Famous quotes containing the word misfortune:
“The theory [before the twentieth century] ... was that all the jobs in the world belonged by right to men, and that only men were by nature entitled to wages. If a woman earned money, outside domestic service, it was because some misfortune had deprived her of masculine protection.”
—Rheta Childe Dorr (1866–1948)
“You will find the most pronounced hatred of other nations on the lowest cultural levels. There is, though, a level where the hatred disappears completely and where one so to speak stands above the nations and where one experiences fortune or misfortune of a neighboring country as if they had happened to one’s own.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“His misfortune was that he loved youth—he was weak to it, it kindled him. If there was one eager eye, one doubting, critical mind, one lively curiosity in a whole lecture-room full of commonplace boys and girls, he was its servant. That ardour could command him. It hadn’t worn out with years, this responsiveness, any more than the magnetic currents wear out; it had nothing to do with Time.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)