“For of all the miseries attaching to miserable love, the worst is the misery of thinking that the passion which is the cause of them all may cease.”

“She closes her eyes and wordlessly thinks of all the misery sex has caused the world…”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

“Passion is something which very few of us have really felt. What we may have felt is enthusiasm, which is being caught up in an emotional state over something. Our passion is for something: for music, for painting, for literature, for a country, for a woman or a man; it is always the effect of a cause. When you fall in love with someone, you are in a great state of emotion, which is the effect of that particular cause; and what I am talking about is passion without a cause. It is to be passionate about everything, not just about something, whereas most of us are passionate about a particular person or thing. I think one must see this distinction very clearly. In the state of passion without a cause, there is intensity free of all attachment; but when passion has a cause, there is attachment, and attachment is the beginning of sorrow.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

“That to live by one man's will became the cause of all men's misery.”

Richard Hooker (1554–1600) English bishop and Anglican Divine

“Writing does not cause misery. It is born of misery.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

“Hopelessness is the root of anxiety, mental illness, and depression. It is the source of all misery and the cause of all addiction.”

Mark Manson book Everything Is Fucked

“I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

“I don’t think of all the misery, but the beauty that still remains.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

“Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.”

Clive Staples Lewis book The Problem of Pain

“Friends love misery… our misery is what endears us to our friends.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic