A Quote by Nancy Mitford

always either on a peak of happiness or drowning in black waters of despair they loved or they loathed, they lived in a world of superlatives

Nancy Mitford

Quote Topics

Always Black Despair Drowning Either Happiness Lived Loved Peak Superlatives Waters World

Quote Author

Nancy Mitford
English - Novelist
November 28, 1904 - June 30, 1973

I grew up in what my mom will always dispute as 'the hood.' She just doesn't like the name. But it had its similarities to any neighborhood like that. The all-black neighbors and the all-black problems and the all-black happiness. And I really loved it.

Jerrod Carmichael

I've always loathed rich people, so I've become who I've loathed, which makes it doubly difficult, if you can follow me.

Larry David

We're at peak oil, peak water, peak resources, and so either we figure it out and let science lead or we head down a very bad, dark trail to where a lot of people aren't going to make it.

Henry Rollins

Attaining lasting happiness requires that we enjoy the journey on our way toward a destination we deem valuable. Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain; happiness is the experience of climbing toward the peak.

Tal Ben-Shahar

Only a soul full of despair can ever attain serenity and, to be in despair, you must have loved a good deal and still love the world.

Blaise Cendrars

Those who have never despaired have neither lived nor loved. Hope is inseparable from despair. Those of us who truly hope make despair a constant companion whom we out-wrestle every day owing to our commitment to justice, love, and hope.

Cornel West

Words have a magical power. They can either bring the greatest happiness or the deepest despair.

Sigmund Freud

Not Waving but Drowning Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he's dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said. Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.

Stevie Smith

It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money. And then do what you've done to me.

John Fowles

O world, world! thus is the poor agent despised. O traitors and bawds, how earnestly are you set a-work, and how ill requited! Why should our endeavor be so loved, and the performance so loathed?

William Shakespeare

I had always been taught that the pursuit of happiness was my natural (even national) birthright. It is the emotional trademark of my culture to seek happiness. Not just any kind of happiness, either, but profound happiness, even soaring happiness. And what could possibly bring a person more soaring happiness than romantic love.

Elizabeth Gilbert

There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest.

Anais Nin

If you found yourself in a situation where you could either save a drowning man, or you could take a Pulitzer prize winning photograph of him drowning, what shutter speed and setting would you use?