Wretched Quotes

1. "Sparta must be regarded as the first völkisch state. The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed children, in short, their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more human than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject."
Author: Adolf Hitler

2. "The priest gazed around my cell and answered in a voice that sounded very weary to me. '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.'This perked me up a little. I said I had been looking at the stones in these walls for months. There wasn't anything or anyone in the world I knew better. Maybe at one time, way back, I had searched for a face in them. But the face I was looking for was as bright as the sun and the flame of desire—and it belonged to Marie."
Author: Albert Camus

3. "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. (The Count of Monte Cristo)"
Author: Alexandre Dumas

4. "The true religion would have to teach greatness and wretchedness, inspire self-esteem and self-contempt, love and hate."
Author: Blaise Pascal

5. "Take care," he said, "take care how you cut yourself. It is more dangerous that you think in this country." Then seizing the shaving glass, he went on, "And this is the wretched thing that has done the mischief. It is a foul bauble of man's vanity. Away with it!" And opening the window with one wrench of his terrible hand, he flung out the glass, which was shattered into a thousand pieces on the stones of the courtyard far below. Then he withdrew without a word. It is very annoying, for I do not see how I am to shave, unless in my watch-case or the bottom of the shaving pot, which is fortunately of metal."
Author: Bram Stoker

6. "I was a witness of the execution at Horsemonger-lane this morning. ... I believe that a sight so inconceivably awful as the wickedness and levity of the immense crowd collected at that execution this morning could be imagined by no man, and could be presented in no heathen land under the sun. The horrors of the gibbet and of the crime which brought the wretched murderers to it, faded in my mind before the atrocious bearing, looks and language, of the assembled spectators. ... When the two miserable creatures who attracted all this ghastly sight about them were turned quivering into the air, there was no more emotion, no more pity, no more thought that two immortal souls had gone to judgment, no more restraint in any of the previous obscenities, than if the name of Christ had never been heard in this world, and there were no belief among men but that they perished like beasts."
Author: Charles Dickens

7. "Almost all Christians being wretchedly enslaved to blindness and ignorance, which the priests are so far from preventing or removing, that they blacken the darkness, and promote the delusion: wisely foreseeing that the people (like cows, which never give down their milk so well as when they are gently stroked), would part with less if they knew more..."
Author: Desiderius Erasmus

8. "How evil life must be if it were indeed necessary that such imploring cries, such cries of physical and moral wretchedness, should ever and ever ascend to heaven!"
Author: Émile Zola

9. "For the very first time Andrew realized that life, real life, had no connection with the way people spent their days, whose lips they kissed, what medals were pinned on them, or the shoes they mended. Life, real life went on soundlessly...ultimately there was no difference between Queen Victoria and the most wretched beggar in London: both were complex machines made up of bone, organ, and tissue, whose fuel was the breath of God."
Author: Félix J. Palma

10. "Love, love, love – all the wretched cant of it, masking egotism, lust, masochism, fantasy under a mythology of sentimental postures, a welter of self-induced miseries and joys, blinding and masking the essential personalities in the frozen gestures of courtship, in the kissing and the dating and the desire, the compliments and the quarrels which vivify its barrenness."
Author: Germaine Greer

11. "Life, the dramatist of speed. Life, that couldn't stop with its foreshadows and ironies and symbols and clues, its wretched jokes and false endings and twists. Life with its hopeless addiction to plot."
Author: Glen Duncan

12. "For a moment she believed he had left, but as she shifted away from the wall she sensed him there beside the bed. He was very close. Wretched curiosity! But she would fight it and not look. "Katherine," he whispered, his breath rolling in a warm wave across her cheek. A traitor tear spilled out, the humiliation was too much to contain. Gently, a finger dabbed the wetness from her skin. He said it again, softly, as though it pleased him just to say it, "Katherine." "Viktor!" the accented voice bellowed from below. And then the shadow was gone. Darkness overwhelmed her then and carried her away to a land of crows and mocking strangers."
Author: Gwenn Wright

13. "I couldn't allow myself to think about her very long; if I had I would have jumped off the bridge. It's strange. I had become so reconciled to this life without her, and yet if I thought about her only for a minute it was enough to pierce the bone and marrow of my contentment and shove me hack again into the agonizing gutter of my wretched past."
Author: Henry Miller

14. "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."
Author: Italo Calvino

15. "The beautiful heroine might be thinking, How long must I bury my face on this wretched man's shoulder? Such is not the always the case, but quite often it is."
Author: Ivor Novello

16. "And unbidden, floating into consciousness came the truth of his utter wretchedness. Even the very earth seemed to cry out in pain. Hodburn Wood"
Author: J. Tyson Capper

17. "Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race."
Author: Jacques Barzun

18. "It is now expedient to give some description of Mrs. Allen, that the reader may be able to judge in what manner her actions will hereafter tend to promote the general distress of the work, and how she will, probably, contribute to reduce poor Catherine to all the desperate wretchedness of which a last volume is capable -- whether by her imprudence, vulgarity, or jealousy -- whether by intercepting her letters, ruining her character, or turning her out of doors."
Author: Jane Austen

19. "I never saw quite so wretched an example of what a sea-faring life can do: but to a degree, I know it is the same with them all; they are all knocked about, and exposed to every climate, and every weather, till they are not fit to be seen. It is a pity they are not knocked on the head at once, before they reach Admiral Baldwin's age."
Author: Jane Austen

20. "Beyond any gift or treasure, I desire to learn to read. (Lia ~ The Wretched of Muirwood)"
Author: Jeff Wheeler

21. "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?"
Author: Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

22. "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!"
Author: John Green

23. "Look at me," he said, glancingdown at his legs. "A wretched old man in a red monkey suit. A convicted murderer aboutto be gassed like an animal. And look at you. A fine young man with a beautifuleducation and a bright future. Where in the world did I go wrong? What happened to me?I've spent mylife hating people, and look what I have to show for it. You, you don't hate anybody. Andlook where you're headed. We have the same blood. Why am I here?"
Author: John Grisham

24. "...we need to fall, and we need to be aware of it; for if we did not fall, we should not know how weak and wretched we are of ourselves, nor should we know our Maker's marvellous love so fully..."
Author: Julian Of Norwich

25. "We live so little time in this world that it is no matter how wretched and miserable we are, if it prepares us for heaven."
Author: Jupiter Hammon

26. "Some would assert that Providence was at work shaking out its pockets in Humanity's lap. Other would argue for that mindless choreographer, Chance. Either way it was a simple thing: a lost diary fell into the hands of a soul-sick war hero on a train from Bombay to Jaipur just when he'd grown tired of the scenery and needed something to keep his thoughts from the minefield of his wretched thoughts.In such mild ways is the groundwork laid for first kisses and ruined lives."
Author: Laini Taylor

27. "The wretchedness of being rich is that you live with rich people. To suppose, as we all suppose, that we could be rich and not behave as the rich behave, is like supposing that we could drink all day and stay sober.-Logan Pearsall Smith (1865-1946) US-English essayist, editor, anthologist"
Author: Logan Pearsall Smith

28. "It was nothing, but it was Adam Parrish's nothing. How he hated and loved it. How proud he was of it, how wretched it was."
Author: Maggie Stiefvater

29. "And when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the wretchedness about him, his dream had had its usual effect: it had intensified the sordidness of his surroundings a thousandfold."
Author: Mark Twain

30. "What misery to be afraid of death.What wretchedness, to believe only in what can be proven."
Author: Mary Oliver

31. "Even in the most wretched life, there's hope."
Author: Michelle Moran

32. "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?"
Author: Nancy Mitford

33. "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."
Author: Nate Parker

34. "He loved a lifeless thing and he was utterly and hopelessly wretched."
Author: Ovid

35. "Next, PleaseAlways too eager for the future, wePick up bad habits of expectancy.Something is always approaching; every dayTill then we say,Watching from a bluff the tiny, clearSparkling armada of promises draw near.How slow they are! And how much time they waste,Refusing to make haste!Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalksOf disappointment, for, though nothing balksEach big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked,Each rope distinct,Flagged, and the figurehead with golden titsArching our way, it never anchors; it'sNo sooner present than it turns to past.Right to the lastWe think each one will heave to and unloadAll good into our lives, all we are owedFor waiting so devoutly and so long.But we are wrong:Only one ship is seeking us, a black-Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her backA huge and birdless silence. In her wakeNo waters breed or break."
Author: Philip Larkin

36. "Writing is wretched, discouraging, physically unhealthy, infinitely frustrating work. And when it all comes together it's utterly glorious."National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) Pep Talk"
Author: Ralph Peters

37. "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."
Author: Richelle E. Goodrich

38. "She's the one who sits in the back of the classroom. The one who never raises her hand.The one who might be the smartest girl you'll ever know.But ever time she speaks some one speaks their opinion before her.She's the one who cries herself to sleep.Who you never see in the hallways.Who is always late to class because she wants to avoid the wretched bitterness that halls expose.Who never tells anyone her problems.Who slices her wrists to get rid of pain.She is the girl who will never be the same.She is the girl who will never think she is ever good enough.She's the one who is feeling like she has no purpose.She is the one that can raise her voice and stop the bullying but will never choose to.She might be your best friend.She might be your daughter.She might be your girlfriend.She might just be the girl in the back of you class. And she will never live the same life she once did."
Author: Sarah Mares

39. "Taryn, is it really that bad? (Janine)Considering the fact that I'm stuck out in this wretched heat wearing high heels with a black car that currently wouldn't go downhill with a hurricane pushing it, I'd say yes. (Taryn)"
Author: Sherrilyn Kenyon

40. "Thus ressentiment becomes the constituent principle of want of character, which from utter wretchedness tries to sneak itself a position, all the time safeguarding itself by conceding that it is less than nothing. The ressentiment which results from want of character can never understand that eminent distinction really is distinction. Neither does it understand itself by recognizing distinction negatively (as in the case of ostracism) but wants to drag it down, wants to belittle it so that it really ceases to be distinguished. And ressentiment not only defends itself against all existing forms of distinction but against that which is still to come.The ressentiment which is establishing itself is the process of levelling."
Author: Søren Kierkegaard

41. "As long as 'Pearl Harbor' stays in the past, it's perfect; when it wretchedly changes gears in the late going, it becomes the wrong kind of same old story: Hollywood stupidity and callowness, writ large across the sky."
Author: Stephen Hunter

42. "For what is genius, I ask you, but the capacity to be obsessed? ...We have all been geniuses, you and I; but sooner or later it is beaten out of us, the glory faded, and by the age of seven most of us are nothing but wretched little adults."
Author: Steven Millhauser

43. "Loneliness is a bitter, wretched companion. sometimes it just won't let go."
Author: Tahereh Mafi

44. "You can be happy with money and you can be wretched with it. It depends on what kind of person you are. -- A Prologue to Love"
Author: Taylor Caldwell

45. "Blaise decided that the thing he would remember most about this London was the sour stink of it. The overripe foulness of the streets made him gag, and when a woman emptied a chamber pot from a top window, nearly catching him in its spray, he bent over and wretched, much to the Nightsneaks' amusement."
Author: Teresa Flavin

46. "Here is what our Lord says about that apostate church:   I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth. You say, "I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing." But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. (Revelation 3:15-18, niv)"
Author: Tim LaHaye

47. "A wretched woman is more unfortunate than a wretched man, because she is an instrument of pleasure."
Author: Victor Hugo

48. "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."
Author: Voltaire

49. "What should one do? If Ruth had any better luck with him I would have thought that he simply had to attach himself to antifatherly gods until he proved himself a man in his own terms...She followed him to the bottom of his burrow, trying to understand, she forgave him incessantly, she was the pacifying force when he and I clashed. And he went out of his way to treat her with even greater impatience and contempt than he treated me. His wretched treatment of his mother was one of the commonest sources of our quarrels. Sometimes I wondered if he didn't abuse her because she tended to take his side - he wanted no mediator between us."
Author: Wallace Stegner

50. "To augment their misery, a contagious disorder of a dangerous nature spread through the land; and, rendered more virulent by the uncleanness, the indifferent food, and the wretched lodging of the lower classes, swept off many whose fate the survivors were tempted to envy, as exempting them from the evils which were to come."
Author: Walter Scott

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