Quotes about sadness

A collection of quotes on the topic of happiness, cry, death, loss.

Best quotes about sadness

Vincent Van Gogh photo

“The sadness will last forever.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Attributed to Vincent, as quoted by Theo van gogh in his letter from Paris, to Elisabeth van Gogh, 5 August 1890 http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/21/etc-Theo-Lies.htm
Some of the last words Vincent said to Theo, while dying
1890s

Jean De La Fontaine photo

“Sadness flies away on the wings of time.”

Jean De La Fontaine (1621–1695) French poet, fabulist and writer.
John Steinbeck photo

“A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.”

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Emily Brontë photo

“Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves.”

Nelly Dean (Ch. VII).
Wuthering Heights (1847)

Bob Marley photo

“The good times of today are the sad thoughts of tomorrow.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Variant: The good times of today are the sad thoughts of tomorrow.

Kurt Cobain photo

“I miss the comfort in being sad.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Song lyrics, In Utero (1993)

Ozzy Osbourne photo

“It’s sad, y’know, what money does to people.”

Source: I Am Ozzy

Henry Rollins photo

“It's sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Variant: It is sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.

André Gide photo

Quotes about sadness

Kurt Cobain photo
Bob Marley photo
John Lennon photo
Liam Payne photo

“Whenever I'm sad I just imagine if babies were born with moustaches.”

Liam Payne (1993) English singer and songwriter

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/6422617.Liam_Payne

Billie Eilish photo
Freddie Mercury photo

“I'm possessed by love — but isn't everybody? Most of my songs are love ballads and things to do with sadness and torture and pain.
In terms of love, you're not in control and I hate that feeling. I seem to write a lot of sad songs because I'm a very tragic person. But there's always an element of humour at the end.”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

As quoted in "I am the Champion" by Nick Ferrari in The Sun (19 July 1985) http://www.queenarchives.com/index.php?title=Freddie_Mercury_-_07-19-1985_-_The_Sun.

Amy Lee photo
Hannah Arendt photo
Dmitri Shostakovich photo

“What can be considered human emotions? Surely not only lyricism, sadness, tragedy? Doesn't laughter also have a claim to that lofty title? I want to fight for the legitimate right of laughter in "serious" music.”

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) Russian composer and pianist

From an article in Sovetskoye Iskusstvo, November 5, 1934; translation from Laurel Fay Shostakovich: A Life (2000) p. 77.

Miguel de Unamuno photo

“It is sad not to be loved, but it is much sadder not to be able to love.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

To a Young Writer

Arthur Koestler photo
Andrew Biersack photo
Kurt Cobain photo
Ernest Hemingway photo
Jim Morrison photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Michel Foucault photo

“Do not think that one has to be sad in order to be militant, even though the thing one is fighting is abominable.”

Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

Source: Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Brandon Sanderson photo
Sylvia Plath photo

“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Anne Brontë photo
Lemmy Kilmister photo
Francisco Palau photo
Leonardo DiCaprio photo

“I don't have emotions about a lot of things. I rarely get angry, I rarely cry. I guess I do get excited a lot, but I don't get sad and enormously happy.”

Leonardo DiCaprio (1974) American actor and film producer

http://www.popmonk.com/actors/leonardo-dicaprio/quotes-leonardo-dicaprio.htm

Voltaire photo

“It is sad that often, to be a good patriot, one must be the enemy of the rest of mankind.”

Voltaire (1694–1778) French writer, historian, and philosopher

Il est triste que souvent, pour être bon patriote, on soit l'ennemi du reste des hommes.
"Country"
Citas, Dictionnaire philosophique (1764)

Claude Monet photo
Romain Rolland photo

“Lost touch with my soul…
I had no where to turn…
I had no where to go.
In My Fear,
I Unearthed My Backbone.
In Deep Pain,
I Discovered My Strength.
In My Denial,
I Detected My Durability.
I crashed down, and I tumbled…
But I did not crumble.
I got through all the Anguish…
I was not meant to be broken.
I did Not Vanquish.
I'm Still Here.
I was not meant to be broken.
From the Nightmare
I was never Awoken.
It took all I had in Me.
I was not meant to be broken.
To become the person I was meant to be.
Put through a whole lot of stress.
Entangled in this Mess.
I was not meant to be broken.
They watched as each blow hit.
Oh how I shall never forget.
Hit me harder with a smile on your face.
Wish for me to fall lower
in place.
Rock Bottom is awefully low for Me.
I'll fight you harder
and then you will see…
I was not meant to be broken.
I tried so hard to make you see.
But all you said to me was leave.
I was not meant to be broken.
They say doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is the sign of insanity.
You never looked at the results.
You destroyed My Vanity.
Never prepared for the Hell that I would see.
Never taught how to Be Me
in your
Twisted World.
Can't you see?
I was not meant to be broken.
The Green Eyed Monster.
Evil childhood wishes.
Come alive before your eyes
like a Snake that Hisses.
The sad thing is this…and this much I'll say.
They will never come back again the Days
you have Missed.
It could have been sweet.
It should have been bliss.
But instead all I got was a poisoned kiss.
I was not built to break.
I was not meant to be broken.”

Christina Rossetti photo

“Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

Remember, l. 13-14.
Source: Pre-Raphaelite Poetry: An Anthology

Eoin Colfer photo

“Genius inspires resentment. A sad fact of life.”

Eoin Colfer (1965) Irish author of children's books

Source: The Time Paradox

C.G. Jung photo

“Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

"The Art of Living", interview with journalist Gordon Young first published in 1960
Variant: [T]here are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word "happy" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

Arundhati Roy photo
Allen Ginsberg photo
Francis of Assisi photo

“Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console,
To be understood as to understand,
To be loved, as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
It is in dying to self that we are born to Eternal Life.
Amen.”

Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order

Widely known as The Prayer of St. Francis, it is not found in Esser's authoritative collection of Francis's writings.
[Fr. Kajetan, Esser, OFM, ed., Opuscula Sancti Patris Francisci Assisiensis, Rome, Grottaferrata, 1978]. Additionally there is no record of this prayer before the twentieth century.
[Fr. Regis J., Armstrong, OFM, Francis and Clare: The Complete Works, New York, Paulist Press, 1982, 10, 0-8091-2446-7]. Dr. Christian Renoux of the University of Orleans in France traces the origin of the prayer to an anonymous 1912 contributor to La Clochette, a publication of the Holy Mass League in Paris. It was not until 1927 that it was attributed to St. Francis.
The Origin of the Peace Prayer of St. Francis, 2013-06-28, Renoux, Christian http://www.franciscan-archive.org/franciscana/peace.html,.
[Christian, Renoux, La prière pour la paix attribuée à saint François: une énigme à résoudre, Paris, Editions franciscaines, 2001, 2-85020-096-4].
Misattributed

Louis Sachar photo
Mario Benedetti photo
Ned Vizzini photo
Paul McCartney photo
Arthur Conan Doyle photo
Émile Durkheim photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Tupac Shakur photo
Alain de Botton photo
Fernando Pessoa photo
Frédéric Chopin photo

“How strange! This bed on which I shall lie has been slept on by more than one dying man, but today it does not repel me! Who knows what corpses have lain on it and for how long? But is a corpse any worse than I? A corpse too knows nothing of its father, mother or sisters or Titus. Nor has a corpse a sweetheart. A corpse, too, is pale, like me. A corpse is cold, just as I am cold and indifferent to everything. A corpse has ceased to live, and I too have had enough of life…. Why do we live on through this wretched life which only devours us and serves to turn us into corpses? The clocks in the Stuttgart belfries strike the midnight hour. Oh how many people have become corpses at this moment! Mothers have been torn from their children, children from their mothers - how many plans have come to nothing, how much sorrow has sprung from these depths, and how much relief!… Virtue and vice have come in the end to the same thing! It seems that to die is man's finest action - and what might be his worst? To be born, since that is the exact opposite of his best deed. It is therefore right of me to be angry that I was ever born into this world! Why was I not prevented from remaining in a world where I am utterly useless? What good can my existence bring to anyone? … But wait, wait! What's this? Tears? How long it is since they flowed! How is this, seeing that an arid melancholy has held me for so long in its grip? How good it feels - and sorrowful. Sad but kindly tears! What a strange emotion! Sad but blessed. It is not good for one to be sad, and yet how pleasant it is - a strange state…”

Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) Polish composer

Stuttgart. After 8th September 1831.
Source: "Selected Correspondence Of Fryderyk Chopin"; http://archive.org/stream/selectedcorrespo002644mbp/selectedcorrespo002644mbp_djvu.txt

Angela of Foligno photo

“Even if at times I can still experience outwardly some little sadness and joy, nonetheless there is in my soul a chamber in which no joy, sadness, or enjoyment from any virtue, or delight over anything that can be named, enters. This is where the All Good, which is not any particular good, resides, and it is so much the All Good that there is no other good. Although I blaspheme by speaking about it -- and I speak about it so badly because I cannot find words to express it -- I nonetheless affirm that in this manifestation of God I discover the complete truth. In it, I understand and possess the complete truth that is in heaven and in hell, in the entire world, in every place, in all things, in every enjoyment in heaven and in every creature. And I see all this is so truly and certainly that no one could convince me otherwise. Even if the whole world were to tell me otherwise, I would laugh it to scorn. Furthermore, I saw the One who is and how he is the being of all creatures. I also saw how he made me capable of understanding those realities I have just spoken about better than when I saw them in that darkness which used to delight me so. Moreover, in that state I see myself as alone with God, totally cleansed, totally sanctified, totally true, totally upright, totally certain, totally celestial in him. And when I am in that state, I do not remember anything else…”

Angela of Foligno (1248–1309) Italian saint

Source: The Memorial and Instructions, pp. 214-216

Pink (singer) photo

“When I'm happy I am sad, but everything's good
It's not that complicated, I'm just misunderstood.”

Pink (singer) (1979) American singer-songwriter

Missundaztood, written by Pink and Linda Perry
Song lyrics, Missundaztood (2001)

Erik Satie photo

“nothing but an icy loneliness that fills the head with emptiness and the heart with sadness.”

Erik Satie (1866–1925) French composer and pianist

about artist/model Suzanne Valadon at the end of their love affair
General quotes

John Mearsheimer photo
John Green photo

“I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark almost blue color, and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.””

A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 310-313
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Golda Meir photo
Andrea Dworkin photo
Francois Villon photo

“It's true that I have loved,
And gladly would again;
But sad heart, and famished belly
Not even partly satisfied
Force me away from paths of love.
And so, let someone else take over
Who has tucked away more food –
Dancing is for men of nobler girth.”

Bien est verté que j'ay amé
Et ameroie voulentiers;
Mais triste cuer, ventre affamé
Qui n'est rassasié au tiers
M'oste des amoureux sentiers.
Au fort, quelqu'ung s'en recompence,
Qui est ramply sur les chantiers!
Car la dance vient de la pance.
Source: Le Grand Testament (The Great Testament) (1461), Line 193.

Charles-Valentin Alkan photo
T. H. White photo
Hakuin Ekaku photo
Alfred, Lord Tennyson photo
Emily Brontë photo

“What use is it to slumber here:
Though the heart be sad and weary?”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

What Use Is It To Slumber Here?
Context: What use is it to slumber here:
Though the heart be sad and weary?
What use is it to slumber here
Though the day rise dark and dreary?

Murasaki Shikibu photo

“The sadness of things.”

Passim. Cf. Lacrimae rerum.
Variant translations:
The pathos of things.
A sensitivity to things.
The sorrow of human existence.
Tale of Genji

Sandra Bullock photo
Johannes Grenzfurthner photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Erich Maria Remarque photo
William Shakespeare photo
Fernando Pessoa photo
C.G. Jung photo
Jean Racine photo
Jim Henson photo
Yoko Ono photo

“I feel sad that he’s just a voice now.”

Yoko Ono (1933) Japanese artist, author, and peace activist
William Shakespeare photo
Paulo Coelho photo

“Sadness does not last forever when we walk in the direction of that which we always desired.”

Variant: Sorrows do not last forever when we are journeying towards the thing we have always wanted.
Source: The Fifth Mountain

Anne Frank photo

“As long as this exists, this sunshine and this cloudless sky, and as long as I can enjoy it, how can I be sad?”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Terry Pratchett photo
Tove Jansson photo
Anne Frank photo
Etgar Keret photo
Colette photo
James Patterson photo
Sharon Creech photo
Victor Hugo photo

“Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist
William Shakespeare photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Clarice Lispector photo
William Shakespeare photo
Haruki Murakami photo
Chögyam Trungpa photo
Lemmy Kilmister photo
Jonathan Safran Foer photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Robert Browning photo

“We loved, sir — used to meet:
How sad and bad and mad it was —
But then, how it was sweet!”

Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era

"Confessions", line 34 (1864).

Paulo Coelho photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Roberto Bolaño photo