#misery

وأنت وإن أفردت في دار وحشة فأنا بدار الأنس في وحشة الفرد ↗

— ابن الرومي

#misery #mourning #poetry #sadness #mourning

That summer, Titanic fever gripped Kabul. People smuggled pirated copies of the film from Pakistan- sometimes in their underwear. After curfew, everyone locked their doors, turned out the lights, turned down the volume, and reaped tears for Jack and Rose and the passengers of the doomed ship. If there was electrical power, Mariam, Laila, and the children watched it too. A dozen times or more, they unearthed the TV from behind the tool-shed, late at night, with the lights out and quilts pinned over the windows. At the Kabul River, vendors moved into the parched riverbed. Soon, from the river's sunbaked hollows, it was possible to buy Titanic carpets, and Titanic cloth, from bolts arranged in wheelbarrows. There was Titanic deodorant, Titanic toothpaste, Titanic perfume, Titanic pakora, even Titanic burqas. A particularly persistent beggar began calling himself "Titanic Beggar." "Titanic City" was born. It's the song, they said. No, the sea. The luxury. The ship. It's the sex, they whispered. Leo, said Aziza sheepishly. It's all about Leo. "Everybody wants Jack," Laila said to Mariam. "That's what it is. Everybody wants Jack to rescue them from disaster. But there is no Jack. Jack is not coming back. Jack is dead. ↗

— Khaled Hosseini

#misery #war #heroism

Whoever is spared personal pain must feel himself called to help in diminishing the pain of others. We must all carry our share of the misery which lies upon the world. ↗

— Albert Schweitzer

#carry #diminishing #feel #help #himself

Our principles are the springs of our actions. Our actions, the springs of our happiness or misery. Too much care, therefore, cannot be taken in forming our principles. ↗

— Red Skelton

#cannot #care #forming #happiness #misery

Evil is always devising more corrosive misery through man's restless need to exact revenge out of his hate. ↗

— Ralph Steadman

#corrosive #devising #evil #exact #hate

Unpopular, lonely and loving, Elinor need not trouble, For if she were not so loving, She would not be so miserable. ↗

— Stevie Smith

#lonely #love #loving #miserable #misery

All that hatred down there," he said, "all that hatred and misery and love. It's a wonder it doesn't blow the avenue apart. ↗

— James Baldwin

#love #misery #love

A man's subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour. ↗

— P.G. Wodehouse

#misery #moroseness #subconscious #humor