Things Could Have Been Worse Quotes & Sayings

Well, it was really very pleasant to see how things lazily adapted themselves to purposes. Here was this Mr Gridley, a man of a robust will, and surprising energy - intellectually speaking, a sort of inharmonious blacksmith* - and he could easily imagine that there Gridley was, years ago, wandering about in life for something to expend his superfluous combativeness upon - a sort of Young Love among the thorns - when the Court of Chancery came in his way, and accommodated him with the exact thing he wanted. There they were, matched, ever afterwards! Otherwise he might have been a great general, blowing up all sorts of towns, or he might have been a great politician, dealing in all sorts of parliamentary rhetoric; but, as it was, he and the Court of Chancery had fallen upon each other in the pleasantest way, and nobody was much the worse, and Gridley was, so to speak, from that hour provided for. — Charles Dickens

It is often said that mankind needs a faith if the world is to be improved. In fact, unless the faith is vigilantly and regularly checked by a sense of man's fallibility, it is likely to make the world worse. From Torquemada to Robespierre and Hitler the men who have made mankind suffer the most have been inspired to do so have been inspired to do so by a strong faith; so strong that it led them to think their crimes were acts of virtue necessary to help them achieve their aim, which was to build some sort of an ideal kingdom on earth. — David Cecil

Kelly looked at the cop, then sighed. "What a cluster. I take it you haven't been killing young women and leaving their half-eaten bodies in the desert?"
Adam was ticked. I could tell it even if he was looking like a reasonably calm businessman. Adam's temper was the reason he wasn't one of Bran's werewolf poster boys. When angered, he often gave in to impulses he wouldn't otherwise have given in to.
"Sorry to disappoint you," Adam told Kelly in silky tones. "But I prefer rabbits. Humans taste like pork." And then he smiled. Kelly took an involuntary step backward.
Tony gave Adam a sharp look. "Let's not make things worse, if we can help it, gentlemen. — Patricia Briggs

I have been called a Rogue Elephant, a Cannibal Shark, and a crocodile. I am none the worse. I remain a caged, and rather sardonic, lion, in a particularly contemptible and ill-run zoo. — Wyndham Lewis

And one of the things she had learned early in her life
was that if you discovered something that made you tighten inside, you had better try to learn
more about it. If you simply ignored the feeling, you would never know what might happen, and
in many ways that was worse than finding out you were wrong in the first place. Because if you
were wrong, you could go forward in your life without ever looking back over your shoulder and
wondering what might have been — Nicholas Sparks

No one," he says, "leaves this world in a different manner from one who has just been born." That is not true; for we are worse when we die than when we were born; but it is our fault, and not that of Nature. — Seneca.

You see, until then I'd been driven. I'd had a true quest, a purpose beyond my function - and then suddenly, the quest was over.
I felt ... drained. Disappointed. Let down.
Does that make sense? I had been sure that as soon as I had everything back I'd feel good. But inside I felt worse than when I stared. — Neil Gaiman

Three a.m. drunks, all over America, were staring at the walls, having finally give it up. You didn't have to be drunk to get hurt, to be zeroed out by a woman; but you could get hurt and become a drunk. You might think for a while, especially when you were young, that luck was with you, and sometimes it was. But there were all manner of averages and laws working that you know nothing about, even as you imagined things were going well. Some night, some hot summer Thursday, night you became the drunk, you were out there alone in a cheap rented room, and no matter how many times you'd been out there before, it was no help, it was even worse because you had got to thinking you wouldn't face it again. All you could do was light another cigarette, pour another drink, check the peeling walls for lips and eyes. What men and women did to each other was beyond comprehension. — Charles Bukowski

I've been keeping in stuff worse than that for more than twenty years."
- what the serial killer said to me. Based the antagonist in my novel on him. He's dead now. — Kristi Belcamino

When Olivier had been taken away Gamache had sat back down and stared at the sack. what could be worse than Chaos, Despair, War?
What would even the Mountain flee from? Gamache had given it a lot of thought.
What haunted people even, perhaps especially, on their deathbed? What chased them, tortured them and brought some of them to their knees? And Gamache thought he had the answer.
Regret.
Regret for things said, for things done, and not done. Regret for the people they might have been. And failed to be.
Finally, when he was alone, the Chief Inspector had opened the sack and looking inside had realize he'd been wrong. The worst thing of all wasn't regret. — Louise Penny

What if we changed the story that has been peddled to us over thousands of years by those religions that want to control us, that this life is merely a stepping stone to something better or something worse, and that we can only achieve the better by passing through the doors of their institutions and following their rules? What if we trash this arcane story which has caused so much suffering and hostility, and accept that we have already arrived in heaven and that there is nothing more gorgeous than here and now? — Danny Scheinmann

But now that so much is changing, is it not up to us to change? Could we not try to evolve just a little, and gradually take upon ourselves our share in the labour of love? We have been spared all of its toil, and so it has slipped in among our amusements, as a scrap of genuine lace will occasionally fall into a child's toy-box, and give pleasure, and cease to give pleasure, and at lengthe lie there among broken and dismembered things, worse than all the rest. We have been spoiled by easy gratification, like all dilettantes, and are held to be masters. But what if we despised out successes? What if we began to learn, from the very start, the labour of love that has always been done for us? What if we were to go and become beginners, now that so much is changing? — Rainer Maria Rilke

I've been ... chased by paparazzi, and they run lights, and they chase you and harass you the whole time. It happens all over the world, and it has certainly gotten worse. You don't know what it's like being chased by them. — Tom Cruise

The increasing frequency of extreme weather events, droughts and floods is in line with what climate scientists have been predicting for decades - and evidence is mounting that what's happening is more severe than predicted, and will get far worse still if we fail to act. — David Suzuki

Some part of me ... had been waiting, since Kelp's death, for certainty that God ... was either dead or malicious. On the cot, now, in the rain-shadowed room with the medicine smells, I knew it was worse than that. They were a challenge, a dare: you must look at the horrors of the world and find a way back to faith in spite of what you saw. I had a glimpse of what the purer version of myself might be capable of: enduring the loss, keeping the rage and disgust down, finding meaning through suffering. But it was only a glimpse. There was so much shame, and the shame made me angry at the thought of getting better. — Glen Duncan

I should have let you bust Frank Dilley's nose," I say.

"That would have made things worse," he says.

"But it would have been a pleasure to watch. — Rae Carson

But you're so easy to sneak up on." He crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall. "You should be honored that I bother, since there's no challenge to it."
"Right," I said dryly.
Tybalt has never made a secret of his contempt for changelings in general and me in particular. Not even the years I spent missing could change that. If anything, it made things worse, because when I came back, I promptly removed myself from all the places he was accustomed to finding me. Hating me suddenly took effort - an effort he's proved annoying glad to make. On the other hand, it's actually been something of a relief, because it is something I can count on. Dawn comes, the moon rises and Tybalt hates me. — Seanan McGuire

For although Claudius had been accused of gambling and drunkenness, not only were no worse sins laid to his charge, but he had successfully established some claim to being considered a learned man. — Frederic William Farrar

Something inside Dolly curled up and died. Things could not have been worse. Except that suddenly they were. — Kate Morton

Here are problems with the Turkish products inside Russia and the tourism going down. People are worried about that. But the really big economic weapons, oil and especially natural gas, those have not been brought into play yet - mostly in the form of threat so far. So basically the view from here is that, yeah, things are getting bad, but they could still get much, much worse. — Peter Kenyon

But Harley has always been this way, for as long as I've known him: he thinks ignorance is the best way to protect someone, and he doesn't understand that what we imagine is often worse than the truth. — Beth Revis

Dark seams radiated outwards like a shotgun blast of ink, as if Nico's body were trying to expel all the shadows he'd travelled through. Yesterday had been worse: an entire meadow withering, skeletons rising from the earth. Reyna wasn't anxious for that to happen again. — Rick Riordan

I heard about this man who fell into a pit, and while he was down there several people came by and offered their opinions. The Pharisee said, "You deserve to be in the pit." The Catholic said, "You need to suffer while you're in the pit." The Baptist said, "If you'd been saved, you wouldn't have fallen into the pit." The charismatic said, "Just confess I'm not in the pit." The mathematician said, "Let me calculate how you fell into the pit." The IRS agent said, "Have you paid taxes on that pit?" The optimist said, "Things could be worse." The pessimist said, "Things will get worse. — Joel Osteen

Diving has been in the game for years. Probably the coverage the game gets now, with all the cameras around, it gets highlighted a bit more. But it hasn't got any worse. — Wayne Rooney

I think you're freaked about what happened at Cambridge. I think it scared you."
"I've been through worse, Bex," I said, joining her on the lower stairs. "Way worse."
"Oh, not the attack." Bex raised her finger in contradiction. "What happened before the attack. I think you saw the future. Which is kind of freaky when - two months ago - you didn't think you were going to have one. — Ally Carter

That's how luck works, lad.
You can bitch all you like about how things could have been more favorable for you, but rest assured things can always be worse.
Always. — Scott Lynch

Because of our broken instincts we are in pain. We continue in pain because our instincts have been twisted by reason. So, what are we supposed to do? Should we abandon knowledge? Throw away reason? In any event, that wouldn't be possible. For better or worse, we ate the fruit of knowledge long, long ago. — Tatsuhiko Takimoto

I can't imagine what kind of poverty would motivate a person to forget themselves and everyone they loved so their families could get a monthly stipend. I may have lived on Abnegation bread and vegetables for most of my life, with nothing to spare, but I was never that desperate. Their situation must have been much worse than anything I saw in the city. - Tris — Veronica Roth

We disguised our political demands behind religion and multiculturalism, and deliberately labeled any objection to our demands as racism. Even worse, we did this to the very generation who had been socialist sympathizers in their youth, people sympathetic to charges of racism, who like Dave Gomer were now in middle-career management posts. It is no wonder then that the authorities were unprepared to deal with politicized religion as ideological agitation; they felt racist if they tried to stop us. — Maajid Nawaz

There's nothing wild about me. I'm a solid middle-aged man."
"Except that once a month you turn into a wolf and go tearing around slaughtering things," Clary said.
"It could be worse," Luke said. "Men my age have been known to purchase expensive sports cars and sleep with supermodels. — Cassandra Clare

The fire of my tribulations had not simply been pain to be endured. It had been an agent of transformation. After all that I'd been through, I'd changed. Not for the worse, I was pretty sure
at least not yet. But only a moron or a freaking lunatic could have faced the things I had and remained unfazed by them. — Jim Butcher

Think about the farmer," Akil tells me. "The farmer can't control and predict very much either. So why is that any better or worse than being on Wall Street? As a farmer, if there was a freeze that destroyed your crops, that might've stressed you, but it wasn't your fault. But as a knowledge worker, you're expected to be in charge of everything. And when things go wrong, it is your fault. The thinking is, you could have planned more, or you should have anticipated what went wrong. That combination of having a lot coming at you and of shifting away from physical work - which does help cope with stress - and not even being able to say, 'It's not my fault, I surrender to higher forces,' whether you believe it's weather or God - that's been taken away." * — Brigid Schulte

I've always been interested in history, but they never taught Negro history in the public schools ... I don't see how a history of the United States can be written honestly without including the Negro. I didn't [paint] just as a historical thing, but because I believe these things tie up with the Negro today. We don't have a physical slavery, but an economic slavery. If these people, who were so much worse off than the people today, could conquer their slavery, we can certainly do the same thing ... I am not a politician. I'm an artist, just trying to do my part to bring this thing about ... — Jacob Lawrence

Flying has always been to me this wonderful metaphor. In order to fly you have to trust what you can't see. Up on the mountain ridges where very few people have been I have thought back to what every flyer knows. That there is this special world in which we dwell that's not marked by boundaries, it's not a map. We're not hedged about with walls and desks. So often in an office the very worst thing that can happen is you could drop your pencil. Out there's a reminder that are a lot worse things, and a lot greater rewards. — Richard Bach

Still much better off Sid, things could have been much worse.
The 'Sky' is only the 'lower' limit, to thee is the Universe. — Rajat Mishra

There are two things in life you cannot choose. The first is your enemies; the second your family. Sometimes the difference between them is hard to see, but in the end time will show you that the cards you have been dealt could always have been worse. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

That was something, wasn't it? Trust was a good place to start. Especially after the kind of betrayal she'd been through. It made him want to prove he was the kind of man she deserved. The kind of man who'd love her for better or worse. The kind who was faithful and true. — Denise Hunter

right at this moment, I cannot imagine it being any worse
right here, I have been turned into nothing
right now, I am negated — David Levithan

All his life he [Robert Kennedy] had been schooled that nothing was worse than to finish second. But crushing fears are no longer so crushing once they are experienced. — Jack Newfield

I've stabbed a man to death. Had sex with a stranger on camera. My soul was stained black with so many crimes, but I couldn't bear to watch him die. Maybe that made me a coward, worse than Vinny. He had been sadistic. I had been selfish. — Lana Sky

Pulling her eyes away, she figured it was best to keep such questions to herself. "You could have just, you know, asked me out instead," she offered, though she wasn't sure why.
John let out a soft chuckle. "Very true. I guess I just ... I wanted to keep you safe."
"Safe? From what?" Evangeline suddenly felt heat rush her face. Was this man just paranoid or what? "Safe from this? Or from you?"
He looked up, placing his fork down on the plate. His stare was expressionless and she suddenly regretted her brazen accusation. "Both." His reply had been simple, direct, stern. "Those people who did this to me, they'll do worse to you if they think that we're involved ... if they think that their message wasn't clear enough. — Shawn Kirsten Maravel

Oncoming death is terrible enough, but worse still is oncoming death with time to spare, time in which all the happiness that was yours and all the happiness that might have been yours becomes clear to you. You see with utter lucidity all that you are losing. — Yann Martel

It could have been quite worse," he agreed magnanimously.
"And those two guys who felt up your butt while the maintenance dude was working on that hinge were kicked out because they violated the 'must have fondler's consent' rule, or so that pink-haired woman who spoke English said, so at least they won't do that to the next guy trapped in the stocks."
"I will sleep easier knowing that. — Katie MacAlister

This Obamacare thing really scares me. The United States government / politicians are trying to turn the American people into a brand X "One size fits all" country. The past ten years has been very grim for Americans. Our current state is very grim. Our future is even more grim than ever. I used to tell people that it will get worse before it gets better. Now, I just say it will get worse. — Carroll Bryant

There is no peace precisely because there has been no justice. As painful and inconvenient as justice may be, we have seen that the alternative allowing accountability to fall by the wayside is worse. — Desmond Tutu

I do have nightmares. So what? I wouldn't trade places with any of the f**kers I killed. Am I afraid of Hell? No. I've been. It's worse than advertised but not as bad as imagined. ~ Brandon Hull — Jayden Hunter

But for now he was alone and hurt and broken on the ground, the man, gravely wounded. Worse, he knew himself a fool, knew himself a loser, knew himself too late, and defeated, ruined by his own hand, near to death.
It was the end and then this happened. The wound in his chest, red and burning, open like an eye, an ear, a mouth, began to glow.
It glowed and warmed until it embered him. Flowers closest to where he lay started to wilt in the heat of it. But inside the man, the heat changed into something else. The first thing he felt it become was courage and the next thing was desire.
They went through him, but with a roughness he'd never known. Then instead of in pain he was thirsty, but with a thirst he'd never known. The heat and the glow and the thirst combined and melted the man into someone he'd never been.
He heard a noise. It was the roar of water.
Up he got off the ground to go and sort himself out. — Ali Smith

No man is hurt but by himself ... Literally by how he interprets what happens to him. If he focusses on how it could have been better, he will be hurt. If he focusses on how it could have been worse, he will be happy. The same is true for women too. — Diogenes

This new war, like the previous one, would be a test of the power of machines against people and places; whatever its causes and justifications, it would make the world worse. This was true of that new war, and it has been true of every new war since ...
I knew too that this new war was not even new but was only the old one come again. And what caused it? It was caused, I thought, by people failing to love one another, failing to love their enemies. — Wendell Berry

If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come. — Raymond Chandler

It was a moment before she replied. And in that moment, she realized that what was gone from her was the child in her, she'd crossed a brink from which there was no turning back. Whoever she had been, she was not anymore. And her life, for better or worse, would never again be what it had. — Allan Folsom

All I could think of was that the teachers must've found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorms room. Or maybe they'd realized I got my Essay on Tom Sawyer from the Internet without ever reading the book and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book. — Rick Riordan

Dexter did not kick the can. And now Dexter is It. Again. You may wonder, how can this be? How can Dexter's night hunt be reduced to this? Always before there has been some frightful twisted predator awaiting the special attention of frightful twisted Dexter - and here I am, stalking an empty Chef Boyardee ravioli can that is guilty of nothing worse than bland sauce. — Jeff Lindsay

Procrastinating is number three on my Stupid List. You still end up exactly where you didn't want to be, doing exactly what you didn't want to do, withe the only difference being that you lost all that time in between, during which you could have been doing something fun. Even worse, you probably stayed in a stressed-out, crappy mood the whole time you were avoiding it. If you know something is inevitable, do it and get it over with. Move on. Life is short. — Karen Marie Moning

There is nothing more distressing ... than the hard, scoffing spirit which treats the allegation of dishonesty in a public man as a cause for laughter. Such laughter is worse than the crackling of thorns under a pot, for it denotes not merely the vacant mind, but the heart in which high emotions have been choked before they could grow to fruition. — Theodore Roosevelt

Looking over the country with those sunken eyes as if the world out there had been altered or made suspect by what he'd seen of it elsewhere. As if he might never see it right again. Or worse did see it right at last. See it as it had always been, would forever be. — Cormac McCarthy

The inevitable tears began to fall. So like I said before, it wasn't the clothes, and it wasn't the humiliation that drove me to cry. It was something much worse. See, I cried because I should have known what had happened had been coming at me. None of it should have come as a surprise. This is what happened when I dared to be happy in my life. When I stuck my head out of my turtle shell and dared to smile, fate made sure to lay the smackdown to remind me I was not allowed a life like everyone else. — John Goode

But I used to have a bit of a gambling problem. And that would have been the answer to my prayers. It got worse when I started playing this character, too. — Fisher Stevens

Chloe had her knees pulled up, one arm wrapped around them. Her other hand was entwined with Derek's. He leaned back against the tree. Slumping, as if it was holding him up. His face glowed with sweat and his eyes were closed.
When I'd seen Derek in wolf form, I figured werewolves grew when they shifted, like the ones in movies. They didn't. He was really that big. Even slumped, he was more than a head taller then Chloe. A huge football player of a guy.
Beside me, Daniel whispered, "I was going to tell him off for bullying you. But I'm having second thoughts."
I smiled at him. "I don't blame you."
Despite his size, Derek was obviously no older than us. His cheeks were dotted with mild acne and I could see the ghosts of fading pocks, as if it had been much worse not too long ago. Dark hair tumbled into his eyes as he rested with his head bent forward. — Kelley Armstrong

I am, in general, an easygoing person. I try to take a reed-bending-with-the-wind attitude toward life, rather than fight everything. But these constant "out of the frying pan, into the fire, into a worse fire, into a worse fire than the worse fire before it" situations that had been riddling my life of late were beginning to wear me down — Katie MacAlister

[The Dalai Lama] told me some years ago, "I've made every concession to China, and I've been as open and tolerant as I could, and still things get worse in Tibet." If you look at it from one point of view, as he himself says, his monastic position of forbearance and nonviolence hasn't reaped any benefits. And yet, he's thinking in terms of the long term, of centuries. — Pico Iyer

Halt eyed them balefully. They were all being so obvious about not mentioning his sudden reappearance that it was even worse than if they had commented on it ...
'Oh, go on!' he said. 'Somebody say something! I know what you're thinking!'
'It's good to see you up and about, Halt,' Selethen said gravely ...
Halt glared at the others and they quickly chorused their pleasure at seeing him back to his normal self. But he could see the grins they didn't quite manage to hide. He fixed a glare on Alyss.
'I'm surprised at you Alyss,' he said. 'I expected no better of Will and Evanlyn, of course. Heartless beasts, the pair of them. But you! I thought you had been better trained!' ...
'Halt, I'm sorry! It's not funny, you're right ... Shut up, Will.' This last was directed at Will as he tried, unsuccessfully, to smother a snigger. — John Flanagan

Contrary to popular wisdom, bullies are rarely cowards.
Bullies come in various shapes and sizes. Observe yours. Gather intelligence.
Shunning one hopeless battle is not an act of cowardice.
Hankering for security or popularity makes you weak and vulnerable.
Which is worse: Scorn earned by informers? Misery endured by victims?
The brutal May have been molded by a brutality you cannot exceed.
Let guile be your ally.
Respect earned by integrity cannot be lost without your consent.
Don't laugh at what you don't find funny.
Don't support an opinion you don't hold.
The independent befriend the independent.
Adolescence dies in its fourth year. You live to be eighty. — David Mitchell

We have all been found guilty of being human. There are worse crimes. — Joe Hill