547 Sadness Quotes

If they had said that the sun or the moon had gone out of the heavens, it could not have struck me with the idea of a more awful and dreary blank in creation than the words: 'Byron is dead!'

Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details.

So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it.

My blessed California, you are so wise. You render death abstract, efficient, clean. Your afterlife is only real estate, And in his kingdom Death must stay unseen.

What we conceal Is always more than what we dare confide. Think of the letters that we write our dead.

I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin's orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death.

The death then of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world, and equally is it beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.

Widows tend either to fade away when husbands die, committing emotional suttee, or else find that a new life burgeons. Here in Christchurch, a lot of burgeoning goes on.

I spent my childhood alone, overweight and ugly, angry at everything, and knowing nothing of a life beyond this sadness.

And I know you're frightened By my laughter But you're not afraid To hold my pain You see I'm never sure Just what you're after, Babe But it seems you only love me When it rains. How come you only love me when it rains?

Half of the secular unrest and dismal, profane sadness of modern society comes from the vain ideas that every man is bound to be a critic for life.

It's like having a pet dog for a long time. You get attached to it, and when it dies you miss it.

Two evils, monstrous either one apart, Possessed me, and were long and loath at going: A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart, And in the wood the furious winter blowing.

Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly! There's naught in this life sweet But only melancholy; O sweetest melancholy!

A person likes to think of himself in a certain way, and when something happens that makes that no longer possible, you mourn the old self. The person you thought you were.

Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.

Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size.

Fate gave, what Chance shall not control, His sad lucidity of soul.

The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.

It's true that I wouldn't have written the first book had my sister and mother been alive. It was my way of continuing our conversation. It's also this Jewish thing of naming and remembering people, and I think there is a sense of keeping that side of life going.

At first he thought he felt bad because he was afraid of leading an army, but it wasn't true. He knew he'd make a good commander. He felt himself wanting to cry. He hadn't cried since the first few days of homesickness after he got here. He tried to put a name on the feeling that put a lump in his throat and made him sob silently, however much he tried to hold it down. He bit down on his hand to stop the feeling, to replace it with pain. It didn't help.

For he loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest sorrow.

Suppressed grief suffocates, it rages within the breast, and is forced to multiply its strength.

Never let go of that fiery sadness called desire.

Peace is in the grave. The grave hides all things beautiful and good. I am a God and cannot find it there, Nor would I seek it; for, though dread revenge, This is defeat, fierce king, not victory.

The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.

Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure Thrill the deepest notes of woe.

Oh, when a mother meets on high The babe she lost in infancy, Hath she not then for pains and fears, The day of woe, the watchful night, For all her sorrow, all her tears, An over-payment of delight?

The light has gone out of my life.

That tuft of jungle feathers, That animal eye, Is just what you say. That savage of fire, That seed, Have it your way. The world is ugly, And the people are sad.

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal - every other affliction to forget: but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open - this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.

Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy Autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.

Child of mortality, whence comest thou? Why is thy countenance sad, and why are thine eyes red with weeping?

I can't sing. As a singist I am not a success. I am saddest when I sing. So are those who hear me. They are sadder even than I am.

My heart is broken by the terrible loss I have sustained in my old friends and companions and my poor soldiers. Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.

People always called The Cure gloomy, but listening to The Cure made me happy. There was something about the gloominess that gave me comfort, and I think we're the same way.

Life is short, and pleasures few, and holed the ship, and drowned the crew, But O! But O! How very blue the sea is!

This is a prayer, inchoate and unfinished, for you, my love, my loss, my lesion, a rosary of words to count out time's illusions, all the minutes, hours, days the calendar compounds as if the past existed somewhere - like an inheritance still waiting to be claimed.

Put on your red shoes , and dance the blues.

In this uncertain space between birth and death, especially here at the end of the world in Moonlight Bay, we need hope as surely as we need food and water, love and friendship. The trick, however, is to remember that hope is a perilous thing, that it's not a steel and concrete bridge across the void between this moment and a brighter future. Hope is no stronger than tremulous beads of dew strung on a filament of spider web, and it alone can't long support the terrible weight of an anguished mind and a tortured heart.

And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted - nevermore!

The moods of sadness that come over anyone who takes up art... these dismal moods have very little compensation.

The person who grieves, suffers his passion to grow upon him; he indulges it, he loves it; but this never happens in the case of actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable time.

To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness.

This is the saddest story I have ever heard.

I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

You may remember that on Earth--though of course we never confessed it--the death of anyone we knew, even those we liked best, was always mingled with a certain satisfaction at being finally done with them.

Ah, happiness courts the light, so we deem the world is gay, but misery hides aloof, so we deem that misery there is none.

One must not let oneself be overwhelmed by sadness.

As life runs on, the road grows strange With faces new, and near the end The milestones into headstones change, 'Neath every one a friend.

Don't waste time mourning - Organize!

Cover her face; mine eyes dazzle: she died young.

'Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. And Mrs. Daneeka: Words cannot express the deep personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father, or brother was killed, wounded, or reported missing in action.'

'If God was dead, how could I feel this bad?'

We used to say 'Ah Hell, we're young' But now we see that life is sad And so is love.

Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep an' it keeps on laughin'.

When I am happy I feel like crying, but when I am sad I don't feel like laughing. I think it is better to be happy; then you get two feelings for the price of one.

There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good income is of no avail.

When we two parted In silence and tears, Half brokenhearted, To sever for years.

In secret we met In silence I grieve, That thy heart could forget, Thy spirit deceive. If I should meet thee After long years, How should I greet thee? With silence and tears.

Strew on her roses, roses, And never a spray of yew. In quiet she reposes: Ah! would that I did too.

Whatever happened to me in my life, happened to me as a writer of plays. I'd fall in love, or fall in lust. And at the height of my passion, I would think, 'So this is how it feels,' and I would tie it up in pretty words. I watched my life as if it were happening to someone else. My son died. And I was hurt, but I watched my hurt, and even relished it, a little, for now I could write a real death, a true loss. My heart was broken by my dark lady, and I wept, in my room, alone; but while I wept, somewhere inside I smiled. For I knew I could take my broken heart and place it on the stage of The Globe, and make the pit cry tears of their own.

Rough wind, the moanest loud Grief too sad for song; Wild wind, when sullen cloud Knells all the night long; Sad storm, whose tears are vain, Bare woods, whose branches strain, Deep caves and dreary main, - Wail, for the world's wrong!

We look before and after, And pine for what is not: Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone, But grief returns with the revolving year.

As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame Over his living head like Heaven is bent, An early but enduring monument, Came, veiling all the lightnings of his song In sorrow.

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not sleep - He hath awakened from the dream of life.

Death ends a life, not a relationship.

There's a hope for every woe, And a balm for every pain, But the first joys of our heart Come never back again!

Thou hast been called, O sleep! the friend of woe; But 'tis the happy that have called thee so.

I grieve for you, how I mourn for you, who are so very dear to me, but again I can rejoice within my heart, not for nothing 'have I labored,' neither has my exile been 'in vain.'

We are no longer the same, you wiser but not sadder, and I sadder but not wiser, for wiser I could hardly become without grave personal inconvenience, whereas sorrow is a thing you can keep adding to all your life long, is it not, like a stamp or an egg collection, without feeling very much the worse for it, is it not.

Memories are killing. So you must not think of certain things, of those that are dear to you, or rather you must think of them, for if you don't there is the danger of finding them, in your mind, little by little.

Gone are the days when my heart was young and gay, Gone are my friends from the cotton fields away, Gone from the earth to a better land I know, I hear their gentle voices calling 'Old Black Joe.'

'I'm the happiest the saddest guy in the world can be.'

Can I see another's woe, And not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, And not seek for kind relief?

Old ocean's gray and melancholy waste.

Between grief and nothing I will take grief.

His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.

Men are we, and must grieve when even the Shade Of that which once was great, is passed away.

She lived unknown, and few could know When Lucy ceased to be; But she is in her grave, and, oh, The difference to me!

As I go musing through this mournful land Soothed by the pine-tree's solemn harmony, Thy well-loved image comes and walks by me. I seem to hold thee by the gentle hand And talk of things I dimly understand, That thy dear spirit set to mine may be As to an intricate lock the simple key.

And with the morn those angel faces smile Which I have loved long since and lost awhile.

The sadness will last forever. (on his deathbed)

When I was one-and-twenty I heard him say again, 'The heart out of the bosom Was never given in vain; 'Tis paid with sighs a plenty And sold for endless rue.' And I am two-and-twenty And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.

There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn. If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and the sorrow was in the beginning.

These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis... These self-obsessed women seemed genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them... I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much.

Nothing reopens the springs of love so fully as absemce, and no absence so thoroughly as that which must needs be endless.

Farewell, thou child of my right hand, and joy! My sin was too much hope of thee, loved boy. Seven years thou wert lent to me, and I thee pay, Exacted by thy fate, on the just day. O, could I lose all father now. For why Will man lament the state he should envy? To have soon 'scaped world's and flesh's rage, And, if no other misery, yet age! Rest in soft peace, and, asked, say here doth lie Ben Jonson his best piece of poetry: For whose sake, henceforth, all his vows be such, As what he loves may never like too much.

Gentle reader, may you never feel what I then felt? May your eyes never shed such stormy, scalding, heart-wrung tears as poured from mine. May you never appeal to Heaven in prayers so hopeless and so agonized as in that hour left my lips; for never may you, like me, dread to be the instrument of evil to what you wholly love.