#misery

I think a lot of songwriters would agree that it's often easier to find inspiration in misery. ↗

— Grant-Lee Phillips

#easier #find #i #i think #inspiration

I've learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends on our dispositions and not on our circumstances. ↗

— Martha Washington

#depends #dispositions #experience #greater #happiness

To do art, one thing should always remember - subjects of people in misery have deep meanings. ↗

— Zhang Yimou

#art #deep #meanings #misery #one thing

I cut an inch off of every straw I see, just to make the world suck a little less.
 ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#change #chivalrous #hope #miserable #misery

Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression, since after all you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you? Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change. If there is anything unhealthy in your reactions, just bear in mind that sickness is the means by which an organism frees itself from what is alien; so one must simply help it to be sick, to have its whole sickness and to break out with it, since that is the way it gets better. ↗

— Rainer Maria Rilke

#depression #hardship #misery #change

Should the king in exile pretend he is happy there? Should he not seek his own country? His miseries are his ally; they urge him on. Let them grow, if need be. But do not forsake the secret of life; do not despise those kingly desires. We abandon the most important journey of our lives when we abandon desire. We leave our hearts by the side of the road and head off in the direction of fitting in, getting by, being productive, what have you. Whatever we might gain – money, position, the approval of others, or just absence of the discontent self – it’s not worth it. ↗

— John Eldredge

#hope #misery #trouble #dreams

It is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles. And yet when King Laugh come, he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall, all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him. Ah, we men and women are like ropes drawn tight with strain that pull us different ways. Then tears come, and like the rain on the ropes, they brace us up, until perhaps the strain become too great, and we break. But King Laugh he come like the sunshine, and he ease off the strain again, and we bear to go on with our labor, what it may be. ↗

— Bram Stoker

#laugh #life #misery #van-helsing #world

Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom. ↗

— Voltaire

#life #meaning #misery #life

The next day he woke up feeling like he'd been unshackled from his fat, like he'd been washed clean from his misery, and for a long time he couldn't remember why he felt this way, and then he said her name. ↗

— Junot Díaz

#her-name #love #misery #life

But then he returned and our life went on. Three days gone. A week. I measured the time in the faint waning of my consciousness of my misery, and wondered if this would one day be enough: simply not to be consciously miserable anymore. ↗

— Sue Miller

#life