Top 100 The Wretched Quotes
#1. Only a complete moral idiot can believe for an instant that we are fighting against the wretched of the earth. We are fighting, as I said before, against the scum of the earth
Christopher Hitchens
#2. How wretched is the person who hangs on by the favors of the powerful.
Robert Burns
#3. I know what it is like to live every day and every hour by the fruits of someone else's wretched bargain. To see people suffer and know that they suffer because I am loved.
I would not do that to the ones I love. Not for anything in the whole wide world.
Rosamund Hodge
#4. As a matter of policy, increasing taxes on the most economically productive group, which already generates 60 percent of the nation's federal revenues, during a sustained period of economic doldrums is a wretched idea.
John Podhoretz
#5. ... the kids, they took us places we never would have gone to on our own. Some times were great... some times were wretched... And there was still no guarantee, no bulletproof glass, safety net, steel-toed boots, anything at all that would promise more good moments... so was it enough? It was.
Mary J. Koral
#6. The colonized, underdeveloped man is a political creature in the most global sense of the term. Frantz Fanon: The Wretched of the Earth
Frantz Fanon
#7. Mathois said, 'The nearer a man comes to God, the more he sees himself to be a sinner. Isaiah the prophet saw the Lord and knew himself to be wretched and unclean (Is. 6:5).
Benedicta Ward
#8. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the moulding of his hands even. Somebody--I
Oscar Wilde
#10. You gotta understand, there are two different kinds of Asians - the kind who are good at school, obey their parents, go to college - that kind of stuff. And then you have my family - me, my brother, all of my cousins - we're just wretched people.
Bobby Lee
#11. In the north we could not hope to keep the worst and poorest servant for a single day in the wretched discomfort in which our negro servants are forced habitually to live.
Fanny Kemble
#12. For my part I have no joy in tears after dinnertime. There will always be a new dawn tomorrow. Yet I can have no objection to tears for any mortal who dies and goes to his destiny. And this is the only consolation we wretched mortals can give, to cut our hair and let the tears roll down our faces.
Homer
#13. God is more powerful than anybody's past, no matter how wretched. He can make us forget - not by erasing the memory but by taking the sting and paralyzing effect out of it
Jim Cymbala
#14. You're afraid, Nana, she might have said. You're afraid that I might find the happiness you never had. And you don't want me to be happy. You don't want a good life for me. You're the one with the wretched heart.
Khaled Hosseini
#15. As wretched as she was, she wanted Harry to be miserable, too. And yet, she was aware of an underlying sense of sadness. Theirs may have been the first war in which there were no winners, only losers.
Sharon Kay Penman
#16. O wretched is the dame, to whom the sound,
"Your lord will soon return," no phrase brings.
Charles Robert Maturin
#17. Nothing lies on our hands with such uneasiness as time. Wretched and thoughtless creatures! In the only place where covetousness were a virtue we turn prodigals.
Joseph Addison
#18. Philosophy has often attempted to repress insolence by asserting that all conditions are leveled by death; a position which, however it may defect the happy, will seldom afford much comfort to the wretched.
Samuel Johnson
#19. What a wretched lot of old shrivelled creatures we shall be by-and-by. Never mind - the uglier we get in the eyes of others, the lovelier we shall be to each other; that has always been my firm faith about friendship.
George Eliot
#20. The Thames is a wretched river after the Mersey and the ships are not like Liverpool ships and the docks are barren of beauty ... it is a beastly hole after Liverpool; for Liverpool is the town of my heart and I would rather sail a mudflat there than command a clipper out of London
John Masefield
#21. Thus even the most wretched individual breaths like a leaf in a verdant forest. His national identity supported him. A revered history receives him. A legitimate culture accepts his voice into the choir of a great community.
Theodor Lessing
#22. Would you require a wretched being, whose life is slowly wasting under a lingering disease, to despatch himself at once by the stroke of a dagger? Does not the very disorder which consumes his strength deprive him of the courage to effect his deliverance?
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#23. God, who might have directed the assassin's dagger so as to end your career in a moment, has given you this quarter of an hour for repentance. Reflect, then, wretched man, and repent.
Alexandre Dumas
#24. If a lover is wretched who invokes kisses of which he knows not the flavor, a thousand times more wretched is he who has had a taste of the flavor and then had it denied him.
Italo Calvino
#25. The wretched of the Earth, he calls us. People too poor to afford cable and too stupid to know that they aren't missing anything.
Paul Beatty
#26. Pg. 231-232: They'd given me a minivan. They could have picked any car and they picked a minivan. A minivan. O God of the Vehicular Justice, why dost thou mock me? Minivan, you albatross around my neck! You mark of Cain! You wretched beast high ceilings and few horsepower!
John Green
#27. Oall the creatures that creep and breathe on earth, there is none more wretched than man.
Homer
#28. Bilbo was tempted to slay him with his sword. But pity stayed him, and though he kept the ring, in which his only hope lay, he would not use it to help him kill the wretched creature at a disadvantage. In
J.R.R. Tolkien
#29. I hit my head against the wall because I don't want to know all the terrible things that I know about. I don't want to feel all these wretched things, but they're in me already. If I don't get rid of them, I'm not ever going to feel anything else.
Ntozake Shange
#30. The weed that wasn't Editorial Board | 488 words THE NEWS is full of instances in which deficits in common sense produce bad outcomes. But rarely is the deficit so clear, or the outcome so wretched, as in the case of a sixth-grade boy in Bedford County,
Anonymous
#31. Happy is he who has gained the wealth of divine thoughts, wretched is he whose beliefs about the gods are dark.
Empedocles
#32. It was a somber place, haunted by old jokes and lost laughter. Life, as I discovered, holds no more wretched occupation than trying to make the English laugh.
Malcolm Muggeridge
#33. The average Christian is so cold and so contented with His wretched condition that there is no vacuum of desire into which the blessed Spirit can rush in satisfying fullness.
Aiden Wilson Tozer
#34. We are on the side of religion as opposed to religions, and we are among those who believe in the wretched inadequacy of sermons and the sublimity of prayer.
Victor Hugo
#35. So as long as you can forget your body you are happy and the moment you begin to be aware of your body, you are wretched. So if civilization is any good, it has to help us forget our bodies, and then time passes happily without our knowing it. Help us get rid of our bodies altogether.
D.H. Lawrence
#36. The wretched Artist himself is alternatively the lowest worm that ever crawled when no fire is in him; or the loftiest God that ever sand when the fire is going.
Caitlin Thomas
#37. Let us not only scatter benefits, but even strew flowers for our fellow-travellers, in the rugged ways of this wretched world.
Lord Chesterfield
#38. Alas, I have studied philosophy, / the law as well as medicine, / and to my sorrow, theology; / studied them well with ardent zeal, / yet here I am, a wretched fool, / no wiser than I was before.
Ghadirian
#39. From ignorance our comfort flows, the only wretched are the wise
Samuel Johnson
#40. Had any poet adequately described the wretched ugliness of a loved one turned inside out with grief?
Kate Morton
#41. Oh dear ... it really is rather disillusioning. When one's friends marry for money they are wretched, when they marry for love it is worse. What is the proper thing to marry for, I should like to know?
Nancy Mitford
#42. Surely, of all creatures that have life and will, we women are the most wretched. When, for an extravagant sum, we have bought a husband, we must then accept him as possessor of our body.
Euripides
#44. Perhaps all a Tsaritsa is is a beautiful cold girl in the snow, looking down at someone wretched, and not yielding.
Catherynne M Valente
#45. I gave the wretched beast a look that said plainly I'll deal with you later.
He flicked his tail at me, cat-speak for Do I look like I'm bothered?
J.L. Merrow
#46. I saw the abyss of my misery; whatever there is of good in me is Yours, O Lord. But because I am so small and wretched, I have a right to count on Your boundless mercy.
Mary Faustina Kowalska
#47. I have so much pride and love for the songs of The Smiths. However, I must ask you, if you come across any Smiths CDs, don't buy them, because all the money goes to that wretched drummer.
Steven Morrissey
#48. To punish someone for your own mistakes or for the consequences of your own actions, to harm another by shifting blame that is rightly yours; this is a wretched and cowardly sin.
Richelle E. Goodrich
#49. In wretched outcomes, the devil is in the details.
Jane Jacobs
#50. Hast thou, then, nothing more to mention? Com'st ever, thus, with ill intention? Find'st nothing right on earth, eternally? MEPHISTOPHELES No, Lord! I find things, there, still bad as they can be. Man's misery even to pity moves my nature; I've scarce the heart to plague the wretched creature.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#51. Ah, on what little things does happiness depend! I have read all that the wise men have written, and all the secrets of philosophy are mine, yet for want of a red rose is my life made wretched.
Oscar Wilde
#52. God, I hate her!" Kelly shouts as soon as Connor and his mom are out of the store. "How did that wretched, wretched woman ever even find someone to procreate with?
Brenna Yovanoff
#53. My wretched feet, flayed and swollen to lameness by the sharp air of January, began to heal and subside under the gentler breathings of April; the nights and mornings no longer by their Canadian temperature froze the very blood in our veins; we could now endure the play-hour passed in the garden.
Charlotte Bronte
#54. War: A wretched debasement of all the pretenses of civilization.
Omar N. Bradley
#55. And if I consume another
mortal's flesh, will I like
god before me, shit a million stars upon
the naked, wretched sky?
A.P. Sweet
#56. At last she sighed.
But the most wretched thing - is it not? - is to drag out, as I do, a useless existence. If our pains were only of some use to someone, we should find consolation in the thought of the sacrifice.
Gustave Flaubert
#57. When I was young, to have a big nose, big lips or dark skin was the worst. You were the wretched. That was something I not only felt, but I participated in.
Nate Parker
#58. As Samuel Johnson said, To hear complaints is wearisome alike to the wretched and the happy.
Gretchen Rubin
#59. We come to the nations pretending to escape persecution, we the most deadly persecutors in all the wretched annals of man.
Samuel Roth
#60. Wretched game, cricket, keeping romantic youths out in the sun when they should be indoors, applying balm to the foreheads of feverish young maidens.
Ruskin Bond
#62. Each human being has significant potential for light and darkness," Grandpa continued. "Over a lifetime, we get a lot of practice leaning toward one or the other. Having made different choices, a renowned hero could have been a wretched villain.
Brandon Mull
#63. Is one of the fairest portions of the globe to remain in a state of nature, the haunt of a few wretched savages, when it seems destined by the Creator to give support to a large population and to be the seat of civilization?
William Henry Harrison
#64. I fear the line between myself and madness is as fine these days as a cobweb, and I have seen what it means when a soul crosses over into that dim and wretched place.
Geraldine Brooks
#65. Hypocrisy is wretched because the hypocrite says with his tongue what is not in his heart. He wrongs his tongue and oppresses his heart. But if the heart is sound, the condition of the tongue follows suit. We are commanded to be upright in speech, which is a gauge of the heart's state.
Hamza Yusuf
#66. Can't stand all these poisonous creatures, all these snakes and insects and fish and things. Wretched things, biting everybody. And then people expect me to tell them what to do about it. I'll tell them what to do. Don't get bitten in the first place. (quoting Dr. Struan Sutherland)
Douglas Adams
#67. My good works, however wretched and imperfect, have been made better and perfected by Him Who is my Lord: He has rendered them meritorious. As to my evil deeds and my sins, He hid them at once. The eyes of those who saw them, He made even blind; and He has blotted them out of their memory.
Saint Teresa Of Avila
#68. Faolan launched himself across the bridge, uttering a prayer to any deity that might be prepared to listen. Let me reach her in time, let her keep hold, let this wretched apology for a bridge not crumble under my feet ...
Juliet Marillier
#69. Every stone here sweats with suffering, I know that. I have never looked at them without a feeling of anguish. But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness. That is the face you are asked to see.
Albert Camus
#70. The wretched man seemed fully conscious of his position.
P.G. Wodehouse
#71. When we realize that we are both wretched and beautiful, we are freed up to see others the same way.
Shane Claiborne
#72. For the wretched one night is like a thousand; for someone faring well death is just one more night.
Sophocles
#73. An identity is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise, or when the stranger enters the gates, never, thereafter, to be a stranger.
James A. Baldwin
#74. When man's freedom equals zero, he commits no crimes. That is clear. The only means of ridding man of crime is ridding him of freedom. And now, just as we have gotten rid of it (on the cosmic scale, centuries are, of course, no more than "just"), some wretched halfwits ...
Yevgeny Zamyatin
#75. The first step to defuse a male in a wretched mood was to not toss new complaints upon the fire.
Erica Ridley
#76. From what I have said of the natives of New Holland they may appear to some to be the most wretched people upon earth but in reality they are far happier than we Europeans, being wholly unacquainted not only with the superfluous, but
James Cook
#77. Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt.
Plautus
#78. With my wolf's hunger
I haul my lamb's body
down like a sail
I am like
the wretched boat
and the lascivious sea
Giuseppe Ungaretti
#79. Rhime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter ... the troublesom and modern bondage of Rimeing
John Milton
#80. Thou art the same: 'tis I whose wretched soul Takes discontent to be its paramour, And gives its kingdom to the rude control Of what should be its servitor, - for sure Wisdom is somewhere, though the stormy sea Contain it not, and the huge deep answer 'Tis not in me.' To
Oscar Wilde
#81. The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.
Samuel Johnson
#82. However wretched a fellow-mortal may be, he is still a member of our common species.
Seneca The Younger
#83. Jesus was not sent here to teach the people to build magnificent churches and temples amidst the cold wretched huts and dismal hovels. He came to make the human heart a temple, and the soul an altar, and the mind a priest.
Kahlil Gibran
#84. Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched tribal dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.'
Henry Hazlitt
#86. Sinful self and all its wretched failures should be sufficiently noticed so as to keep us in the dust before God. Christ and His great salvation should be contemplated so as to lift us above self and fill the soul with thanksgiving.
Arthur W. Pink
#87. I have learned never to underestimate the capacity of the human mind and body to regenerate
even when prospects seem most wretched. The life force may be the least understood force on earth. Norman Cousins (in his; Anatomy of an Illness)
Norman Cousins
#88. Wretched Girl, you must stay here with me! Here amidst these lonely Tombs, these images of Death, these rotting loathsome corrupted bodies! Here shall you stay, and witness my sufferings; witness, what it is to die in the horrors of despondency, and breathe the last groan in blasphemy and curses!
Matthew Gregory Lewis
#89. The old folks say there is only black and white. That may do for their tidy lives, but it doesn't apply to all of us. We, Supergirls for real and the wretched creature at my feet, live in the gray and the mist. We may never see the stars, but we believe in the dream of them.
Mav Skye
#90. And still the Weaver plies his loom,
whose warp and woof is wretched Man
Weaving th' unpattern'd dark design,
so dark we doubt it owns a plan
Richard Francis Burton
#91. The most wretched of sights, the just-crushed spirit.
Chang-rae Lee
#93. Baseball loyalists cite the game's legendary numbers - 300 wins, 500 homers, 3,000 hits - as evidence of the sport's elegance, beauty, and gravitas. What no one mentions is how wretched and painful it is to actually watch a former star gasp and sputter his way toward a legendary number.
Stephen Rodrick
#94. Whereas in the old days one acquired eternal happiness by the grace of God, now too often the eternal happiness seems to have become like an aged and infirm pensioner who sustains his life in the house of the rich on the wretched crust of poverty.
Soren Kierkegaard
#95. The wretched are in this respect fortunate, that they have the strongest yearning after happiness; and to desire is in some sense to enjoy.
William Hazlitt
#97. They wouldn't be heroes if they were infallible, in fact they wouldn't be heroes if they weren't miserable wretched dogs, the pariahs of the earth, besides which the only reason to build up an idol is to tear it down again.
Lester Bangs
#98. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy.
G.K. Chesterton
#100. Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road.
Voltaire
