#sorrows

But after living in Communist China for the past seventeen years, I knew that such a society was only a dream because those who seized power would invariably become the new ruling class. They would have the power to control the people’s lives and bend the people’s will. Because they controlled the production and distribution of goods and services in the name of the state, they would also enjoy material luxuries beyond the reach of the common people. In Communist China, details of the private lives of the leaders were guarded as state secrets. But every Chinese knew that the Party leaders lived in spacious mansions with many servants, obtained their provisions from special shops where luxury goods were made available to their household at nominal prices, and send their children in chauffeur-driven cars to exclusive schools to be taught by specially selected teachers. Even though every Chinese knew how these leaders lived, no one dared to talk about it. If we had to pass by a special shop for the military or high officials, we carefully looked the other way to avoid giving the impression we knew it was there. Pg. 90 ↗

— Nien Cheng

#communist-china #corruption #cultural-revolution #maoism #death

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people. ↗

— Arthur Schopenhauer

#almost #other #our #out #people

It was a life, she eventually concluded, that had been lived in the middle ground, where contentment and love were found in the smallest details of people's lives. It was a life of dignity and honor, not without sorrows yet fulfilling in a way that few experiences ever were. ↗

— Nicholas Sparks

#dignity #fulfilling #honor #life #love

There are many things in your heart you can never tell to another person. They are you, your private joys and sorrows, and you can never tell them. You cheapen yourself, the inside of yourself, when you tell them. ↗

— Greta Garbo

#cheapen #heart #inside #joys #many

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. ↗

— Victor Hugo

#accomplished #daily #go #great #laboriously

Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves. ↗

— Emily Bronte

#people #proud #sad #sorrows #themselves

All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them. ↗

— Isak Dinesen

#borne #into #put #sorrows #story

Sorrows are like thunderclouds, in the distance they look black, over our heads scarcely gray. ↗

— Jean Paul

#distance #gray #heads #like #look

But to the slave mother New Year's day comes laden with peculiar sorrows. She sits on her cold cabin floor, watching the children who may all be torn from her the next morning; and often does she wish that she and they might die before the day dawns. ↗

— Harriet Ann Jacobs

#cabin #children #cold #comes #dawns

When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions. ↗

— William Shakespeare

#battalions #come #single #sorrows #spies