Misery Loves Company Quotes

Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.

People say misery loves company, but I think it’s like that with anger too.

That's why Twinkle likes the place so much, Scott thought, looking around at the faded wood veneer tables, and the faded souls drinking at them. Misery was soaked through the place like the old beer soaked through its carpets.

I didn't figure things out, either, you know. So if you'e an idiot, I guess that makes two of us." He seems relieved to hear me say that. I guess idiots love company.

It's strange how we always want other people to feel what we feel. It must be a basic human drive. Misery loves company, right? Or when you see a movie that you love, don't you want to drag all your friends to see it as well? Because it's only good the second time if it's the first time for somebody else—as if their experience somehow resonates inside of you.

Why does it help to read others' stories? It is not only that misery loves company, because (I learned) misery is too self-absorbed to want much company. Others' experiences did help with my emotional struggle...

Whoever said misery loves company was full of shite. Whatever can go wrong will go wrong, however... that guy was onto something.

Another step had her backed up against the wall, and he braced his arms on both sides of her. "I'm beginning to look forward to this marriage, just so I can spend the rest of my life making you miserable." Alexandra was too angry to be intimidated. "Misery loves company, sweetheart," she shot back. "So don't think I'll be suffering mine alone." She slipped out from under his arm and marched out the door.

The whole "misery loves company" thing never applies more than when you're breaking up. The thought that the other person is doing fine is simply too much to bear.

I feel that if I’m going through this hellish decline, you should be going through one also . . . misery loves company, and I guess we’ve all got a streak of one hundred percent gold-plated bastard in our natures, tangled up so tightly with the good part of us that we can never get free of it.

Misery loves company, but that doesn’t mean you have to accept the invitation.

The cliche is that misery loves company. Another is that there is fellowship among thieves. But thieves do not seek the consoling presence of the fellowship of police officers. Sinful misery does not love the company of purity.

Misery loves good company, so if you are surrounded with drama, gossip and fools you may want to consider that you are presently at risk of becoming one of them.

We are each alone in the bubble of our grief, and while it's true that misery loves company, sorrow is not reduced or diminished in any way when it's shared.

Misery loves company Tragically

Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.

Misery loves company, which explains my sudden popularity. —T-SHIRT

Misery loved company, but damnation needed it.

For the miserable find comfort in the philosophy that not on them alone has evil fallen.

Hate pulls so much negative energy from the soul. I guess the saying is true; misery loves company.

Misery loves company. For the sake of your sanity, avoid entertaining her.

Misery not only loves company, it derives validation from it.

Misery loves company, but company often multiplies your misery.

It is often said that “misery loves company”, but so does mediocrity. Don’t let the fears, insecurities, and limiting beliefs of others limit what’s possible for you.

Misery loves company.

I wanted to rip her from her gilded cage and force the world onto her just to watch her crumble. Misery loves company, and I was nothing if not lonely."- Kaden

Loved people love people. Forgiven people forgive people. Adored people adore people. Freed people free people. But when we are still locked in our own prisons, it is impossible to crave the liberation of others. Misery prefers company.

because misery doesn’t always love company. It’s not fair of me to expect anyone else to share the space under my dark cloud.

I kept every emotion locked up tight inside. I knew Leo was deeply hurt by my silence, and I liked hurting him, liked sharing my pain. Misery loves company, and I was a big hole of darkness, drawing everyone around me into my despair.

There is no room for "DRAMA" in our lives. The term has become over-used and trivialized. However, the effects are very serious. "Drama" needlessly interrupts important matters. It's toxic, and destroys everything and everyone it touches. That kind of misery loves company but you can always decline the invitation.

People say misery loves company, but I think it's like that with anger too. I'm not the only one pissed—everyone around me is. They didn't have to be sitting in the passenger's seat when it happened. My anger is theirs, and theirs is mine.

It dulls it, the pain, I mean. It dulls it because you see your condition is not unique, that other people suffer as you suffer. There must be some kind of truth in the old saying, misery loves company. That it’s easier to die if others around you are dying.

Misery loves company, but company does not reciprocate.

I heard that misery loves company, but I suspected it would get along with pie, too.

Misery loves company, as someone unbearably trite said once.

Animosity in fact loves, but in a different sense. Meaning it loves in the same way that, as it is often said, misery loves company. And just as love seeks unity, so does hatred crave uniformity.

how shall I get through the months or years of my future life, in company with that man -- my greatest enemy -- for none could injure me as he has done? Oh! when I think how fondly, how foolishly I have loved him, how madly I have trusted him, how constantly I have laboured, and studied, and prayed, and struggled for his advantage, and how cruelly he has trampled on my love, betrayed my trust, scorned my prayers and tears, and efforts for his preservation --crushed my hopes, destroyed my youth's best feelings, and doomed me to a life of hopeless misery -- as far as man can do it -- it is not enough to say that I no longer love my husband -- I HATE him! The word stares me in the face like a guilty confession, but it is true: I hate him -- I hate him!

company loves misery

Move along, pal. I haven't upgraded to misery yet.

You are too kind, and I am unused to it. For your own sake, do not stroke my misery. It knows not how to respond, but with a vicious bite.

This is the way that misery does love company: People are relieved to learn that they are not alone in their suffering, that they are part of something larger, in this case, a societal plague [drugs]--an epidemic of children, an epidemic of families.

The kind of teacher you will become is directly related to the kind of teachers you associate with. Teaching is a profession where misery does more than just love company—it recruits, seduces, and romances it. Avoid people who are unhappy and disgruntled about the possibilities for transforming education. They are the enemy of the spirit of the teacher.

Black: So how come they cant be your brothers in despair and selfdestruction? I thought misery loved company? White: I'm sure I don't know. Black: Well let me take a shot at it. White: Be my guest. Black: What I think is that you got better reasons then them. I mean, their reasons is just that they dont like it here, but yours says what they is not to like and why not to like it. You got more intelligent reasons. More elegant reasons.

It’s strange how we always want other people to feel what we feel. It must be a basic human drive. Misery loves company, right? Or when you see a movie that you love, don’t you want to drag all your friends to see it as well? Because it’s only good the second time if it’s the first time for somebody else—as if their experience somehow resonates inside of you. The power of shared experiences. Maybe it’s a way to remind ourselves that on some level we’re all connected.

In my family, misery didn't just love company, it wanted hostages.

We were the definition of misery loving company. But then I wondered if the combination of our two miseries could make something beautiful. Maybe it could create joy.

Find my weak points, but more importantly, find yours.

I’m glad for the anger I see on his face. Misery may love company, but anger thrives on it.

Misery loves company

Misery loves company, and madness calls it forth.

Misery loves company, and the miserable reach out their arms to those on whom they once turned their backs.

misery loves company’, but so does mediocrity.

However bad my day is, I can always depend on you to be having a worse one. Misery loves company and with you it's like having a party,

In our moments of distress we can see clearly that what is wrong with this world of ours is the fact that Misery loves company and seldom gets it.

We were each alone in the bubble of our grief, and while it’s true that misery loves company, sorrow is not reduced or diminished in any way even when it’s shared.

I looked around the barroom. Someone else might have seen nothing more than a random crowd of drinkers, but I saw my people. Kith and kin. Every sort of person was there – stockbrokers and safecrackers, athletes and invalids, mothers and supermodels – but we were as one. We’d all been hurt by something, or somebody, and so we’d all come to Publicans, because misery loves company, but what it really craves is a crowd.

It was pitiful for a person born in a wholesome free atmosphere to listen to their humble and hearty outpourings of loyalty toward their king and Church and nobility; as if they had any more occasion to love and honor king and Church and noble than a slave has to love and honor the lash, or a dog has to love and honor the stranger that kicks him! Why, dear me, ANY kind of royalty, howsoever modified, ANY kind of aristocracy, howsoever pruned, is rightly an insult; but if you are born and brought up under that sort of arrangement you probably never find it out for yourself, and don't believe it when somebody else tells you. It is enough to make a body ashamed of his race to think of the sort of froth that has always occupied its thrones without shadow of right or reason, and the seventh-rate people that have always figured as its aristocracies -- a company of monarchs and nobles who, as a rule, would have achieved only poverty and obscurity if left, like their betters, to their own exertions... The truth was, the nation as a body was in the world for one object, and one only: to grovel before king and Church and noble; to slave for them, sweat blood for them, starve that they might be fed, work that they might play, drink misery to the dregs that they might be happy, go naked that they might wear silks and jewels, pay taxes that they might be spared from paying them, be familiar all their lives with the degrading language and postures of adulation that they might walk in pride and think themselves the gods of this world. And for all this, the thanks they got were cuffs and contempt; and so poor-spirited were they that they took even this sort of attention as an honor.

Yet every great storyteller knows it’s the fine art of taking me by the hand and showing me that has the most effect on a reader’s soul. It’s how writers slip it all into us while we’re not looking. While we’re reading words, they’re making magic happen, and when that magic lands right in our hearts, we’re theirs forever.

That was the strange thing about misery: it loved company.

It isn't misery that loves company - no, no. Happiness loves company, and misery - misery just wants to be left alone

Misery, after all, loves company.

Sometimes misery doesn’t love company.

Everyone who is in true misery wants to be alone. People have surface sadness that can be solved by company. But despite popular cliché, misery does not love company. Misery seeks out solitude, which graduates to loneliness.

And men are subject, also, to this same Law of Attraction. Go into any cheap boarding house district in any city and there you will find people of the same general trend of mind associated together. On the other hand, go into any prosperous community and there you will find people of the same general tendencies associated together. Men who are successful always seek the company of others who are successful, while men who are on the ragged side of life always seek the company of those who are in similar circumstances. “Misery loves company.

When I go musing all alone Thinking of divers things fore-known. When I build castles in the air, Void of sorrow and void of fear, Pleasing myself with phantasms sweet, Methinks the time runs very fleet. All my joys to this are folly, Naught so sweet as melancholy. When I lie waking all alone, Recounting what I have ill done, My thoughts on me then tyrannise, Fear and sorrow me surprise, Whether I tarry still or go, Methinks the time moves very slow. All my griefs to this are jolly, Naught so mad as melancholy. When to myself I act and smile, With pleasing thoughts the time beguile, By a brook side or wood so green, Unheard, unsought for, or unseen, A thousand pleasures do me bless, And crown my soul with happiness. All my joys besides are folly, None so sweet as melancholy. When I lie, sit, or walk alone, I sigh, I grieve, making great moan, In a dark grove, or irksome den, With discontents and Furies then, A thousand miseries at once Mine heavy heart and soul ensconce, All my griefs to this are jolly, None so sour as melancholy. Methinks I hear, methinks I see, Sweet music, wondrous melody, Towns, palaces, and cities fine; Here now, then there; the world is mine, Rare beauties, gallant ladies shine, Whate'er is lovely or divine. All other joys to this are folly, None so sweet as melancholy. Methinks I hear, methinks I see Ghosts, goblins, fiends; my phantasy Presents a thousand ugly shapes, Headless bears, black men, and apes, Doleful outcries, and fearful sights, My sad and dismal soul affrights. All my griefs to this are jolly, None so damn'd as melancholy. Methinks I court, methinks I kiss, Methinks I now embrace my mistress. O blessed days, O sweet content, In Paradise my time is spent. Such thoughts may still my fancy move, So may I ever be in love. All my joys to this are folly, Naught so sweet as melancholy. When I recount love's many frights, My sighs and tears, my waking nights, My jealous fits; O mine hard fate I now repent, but 'tis too late. No torment is so bad as love, So bitter to my soul can prove. All my griefs to this are jolly, Naught so harsh as melancholy. Friends and companions get you gone, 'Tis my desire to be alone; Ne'er well but when my thoughts and I Do domineer in privacy. No Gem, no treasure like to this, 'Tis my delight, my crown, my bliss. All my joys to this are folly, Naught so sweet as melancholy. 'Tis my sole plague to be alone, I am a beast, a monster grown, I will no light nor company, I find it now my misery. The scene is turn'd, my joys are gone, Fear, discontent, and sorrows come. All my griefs to this are jolly, Naught so fierce as melancholy. I'll not change life with any king, I ravisht am: can the world bring More joy, than still to laugh and smile, In pleasant toys time to beguile? Do not, O do not trouble me, So sweet content I feel and see. All my joys to this are folly, None so divine as melancholy. I'll change my state with any wretch, Thou canst from gaol or dunghill fetch; My pain's past cure, another hell, I may not in this torment dwell! Now desperate I hate my life, Lend me a halter or a knife; All my griefs to this are jolly, Naught so damn'd as melancholy.

One splendid summer afternoon Kaspar realized he had never been happier in his life or both of his lives, past and present. Not fireworks-orgasms-and-champagne happy, but on waking in the morning he was glad almost every single day to be exactly where he was. He had never before experienced the feeling of genuine, constant well-being and it was a true revelation. The longer the satisfaction continued, the less he thought about his previous life as a mechanic and the extraordinary things he’d once seen and been able to do. Misery may love company but happiness is content to be alone. The funny irony of his existence now was, as long as he was this happy and content with his lot, Kaspar didn’t need to make much of an effort to “walk away” from his mechanic’s life because now he was sated with this one both in mind and heart.

So far, aging often feels like an exercise in gaslighting. You might feel great. You might look great. And yet everyone and everything is telling you it’s terrible. It’s all terrible. Eventually every day becomes an endless decision to choose reality over consensus. I am feeling this, so it must be true versus everyone says this is true, so I will feel it too. The disconnect is so extreme at times, I find the result is I’ve come to distrust literally every story we’ve ever been told to expect as women, even when some of them have turned out to be true. To choose to enjoy things simply because they are enjoyable, even if no one quite believes you. To understand things are hard, even when you are constantly being told they are not as hard. This is true loneliness, I sometimes want to say. Because so much of enjoyment, and so much of bearing the hardest things, relies on the ability to do so with others. Misery loves company, but so does joy. And not the company of one other person. So many women in my life are told daily by their partner that they are beautiful, and yet move through the world feeling ugly. We need the company of a narrative.

And all that time, Franca contained in her breast a storm of anguish and violence so terrible that she had at times, when she was alone and longing to 'break down', to clutch her breast with a fierce answering force to keep the black horror from spurting forth. Her face was calm and benign, always in company, and usually alone too, for she was aware that to play such a part properly allowed of no rest periods, no weak moments of unmasking. She must continue, in her deceit, whole, like the spy who, in order to go on, has to become what he seems. She was, daily, amazed at herself, at her self-control; and at the terrible demons which fed upon her, and in doing so, she realised, fed her. She had begun to need her rage and her hate, even of late her fierce cruel fantasies. She could not, and did not try to, riddle out, rationally order, explain, least of all banish, these horrible consolations, As it seemed, if she were not to die of her love she had to poison it; and even, over its death agonies, to exult. As the days went by, Franca cherished and nourished and developed her suffering, unable to envisage any change or any plan — any machine into which so much relentless force might be fed. Indeed she was afraid to plan or picture a different future of any kind. So long as she stayed silent she had a secret weapon. If she spoke, if once there were the least word, the least crack or fissure, upon which tears and screams could follow, she would have lost her one advantage, her source of ordinary viable life, and would be utterly undone and destroyed.

lives as adults, the way in which so many opportunities have been destroyed and so much misery passed on unintentionally to the next generation. This tragic realization is only possible if we stop weighing the good points of our parents against the bad. If we persist in doing that, we will relapse into compassion, into the denial of the cruelties we have been subjected to, all because we believe we must take a “balanced” view of things. My conviction is that this reflects the efforts undertaken by the children we once were. The adult perspective must reject this balancing process because it is confusing and gets in the way of our own lives. Of course, people who were never beaten in childhood, who were never subjected to sexual abuse, do not need to do this work. They can enjoy the good feelings they have in the company of their parents, they can quite rightly call them love, and they do not need to deny themselves in any way. The burden of such “work” weighs on individuals who have been abused and then only if they are not willing to pay for self-deception with physical illness.

I have stopped loving you. I have stopped caring about you. I have stopped worrying about you. I have simply . . . stopped. This might come as news to you but despite everything, despite the cruelty, the selfishness and the pain you have caused, I still found a way to care. But not any more. Now, I am putting you on notice. I no longer need you. I don’t think fondly of our early days, so I am erasing these memories and all that followed. For much of our time together I wished for a better relationship than the one we have, but I’ve come to understand this is the hand I have been dealt. And now I am showing you all my cards. Our game is complete. You are the person I share this house with, nothing more, nothing less. You mean no more to me than the shutters that hide what goes on in here, the floorboards I walk over or the doors we use to separate us. I have spent too much of my life trying to figure out your intricacies, of suffering your deeds like knives cutting through scar tissue. I am through with sacrificing who I should have been to keep you happy as it has only locked us in this status quo. I have wasted too much time wanting you to want me. I ache when I recall the opportunities I’ve been too scared to accept because of you. Such frittered-away chances make me want to crawl on my hands and knees to the end of the garden, curl up into a ball on a mound of earth and wait until the nettles and the ivy choke and cover me from view. It’s only now that I recognise the wretched life you cloaked me in and how your misery needed my company to prevent you from feeling so isolated. There is just one lesson I have learned from the life we share. And it is this: everything that is wrong with me is wrong with you too. We are one and the same. When I die, your flame will also extinguish. The next time we are together, I want one of us to be lying stiff in a coffin wearing rags that no longer fit our dead, shrunken frame. Only then can we separate. Only then can we be ourselves. Only then do I stand a chance of finding peace. Only then will I be free of you. And should my soul soar, I promise that yours will sink like the heaviest of rocks, never to be seen again.

But how am I to get over the ten or twelve days that must yet elapse before they go? Yet why so long for their departure? When they are gone how shall I get through the months or years of my future life, in company with that man—my greatest enemy—for none could injure me as he has done? Oh! when I think how fondly, how foolishly I have loved him, how madly I have trusted him, how constantly I have laboured, and studied, and prayed, and struggled for his advantage; and how cruelly he has trampled on my love, betrayed my trust, scorned my prayers and tears, and efforts for his preservation—crushed my hopes, destroyed my youth's best feelings, and doomed me to a life of hopeless misery—as far as man can do it—it is not enough to say that I no longer love my husband—I hate him! The word stares me in the face like a guilty confession, but it is true: I hate him—I hate him!—But God have mercy on his miserable soul!—and make him see and feel his guilt—I ask no other vengeance! if he could but fully know and truly feel my wrongs, I should be well avenged; and I could freely pardon all; but he is so lost, so hardened in his heartless depravity that, in this life, I believe he never will.

Misery loves company...never be afraid to stand out and stand up for happiness! Be a good example, not a good excuse for others to keep dwelling in unhappiness.

If misery loves company, I was quickly becoming his best friend.

Misery loves company.  If I’m going to be miserable, it’s about damn time I had some company.

Misery may love company, but it is the companies that love misery that suffer the most.

Misery may love company, but trust me, the company isn’t in love with the misery.

Misery may love company, but anger thrives on it.

Misery loves - needs - company. There is nothing altruistic in sharing.

Most depressed people don’t believe that, they can be happy, but they choose to believe that every happy person, can be depressed. So, they made it their goal or task to make it so. To make everyone as depressed as they are. Misery loves company. Choose not to allow people to make you depressed as they are. Always choose happiness.

Misery loves company but so does recovery.

Misery loves company, dear.” She was also fond of asking rhetorically, “Why spend your money when you can spend his?

Racism, xenophobia and racial segregation never disappeared. These things went underground and are now being applied by companies like Google, Amazon and many others. It is not a coincidence that despite the equalization of opportunities that the internet provides, the resources of the world keep going to the same 2 countries and you keep buying information from people that live in those same 2 countries and being exposed only to products of those same 2 countries. The opportunities are not the same for everyone because they are being monopolized and controlled. The excuse of always, your security, is being used to bomb nations and also steal all of your rights, including the right to privacy and to the same opportunities. When there are threats against those nations by some who want to annihilate them, they also make you believe that this is something horrible, while making you believe that the opposite is justified. And like dumb rats in a lab experiment, the population keeps pressing the same buttons until they die in absolute misery and ignorance, fighting each other and never seeing the real enemy. Work harder, they say! The least thing they need is for you to notice these differences. They then put some Indian as the CEO or Prime Minister of one of these companies or nations to gaslight you and make you think that you are crazy, and that the opportunities exist and that they are liberal. And when your warn the dumb chickens that they are heading to the slaughterhouse, the dumb chickens, in love with their captivity and their corn, say that you are the crazy one.

The old darkness has taken a seat alongside him. He is used to it by now, making room for it the way you make room for a commuter on a bus.

Stress is a factor that can contribute to an increased risk of having a heart attack. Do not associate or surround yourself with people who are lacking. The cliché of miserable loves company is true.

Misery loves – needs – company; there is nothing altruistic in sharing. Self-interest feeds on malice and all else falls to the wayside.

What the fuck was wrong with him? He’d wasted his whole life denying the one person who wanted him, flaws and all. Because he didn’t deserve him. Aiden deserved better. But Thomas had never let him go and find better. He’d just trapped him there in his misery. Because misery loved company and Aiden was just damaged enough, just needy enough to take Thomas’s scraps.

It is not true that misery loves company. What misery loves is a double martini.

We need people, Juliet, to show us our selfishness, to extract the ugliness that reveals itself in our hearts.

Misery loves company, but today . . . today misery wanted to be alone.

Folks who thrive in God’s grace give grace easily, but the self-critical person becomes others-critical. We “love” people the way we “love” ourselves, and if we are not good enough, then no one is. We keep ourselves brutally on the hook, plus our husbands, our kids, our friends, our churches, our leaders, anyone “other.” When we impose unrealistic expectations on ourselves, it’s natural to force them on everyone else. If we’re going to fail, at least we can expect others to fail; and misery loves company, right?

D’aron the Daring, Derring, Derring-do, stealing base, christened D’aron Little May Davenport, DD to Nana, initials smothered in Southern-fried kisses, dat Wigga D who like Jay Z aw-ite, who’s down, Scots-Irish it is, D’aron because you’re brave says Dad, No, D’aron because you’re daddy’s daddy was David and then there was mines who was named Aaron, Doo-doo after cousin Quint blew thirty-six months in vo-tech on a straight-arm bid and they cruised out to Little Gorge glugging Green Grenades and read three years’ worth of birthday cards, Little Mays when he hit those three homers in the Pee Wee playoff, Dookie according to his aunt Boo (spiteful she was, misery indeed loves company), Mr. Hanky when they discovered he TIVOed ‘Battlestar Galactica,’ Faggot when he hugged John Meer in third grade, Faggot again when he drew hearts on everyone’s Valentine’s Day cards in fourth grade, Dim Dong-Dong when he undressed in the wrong dressing room because he daren’t venture into the dark end of the gym, Philadelphia Freedom when he was caught clicking heels to that song (Tony thought he was clever with that one), Mr. Davenport when he won the school’s debate contest in eighth grade, Faggot again when he won the school’s debate contest in eighth grade, Faggot again more times than he cared to remember, especially the summer he returned from Chicago sporting a new Midwest accent, harder on the vowels and consonants alike, but sociable, played well with others that accent did, Faggot again when he cried at the end of ‘WALL-E,’ Donut Hole when he started to swell in ninth grade, Donut Black Hole when he continued to put on weight in tenth grade (Tony thought he was really clever with that one), Buttercup when they caught him gardening, Hippie when he stopped hunting, Faggot again when he became a vegetarian and started wearing a MEAT IS MURDER pin (Oh yeah, why you craving mine then?), Faggot again when he broke down in class over being called Faggot, Sissy after that, whispered, smothered in sniggers almost hidden, Ron-Ron by the high school debate team coach because he danced like a cross between Morrissey and some fat old black guy (WTF?) in some old-ass show called ‘What’s Happening!!’, Brainiac when he aced the PSATs for his region, Turd Nerd when he hung with Jo-Jo and the Black Bruiser, D’ron Da’ron, D’aron, sweet simple Daron the first few minutes of the first class of the first day of college.

Misery may love company,” he said, “but lunacy truly thrives on companionship.

Misery loves company, particularly when she is herself the hostess, and can give generously of her stores to others.

Whiners feel helpless and overwhelmed by an unfair world. Their standard is perfection, and no one and nothing measures up to it. But misery loves company, so they bring their problems to you. Offering solutions makes you bad company, so their whining escalates.

Trouble sharpens the vision. In our moments of distress we can see clearly that what is wrong with this world of ours is the fact that Misery loves company and seldom gets it.

Blakeborough has never struck me as the kind of man to overlook criminal behavior, even in his brother.” “True. He has a strong moral sense, even if he does hide it beneath an equally strong aversion to people.” He drew back to stare at her. “Forgive me, sweeting, but I cannot imagine you married to him. His melancholy would give you fits within a month.” “Right,” she teased, “because I’m much better off married to a man who follows plans so slavishly that he stays awake half the night for fear of oversleeping and missing the coronation.” He arched an eyebrow. “I couldn’t sleep for watching you nurse Ambrose. It’s been some time since I…well…saw your charms unveiled in any other capacity. I have to take my pleasures where I may.” “Aw, my poor dear,” she said in mock concern. Deciding to put him out of his misery, she added, “I ought to say that’s what you get for being so unfashionable as to share a bedchamber with your wife, but as it happens, Dr. Worth--” The music abruptly ended, and the sound of a gong being struck broke into everyone’s conversations. They fell silent as Max went to stand at the entrance to the room with Victor and Isabella at his side. “Attention, everyone!” Max clapped his cousin on the back. “I am proud and pleased to introduce to you the new owner of Manton’s Investigations.” Cheers and applause ensued. When it died down, Tristan called out, “So the legal machinations are finally done? Dom has actually let go of the thing at last?” “I signed the papers yesterday,” Dom told his brother. He gazed fondly at Jane. “I decided I’d lost enough of my life to finding other people’s families. Now I’d rather spend time with my own.” “I’ll bet that didn’t stop you from writing a contract of epic proportions.” Lisette grinned at her husband. “How many stipulations did Dom make before he agreed to complete the sale?” “Only one, actually,” Max said. Everyone’s jaw dropped, including Jane’s. She gaped at her husband. “Only one? You didn’t dictate how Victor is to run the thing and when and where and--” “As you once said so eloquently, my love, ‘you can set a plan in motion, but as soon as it involves people, it will rarely commence exactly as you wish.’ There didn’t seem much point in setting forth a plan that wouldn’t be followed.” Dom smirked at her. “I do heed your trenchant observations, you know. Sometimes I even act on them.” She was still staring at him incredulously when he shifted his gaze to Victor. “Besides, Victor is a good man. I trust him to uphold the reputation of Manton’s Investigations.” Jane glanced at Victor. “You’re not going to change the name to ‘Cale Investigations’?” Victor snorted. “I’d have to be mad. Who wants to start from scratch to build a company’s reputation? It’s known for excellence as Manton’s, and it will always be known as Manton’s, as long as I have anything to say about it.” “So what was the one stipulation that Dom required?” Tristan asked. Dom scowled. “That it never, in any official capacity, whether in interviews or correspondence or consultation, be referred to as ‘the Duke’s Men.’” As everyone burst into laughter, Jane stretched up to kiss his cheek. “Now, that sounds more like you, my darling.

Am I an asshole? In the past, I would have said "no" with some degree of confidence. But as I drop my bag of groceries into my bike pack under the store's front awning, I have to consider that the answer might have changed during the past few months. They say misery loves company. I think I get it now. That back there with Marley--taunting her, I admit--that shit was the best part of my day. My week. My month. That shit was the rainbow in a fucking black and white film. The outrage on her face... Goddamn. I fucking loved her angry, bright red face. When I turned to walk away, she looked mad enough to spit bullets. All over a fucking pack of pork chops. As I zip my bag, I press my lips together--to suppress a wicked chuckle. Asshole. I'm not sure I even mind it. Why not be an asshole? Nice guys come in last--another adage I'm starting to believe. I've played it nice my whole damn life, or fucking tried. Why not seek out entertainment now?

my friends, lost, lovesick, blind chose you, hoping the same I’d find misery, they say, loves company in your pain, I sought unity VEIL OF SOLACE

Not because misery loved company, but I just wished there was someone on this earth who’d once loved me unconditionally.

Sometimes you want to look at a guy and say: Well, he’s fucked, but he’s trying.