“The saddest people I've met in my life are the ones who don't care deeply about anything at all.”
Quoted in BBC obituary 4 July 2012 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18703602
“Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.”
Source: The Complete Poems
“The saddest thing that befalls a soul
Is when it loses faith in God and woman.”
Scene 12.
A Life Drama and other Poems (1853)
“For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"”
Bret Harte wrote a famous parody of this famous poem, "Mrs. Judge Jenkins" in which the Judge marries Maud, and which he ends with the lines:
Maud soon thought the Judge a bore,
With all his learning and all his lore;
And the Judge would have bartered Maud's fair face
For more refinement and social grace.
If, of all words of tongue and pen,
The saddest are, "It might have been,"
More sad are these we daily see:
"It is, but hadn't ought to be".
Maud Muller (1856)
Context: Alas for maiden, alas for Judge,
For rich repiner and household drudge!
God pity them both! and pity us all,
Who vainly the dreams of youth recall;
For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
As quoted in "Liberal Democracy and Us" https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/liberal-democracy-and-us/ (6 May 2018), by Jay Nordlinger, National Review
Book III, Ch. 4
The Professor's House (1925)
“Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”
"Tonight I Can Write" (Puedo Escribir), XX, p. 49.
Source: Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair) (1924)
