William Faulkner Quotes

Affliction is enamoured of thy parts, And thou art wedded to calamity.

Were a stranger to drop on a sudden into this world, I would show him, as a specimen of its ills, a hospital full of diseases, a prison crowded with malefactors and debtors, a field of battle strewed with carcasses, a fleet foundering in the ocean, a nation languishing under tyranny, famine, or pestilence. To turn the gay side of life to him, and give him a notion of its pleasures; whither should I conduct him? to a ball, to an opera, to court? He might justly think, that I was only showing him a diversity of distress and sorrow.

Disease, insanity, and death were the angels that attended my cradle, and since then have followed me throughout my life.

Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.

Tragedy is one of the larger prices we pay for being alive. No one ever sidesteps tragedy. It is always there, shadowing us.

The wretched hasten to hear of their own miseries.

The memory of man is as old as misfortune

Every life has a measure of sorrow, and sometimes this is what awakens us.

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.

Sickness, insanity and death were the angels that surrounded my cradle and they have followed me throughout my life.

Sorrow happens, hardship happens, the hell with it, who never knew the price of happiness, will not be happy.

Life is pain, highness. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.

Life is difficult for everyone; everyone has bad days. Everyone has trouble in their life, because it doesn't matter how rich you are: Sickness and trouble and worry and love, these things will mess with you at every level of life.

My life has been tragic and disastrous since birth.

Thy fate is the common fate of all; Into each life some rain must fall.

The evils of mortals are manifold; nowhere is trouble of the same wing seen.

Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm.

No one could be more happy than a man who has never known affliction.

One man’s exile is but a drop in the sea of human misery

There's never any ebb in human misery.

You can't have a pain-free life. It can't all be roses and unicorns.

In everybody's life, there is love, there is sorrow, there is melancholy. And there might be danger as well.

Tragedy isn't getting something, or failing to get it; it's losing something you already have.

How quick the old woe follows a little bliss!