Joseph Hall Quotes

I was always a 'grass is greener' kind of guy.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

Many women long for what eludes them, and like not what is offered them.

I have coveted everything and taken pleasure in nothing

Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder; she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate.

When he was in school he longed to be out, and when he was out he longed to be in. On the way he thought about coming home, and coming home he thought about going. Wherever he was he wished he were somewhere else, and when he got there he wondered why he'd even bothered.

The things that I can't have I want, And what I have seems second-rate, The things I want to do I can't, And what I have to do I hate.

What makes man most unhappy is to be deprived not of that which he had, but of that which he did not have, and did not really know.

The discontented believe that their regrets are about the past.

I can't get no satisfaction.

We spend our time envying people whom we wouldn't wish to be.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

I feel like I was born in the wrong time.

Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters of life begin when you get what you want.

The ox longs for the gaudy trappings of the horse; the lazy pack-horse would fain plough. [We envy the position of others, dissatisfied with our own.]

I missed you even when I was with you. That’s been my problem. I miss what I already have, and I surround myself with things that are missing.

The miserable think that what they have is never enough. Like the Little Mermaid, who owned no more than twenty thingamabobs, they say, "But who cares, no big deal, I want MORE." (How could you be miserable with twenty thingamabobs?)

Suffering is getting what you do not want while wanting what you do not get.

If you are foolish enough to be contented, don't show it, but grumble with the rest.

Want is misery.

Where ever I am I always find myself looking out the window wishing I was somewhere else.

My dad had a lot of bad luck. You could see his suffering, his terrible suffering, living a life that was disappointing and looking for another one.

I'd never been content in America.

Luckier than one's neighbor, but still not happy.

I've been very fortunate in the things I've had in my life. But, at the same time, I wish I had the same types of memories as everyone else.