Family Unhappiness Quotes & Sayings

But now, years later, I must admit that unhappiness seems to run in the family, there have been so many generations of it on my dad's side that I wonder why someone doesn't just put a stop to it. I don't know why someone doesn't throw a big black umbrella over our heads and pull us all out of the rain. — Elizabeth Wurtzel

Let my daughter remember that in view of her age she should always help her brother with the advice that her greater experience and her affection may suggest, and let them both remember that in whatever situation they may find themselves they will never be truly happy unless united. Let them learn from our example how much consolation our affection has brought us in the midst of our unhappiness and how happiness is doubled when one can share it with a friend - and where can one find a more loving and truer friend than in one's own family? — Melanie Clegg

While it's true that, as Tolstoy observed, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, and everyone on planet Earth, vale of tears that it is, is certainly entitled to the specificity of his or her suffering, one nonetheless likes to think that literature has the power to render comprehensible different kinds of unhappiness. If it can't do that, what's it good for? — Elif Batuman

The best defenses against the terrors of existence are the homely comforts of love, work, and family life, which connect us to a world that is independent of our wishes yet responsive to our needs. It is through love and work, as Freud noted in a characteristically pungent remark, that we exchange crippling emotional conflict for ordinary unhappiness. Love and work enable each of us to explore a small corner of the world and to come to accept it on its own terms. But our society tends either to devalue small comforts or else to expect too much of them. Our standards of "creative, meaningful work" are too exalted to survive disappointment. Our ideal of "true romance" puts an impossible burden on personal relationships. We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves. — Christopher Lasch

today's heavy emphasis on competition and humiliation of your "opponent" (whether in sports, business, or family), our culture sets men up for anger and unhappiness. — Thomas J. Harbin

When someone obtains peace and serenity, this shines a bright spotlight on others' own unhappiness making their discomfort even more apparent. — David W. Earle

Many people's unhappiness is rooted in the habitual role they play. While our family role may have made sense growing up, it often wreaks havoc in our adult lives. — Lauren Mackler

Yet she lays out this family plan the way you'd say, "After yoga, I'll go to Lia's for the mani-special and then wax on about hairstyles and hemlines until dinner."
If I were gifted at making long-term plans, which by now we all know I'm not, and if I was at all hopeful, which we all know that I can never be, although it crosses my mind that it's entirely possible these are all just huge, f*&king, temporary setbacks and nothing more, even though it's been going on for over three years now, since Holly died, and I met Lincoln Presley. Events that could be construed as somehow inevitably related. Yes, perhaps there's an expiration date on the said pursuit of unhappiness. Perhaps, things will eventually go my way after I actually discover what that way is supposed to be. — Katherine Owen

I began writing my nonfiction memoir to explain why women, "don't just leave."
My exciting, narrative-driven memoir aspires to to save others from needless unhappiness: surviving isn't enough.Trauma can be overcome and joy recaptured.The book is written in a fresh, lively voice with lots of humor. The chapters of me growing up in the 50's and 60's and my college years at Penn State provide an intimate, historical trip through some of the most fascinating times in modern history. This is also a family saga depicting mental illness and shows how this could have happened to me: My husband and I were the dance. — Cassi Janzek

It's about that applause I want to speak to you. I want you to remember that when you've done a little dance or a song or sketch, the applause which you get is not only because you yourself have done your best, but because each of those men is seeing in you someone he loves at home, and because of you is able to forget for a little while the unhappiness of not being in his home, and in some cases the great tragedy of not knowing what has happened to the children in his family. — Noel Streatfeild

He saw the cause of his unhappiness in the family
the family as a social institution, which does not permit the child to become an independent individual at the proper time. — August Strindberg

For most of life, nothing wonderful happens. If you don't enjoy getting up and working and finishing your work and sitting down to a meal with family or friends, then the chances are that you're not going to be very happy. If someone bases his happiness or unhappiness on major events like a great new job, huge amounts of money, a flawlessly happy marriage or a trip to Paris, that person isn't going to be happy much of the time. If, on the other hand, happiness depends on a good breakfast, flowers in the yard, a drink or a nap, then we are more likely to live with quite a bit of happiness. — Andy Rooney

When I was a kid, there was unhappiness in my family - was dealt with partly by escaping to television. And from a very early age, for whatever reason, I became scornful and resistant to and angry about that. And some other time in my life, I realized that there's a lot I loved in television. — Robert Pinsky

I really wanted to get out of that cycle in our family where somebody's taking revenge on somebody for some slight that happened thirty years ago, and the only way to assert one's existence is by climbing over the body of an unfortunate sibling, or with a fellow family member, and you end up even unconsciously rejoicing in the other person's unhappiness and being like, I am happy because I can see how unhappy these other people are. — Marco Roth

Invest in your work life balance. Time with friends and family is as important as times at work. Getting that out of balance is a path toward unhappiness. — Stephen Gillett

Forgiveness is not just a selfish pursuit of personal satisfaction or righteousness. It actually alleviates the amount of suffering in the world. As each one of us frees ourselves from clinging to resentments that cause suffering, we relieve our friends, family, and community of the burden of our unhappiness. This is not a philosophical proposal; it is a verifiable and practical truth. Through our suffering and lack of forgiveness, we tend to do all kinds of unskillful things that hurt others. We close ourselves off from love, for example, out of fear of further pains or betrayals. This alone - a lack of openness to the love shown to us - is a way that we cause harm to our loved ones. The closed heart lets no one in or out. — Noah Levine

I have learned that the kindness of a teacher, a coach, a policeman, a neighbor, the parent of a friend, is never wasted. These moments are likely to pass with neither the child nor the adult fully knowing the significance of the contribution. No ceremony attaches to the moment that a child sees his own worth reflected in the eyes of an encouraging adult. Though nothing apparent marks the occasion, inside that child a new view of self might take hold. He is not just a person deserving of neglect or violence, not just a person who is a burden to the sad adults in his life, not just a child who fails to solve his family's problems, who fails to rescue them from pain or madness or addiction or poverty or unhappiness. No, this child might be someone else, someone whose appearance before this one adult revealed specialness or lovability, or value. — Gavin De Becker

Taking responsibility for yourself and your happiness gives a great freedom to children who have felt guilty and responsible for your unhappiness (which they always do). A child can never hope to balance the scales or repay the debt when a parent has sacrificed her life, her happiness, her fulfilment for the child or the family. Seeing a parent fully embrace life gives a child the permission to do the same, just as seeing a parent suffer indicates to the child that suffering is what life is all about. — Robin Norwood

Art, if you loved it, was worth any amount of unhappiness and pain. If you had to hurt someone to achieve those ends, so be it. If the outcome was beautiful enough, strange enough, memorable enough, it did not matter. It was worth it. — Kevin Wilson