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

“One does not kill oneself for love of a woman, but because love—any love—reveals us in our nakedness, our misery, our vulnerability, our nothingness.”

Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator

“My best friends are my memories
They're the only ones that save me from misery”

Paul Rey (1992) Swedish singer

“Lord, heap miseries upon us yet entwine our arts with laughters low.”

James Joyce book Finnegans Wake

“In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends.”

John Churton Collins (1848–1908) British literary critic

“Human friends, friends in hardship and in life, this is our pure love, love of mother and son.”

Albert Cohen (1895–1981) Swiss writer

“Friends humor and flatter us, they steal our time, they encourage our love of ease, they make us content with ourselves, they are the foes of our virtue and our glory.”

John Lancaster Spalding (1840–1916) Catholic bishop

“How mutable are our feelings, and how strange is that clinging love we have of life even in the excess of misery!”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

“In our hearts there is a ruthless dictator, ready to contemplate the misery of a thousand strangers if it will ensure the happiness of the few we love.”

Graham Greene book The Heart of the Matter

“Either give me your hand, or end it now, and put us both out of our misery”

Judith McNaught (1944) American writer