escape.

In my experience lust only ever leads to misery. All that suspicion and jealousy and anguish it unleashes. I don't want those things in my life.

I find that people find a way out of misery through humor and it's humor that's often unacceptable to people who are not in quite such a state of misery.

I simply can't build my hopes on a foundation of confusion, misery and death... I think... peace and tranquillity will return again.

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

Religion has caused more misery to all of mankind in every stage of human history than any other single idea.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

I am about to be married, and am of course in all the misery of a man in pursuit of happiness.

The greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not our circumstances.

In every human society, there is an effort continually tending to confer on one part the height of power and happiness, and to reduce the other to the extreme of weakness and misery. The intent of good laws is to oppose this effort and to diffuse their influence universally and equally.