It is a wretched taste to be gratified with mediocrity when the excellent lies before us.
Isaac Disraeli

It makes me so desperately sad to witness just how unforgivably wretched our world has become.
Ralph Steadman

It was a somber place, haunted by old jokes and lost laughter. Life, as I discovered, holds no more wretched occupation than trying to make the English laugh.
Malcolm Muggeridge

Life is a wretched gray Saturday, but it has to be lived through.
Anthony Burgess

Men often are valued high, when they are most wretched.
John Webster

Never keep a line of retreat: it is a wretched invention.
Fridtjof Nansen

Not only does the proportion of the poor increase with the growth of the city, but their condition becomes more wretched.
Josiah Strong

Nothing is more wretched than the mind of a man conscious of guilt.
Plautus

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!
Marcus Tullius Cicero

Of all virtues and dignities of the mind, goodness is the greatest, being the character of the Deity; and without it, man is a busy, mischievous, wretched thing.
Francis Bacon

One seeks to make the loved one entirely happy, or, if that cannot be, entirely wretched.
Jean de la Bruyere

The beautiful heroine might be thinking, How long must I bury my face on this wretched man's shoulder? Such is not the always the case, but quite often it is.
Ivor Novello

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.
Blaise Pascal

The old, subjective, stagnant, indolent and wretched life for woman has gone. She has as many resources as men, as many activities beckon her on. As large possibilities swell and inspire her heart.
Anna Julia Cooper

The wretched have no compassion, they can do good only from strong principles of duty.
Samuel Johnson

There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else.
Andrew Carnegie

These wretched babies don't come until they are ready.
Elizabeth II

This wretched brain gave way, and I became a wreck at random driven, without one glimpse of reason or heaven.
Thomas More

Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.
Adolf Hitler