"We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed"
About this Quote
Born into tears, stuck in grievance, checked out in disillusionment: Fuller compresses an entire human biography into a three-beat punchline. It lands because it sounds like the bleakest possible nursery rhyme, the kind of proverb you can’t argue with without sounding naive. The verbs do the real work. “Born” is passive, “live” is habitual, “die” is definitive. The line implies that misery isn’t an episode; it’s the default setting, and our main “agency” is reduced to complaining about it.
As a 17th-century English clergyman, Fuller isn’t just indulging in mood. He’s writing in a period steeped in religious conflict, plague cycles, and political whiplash, when the promise of earthly stability looked increasingly like a scam. In that context, the aphorism doubles as a moral diagnosis: if life tends to dissatisfaction, then expecting the world to make you whole is a category error. The subtext is theological without sounding pious. It nudges the reader toward humility (your grievances are not special) and toward the idea that consolation, if it exists, won’t come from circumstances.
The cynicism is also a rhetorical trap. By stating human existence as an unbroken chain of complaint, Fuller shames the reader out of self-pity even as he validates it. It’s not comfort; it’s corrective comedy, the sermon smuggled in as a fatalistic one-liner.
As a 17th-century English clergyman, Fuller isn’t just indulging in mood. He’s writing in a period steeped in religious conflict, plague cycles, and political whiplash, when the promise of earthly stability looked increasingly like a scam. In that context, the aphorism doubles as a moral diagnosis: if life tends to dissatisfaction, then expecting the world to make you whole is a category error. The subtext is theological without sounding pious. It nudges the reader toward humility (your grievances are not special) and toward the idea that consolation, if it exists, won’t come from circumstances.
The cynicism is also a rhetorical trap. By stating human existence as an unbroken chain of complaint, Fuller shames the reader out of self-pity even as he validates it. It’s not comfort; it’s corrective comedy, the sermon smuggled in as a fatalistic one-liner.
Quote Details
| Topic | Life |
|---|
More Quotes by Thomas
Add to List
