“There is no greater grief than to find no happiness, but happiness in what is past.”
Source: The Powerbook
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Jeanette Winterson187
English writer 1959Related quotes
“Can there be any happiness greater than the happiness of salvation?”
Yann Martel book Life of Pi
Source: Life of Pi
“What greater happiness is there than the privilege of being bored together?”
Curtis Sittenfeld (1975) Novelist, short story writer
Source: American Wife
Marcel Pagnol (1895–1974) novelist, playwright and filmmaker from France
Variant: People see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is and the future less resolved than it’ll be.
“There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery.”
Dante Alighieri book Inferno
Canto V, lines 121–123 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno
“There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery.”
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet
Inferno, canto v, line 121.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)
Arthur C. Clarke book The City and the Stars
Source: The City and the Stars (1956), Chapter 23 (pp. 174-175)
John McCain (1936–2018) politician from the United States
Letter of advice to British diplomat Tom Fletcher's son. https://twitter.com/TFletcher/status/1033597850729570304 <br class="br">2000s, 2008
“Happiness is beneficial for the body but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”
Marcel Proust book In Search of Lost Time
Le bonheur est salutaire pour le corps, mais c'est le chagrin qui développe les forces de l'esprit.
Source: In Search of Lost Time, Remembrance of Things Past (1913-1927), Vol. VII: The Past Recaptured (1927), Ch. III: "An Afternoon Party at the House of the Princesse de Guermantes"