Top 100 Quotes About Wretchedness
#1. Her carriage bespoke an exquisite misery, a wretchedness so perfect and so absolute that it manifested as dignity, as calm. More than a dark horse, she was darkness itself, the cloak of it.
Eleanor Catton
#3. Knowing God without knowing our own wretchedness makes for pride.
Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair.
Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.
Blaise Pascal
#4. We should strive to keep our hearts open to the sufferings and wretchedness of other people, and pray continually that God may grant us that spirit of compassion which is truly the spirit of God.
Vincent De Paul
#5. Blessedness, not material possessions, is the measure of right thought; wretchedness, not lack of material possessions, is the measure of wrong thought.
James Allen
#6. It would hardly be possible to exaggerate man's wretchedness if it were not so easy to overestimate his sensibility
George Santayana
#7. There is nothing that we can see on earth which does not either show the wretchedness of man or the mercy of God. One either sees the powerlessness of man without God, or the strength of man with God.
Blaise Pascal
#8. All acts suppose certain dispositions, and habits of mind and heart, which may be in themselves states of enjoyment or of wretchedness, and which must be fruitful in other consequences besides those particular acts.
John Stuart Mill
#9. Such things as anguish, woe, affliction, guilt, feelings of awfulness, and utter wretchedness, the bread and butter of Days of Yore and Russians, sadly have very little staying power in these lickety-split Modern Times.
Marisha Pessl
#10. A great proportion of the wretchedness which has embittered married life, has originated in a negligence of trifles.
Thomas Sprat
#11. And unbidden, floating into consciousness came the truth of his utter wretchedness. Even the very earth seemed to cry out in pain. Hodburn Wood
J. Tyson-Capper
#12. Wake up, see your own wretchedness, and fly to the Lord Jesus. He is the righteousness of God, for He Himself is God. Only by believing in His righteousness will you be delivered from condemnation.
John Bunyan
#13. The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proved by his wretchedness. For what in animals is nature, we call in man wretchedness
by which we recognize that, his nature being now like that of animals, he has fallen from a better nature which once was his.
Blaise Pascal
#14. There is no greater sorrow then to recall our times of joy in wretchedness.
Dante Alighieri
#15. Knowing God without knowing our wretchedness leads to pride. Knowing our wretchedness without knowing God leads to despair. Knowing Jesus Christ is the middle course, because in him we find both God and our wretchedness.
Blaise Pascal
#16. I tried out the standard blow-into-the-palm-of-your-hand to test my breath and yes, on a scale of one to ten, I could kill a small puppy with that wretchedness.
R.S. Grey
#17. Gospel riches are sent to remove our wretchedness, and mercy to remove our misery.
Charles Spurgeon
#18. Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of the earth is multiform.
Matt LeBlanc
#19. They gave themselves up wholly to their sorrow, seeking increase of wretchedness in every reflection that could afford it, and resolved against ever admitting consolation in future.
Jane Austen
#20. I have loved humanity, I have loved it so much. For me, there are three kinds of men; he who curses life, he who blesses it and he who contemplates it. I loved the first for his wretchedness, the second for his indulgence and the third for his perception.
Kahlil Gibran
#21. The happiness of the tender heart is increased by what it can take away from the wretchedness of others.
Jean Antoine Petit-Senn
#22. Mythological subjects always new. Modern subjects difficult because of the absence of the nude and the wretchedness of modern costume.
Eugene Delacroix
#23. Wretchedness. It is atrociously unfair, of course, that the Baudelaires have so many troubles, but that is the way the story goes. So now that I've told you that the first sentence will be The Baudelaire
Lemony Snicket
#24. The feeling of intense repulsion, which had begun to oppress and torture his heart while he was on his way to the old woman, had by now reached such a pitch and had taken such a definite form that he did not know what to do with himself to escape from his wretchedness
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#25. The histories which we have of the great tragedy give no idea of the general wretchedness, the squalid misery, which entered into every individual life in the region given up to the war. Where the armies camped the destruction was absolute.
Rebecca Harding Davis
#26. This book has been a catalogue of mistakes by politicians, moral and practical disasters which led to wars, enslavement and wretchedness on a scale which no previous age could have dreaded or dreamed of.
A. N. Wilson
#27. Being unable to cure death, wretchedness and ignorance, men have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.
Blaise Pascal
#28. I just loved being divorced from my own wretchedness.
Beth Henley
#29. there is always more wretchedness below than there is brotherhood above,
Victor Hugo
#30. There will always be causes for anxiety, whether due to prosperity or to wretchedness. Life will be driven on through a succession of preoccupations: we shall always long for leisure, but never enjoy it.
Seneca.
#31. The arrogance of wealth and the dejection of wretchedness, capital cities of unwonted extent, a lax morality, a vulgar egotism, and a great confusion of interests, are the dangers which almost invariably arise from the magnitude of States.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#32. She saw only that he was quiet and onubtrusive, and she liked him for it. He did not disturb the wretchedness of her mind by ill-timed conversation.
Jane Austen
#33. Ah, God, my God, what wretchedness I suffered in that world, and how I trifled with!
-St. Augustine on school
Augustine Of Hippo
#34. I do not think that there is so much wretchedness in us as vanity; we are not so much wicked as daft; we are not so much full of evil as of inanity; we are not so much pitiful as despicable.
Michel De Montaigne
#35. I envy the poet. He is encouraged toward drunkenness and wallows with nubile wenches while the painter must endure wretchedness and pain for his art.
Rembrandt
#36. My writing table has seen all my wretchedness, knows all my plans, has overheard all my thoughts.
Honore De Balzac
#37. There is a degree of wretchedness and want among the lower class of people which is not anywhere so common as among the Spanish and Portuguese settlements.
William Bligh
#38. The United States has already passed on as the world's economic leader. Having flouted Thomas Jefferson for too long, America has succumbed to public debt, the 'fore horse for oppression and despotism,' after which 'taxation will follow, and in its train wretchedness and oppression.
Ilana Mercer
#39. It is the wretchedness of being rich that you have to live with rich people.
Logan Pearsall Smith
#40. So this is pain. So this is wretchedness. So this is misery. I never knew. -Jack
Melissa De La Cruz
#42. We have only one heart, and the same wretchedness which leads us to mistreat an animal will not be long in showing itself in our relationships with other people. Every act of cruelty towards any creature is contrary to human dignity.
Pope Francis
#43. The ever-recurring law of necessity soon teaches a man to do what he does not like, so as to avert evils which he would dislike still more ... this foresight, well or ill used, is the source of all the wisdom or the wretchedness of mankind.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
#44. I would go so far as to say that it may even have caused him to think the more highly of them because their unbelief grew from a far more honest view of the wretchedness of things than the belief of the devout who see only what they choose to see and turn a blind eye on the rest.
Frederick Buechner
#45. In my personal experience I have hardly come to know the wretchedness of mankind better than as a result of the general theory of relativity and everything connected to it. But it doesn't bother me.
Albert Einstein
#46. Nevertheless, in this sea of human wretchedness and malice there bloomed at times compassion, as a pale flower blooms in a putrid marsh.
Henryk Sienkiewicz
#47. Strive always to confess your sins with a deep knowledge of your own wretchedness and with clarity and purity.
John Of The Cross
#48. I felt physically weak and broken down, but my worse ailment was an unutterable wretchedness of mind; a wretchedness which kept drawing from me silent tears.
Charlotte Bronte
#49. The problem for a Paracelsian physician like me is that I see diseases as disguises in which people present me with their wretchedness.
Robertson Davies
#50. We can only know God well when we know our own sin. And those who have known God without knowing their wretchedness have not glorified Him but have glorified themselves.
Blaise Pascal
#51. And when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the wretchedness about him, his dream had had its usual effect: it had intensified the sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold.
Mark Twain
#52. Yet, ironically, it is her very wretchedness that makes me pity her so. I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't know what to do!
Christopher Pike
#53. Sin is nothing else but the failure to recognize human wretchedness.
Simone Weil
#54. I've always been very keen on Pascal, and what I'm most keen on in Pascal is his emphasis upon human wretchedness. He has a phrase which goes something like 'Anxiety, boredom and inconstancy, that is the human condition' and I've always been very partial to that.
Simon Critchley
#55. Unless we know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, concupiscence, weakness, wretchedness and unrighteousness, we are truly blind. And if someone knows all this and does not desire to be saved, what can be said of him?
Blaise Pascal
#56. The law showeth unto us our sins, and maketh known unto us our miserable estate and wretchedness, and how that there is nothing good in us, and that we are far off from all manner of righteousness, and so driveth us of necessity to seek righteousness in Christ.
Daniel Cawdry
#57. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us.
Pema Chodron
#58. Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.
Seneca.
#59. The wretchedness of ordinary life, endured so gaily when it is part of our normal existence, is made far worse when it comes as something new, and is exaggerated by the working of the imagination.
Marcel Proust
#60. Humility exalteth man to the heaven of glory and power, whilst pride abaseth him to the depths of wretchedness and degradation.
Baha'u'llah
#61. You had better all die - die immediately, than live as slaves and entail your wretchedness upon your posterity.
Henry Highland Garnet
#62. The Church Fathers teach us that a shattered heart is the most pleasing gift to God. It is the sign that we are conscious of our sins, of the evil we have done, of our wretchedness, and of our need for forgiveness and mercy.
Pope Francis
#63. Haunted by my own wretchedness, I know I will die with great regrets.
R.P. McCabe
#64. The deepest wretchedness often results from a perpetual continuation of petty trials.
L.G. Abell
#65. Reasons for anxiety will never be lacking, whether born of prosperity or of wretchedness; life pushes on in a succession of engrossments. We shall always pray for leisure, but never enjoy it.
Seneca.
#66. Every soul is wretched that becomes bound in friendship to perishable things. The soul is torn apart when the thing loved is lost. The wretchedness was perhaps always there, masked by the beloved thing that has been stripped away.
Augustine Of Hippo
#67. The uncouth hordes of common men are not fit to recognize duly the merits of those who eclipse their own wretchedness.
Ludwig Von Mises
#68. The most durable monument of human labor is that which recalls the wretchedness and nothingness of man.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#69. How evil life must be if it were indeed necessary that such imploring cries, such cries of physical and moral wretchedness, should ever and ever ascend to heaven!
Emile Zola
#70. Each one of us must suffer long to himself before he can learn that he is but one in a great community of wretchedness which has been pitilessly repeating itself from the foundation of the world.
William Dean Howells
#71. One has followed the other in an endless circle, for it is certain that as man's insight increases so he finds both wretchedness and greatness within himself. In a word man knows he is wretched. Thus he is wretched because he is so, but he is truly great because he knows it.
Blaise Pascal
#72. Only those who have learned well to be earnestly dissatisfied with themselves, and to be confounded with shame at their wretchedness truly understand the Christian gospel.
John Calvin
#73. I cannot think a civilization worth having that does not encourage and enable its subjects to spend something, not extorted by governments but freely given to keep wretchedness at least from the streets they walk through day by day.
Freya Stark
#74. Isolation is the sum total of wretchedness to a man.
Thomas Carlyle
#75. Though he wouldn't take it or offer it back, she gave. She squeezed it into him and held it there. She accepted him. She loved him in his wretchedness, kissed his ragged cheek, and called him /father./
A.S. Peterson
#76. Those who have known God without knowing their own wretchedness have not glorified him but themselves.
Blaise Pascal
#77. The Giver of life gave it for happiness and not for wretchedness.
Thomas Jefferson
#78. Thy wretchedness weighs upon me, so that it to weep invites me.
Dante Alighieri
#79. Her father's marvelous gentleness was not because he lacked a keen enough perception of the faults and wretchedness of others; it came from his constant searching of his own heart before God, crushing it in repentance over his own failings. No,
Sigrid Undset
#80. What a mistake those who do not hope make! Judas made a huge blunder the day in which he sold Christ for 30 denarii, but he made an even bigger one when he thought that his sin was too great to be forgiven. No sin is too big: any wretchedness, however great, can always be enclosed in infinite mercy.
Pope John Paul I
#81. O, vile! These tauntauns have an awful stench outside, But nothing did I know of wretchedness, Disgusting rot, and sick'ning filth till this New smell hath made attack upon my nose.
Ian Doescher
#82. But what a path it has been! I have had to pass through so much foolishness, so much vice, so much error, so much nausea and disillusionment and wretchedness, merely in order to become a child again and be able to start over. But all of this was just and proper.
Hermann Hesse
#84. Knowing Jesus Christ strikes the balance because he shows us both God and our own wretchedness.3 What do you see in your own heart?
Edward T. Welch
#86. Love is not always blind and there are few things that cause greater wretchedness than to love with all your heart someone who you know is unworthy of love.
W. Somerset Maugham
#87. It is the same with wretchedness as with everything else. It ends by becoming bearable.
Victor Hugo
#88. The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people. To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober.
-Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) US-English essayist, editor, anthologist
Logan Pearsall Smith
#89. Every child has the spirit of creation. The rubbish of life often exterminates the spirit through plague and a souls own wretchedness.
Peter Paul Rubens
#90. Knowlege of God without knowledge of man's wretchedness leads to pride. Knowledge of man's wretchedness without knowledge of God leads to despair. Knowledge of Jesus Christ is the middle course, because by it we discover both God and our wretched state.
Blaise Pascal
#91. The nations of our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal; but it depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or to wretchedness.
Alexis De Tocqueville
#92. Let not the general representation unto thyself of the wretchedness of this our mortal life, trouble thee.
Marcus Aurelius
#93. True religion teaches us to reverence what is under us, to recognize humility and poverty, and, despite mockery and disgrace, wretchedness, suffering, and death, as things divine.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#94. Many are convinced, who are not truly enlightened; are afraid of the consequences of sin, though they never saw its evil; have a seeming desire of salvation, which is not founded upon a truly spiritual discovery of their own wretchedness, and the excellency of Jesus.
John Newton
#95. We can only know one thing about God - that he is what we are not. Our wretchedness alone is an image of this. The more we contemplate it, the more we contemplate him.
Simone Weil
#96. The best proof adduced of the wretchedness of life is that derived from contemplating its glory.
Soren Kierkegaard
#97. Please don't give me words; give me a hug. Don't tell me that I'm holding up so well; break down with me and admit our shared wretchedness. Don't feign some bright mountaintop; walk with me through the dark valley where neither of us can utter a word.
Robert Dykstra
#98. But she insists the family hadn't a choice. Not true. We always have choices. Isn't that what Dante teaches us?
I really have become quite the Dante scholar: There is no greater sorrow than to recall our time of joy in wretchedness.
Chris Bohjalian
#99. Rags, wretchedness, poverty and dirt, those signs and symbols that indicate the presence of [Muslim] rule more surely than the crescent-flag itself, abound.
Mark Twain
#100. The purpose of the whole (work) is to remove those who are living in this life from a state of wretchedness and lead them to the state of blessedness.
Dante Alighieri
