Who persuaded you to cut off the nose of your wife's lover? Wretched husband, that was not the part which outraged you! Fool, what have you done? Your wife has lost nothing by the operation
If happy I and wretched he, Perhaps the king would change with me.
That is a most wretched fortune which is without an enemy.
Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us.
He is the most wretched of men who has never felt adversity.
With my mouth I speak slander, day and night. I spy on the houses of others - I am such a wretched low-life! Unfulfilled sexual desire and unresolved anger dwell in my body, like the outcasts who cremate the dead. I live as a wild hunter, O Creator!
No-one was ever made wretched in a brothel.
The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture ought below, Is ever first to quail and start From the slightest pain or equal foe.
In all the debate about Afghanistan, we don't hear much about our obligation to the wretched lives of Afghan women. They are being treated as collateral damage as the big boys discuss geopolitical goals.
The most wretched have yet hope.