Patrick Kavanagh Quotes

Self-inflicted misery smirks under its crown of thorns.

I do suspect that this world is hell.

Why doesn't that Devil take me with him? It would be much better with him than it is here.

What feeds me destroys me.

I spent some time in Hell.

Is there anything men take more pains about than to render themselves unhappy?

Wickedness frames the engines of her own torment. She is a wonderful artisan of a miserable life.

The violence done us by others is often less painful than that which we do to ourselves.

How many people does each of us know who claim to seek happiness but freely choose paths inevitably leading to misery?

To seek out in a world full of joy the one thing that is certain to give you pain, and hug it to your bosom with all your strength; that's the greatest human happiness.

For I say this is death and the sole death,- When a man's loss comes to him from his gain, Darkness from light, from knowledge ignorance, And lack of love from love made manifest.

There can be no peace for us, only misery, and the greatest happiness.

You do it to yourself, you do, And that's what really hurts, Is that you do it to yourself, Just you and no one else, You do it to yourself...

If no love is, O God, what fele I so? And if love is, what thing and which is he? If love be good, from whennes cometh my woo? If it be wikke, a wonder thynketh me

Pain. I seem to have an affection, a kind of sweettooth for it. Bolts of lightning, little rivulets of thunder. And I the eye of the storm.

even damnation is poisoned with rainbows.

We probably in hell already, our dumb asses not knowing.

I am malicious because I am miserable

I drink because I wish to multiply my sufferings.

Quand notre coeur a fait une fois sa vendange, Vivre est un mal. Once our heart has been harvested once, Life becomes miserable.

Nothing is as heady as the wine of misfortune.

My final belief is suffering. And I begin to believe that I do not suffer.

No more shall ye behold such sights of woe, deeds I have suffered and myself have wrought; henceforward quenched in darkness shall ye see those ye should ne'er have seen; now blind to those whom, when I saw, I vainly yearned to know.

Faustus: Stay, Mephistopheles, and tell me, what good will my soul do thy lord? Mephistopheles: Enlarge his kingdom. Faustus: Is that the reason he tempts us thus? Mephistopheles: Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris. (It is a comfort to the wretched to have companions in misery)