When I was a young man, I understood that poetry was two things - it was difficult to understand, but you could understand that the poet was miserable. So for a while there, I wrote poems that were hard to understand, even by me, but gave off whiffs of misery.

Billy Collins

Poetry Young Man Young

In my early 20s I was so miserable doing construction, I wanted something that paid money. I liked nice stuff. I liked cars and architecture, and things that cost money. I wanted to not swing a hammer, and make money... and not do stuff that was dirty. I attempted to get into comedy. I started to do stand-up, but I wasn't very good at it.

Adam Carolla

Money Good Car

Marriage is a kind of prison for anyone who's miserable in it - men and women alike - and anyone who's suffered through difficult periods in marriage dreams of escape from it.

Adam Ross

Women Men Marriage

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.

Adam Smith

Society Great Art

There are two evil futurities and one good. A miserable future existence is evil; and annihilation, or nigban, is an evil - a fearful evil. A happy future existence is alone good.

Adoniram Judson

Good Future Fear

I did a law degree but was miserable the whole time. I was supposed to join a law firm in London but instead went to Oxford to do a master's in philosophy.

Adrian McKinty

Time Whole Who

I find it easier to write in the winter in Melbourne. When the weather is good you want to go out for a walk, ride a bike, go to a cafe or something. When it's raining, when it's a miserable day, I just sit down at my desk and get some work done.

Adrian McKinty

Work Good You

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

Agatha Christie

Time Wit Wildly

I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

Agatha Christie

Time Sympathy Wit

My feeling about work is it's much more about the experience of doing it than the end product. Sometimes things that are really great and make lots of money are miserable to make, and vice versa.

Alan Cumming

Work Time Money

Well, it's not hard to be number one entertaining Jew. Some of them are quite bleeding bloody miserable, really.

Alan Sugar

Well Them T

At the end of the day, I know that I would rather be alone and occasionally lonely and unhappy than in a miserable marriage and lonely and unhappy all the time. I don't mind being single. In fact, I like it.

Alana Stewart

Time Marriage Alone

If I am in a beautiful place, but I don't like the people, I am miserable.

Alber Elbaz

T Place People

Besides paid white laborers, there was everywhere a class of white servants bound without wages for a term of years, and a more miserable class of Negro slaves.

Albert Bushnell Hart

Age Years Year

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

Aldous Huxley

Men Worship Will

Oh! Most miserable wretch that I am! Why have I not learnt how to swim?

Alexander the Great

Why T Swim

I literally tried every sport and was miserable. Soccer couldn't hold my attention. I couldn't figure skate. I'm afraid to swim. So I did dance for five years. It came a time where I was getting a little bit bored with it.

Alicia Sacramone

Time Years Year

I started off when I was seven years old doing musicals. I was in 'Les Miserables' and 'The Sound of Music,' and my mum's an actress. My parents divorced when I was young, and when she couldn't find a babysitter, I was in the wings, sleeping.

Alicia Vikander

Music Art Young

Lollapalooza, that was one of my worst shows. We just played at, like, 3 in the afternoon; it was like the hottest, most miserable thing. My shoes were melting. I just thought I was going to die. It was the most horrible experience. I lasted, what, four songs? In front of quite a lot of people. That was one of my least favorites.

Alison Mosshart

Experience Worst Were

Famous, adj.: Conspicuously miserable.

Ambrose Bierce

Famous Us Sly

I just wanted to see every single musical I could. The very first one I saw was 'Beauty and the Beast,' the only one I could get tickets for, and then 'Les Miserables' and then 'Chicago.'

America Ferrera

Music Wanted Want

Life can be tough sometimes. But I think it just starts with admitting, 'Okay, the world's not perfect, how do we live our lives within that and not be miserable?'

Amy Lee

When you're miserable, you don't want anyone around you to be happy.

Amy Lee

You write a book and you hope somebody will go out and pay $24.95 for what you've just said. I think books were my salvation. Books saved me from being miserable.

Amy Tan

I have had an actor squeeze himself up against me during a shot in a song and whisper in my ear that he was so glad that I was in the film with him. When I threw him off me and refused to speak to him again, he made my experience miserable.

Amyra Dastur

I have this desire to have this immaculate form of love that really doesn't exist, so my obsession goes on through life and I never find it and I end up miserable. But it makes me a better writer.

Angel Haze

I can choose to be happy, or choose to be miserable every day - waiting until I die.

Angel Haze

I see that a man cannot give himself up to drinking without being miserable one half his days and mad the other.

Anne Bronte

There's nothing worse than walking into a hospital and seeing people sick and miserable and having a horrible treatment.

Anne Wojcicki

I went to a performing arts school. I went to an audition for a musical, 'Les Miserables,' in the West End, and I got in, and my parents were like, 'Oh, you can sing?' So I kind of started singing properly when I was, like, seven.

Anne-Marie

I sometimes think it's like a weird elastic band. The more tragic your work is, the quicker you snap back. There's a catharsis in telling a miserable old tale; you get rid of demons.

Anne-Marie Duff

It's a privilege to do what I do for a living - to take people out of their miserable day, or to educate somebody, or make somebody laugh, or fall in love with an idea. How good is that? And I get paid to do it!

Anne-Marie Duff

People always accuse me of making these dark, depressing movies. 'Why do you have to pick up on real issues? People are so exhausted and miserable.'

Anurag Kashyap

If you were not a sinful, polluted, helpless, and miserable creature, this Savior would not be suited to you, and you would not be comprehended in his gracious invitations to the children of men.

Archibald Alexander

Make sure that you are happy with what you are doing; otherwise, you will be miserable. Pursue your dream. Don't give up.

Arnel Pineda

I myself am pathetically impressed when I meet writers of very long novels. How can they spend so many hundreds of hours at the miserable, lonely pastime of creating fiction?

Arthur Smith

Listening to Chris Moyles on Radio 1 is the most miserable thing any human being can do, but attending awards ceremonies isn't far behind.

Arthur Smith

When I was little, I saw the play 'Les Miserables' on Broadway, I thought it was the most amazing thing I have ever seen.

Ashley Tisdale

Always leave something to wish for; otherwise you will be miserable from your very happiness.

Baltasar Gracian

Life's philosophy, hm... I just say, 'Do what you do and have fun doing it and try not to be too miserable.'

Bam Margera

I didn't do anything for two years but work on 'Gone Baby Gone,' and it was miserable and hard, but at the end? It is a good movie. I liked it very much. If it had been dismissed and deemed worthless, it would been definitely devastating. But that didn't happen.

Ben Affleck

It's not marriage that I crave. Many of my friends who have married are pretty miserable. Within a year and a half, most of them are either unhappy or divorced.

Ben Elliot

I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends' floors, was happy, was miserable.

Ben Okri

It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.

Benjamin Franklin

What a miserable thing life is: you're living in clover, only the clover isn't good enough.

Bertolt Brecht

Locations are all tough, all miserable. I never left the sound stage for 18 years at Warners. We never went outside the studio, not even for big scenes.

Bette Davis

When I was in the first grade I was afraid of the teacher and had a miserable time in the reading circle, a difficulty that was overcome by the loving patience of my second grade teacher. Even though I could read, I refused to do so.

Beverly Cleary

I used to think you had to live this miserable life and that that would make you funnier, but you don't. The misery will come. The misery will find you.

Bill Burr

I don't think, I don't intend to make people miserable. I am demanding.

Bill Parcells

My persona is less miserable than a lot of contemporary poetry speakers are.

Billy Collins

When I was a young man, I understood that poetry was two things - it was difficult to understand, but you could understand that the poet was miserable. So for a while there, I wrote poems that were hard to understand, even by me, but gave off whiffs of misery.

Billy Collins