Martin Farquhar Tupper Quotes

I have been to hell and back. I have seen the edge. I have seen the dark side of life.

For me and Washington, it was like I was in a dark tunnel, and the light was really far away.

He was never without misery, and never without hope.

It's the hope for all the hopeless in the worst of trying times.

When our life is a continuous trial, the moments of respite seem only to substitute the heaviness of dread for the heaviness of actual suffering; the curtain of cloud seems parted an instant only that we may measure all its horror as it hangs low, black, and imminent, in contrast with the transient brightness; the waterdrops that visit the parched lips in the desert bear with them only the keen imagination of thirst.

The people I am most interested in are the ones on the edge of losing everything and falling into the last bit of despair. I'm trying to write about how people exist on that edge and how they can come back.

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

I am talking about misery and all of its implications.

What I learned at home was despair and hopelessness. What I learned at the pictures was don't give up the ship, we have only begun to fight, it's always darkest before the dawn.

I could not have gone through the awful wretched mess of life without having left a stain upon the silence.

And one thing to be remembered: it is not that the people who are poor, starving, become frustrated with life - no. They cannot become frustrated. They have not lived yet - how can they be frustrated? They have hopes. A poor man always has hopes that something is going to happen - if not today then tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow; if not in this life then in the next life.

The miserable have no other medicine But only hope.

Life is so damned hard, so damned hard... It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can't be hurt ever any more. That's the last and worst thing it does.

When you're down, when you've been kicked down in the street and then kicked a few more times until you're bleeding and your teeth are out, then you only have up to go. You get reborn again, and expectations aren't so great because they've taken you away. It's beautiful to be down there. It's so beautiful!

How many would die did not hope sustain them.

Even in the most wretched life, there’s hope.

Weave me a rope from this dark despair, from this dull-eyed pain... Weave me a rope from this endless night, from this distant shore... Weave me a rope that will pull me through these impossible times.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

There were air raids at night. The factory was dark and dirty. And I remember thinking - well - I must find somebody or something because like this I cannot go on.

The most audacious thing I could possibly state in this day and age is that life is worth living. It's worth being bashed against. It's worth getting scarred by. It's worth pouring yourself over every one of its coals.

Poverty makes you sad as well as wise.

We were poor, my mother and I, living in a world of doom and gloom, pessimism and bitterness, where storms raged and wolves scratched at the door.

These hands which stretch out, implore, beg, then rise to the head in a gesture of calamity.

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.