Most Unhappy Quotes & Sayings

They've got lots of theories, books, sciences - I've read a lot of those books. Most of them are pretty unhappy. — Frederick Lenz

Think, for example, has a higher suicide rate: countries whose citizens declare themselves to be very happy, such as Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, and Canada? or countries like Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain, whose citizens describe themselves as not very happy at all? Answer: the so-called happy countries. It's the same phenomenon as in the Military Police and the Air Corps. If you are depressed in a place where most people are pretty unhappy, you compare yourself to those around you and you don't feel all that bad. But can you imagine how difficult it must be to be depressed in a country where everyone else has a big smile on their face?2 Caroline Sacks's decision to evaluate herself, then, by looking around her organic chemistry classroom was not some strange and irrational behavior. It is what human beings do. We compare ourselves to those in the same situation as ourselves, which means that students in an elite school - except, perhaps, — Malcolm Gladwell

Take the example of people who are being most unrealistic - people who are beating monks to death and torturing them. Why shouldn't you be angry or hate that person? Well, the person who is doing that is very unhappy. They are being ordered by a higher-up. — Robert Thurman

Next time we will look at this from a much more basic point of view and one antedating all zoology, which, glimpsed only a little after my twentieth year, made write in those days that what is most valuable in man is his eternal and almost divine discontent, a discontent which is a kind of love without a beloved, and like an ache which we feel in members of our body that we do not have. Man is the only being that misses he has never had. And the whole of what we miss, without ever having had it, is never what we call happiness. From this one could start a meditation on happiness, an analysis of that strange condition which makes man the only being who is unhappy for the very reason that he needs to be happy. That is, because he needs to be what he is not. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Once this had been the life I'd wanted. Even chosen. Now, though, I couldn't believe that there had been a time when this kind of monotony and silence, this most narrow of existences, had been preferable. Then again, once, I'd never known anything else...
My mother had to know I was unhappy. But it didn't matter: all she cared about was that I was her Macy again, the one she'd come to depend on, always within earshot or reach. I came to work early, sat up straight at my desk and endured the monotony of answering phones and greeting potential homebuyers with a smile on my face. After dinner, I spent my hour and a half of free time alone, doing accepted activities. When I came home afterwards, my mother w ould be waiting for me, stickingher head out of her office to verify that, yes. I was just where I was supposed to be. And I was. I was also miserable.
~Macy, pg 306 — Sarah Dessen

... for I look upon the Frasers to be about as unhappy as most other married people. — Jane Austen

I feel so unhappy."
I am sure that this one phrase whispered to me would arouse my sympathy more than the longest, most painstaking account of a woman's life. It amazes and astonishes me that I have never once heard a woman make this simple statement. This woman did not say, "I feel so unhappy" in so many words, but something like a silent current of misery an inch wide flowed over the surface of her body. When I lay next to her my body was enveloped in her current, which mingled with my own harsher current of gloom like a "withered leaf settling to rest on the stones at the bottom of a pool." I had freed myself from fear and uneasiness. — Osamu Dazai

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. — Anonymous

The music is not part of this planet in a sense that the spirit of it is about happiness. Most musicians play earth things about what they know, but I found out that they are mostly unhappy and frustrated, and that creeps over into their music. — Sun Ra

But nobody yet had been able to dig down to what was most captivating about her: this was the mysterious ability of her soul to apprehend in life only that which had once attracted and tormented her in childhood, the time when the soul's instinct is infallible; to seek out the amusing and the touching: to feel constantly an intolerable, tender pity for the creature whose life is helpless and unhappy; to feel across hundreds of miles that somewhere in Sicily a thin-legged little donkey with a shaggy belly is being brutally beaten. Whenever she did come across a creature that was being hurt, she experienced a kind of legendary eclipse - when inexplicable night comes down and ash flies and blood appears on the walls - and it seemed that if at once, at once, she did not help, did not cut short another's torture (the existence of which it was absolutely impossible to explain in a world so conducive to happiness), her heart would not stand it, and she would die. — Vladimir Nabokov

Everything comes down to this: the reason for every word I have written and every word I will write. I am recounting my life for you so that you may know this secret without the pain of discovering it: We are unhappy because we think that love is something we require from someone else. Our salvation depends on a simple gesture that is nonetheless the most difficult act we can perform: We must give away the thing we most long for. Not to receive but to give. — Arthur Japin

Very few people are happy in this world. Most are miserable. Even in their so-called happiness, they are unhappy; it is so short of ecstasy, of god-consciousness; it's almost pitiful. — Frederick Lenz

In the middle of my sophomore year, I was sent to boarding school, at the Cranbrook School for boys, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where I fell in love with Marilyn Monroe. I knew that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, and yet she was in pain, in need. She was unhappy. I believed that I could help her. — Edmund White

I am the most unhappy soul alive."
"I'd heard it said that fairies have no souls."
"Then do I ache, and bleed, and smart, elsewhere; still, call it soul for it is solely mine. — Neil Gaiman

It isn't any single thing," Mrs. Waite repeated earnestly, the tears on her cheeks, "It's just that - well, look, Natalie. This is the only life I've got - you understand? I mean, this is all. And look what's happening to me. I spend most of my time just thinking about how nice things used to be and wondering if they'll ever be nice again. If I should go on and on and die someday and nothing was ever nice again - wouldn't that be a fine thing? I get to feeling like that and then I think I'll make things be nice, and make him behave, and just make everything all happy and exciting again the way it used to be - but I'm too tired. — Shirley Jackson

It is a celebrated thought of Socrates, that if all the misfortunes of mankind were cast into a public stock, in order to be equally distributed among the whole species, those who now think themselves the most unhappy would prefer the share they are already possessed of, before that which would fall to them by such a division. [as they realise their problems could be worse!] — Joseph Addison

When the desire is born, right away you start counting yourselves a failure, because you've got this desire that hasn't been satisfied. Know that you never get it done! And since you never get it done, it's time to stop being unhappy about what's undone, because most of it is undone! You are an eternal being. Most of it is undone. Instead of taking score about what's been achieved - we want you to start feeling anticipation about what is still to arrive. — Esther Hicks

Steve got that pinched, unhappy look on his face that Tony never knew how to deal with. Most of the time he either threw something more broken than himself in Steve's path and ran, or just offered to buy the Dodgers again. Neither of the gambits worked well, but Tony was out of ideas. — Scifigrl47

Most unhappy people need to learn just one lesson: how to see themselves through the lens of genuine compassion, and treat themselves accordingly. — Martha Beck

I absolutely think that happiness is a choice. One of the most potent forces in human psychology is the power of habit. Do something, think something, often enough and it will become the only thing you can do or think. Choose to be unhappy and soon that's all you will be. Live in a swamp and you'll grow webbed feet. — Nicholas Evans

You can be with one of the most beautiful women in the world and still be unhappy. — Rod Stewart

One entered the world, Denis pursued, having ready-made ideas about everything. One had a philosophy and tried to make life fit into it. One should have lived first and then made one's philosophy to fit life ... Life, facts, things were horribly complicated; ideas, even the most difficult of them, deceptively simple. In the world of ideas, everything was clear; in life all was obscure, embroiled. Was it surprising that one was miserable, horribly unhappy? — Aldous Huxley

The most unhappy of all men is the man who cannot tell what he is going to do, who has got no work cut-out for him in the world, and does not go into it. For work is the grand cure of all the maladies and miseries that ever beset mankind,honest work, which you intend getting done. — Thomas Carlyle

We are young, but We already know that in life's great game those who are most unhappy are those who haven't taken the risk to be happy.
And I don't want to be one of those — Guillaume Musso

It's all in the genes: an explanation for the way things are that does not threaten the way things are. Why should someone feel unhappy or engage in antisocial behavior when that person is living in the freest and most prosperous nation on earth? It can't be the system! There must be a flaw in the wiring somewhere. — Louis Menand

The trick is simply to avoid jerks. There are lots of them out there. Most people are unhappy. — Frederick Lenz

I don't want to be a star - most of the ones I know are too unhappy. — Vivian Vance

Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be 'some one,' like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must need pity the Opera ghost ... — Gaston Leroux

Unhappy people do the oddest, most terrible things, just trying to keep despair at bay. All you have to do is accept them ... go around them ... take evasive action. — Geraldine McCaughrean

If he could sleep, she thought, sleep through the unhappy months, the heart's hunger, the months of death and cold and not having what you most want, and wake with time gone past and blurred and a new year coming. But perhaps it is too early in the year, she thought after that, and besides, he is not a bear. — Naomi Mitchison

I've never paid any attention to time. Dancer says I've enjoyed a luxury most people never have. He hates clocks and watches and everything that has to do with time. He says people already have too many lost days and that most folks live in the past or the future but never the present, always saying stuff like "I'm unhappy because 'X' happened to me yesterday, or I'll be happy again when 'Y' happens to me tomorrow." He says time is the ultimate villain. — Karen Marie Moning

No matter how happy you are; start assuming, suspecting and doubting; and make yourself the most unhappy person on the universe. — Suman Pokhrel

Poverty is a funny phenomenon. It is always defined financially and always relative to what other people earn. It is possible to be extremely happy despite having little money and being officially categorised as poverty-stricken. You can also be really unhappy despite earning a high salary. Those who always want something more will always live in poverty, regardless of how much they earn, while those who are content with what they have will always feel they have an abundance. Most poverty in the UK isn't material poverty, it's spiritual poverty, a state of mind in which fulfilment comes only from the pursuit of material gain. — Mark Boyle

Don't appeal to mercy to God the Father up in the sky, little man, because he's not at home and never was at home, and couldn't care less. What you do with yourself, whether you are happy or unhappy- live or die- is strictly your business and the universe doesn't care. In fact you may be the universe and the only cause of all your troubles. But, at best, the most you can hope for is comradeship with comrades no more divine (or just as divine) as you are. So quit sniveling and face up to it- 'Thou art God!' — Robert A. Heinlein

I didn't have a catharsis for my childhood pain, most of us don't, and until I learned how to forgive those people and let it go, I was unhappy. — Tyler Perry

The other thing is that I'm a pretty moody guy, but no one really wants to see a normal-looking guy complain about things or talk about being unhappy. That's hard. Most people are like, 'Well, you have all your hair and you're tall, so why are you unhappy?' That can be limiting. — Gary Gulman

I think writing about unhappiness is probably the source of my popularity, if I have any-after all, most people are unhappy, don't you think? — Philip Larkin

When you're unhappy, you either see nothing at all and the world sinks into meaninglessness, or else you see things preternaturally sharply, and everything suddenly seems to have meaning. Even the most banal things, like a traffic light turning from red to green, can decide whether you turn left or right. — Nicolas Barreau

The most unhappy and frail creatures are men and yet they are the proudest. — Michel De Montaigne

After many unhappy experiments in the direction of an ideal Republic, it was found that what may be described as a Despotism tempered by Dynamite provides, on the whole, the most satisfactory description of ruler - an autocrat who dares not abuse his autocratic power. — W.S. Gilbert

Self-conceit is a sentiment entirely incompatible with genuine sorrow, and it is so firmly engrafted on human nature that even the most profound sorrow can seldom expel it altogether. Vanity in sorrow expresses itself by a desire to appear either stricken with grief or unhappy or brave: and this ignoble desire which we do not acknowledge but which hardly ever leaves us even in the deepest trouble robs our grief of its strength, dignity and sincerity. — Leo Tolstoy

Women are unhappy in their marriages because they want men to be more related than most men know how to be. And men are unhappy in their marriages because their women seem so unhappy with them. — Terrence Real

He watched with an attentiveness both polite and flattering as Maura scraped her cards up from the sofa cushions. He leaned to pick up one she had missed.
"This fellow looks unhappy," he observed. The art depicted a man stuck with ten swords. The victim lay on his face, as most people did after being stuck with ten swords.
"That's a fellow after Calla's done with him," Maura said. — Maggie Stiefvater

All men are liars, fickle, chatterers, hypocrites, proud or cowardly, despicable, sensual ; all women faithless, tricky, vain, inquisitive, and depraved. The world is only a bottomless cesspool, where the most shapeless sea-beasts climb and writhe on mountains of slime. But there is in the world a thing holy and sublime - the union of two of these beings, imperfect and frightful as they are. One is often deceived in love, often wounded, often unhappy ; but one loves, and on the brink of the grave one turns to look back and says : I have suffered often, sometimes I have been mistaken, but I have loved. It is I who have lived, and not a spurious being bred of my pride and my sorrow — Alfred De Musset

Those who remember are usually the unhappy ones. Only those who are able to forget, find the most joy in life. — L. Frank Baum

Very well, let's see. I'm very sympathetic about your having left Raffin. I think you're brave to have defied Randa as you did with that Ellis fellow; I don't know if I could've gone through with it. I think you have more energy than anyone I've ever encountered, though I wonder if you aren't a bit hard on your horse. I find myself wondering why you haven't wanted to marry Giddon, and if it's because you've intended to marry Raffin, and if so, whether you're even more unhappy to have left him than I realized. I'm very pleased you've come with me. I'd like to see you defend yourself for real, fight someone to the death, for it would be a thrilling sight. I think my mother would take to you. My brothers, of course, would worship you. I think you're the most quarrelsome person I've ever met. And I really do worry about your horse. — Kristin Cashore

"From the reign of Nero to that of Antoninus Pius," Gibbon says again, "the Jews discovered a fierce impatience of the dominion of Rome which repeatedly broke out in the most furious massacres and insurrections. Humanity is shocked at the recital of the horrid cruelties which the Jews committed in the cities of Egypt, of Cyprus, and of Cyrene, where they dwelt in treacherous friendship with the unsuspecting natives ... In Cyrene they massacred 220,000 Greeks; in Cyprus 240,000; in Egypt a very great multitude. Many of these unhappy victims were sawed asunder ... " — Nesta Helen Webster

Most actors make themselves unhappy by searching for their sanity, by insisting on their normalcy; it's a grave mistake. — Michael Shurtleff

Most marriages are a mess, and the children get caught between two bitter, antagonistic parents. My parents stayed married for 27 unhappy years, till their kids were grown, and this was a catastrophe for us. — Anne Lamott

Some cry: 'Love me!!' Others: 'Don't love me!!' But a certain genus, the worst and most unhappy, cries: 'Don't love me and be faithful to me!!' — Albert Camus

The gravedigger knew a fine trick. When the worms looked unhappy he would leave his place in the mausoleum and go up into the sunshine. He would go empty-handed, but when he returned, with him came a most exquisite corpse. The worms would rejoice, and they would feast upon the corpse until they were fat and could feast no more. The young would come with the old to see this trick and glory in it. No worm knew where the gravedigger got his corpses, but they were always succulent and nourishing. They praised the gravedigger's generosity. -- From "Worms — L. Joseph Shosty

MEDITATION ON THE BUS. Rainy and cold. Thinking gloomily of the sins and shortcomings of others, it suddenly came to me to remember my own offenses, just as heinous as those of others. If I concern myself with my own sins and lament them, if I remember my own failures and lapses, I will not be resentful of others. This was most cheering and lifted the load of gloom from my mind. It makes one unhappy to judge people and happy to love them. — Dorothy Day

Most of the time I liked being in charge of my life, thrived on it, in fact. But occasionally, when I was tired or unhappy. I'd find myself thinking how nice it would be to let someone else run the show, at least for a while. — Alice Steinbach

I lost some of my friends because I got so famous, people who just assumed that I would be different now. I felt like everyone hated me. That is the most unhappy time of my life. — Haruki Murakami

Those who divorce aren't necessarily the most unhappy, just those neatly able to believe their misery is caused by one other person. — Alain De Botton

Most near-future fictions are boring. It's always dark and always raining, and people are so unhappy. — Haruki Murakami

When you become a mother, it's easy to believe your life no longer belongs to you. In an instant, your most pressing objective shifts. No longer does it matter whether your hair and makeup are perfect, not when you have to worry about whether the human being you brought into this world is hungry or sick or unhappy. It's easy to lose yourself in the day-to-day needs of others when you become a mother. — Cassia Leo

Some of the most unhappy artists in the most difficult situations can create awe-inspiring works of art. — Eric Gibbons

But isn't a life based on seeking personal happiness by nature self-centered, even self-indulgent? Not necessarily. In fact, survey after survey has shown that it is unhappy people who tend to be most self-focused and are often socially withdrawn, brooding, and even antagonistic. Happy people, in contrast, are generally found to be more sociable, flexible, and creative and are able to tolerate life's daily frustrations more easily than unhappy people. And, most important, they are found to be more loving and forgiving than unhappy people. — Dalai Lama XIV

Most people are unhappy; and they are unhappy because there is no love in their hearts. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

In omni adversitate fortunae, infelicissimum genus est infortunii fuisse felicem In every adversity of fortune, to have been happy is the most unhappy kind of misfortune. — Boethius

I asked her about this. But she couldn't put her finger on what made her unhappy. The most common complaint she made is one I've heard often from nursing home residents I've met: "It just isn't home." To Alice, Longwood House was a mere facsimile of home. And having a place that genuinely feels like your home can seem as essential to a person as water to a fish. — Atul Gawande

Do you not know that there comes a midnight hour when every one has to throw off his mask? Do you believe that life will always let itself be mocked? Do you think you can slip away a little before midnight in order to avoid this? Or are you not terrified by it? I have seen men in real life who so long deceived others that at last their true nature could not reveal itself; ... In every man there is something which to a certain degree prevents him from becoming perfectly transparent to himself; and this may be the case in so high a degree, he may be so inexplicably woven into relationships of life which extend far beyond himself that he almost cannot reveal himself. But he who cannot reveal himself cannot love, and he who cannot love is the most unhappy man of all. — Soren Kierkegaard

Each of them had personal, real or imagined, but deep reasons for dissatisfaction with life. Furthermore they had one great reason in common; both felt themselves to be unhappy and like outcasts in this town and this society of officers, for the most part frivolous and empty-headed. So they clung to one another feverishly like two survivors of a shipwreck. — Ivo Andric

The most unhappy people in the world are those who face the days without knowing what to do with their time. But if you have more projects than you have time for, you are not going to be an unhappy person. This is as much a question of having imagination and curiosity as it is of actually making plans. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Hollywood is great for entertaining people, it's a wonderful business but it's make-believe, you must remember that. That's one of the most important things to remember and the distinction in your own life, otherwise people get lost in their own fame, and it makes them unhappy. — Dolph Lundgren

I've always been unhappy with my teeth. I've lost most of them from my bottom jaw, and those in the upper jaw have been screwed in or capped. As a result, I've got great hollows under my cheeks, and my bone structure seems accentuated. — Kate O'Mara

This story ["The Depressed Person"] was the most painful thing I ever wrote. It's about narcissism, which is a part of depression. The character has traits of myself. I really lost friends while writing on that story, I became ugly and unhappy and just yelled at people. The cruel thing with depression is that it's such a self-centered illness - Dostoevsky shows that pretty good in his "Notes from Underground". The depression is painful, you're sapped/consumed by yourself; the worse the depression, the more you just think about yourself and the stranger and repellent you appear to others. — David Foster Wallace

Cowell Devlin sighed. Yes, he understood Anna Wetherell at long last, but it was not a happy understanding. Devlin had known many women of poor prospects and limited means, whose only transport out of the miserable cage of their unhappy circumstance was the flight of the fantastic. Such fantasies were invariably magical - angelic patronage, invitations into paradise - and Anna's story, touching though it was, showed the same strain of the impossible. Why, it was painfully clear! The most eligible bachelor of Anna's acquaintance possessed a love so deep and pure that all respective differences between them were rendered immaterial? He was not dead - he was only missing? He was sending her 'messages' that proved the depth of his love - and these were messages that only she could hear? It was a fantasy, Devlin thought. It was a fantasy of the girl's own devising. The boy could only be dead. — Eleanor Catton

Anatole has been explaining to me the native system of government. He says the business of throwing pebbles into bowls with the most pebbles winning an election - that was Belgium's idea of fair play, but to people here it was peculiar. To the Congolese (including Anatole himself, he confessed) it seems odd that if one man gets fifty votes and the other gets forty-nine, the first one wins altogether and the second one plumb loses. That means almost half the people will be unhappy, and according to Anatole, in a village that's left halfway unhappy you haven't heard the end of it. There is sure to be trouble somewhere down the line. The — Barbara Kingsolver

Most of us live in a state of perpetual "could be better." We're so used to having control over every little parameter of our lives that we cannot focus on what's going right, only on what's going wrong. That's the viewpoint we always seem to be coming from, and it means that we are perpetually unsatisfied, unhappy, disappointed, and ungrateful. — Michael Taft

And broken both your hearts? How would that have benefited me? You are as dear to me as another half of my soul, Jem. I could not be happy while you were unhappy. And Tessa - she loves you. What sort of awful monster would I be, delighting in causing the two people I love the most in the world agony simply that I might have the satisfaction of knowing that if Tessa could not be mine, she could not be anybody's? — Cassandra Clare

Most people who are deemed 'mean' are usually perfectionist who make mediocre people unhappy, cause they put more pressure on them then they can handle. — Lee Clow

If he was a ghost in the life he remembered, Jeff thought, he was also a ghost in his present life, just the same way. Except, in all the fourteen years, just a couple of times. With Melody that first summer he had felt alive. On the beach on the island. And when he played the guitar. Most of the time, he thought, he practiced not being anybody. If you weren't anybody then nobody could - what? Hurt you or leave you behind? Make you unhappy? But then they couldn't make you happy either, could they? If you played it safe, then you kept safe. Jeff figured he was pretty good at keeping safe - he didn't even look in mirrors because he didn't want to see Melody's eyes. But one result of that was that Jeff didn't know anything about himself. And he thought, sitting in the little boat, alone on the creek, alone with the creek and the sky and the marshes, that he might want to know more. — Cynthia Voigt

A magpie flies like a frying pan!'8 he could write, with the joy of discovering something new in the world. And it is that joy, that childish delight in the lives of creatures other than man, that I love most in White. He was a complicated man, and an unhappy one. But he knew also that the world was full of simple miracles. — Helen Macdonald

It's the most unhappy people who want to stay alive, because they think they haven't done everything they want to do. They think they haven't had enough time. They feel they've been shortchanged. — Carol Rifka Brunt

Poltergeists, for the most part, seemed to be pretty unhappy spirits with a vendetta against humanity and an eye for trickery. I knew that if I died I'd definitely come back as one. It actually was quite appealing, throwing shit around and scaring hapless people out of their homes, just to be an ass. I started looking forward to "meeting" these asshole ghosts. — Karina Halle

Most of the people who feel they are unhappy now are holding a grudge and wishing unhappiness on that person. — CLAMP

Why then should I often be unhappy over what happens here? Shouldn't I always be glad, contented and happy, except when I think about her and her companions in distress? I am selfish and cowardly. Why do I always dream and think of the most terrible things- my fear makes me want to scream out loud sometimes. Because still, in spite of everything, I have not enough faith in God. He has given me so much- which I certainly do not deserve- and I still do so much that is wrong every day. If you think of your fellow creatures, then you only want to cry, you could really cry the whole day long. The only thing to do is to pray that God will perform a miracle and save some of them. And I hope that I am doing that enough! — Anne Frank

Alas, poor men, their destiny. When all goes well a shadow will overthrow it. If it be unkind one stroke of a wet sponge wipes all the picture out; and that is far the most unhappy thing of all.
-Cassandra — Aeschylus

The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, or unfulfilled. For it is only in such moments, propelled by our discomfort, that we are likely to step out of our ruts and start searching for different ways or truer answers. — M. Scott Peck

It is a terrible thing to learn as a child that one is a being separate from all the world, that no one and no thing hurts along with one's burned tongues and skinned knees, that one's aches and pains are all one's own. Even more terrible, as we grow older, to learn that no person, no matter how beloved, can ever truly understand us. Our own selves make us most unhappy, and that's why we're so anxious to lose them ... — Donna Tartt

It is a most unhappy state to be at a distance with God: man needs no greater infelicity than to be left to himself. — Owen Feltham

Ah! candid and unadulterated mind! you have learned early to reflect; but take care lest this habit, hitherto so well applied, should totally unfit you for society. It will strew thorns in your path, while other young women of your age seek only flowers. By imagining yourself in the place of others, as you now continually do, you will learn to feel for all the unhappy, or even for those who appear so; whereas it might save a great deal of (for the most part useless) pain, if you could contrive to feel only for yourself. — Charlotte Turner Smith

Most certainly not. Why face this with honesty and directness? It is so much more fun to dance around the truth, dodge the reality of the situation, which is that you are in love with this man, you share some kind of unhappy past with him ... and that he has feelings for you, as well. Why would you ever wish to deal with that head on? — Jess Michaels

The whole youth-idolatry oh-god-not-another-birthday thing has to be the most sure-fire way to be unhappy about the way things are progressing in your life. — Nat Friedman

...people who struggle against tyranny are more psychologically healthy than those who are docile and simply conform to current ways of thinking...there is much evidence that some of the most creative people in history were driven individuals who were terribly unhappy and out of sync with their social context. Creativity itself is a form of deviant behavior that requires individuals to break from usual assumptions and understandings in developing entirely new perspectives and approaches. — David Mechanic

Most people have no idea how unhappy they are because they don't know what happiness is. When they get a little break from their total pain, they feel a little better and they call it happiness. — Frederick Lenz

And there is escaping things the knowledge of which makes one unhappy. If "truth" is what we know and are aware of, in the most engrossing fiction we escape truth. Whatever else it is, drama is forgetfulness. We can forget and forget that we are forgetting. It is temporary mind control. If memories are pain, fiction is anesthesia. — Thomas C. Schelling

As Dr. Spock points out, raising happy children is an elusive aim compared to the more concrete aims of parenting in the past: creating competent children in certain kinds of work; and creating morally responsible citizens who fulfill a prescribed set of community obligations. The fact is, those bygone goals are probably more constructive
and achievable. Not all children will grow up to be happy, in spite of their parents' most valiant efforts, and all children are unhappy somewhere along the way. — Jennifer Senior

If you are interested in preventing animal suffering, the first thing you should give up is eggs and milk because the animals who produce those foods lead the most unhappy lives. You would do better to eat meat and stop eating eggs and dairy products. — Cesar Chavez

Inequality makes everyone unhappy, the poor most of all, and that is well within the remit of the state. More money gives less extra happiness the richer we get, yet we are addicted to earning and spending more every year. — Polly Toynbee

Rose leaned against the bathroom door. Here it was - her real life, the truth of who she was, barreling down on her like a bus with bad brakes. Here was the truth - she wasn't the kind of person Jim could fall in love with. She wasn't what she'd made herself out to be - a cheerful, uncomplicated girl, a normal girl with a happy, orderly life, a girl who wore pretty shoes and had nothing more pressing on her mind that whether ER was a rerun this week. The truth was in the exercise tape she didn't have time to unwrap, let alone exercise to; the truth was her hairy legs and ugly underwear. Most of all, the truth was her sister, her gorgeous, messed-up, fantastically unhappy and astoundingly irresponsible sister. — Jennifer Weiner

I am a most unhappy man. I accidentally ruined my country. A great industrial nation is now controlled by its system of credit. Our government is no longer based on the freedom of opinion, nor on the conviction and the majority decision, it is now a government which is subjected to the conviction and the compulsion of a small group of dominant men. — Woodrow Wilson

Most writers are unhappy with film adaptations of their work, and rightly so. 'Field of Dreams,' however, caught the spirit and essence of 'Shoeless Joe' while making the necessary changes to make the work more visual. — W.P. Kinsella

The most fragile, unhappy people destine themselves to live lives of constantly reminding themselves to be happy. — Criss Jami

The spectrum that most people exist in this world is very mundane and very unhappy. Certainly human beings are capable of experiencing great joy and happiness. — Frederick Lenz

For in every ill-turn of fortune the most unhappy sort of unfortunate man is the one who has been happy. Boethius, De — Robert Galbraith

...anyone who chooses to make fishing his occupation solely for the money is in the wrong business. If no thrill is experienced in catching fish, no satisfaction in going to sea and returning to shore, no pride in exclaiming "I am a fisherman," then a life on the water will be unfulfilling, perhaps even unbearable. Among the unhappy with whom I am acquainted, perhaps the most miserable people are those who fish out of necessity rather than out of a love of the sea and the seafaring life. I have always maintained that when I no longer feel a thrill, satisfaction, and pride from fishing, I will start a new career. (pp. 248-249) — Linda Greenlaw

As a rule, however fine and deep a phrase may be, it only affects the indifferent, and cannot fully satisfy those who are happy or unhappy; that is why dumbness is most often the highest expression of happiness or unhappiness; lovers understand each other better when they are silent, and a fervent, passionate speech delivered by the grave only touches outsiders, while to the widow and children of the dead man it seems cold and trivial. — Anton Chekhov