Avoid Misery Quotes & Sayings

There is plenty of misery in the world, all right, but there is ample pleasure, as well. If a person forswears pleasure in order to avoid misery, what has he gained? ... how can you admire a human who consciously embraces the bland, the mediocre, and the safe rather than risk the suffering that disappointments can bring? ... If desire causes suffering, it may be because we do not desire wisely, or that we are inexpert at obtaining what we desire ... why not get better at fulfilling desire? I cannot believe that the most delicious things were placed here merely to test us, to tempt us, to make it the more difficult for us to achieve the grand prize - they safety of the void. To fashion of life such a petty game is unworthy of both men and gods. — Tom Robbins

Reclamation is hard work. Finding the value in your group's characteristics means always having to confront the darkness in those characteristics. For example, it is acceptable, and productive, to think of America as a great nation. It has many great characteristics, from the freedom it grants its citizens to the cultural contributions it has fostered and rewarded. But by unearthing America's good qualities, you will also find its destructive qualities. The way it has interfered internationally and created death and misery for countless citizens of other nations, its history of genocide and slavery, and so on. It is possible to know America's destructive power and still think it is a great nation. But some prefer not to look at all, so as to avoid the cognitive dissonance. It — Jessa Crispin

He could not bear to see pain, or sorrow, or misery of any kind; and, if it came under his notice, he was never easy till he had relieved it, for the time, at any rate. But he was afraid of being made uncomfortable; so, if he possibly could, he would avoid seeing any one who was ill or unhappy; and he did not thank any one for telling him about them. — Elizabeth Gaskell

When he returned to the Iron Man production office, Downey asked that Favreau be sure to place a Tesla Roadster in Tony Stark's workshop. — Ashlee Vance

What causes misery is always trying to get away from the facts of life, always trying to avoid pain and seek happiness - this sense of ours that there could be lasting security and happiness available to us if we could only do the right thing. — Pema Chodron

Especially as it was safer for the main team if Wyatt didn't go with them, what with his sudden but inevitable betrayal still yet to occur. Plus, — K.B. Spangler

It's going to be a long, lonesome eleven months in Iraq, long and lonesome being the best-case scenario — Ben Fountain

Peace, or freedom from conflict, is the absolute core of happiness. It is in learning to watch our sense of peace that we avoid unhappiness. All forms of misery are heralded by a frame of mind that must become immediately recognizable if we are ever to gain mastery in happiness ... Take the time to look in your heart and be clear. Walk through life being clear. Practice doing each thing in peace. — Hugh Prather

There s only one way to deal with misery ... I say Avoid it — Barbara Johnson

Back in 1994 there was no Judas Priest. — Glenn Tipton

And believing that we are broken is the same as being broken. It means we experience ourselves that way. That perception shapes our reality. It is an illusion we must strive to avoid, as great misery comes from such a belief. — Jewel

A person will struggle - she'll fight. She'll do just about anything to avoid making a decision she knows she has to make. We have got to be the most perverse creatures on the planet. Something in the human enjoys misery. It keeps us locked away, some in a mansion, some in a hovel. But then, one day - a day you don't plan, an hour you don't expect - the door opens. You have what you need, or you receive your answer. It's so obvious, and so right, and you even have the wherewithal to carry out what you need to carry out. A big angel with flaming eyes and burnished hair might as well have walked through the wall . . . — Donna Salli

Medically speaking, there is no such thing as a nervous breakdown. Which is very annoying to discover when you're right in the middle of one. — Marian Keyes

Here is a thing which the more you fear and avoid it the nearer you approach to it, and this is misery; the more you flee from it the more miserable and restless you will become. — Leonardo Da Vinci

I'm being explicit about really horrifying experiences in my life, but my hope has always been to be responsible as an artist and to avoid indulging in my misery, or to come off as an exhibitionist. I don't want to make the listener complicit in my vulnerable prose poem of depression, I just want to honor the experience. I'm not the victim here, and I'm not seeking other peoples' sympathy. I don't blame my parents, they did the best they could. — Sufjan Stevens

Don't sell your soul for a lifetime of slavery to avoid a brief time of misery. This, too, shall pass. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Because God is better than we think we have to change the way we think. — Bill Johnson

Serial killing
definition: must hit three,
just like a gangbang. — Asa Akira

Renunciation - that is the great fact we all, individuals and classes, have to learn. In trying to avoid it we bring misery to ourselves and others. — Beatrice Webb

Teaching for creativity aims to encourage self-confidence, independence of mind, and the capacity to think for oneself. — Ken Robinson

All the stress and misery of life comes from fear of loss. Remember that you can never lose anything without gaining something. To avoid misery, concentrate on what you will gain. — Debasish Mridha

I called my philosophy the philosophy of fuckness. I first developed this philosophy when I realized I was the type of person who would go to just about any lengths necessary in order to avoid trouble and misery. That is, I just wanted to live life the way I wanted to live it without any interruptions or having to answer to anyone. — Andersen Prunty

And George Farr had the town, the earth, the world to himself and his sorrow. Music came faint as a troubling rumor beneath the spring night, sweetened by distance: a longing knowing no ease. (Oh God, oh God!)
At last George Farr gave up trying to see her. He had 'phoned vainly and time after time, at last the telephone became the end in place of the means: he had forgotten why he wanted to reach her. Finally he told himself that he hated her, that he would go away; finally he was going to as much pains to avoid her as he had been to see her. So he slunk about the streets like a criminal, avoiding her, feeling his his very heart stop when he did occasionally see her unmistakable body from a distance. And at night he lay sleepless and writhing to think of her, then to rise and don a few garments and walk past her darkened house, gazing in slow misery at the room in which he knew she lay, soft and warm, in intimate slumber, then to return to home and bed to dream of her brokenly. — William Faulkner

When the other man has none, you don't need a gun. — Billy Idol

To avoid pain we must know the conditions of health. For the accomplishment of this end we must rely upon investigation instead of faith, upon labor in place of prayer. Most misery is produced by ignorance. Passions sow the seeds of pain. — Robert Green Ingersoll

For there is no one so great or mighty that he can avoid the misery that will rise up against him when he resists and strives against God — John Calvin

Honesty renders your heart defenceless, and lying fucks with your head. That's why I choose to remain silent and protect them both instead. — K.M. Golland

It came to me that reform should begin at home, and since that day I have not had time to remake the world. — Will Durant

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not. — George Bernard Shaw

The kingdom of God is within you — Sunday Adelaja

Don't aim at any impossible heroisms. Strive rather to be quiet in your own sphere. Don't live in the cloudland of some transcendental heaven; do your best to bring the glory of a real heaven down, and ray it out upon your fellows in this work-day world. — William Morley Punshon

Weirdly - but as Danny and Amos had suspected - the further the winning number was from the number on a person's lottery ticket, the less regret they felt. "In defiance of logic, there is a definite sense that one comes closer to winning the lottery when one's ticket number is similar to the number that won," Danny wrote in a memo to Amos, summarizing their data. In another memo, he added that "the general point is that the same state of affairs (objectively) can be experienced with very different degrees of misery," depending on how easy it is to imagine that things might have turned out differently.

Regret was sufficiently imaginable that people conjured it out of situations they had no control over. But it was of course at its most potent when people might have done something to avoid it. What people regretted, and the intensity with which they regretted it, was not obvious. — Michael Lewis

Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world - and there clearly are - then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality. — Sam Harris

Individual initiative alone and the mere free play of competition could never assure successful development. One must avoid the risk of increasing still more the wealth of the rich and the dominion of the strong, whilst leaving the poor in their misery and adding to the servitude of the oppressed. — Pope Paul VI

And if you have high cholesterol, you would feel the same as if you had low cholesterol because there are no side effects, no symptoms of having high cholesterol. — Mark Spitz

Avoid then, the deliberate manufacture of misery, but if trouble comes, cheerfully capitalize it as an opportunity to demonstrate His omnipotence. — Alcoholics Anonymous