Miss Austen’s novels … seem to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in the wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer … is marriageableness. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the whole wretched business there was something generous that was doing its best to flower.
nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Pain is slight if opinion has added nothing to it; ... in thinking it slight, you will make it slight. Everything depends on opinion. It is according to opinion that we suffer. A man is as wretched as he has convinced himself that he is. - Seneca
To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state. - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Is demum miser est, cuius nobilitas miserias nobilitat. (Indeed, wretched the man whose fame makes his misfortunes famous.) - Lucius Accius
I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence. - Eugene V. Debs
The world requires me to re-write its wretched dialogue! - Richard Greenberg
It is a consolation to the wretched to have companions in misery. - Publilius Syrus
All terrific but the people. THE PEOPLE. Everyone looks so exalted, or so wretched, or so spiffy, so funny, so splendid. If you are ever bored or blue, stand on the street corner for half an hour. - Maira Kalman
Thus have the gods spun the thread for wretched mortals: that they live in grief while they themselves are without cares; for two jars stand on the floor of Zeus of the gifts which he gives, one of evils and another of blessings. - Homer
I have known sorrow and learned to aid the wretched. - Virgil
Who but the Christian, among the religions of the world and throughout time, worships a God who loves him so much that he died an agonizing and wretched death to pay for his sins? - Ron Brackin
Life is a wretched gray Saturday, but it has to be lived through. - Anthony Burgess
Knowlege of God without knowledge of man's wretchedness leads to pride. Knowledge of man's wretchedness without knowledge of God leads to despair. Knowledge of Jesus Christ is the middle course, because by it we discover both God and our wretched state. - Blaise Pascal
Words are powerless when confronted by catastrophe; they're pitiable, wretched, and easily distorted - Aharon Appelfeld
It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. - W. Somerset Maugham
A wretched soul, bruised with adversity, We bid be quiet when we hear it cry; But were we burdened with like weight of pain, As much or more we should ourselves complain. - William Shakespeare
Can't stand all these poisonous creatures, all these snakes and insects and fish and things. Wretched things, biting everybody. And then people expect me to tell them what to do about it. I'll tell them what to do. Don't get bitten in the first place. (quoting Dr. Struan Sutherland) - Douglas Adams
Writing is wretched, discouraging, physically unhealthy, infinitely frustrating work. And when it all comes together it’s utterly glorious." Ralph Peters - National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) Pep Talk
Here were we wretched creatures of men making for each other's throats, and outraging the good earth which God had made so fair a habitation. - John Buchan
Submission to what people call their 'lot' is simply ignoble. If your lot makes you cry and be wretched, get rid of it and take another. - Elizabeth von Arnim
It is entirely seemly for a young man killed in battle to lie mangled by the bronze spear. In his death all things appear fair. But when dogs shame the gray head and gray chin and nakedness of an old man killed, it is the most piteous thing that happens among wretched mortals. - Homer
Blinding ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes! - Leonardo Da Vinci
You can be happy with money and you can be wretched with it. It depends on what kind of person you are. -- A Prologue to Love - Taylor Caldwell
Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt. - Titus Maccius Plautus
I wonder now whether inner coldness and desolation may not be the pre-condition for making the world believe, by a kind of fraudulent showmanship, that one's own wretched heart is still aglow. - W.G. Sebald
How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. . . . All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart. - Nikos Kazantzakis