misfortune quotes

  Le bonheur engloutit nos forces, comme le malheur e  teint nos vertus. Happiness engulfs our strength, just as misfortune extinguishes our virtues.

- Honore   de Balzac
La Peau de chagrin.

Calamity, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering.Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others.

- Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
  The Cynic's Word Book. Retitled  The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

It is the misfortune of an old man that though he can put things out of his head he can't put them out of his feelings.

- (Arthur) Joyce Lunel Cary
  To Be A Pilgrim, ch.8.

   What a misfortune it isto be bornawoman!† Why seek for knowledge, which can prove only that our wretchedness is irremediable? If a ray of light break in upon us, it is but to make darkness more visible; to show usthenew limits, the Gothic structure, theimpenetrable barriers of our prison.

- Maria Edgeworth
  Leonora, letter1.

Here lies a prince whose intentions were pure, but who had the misfortune to see all his plans collapse.

-Joseph II
Epitaph for himself. Quoted in T C  W Blanning Joseph II (1994), p.1.

Dans l'adversite   de nos meilleurs amis, nous trouvons toujours quelque chose qui ne nous de  pla|"t pas. In the misfortune of our best friends, we always find something which is not displeasing to us.

- Fran c° ois, 6th Duc de La Rochefoucauld
  Re  flexions, ou sentences et maximes morales, no.99.

To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

- Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
  Lady Bracknell.The Importance of Being Earnest, act1.