Misery taught him nothing more than defiant endurance of it

Aschenbach stated outright that nearly everything great owes its existence to “despites”: despite misery

If in this world there is one misery having no relief, it is the pressure on the heart from the Incommunicable. And if another Sphinx should arise to propose another enigma to man–saying, what burden is that which only is insupportable by human fortitude? I should answer at once: It is the burden of the Incommunicable

As members of a social species endowed with large brains, we are natural-born marketers. Capitalism, the economic system that has elevated innumerable people out of abject poverty and misery, is founded on marketing. Everything that defines your daily existence has the indelible marks of marketing on it.

People like these have done more to relieve human misery than any prophet with a manifesto ever will. They number in the millions, these mortals, but they don’t make it into the history books much. They don’t do anything sweeping or controversial. They live their lives, contribute their bits of good work, and die quietly in their beds without recognition or reward. Usually.

Public money ought to be touched with the most scrupulous conscientiousness of honor. It is not the produce of riches only, but of the hard earnings of labor and poverty. It is drawn even from the bitterness of want and misery. Not a beggar passes, or perishes in the streets, whose mite is not in that mass

At one point Deepak said that when you’re happy for a particular reason, you’re still in misery—because that reason can be taken from you tomorrow.

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

While money can’t buy happiness, it certainly lets you choose your own form of misery.

The enquiry ‘Who am I?’ is the principal means to the removal of all misery and the attainment of the supreme bliss.

Misery does not exist in reality but only in mere imagination.

Turn the mind inward and cease thinking of yourself as the body; thereby you will come to know that the self is ever happy. Neither grief nor misery is experienced in this state.

Success can also cause misery. The trick is not to be surprised when you discover it doesn’t bring you all the happiness and answers you thought it would.

Seems it’s my destiny for love to cause me misery.

No sadness is greater than in misery to rehearse memories of joy.

I am made of God, through his Grace. Such that your misery touches me not, Nor does flame of that burning assail me.

No sorrow is deeper than the remembrance of happiness when in misery.

There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.

In a moment all the heavy sorrow and misery which sleep had banished were upon him again, and he realized that he was no longer a petted prince in a palace, with the adoring eyes of a nation upon him, but a pauper, an outcast, clothed in rags, prisoner in a den fit only for beasts, and consorting with beggars and thieves.

What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.

I have always considered marriage as the most interesting event of one’s life, and the foundation of happiness or misery.

If we do not know ourselves to be full of pride, ambition, lust, weakness, misery, and injustice, we are indeed blind. And if, knowing this, we do not desire deliverance, what can we say of a man…?