Quotes about Misfortune

Many are those who pity others while being blind to their own misfortunes.

Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.

Great minds have great purposes, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.

There are obstinate and unknown braves who defend themselves inch by inch in the shadows against the fatal invasion of want and turpitude. There are noble and mysterious triumphs which no eye sees. No renown rewards, and no flourish of trumpets salutes. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment, and poverty and battlefields which have their heroes. 

A wayfarer carried a heavy sack about which he complained unceasingly. From none could he get help or comfort. And as he slowly journeyed, groaning under his burden, the Angel of Optimism came to him and spoke kindly, saying: "Brother, what does thou carry?" The man answered surlily, "My worries." The angel smiled pityingly upon him and said, "Let us look into thy burden and examine thy worries." And so they looked in. But lo! the sack was empty. "Why surely," cried the man, "there were two great worries, too heavy for man to bear. But-ah, yes, I had forgot-one was a worry of yesterday, and so it is gone." "And the other?" "That-why, that was a worry of tomorrow, and it-it has not yet come." Then the angel smiled with infinite pity, saying: "Hearken! He who bows himself down under the worries of yesterday and tomorrow wears himself out for naught. But he who carries only the worries of today has no need of a sack for his sorrows. If thou will cast this black thing aside, and give all thy strength and cheer and courage to the things of today, real misfortune never can burden thee." Wondering, the man did as the angel commanded. And as he took up his journey and went lightly, swiftly on, his heart and his hands were free to relieve many a brother wayfarer of his burden and to pluck sweet fruits and flowers along the wayside. And when he came at last to the setting of the sun it was with smiles and a song.

Misfortune, n. The kind of fortune that never misses.

Love can cure heartbreaks, misfortune, or tragedy. It is the eternal companion.

What is Love? It's silence when your words would hurt, It's patience when your neighbor's curt, It's defense when the scandal flows, It's thoughtfulness for another's woes, It's promptness when stern duty calls, It's courage when misfortune falls.

Love can achieve unexpected majesty in the rocky soil of misfortune.

Quiet minds cannot be perplexed or frightened, but go on in fortune or misfortune at their own private pace, like a clock in a thunderstorm.

The measure of a man is the way he bears up under misfortune.

Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.

After killing off a number of plants inadvertently, it may be hard to face horticultural euthanasia. . . . But the misfortune of these mistakes goes beyond a small blot on your garden. The sad relics are the lessons you are refusing to learn. . . . After four or five years you have to make an assessment of your selections and stop nursing along specimens that long for [permanent quiet peace]. You will be amazed what a lift it will give to your whole garden to be rid of these ghosts.

It is my misfortune - and probably my delight - to use things as my passions tell me. What a miserable fate for a painter who adores blondes to have to stop himself putting them into a picture because they don't go with the basket of fruit! . . . I put all the things I like into my pictures. The things - so much the worse for them. They just have to put up with it.

If we put the emphasis upon the right things. If we live the life that is worth while, and then fail, we will survive all disasters, we will out-live all misfortune. We should be so well balanced and symmetrical, that nothing which could ever happen could throw us off our center, so that no matter what misfortune should overtake us, there would still be a whole magnificent man or woman left after being stripped of everything else.

Ignorance is a voluntary misfortune.

Opportunity often comes in disguised in the form of misfortune, or temporary defeat.

A young musician plays scales in his room and only bores his family. A beginning writer, on the other hand, sometimes has the misfortune of getting into print.

Fortune knocks but once, but misfortune has much more patience.

There is no greater sin than desire, No greater curse than discontent, No greater misfortune than wanting something for oneself. Therefore he who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

What Cicero said of men-that they are like wines, age souring the bad, and bettering the good-we can say of misfortune, that it has the same effect upon them.

This great misfortune - to be incapable of solitude.

A woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.

On average, an infant laughs nearly two hundred times a day; an adult, only twelve. Maybe they are laughing so much because they are looking at us. To be able to preserve joyousness of heart and yet to be concerned in thought: in this way we can determine good fortune and misfortune on earth, and bring to perfection everything on earth.

. . . The books we need are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation-a book should serve as an axe for the frozen sea within us.

They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor.

In other countries poverty is a misfortune - with us it is a crime.

In the misfortune of our best friends, we find something which is not displeasing to us.