Woe Quotes

Thus hand in hand through life we 'll go; Its checker'd paths of joy and woe With cautious steps we 'll tread. ~ Nathaniel Cotton

Woe to that land that's govern'd by a child! ~ William Shakespeare

O holy God! The sinless seraphs covered their faces in Your presence. How much more should we who are but sinful creatures bow in reverence before Your throne. You alone are holy. You alone are the transcendent, majestic God. You alone are morally pure. You are perfect light; in You there is no darkness at all. And yet, through Your Son You came to us as our Savior. You came not to pronounce woe but blessing to those who trust in Jesus. Fill our hearts with awe because of Your holiness, and with amazement because of Your love. Through Jesus Christ our Lord we praise You. Amen. ~ Jerry Bridges

Now it is clear, God cares only for what is his, busies himself only with himself, thinks only of himself, and has only himself before his eyes; woe to all that is not well pleasing to him. He serves no higher person, and satisfies only himself. His cause is - a purely egoistic cause. ~ Max Stirner

Ninety per cent of the world's woe comes from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go almost all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves
so how can we know anyone else? ~ Sydney J. Harris

If I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it - keep going, keep going come what may. ~ Vincent Van Gogh

Woe, alas, to the one who shall have loved bodies, forms, appearances only. Death will take everything from him. Try to love souls, you shall find them again ~ Victor Hugo

Woe to him who receives; for if one receives who has need, he is guiltless; but he who receives not having need shall pay the penalty, why he received and for what. And coming into confinement, he shall be examined concerning the things which he has done, and he shall not escape from there until he pays back the last penny. And also concerning this, it has been said, Let your alms sweat in your hands, until you know to whom you should give. ~ Anonymous

Four little chests all in a row,
Dim with dust, and worn by time,
Four women, taught by weal and woe
To love and labor in their prime. "
"Four sisters, parted for an hour,
None lost, one only gone before,
Made by love's immortal power,
Nearest and dearest evermore. ~ Louisa May Alcott

MATTHEW 18. t At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, "Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" 2And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them 3and said, "Truly, I say to you, unless you u turn and v become like children, you w will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 x Whoever humbles himself like this child is the w greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 y "Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, 6but z whoever causes one of these a little ones who believe in me to sin, [1] it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. Temptations to Sin 7"Woe to the world for b temptations to sin! [2] c For it is necessary that temptations come, d but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes! ~ Anonymous

Mission is a duty about which one must say 'Woe to me if I do not evangelize' (1 Corinthians 9:16) ... redemption and mission are acts of love [because] those who proclaim the Gospel participate in the charity of Christ. ~ Pope Benedict XVI

One woe doth tread upon another's heel. So fast they follow. ~ William Shakespeare

Woe is the mind of the common man, so easily controlled by the prospect of an ambition never to be truly attained. This is what tyrants live on and by what commoners are blissfully burdened and subdued. ~ Evan Meekins

Woe to us if we get our satisfaction from the food in the kitchen and the TV in the den and the sex in the bedroom with an occasional tribute to the cement blocks in the basement! ~ John Piper

Lords, I protest my soul is full of woe
That blood should sprinkle me to make me grow.
Come, mourn with me for what I do lament,
And put sullen black incontinent.
I'll make a voyage to the Holy Land
To wash this blood off from my guilty hand.
March sadly after. Grace my mournings here
In weeping after this untimely bier. ~ William Shakespeare

I know not whence I came,
I know not whither I go;
But the fact stands clear that I am here
In this world of pleasure and woe.
And out of the mist and murk,
Another truth shines plain.
It is in my power each day and hour
To add to its joy or its pain.
I know that the earth exists,
It is none of my business why.
I cannot find out what it's all about,
I would but waste time to try.
My life is a brief, brief thing,
I am here for a little space.
And while I stay I would like, if I may,
To brighten and better the place. ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox

There are three kinds of love;
unselfish, mutual, and selfish.
The unselfish love is of the highest kind;
The lover only minds the welfare of the beloved and does not care for his own sufferings.
In mutual love the lover not only wants the happiness of his beloved;
but has an eye towards his own happiness also. It is middling.
The selfish love is the lowest. It only looks towards its own happiness,
no matter whether the beloved suffers weal or woe. ~ Ramakrishna

Failure cannot be erased. It is built in to a life and helps us grow. Failure cannot be erased, but it can be understood.
Most people carry around a load of feeling that they bury or pretend is not there because it is too painful and alarming to cope with or because it involved unbearable guilt. Anger against a parent, for example.
I knew the tide of woe was rising, that woe that seizes me like anger, and is a form of anger, and I didn't know what to do to stop it, so I got up and picked flowers, cooked my dinner, looked at the news, all the same usual routine that can ward off the devils or suddenly clear the air as when a thunderstorm seems to be coming and then dissipates ... .it always happens when there is a galaxy of problems that get knit together into one huge outcry against the sense of being abandoned or orphanhood ... ~ May Sarton

Woe entreats: Go! Away, woe! But all that suffers wants to live, that it may become ripe and joyous and longing- longing for what is farther, higher, brighter. "I want heirs"- thus speaks all that suffers; "I want children; I do not want myself".
Joy, however, does not want heirs, or children- joy wants itself, wants eternity, wants recurrence, wants everything eternally the same. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

All thy old woes shall now smile on thee, and thy pains sit bright on thee. All thy sorrows here shall shine and thy sufferings be divine; Tears shall take comfort and turn to gems and wrongs repent to diadems Even thy deaths shall live and new dress the soul that once they slew. ~ Richard Crashaw

Sneeze on Monday, sneeze for danger.
Sneeze on Tuesday, kiss a stranger.
Sneeze on Wednesday, sneeze for a letter.
Sneeze on Thursday, something better.
Sneeze on Friday, sneeze for woe.
Sneeze on Saturday, a journey to go.
Sneeze on Sunday, your safety seek.
For the devil will have you the rest of the week. ~ R.L. Stine

And moody madness laughing wild Amid severest woe. ~ Thomas Gray

Habits, though in their commencement like the filmy line of the spider, trembling at every breeze, may in the end prove as links of tempered steel, binding a deathless being to eternal felicity or woe. ~ Lydia Sigourney

Woe is forerun with woe. ~ William Shakespeare

There was much woe and lamentation in the seventies that the game was dying. ~ John Thorn

Woe to the house where there is no chiding. ~ George Herbert

How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek (my weary travel's end)
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,
"Thus far the miles are measur'd from thy friend."
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods [dully] on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider lov'd not speed, being made from thee.
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side,
For that same groan doth put this in my mind:
My grief lies onward and my joy behind. ~ William Shakespeare

I like the man who takes the stones Upon his rocky road With smiling lips instead of groans, Whate'er his heavy load Who seizes each as on he goes, And neatly crumbles it, And turns his share of pebbly woes To stores of inner grit. ~ John Kendrick Bangs

Woe to those who were never beaten! They will never be winners in this life. ~ Paulo Coelho

Deep in the meadow, hidden far away A cloak of leaves, a moonbeam ray Forget your woes and let your troubles lay ~ Suzanne Collins

From Eden's bowers the full-fed rivers flow,
To guide the outcasts to the land of woe:
Our Earth one little toiling streamlet yields.
To guide the wanderers to the happy fields. ~ George MacDonald

English philosopher Bertrand Russell, another prominent twentieth-century pacifist, once used those medicinal facts about iodine to build a case against the existence of immortal souls. "The energy used in thinking seems to have a chemical origin ... ," he wrote. "For instance, a deficiency of iodine will turn a clever man into an idiot. Mental phenomena seem to be bound up with material structure." In other words, iodine made Russell realize that reason and emotions and memories depend on material conditions in the brain. He saw no way to separate the "soul" from the body, and concluded that the rich mental life of human beings, the source of all their glory and much of their woe, is chemistry through and through. ~ Sam Kean

Woe to that nation whose literature is cut short by the intrusion of force. This is not merely interference with freedom of the press but the sealing up of a nation's heart, the excision of its memory. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Rather I'd choose laboriously to bear A weight of woes, and breathe the vital air, A slave to some poor hind that toils for bread, Than reign the sceptred monarch of the dead. ~ Homer

I realised that I had set so many of my novels and stories abroad, because custom had prevented me from seeing how exotic my own country is. Britain really is an immense lunatic asylum. That is one of the things that distinguishes us among the nations ... We are rigid and formal in some ways, but we believe in the right to eccentricity, as long as the eccentricities are large enough ... Woe betide you if you hold your knife incorrectly, but good luck to you if you wear a loincloth and live up a tree. ~ Louis De Bernieres

All the woe of the words 'I am' seemed dissolved there, painlessly, peacefully. ~ David Mitchell

One starts gambling for a joke, out of curiosity, as a little challenge to fortune. One goes on, pricked to the quick by delusions, excited by vague desires that grow. Woe to you if you win anything - an AMBO, a small TERNO! It is all up with you, for your chance of winning seems certain ... It is the devil's money going back to hell. ~ Matilde Serao

The Princess was never heard to complain, for she was a true Princess with a pure heart. The happiest folk are those that are busy, for their minds are starved of time to seek out woe. Thus did the Princess grow up contented. ~ Kate Morton

Money, thou bane of bliss, and source of woe,
Whence cam'st thou, that thou art so fresh and fine?
I know thy parentage is base and low:
Man found thee poor and dirty in a mine. ~ George Herbert

As long as skies are blue, and fields are green
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

The happiest folk are those that are busy, for their minds are starved of time to seek out woe. ~ Kate Morton

To me, art is not a solitary delight. It is a means of stirring the greatest number of men by providing them with a privileged image of our common joys and woes. ~ Albert Camus

They saw their injured country's woe;
The flaming town, the wasted field;
Then rushed to meet the insulting foe;
They took the spear, - but left the shield. ~ Philip Freneau

Oys by civil calculations, we had by now roughed up the swami and slept where the elephant shits, Shocking us would have required some kind of genius.
Woe To Live On ~ Daniel Woodrell

Never choose to be a worker, but once God has placed His call upon you, woe be to you if you "turn aside . . . to the right or the left . . ." (Deuteronomy 28:14). He will do with you what He never did before His call came to you, and He will do with you what He is not doing with other people. Let Him have His way. ~ Oswald Chambers

If, by chance, someone among those men of extraordinary talent is found who has firmness of soul and who refuses to yield to the genius of his age and to debase himself with childish works, woe unto him! He will die in poverty and oblivion. ~ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Care-charming Sleep, thou easer of all woes, brother to Death, sweetly thyself dispose. ~ John Fletcher

Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone. But grief returns with the revolving year. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Change follows change in us, almost without transition; we pass from blissful rapture to sobbing woe; a single step divides our sublimest ecstasies from the darkest depth of spiritual despondency. ~ Ignacy Jan Paderewski

O lords,
When I have said, cry 'woe!' the queen, the queen,
The sweet'st, dear'st creature's dead,
and vengeance for't
Not dropp'd down yet. ~ William Shakespeare

Do not seek to find hope among your leaders. They are the repositories of poison. Their interest in you extends only so far as their ability to control you. From you, they seek duty and obedience, and they will ply you with the language of stirring faith. They seek followers, and woe to those who question, or voice challenge. 'Civilization after civilization, it is the same. The world falls to tyranny with a whisper. The frightened are ever keen to bow to a perceived necessity, in the belief that necessity forces conformity, and conformity a certain stability. In a world shaped into conformity, dissidents stand out, are easily branded and dealt with. There is no multitude of perspectives, no dialogue. The victim assumes the face of the tyrant, self-righteous and intransigent, and wars breed like vermin. And people die. ~ Steven Erikson

It is not enough to say, simply, the motherland called and we fought; woe to the dead, and to the living goes their glory. ~ A.H. Septimius

One thing seemed to suggest that I might have some wisp of beauty to offer the world: the nature of my heart, which remained free of bitterness and anger. I feared, but I did not hate. I knew dread, but I did not judge. I loved and wished to be loved in return. And though my life had been circumscribed, though my experience had been limited by the threats I faced, I was usually happy. In this world, where woe and misery were common, where sometimes darkness seemed about to drown civilization, perhaps a capacity for happiness and hope was beauty of a kind, a small welcome light in the flood. ~ Dean Koontz

In the beginning the Gods made man, and fashioned the sky and the sea, And the earth's fair face for man's dwelling-place, and this was the Gods' decree: Lo, We have given to man five wits: he discerneth folly and sin; He is swift to deride all the world outside, and blind to the world within: So that man may make sport and amuse Us, in battling for phrases or pelf, Now that each may know what forebodeth woe to his neighbor, and not to himself. ~ James Branch Cabell

We are so constituted that we believe the most incredible things; and, once they are engraved upon the memory, woe to him who would endeavor to erase them. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

O crooked paths! Woe to the audacious soul, which hoped, by forsaking Thee, to gain some better thing! ~ Augustine Of Hippo

Rudeness affected Margaret like a bitter taste in the mouth. It poisoned life. At times it is necessary, but woe to those who employ it without due need. ~ E.M. Forster

Look now how mortals are blaming the gods, for they say that evils come from us, but in fact they themselves have woes beyond their share because of their own follies. ~ Homer

Woe to him whose beliefs play fast and loose with the order which realities follow in his experience; they will lead him nowhere or else make false connections ~ William James

Only he is fit to preach who cannot avoid preaching, who feels that woe is upon him unless he preach the gospel ~ Charles Spurgeon

Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true, here is the place where I love you. ~ Suzanne Collins

Joys as winged dreams fly fast, / Why should sadness longer last? / Grief is but a wound to woe; / Gentlest fair, mourn, mourn no moe. ~ John Fletcher

Reclaiming the belly laugh can cure a world of woes. ~ Jamie Sams

Labor is rest
from the sorrow that greet us;
Rest from all petty vexations that meet us,
Rest from sin-promptings that ever entreat us,
Rest from the world-sirens that hire us to ill.
Work
and pure slumbers shall wait on thy pillow;
Work
thou shalt ride over Care's coming billow;
Lie not down wearied 'neath Woe's weeping willow!
Work with a stout heart and resolute will! ~ Frances Sargent Osgood

Pity is best taught by fellowship in woe. ~ Samuel Taylor Coleridge

After a decade this glum, we deserved a shot of 'Glee,' a show that restored our faith in the power of song, the beauty of dance, and the magic of 'spirit fingers' to chase our cares and woes into somebody else's backyard. ~ James Wolcott

O' thinkest thou we shall ever meet again? I doubt it not; and all these woes shall serve For sweet discourses in our times to come. ~ William Shakespeare

So two, together weeping, make one woe. ~ William Kirby

Give not thyself up, then, to fire, lest it invert thee, deaden thee, as for the time it did me. There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness. ~ Herman Melville

Woe betide the leaders now perched on their dizzy pinnacles of triumph if they cast away at the conference table what the soldiers had won on a hundred bloodsoaked battlefields. ~ Winston S. Churchill

I cherish my privacy, and woe betide anyone who tries to interfere with that. ~ Jeff Beck

At morn we buried Melanippus; as the sun set the maiden Basilo died by her own hand, as she could not endure to lay her brother on the pyre and live; and the house beheld a two-fold woe, and all Cyrene bowed her head, to see the home of happy children made desolate. ~ Allimachus And Lycophron CXLII

This world is all a fleeting show, For man's illusion given The smiles of joy, the tears of woe, Deceitful shine, deceitful flow, Theres nothing true but Heaven. ~ Charles Lamb

If love be good, from whence cometh my woe? ~ Geoffrey Chaucer

If our principal treasure be as we profess, in things spiritual and heavenly, and woe unto us if it be not so! on them will our affections, and consequently our desires and thoughts, be principally fixed. ~ John Owen

What is it that endowed things with meaning, value, significance? The creating heart, which desired, and, out of its desire, created. It created joy and woe. It wanted to satiate itself with woe. We must take all the suffering that has been endured by men and animals upon ourselves and affirm it, and possess a goal in which it acquires reason. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Long have I dwelt forgotten here
In pining woe and dull despair;
This place of solitude and gloom
Must be my dungeon and my tomb. ~ Anne Bronte

Sonnet 129
The expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoy'd no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated, as a swallow'd bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows; yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell. ~ William Shakespeare

His faith is lost, he trusts no more this world of woe;
Distraught and wild, he shuns mankind, and does not know
To whom to trust the secrets of his troubled breast,
Afraid to feel again the faith it once possessed. ~ Nicoloz Baratashvili

At first, this earth, a stage so gloomed with woe
You all but sicken at the shifting scenes
And yet be patient. Our playwright may show
In some filth act what this wild drama means. ~ Jack London

Nor mourn, O living One, because her part in life was mourning:
Would she have lost the poet's fire for the anguish of the burning?
The minstrel harp, for the strained string? tripod for the afflated
Woe, or the vision, for those tears in which it shone dilated? ~ Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Satan represents God's law of love as a law of selfishness. He declares that it is impossible for us to obey its precepts. The fall of our first parents, with all the woe that has resulted, he charges upon the Creator, leading men to look upon God as the author of sin, and suffering, and death. Jesus was to unveil this deception. As one of us He was to give an example of obedience. For this He took upon Himself our nature, and passed through our experiences. "In all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren." Hebrews 2:17. If we had to bear anything which Jesus did not endure, then upon this point Satan would represent the power of God as insufficient for us. Therefore Jesus was "in all points tempted like as we are." Hebrews 4:15. ~ Ellen G. White

It was written all in O, or nearly so, and all the O's are gone," said Andrea. "When coat is cat, and boat is bat, and goatherd looks like gathered, and booth is both, since both are bth, the reader's eye is bothered."
"And power is power, and zero zer, and, worst of all, a hero's her." The old man sighed as he said it.
"Anoon is ann, and moan is man." Andrea smiled as she said it.
"And shoe," Andreus said, "is she."
"Ah, woe," the old man said, "is we. ~ James Thurber

There is nothing wrong with being fascinated by the dark side of life, and ourselves, but woe to those who think this is representative of reality. All too many of us sit in our homes watching TV, falling prey to the delusion that the world is getting worse. If these sorry individuals spent more time meeting their neighbors, they'd discover that 95% of their peers are fine people. ~ Anthony Marais

I doubt if I have made the best use of all my calamities. Soft, amiable natures they would have refined to saintliness; of strong, evil spirits they would have made demons; as for me, I have only been a woe-struck and selfish woman. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Preserve your peace of mind. There is not much time; all things end in death. Do not lament the past too much, or fear the future too acutely, ot waste too much energy on other peoples' woes, in case the present dissolves altogether. ~ Fay Weldon

Then he will be called Acheron for the River of Woe. Like the river of the Underworld, his journey shall be dark, long and enduring. He will be able to give life and to take it. He will walk through his life alone and abandoned – ever seeking kindness and ever finding cruelty. May the gods have mercy on you, little one. No one else ever will. (Oracle) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

But woe to him, who left to moan, Reviews the hours of brightness gone. ~ Euripides

With hope or without hope we will follow the trail of our enemies. And woe to them, if we prove the swifter! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

But oh! shipmates! on the starboard hand of every woe, there is a sure delight; and higher the top of that delight, than the bottom of the woe is deep. ~ Herman Melville

An archer, the moment he thinks he's experienced, is lost; every lion we encounter in our brief life is different from every other lion; woe to us if we stop to make comparisons, to deduce our movements from norms and premises. ~ Italo Calvino

When a child is given to his parents, a crown is made for that child in Heaven, and woe to the parents who raise a child without consciousness of that eternal crown! ~ Fulton J. Sheen

Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall. ~ Herman Melville

But woe is me! too early I attended
A youthful suit- it was to gain my grace-
O, one by nature's outwards so commended
That maidens' eyes stuck over all his face.
Love lacked a dwelling and made him her place;
And when in his fair parts she did abide,
She was new lodged and newly deified ~ William Shakespeare

In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the liberty of opinion; within these barriers an author may write what he pleases, but woe to him if he goes beyond them. ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

I have lived through an eventful year, yet understand no more of it than a babe in arms. Of all the people of this town I am the one least fitted to write a memorial. Better the blacksmith with his cries of rage and woe. ~ J.M. Coetzee

Like a red morn that ever yet betokened,
Wreck to the seaman, tempest to the field,
Sorrow to the shepherds, woe unto the birds,
Gusts and foul flaws to herdmen and to herds. ~ William Shakespeare

God's mills grind slow, But they grind woe. ~ William Rounseville Alger

I can tell you at once that nothing you touch today will have more bloodshed, suffering, and woe attached to it than the innocuous twin pillars of your salt and pepper set. ~ Bill Bryson

Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless. ~ Isaiah