Quotes about sadness
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“They could read him, they could study him, they could pick him apart, but they couldn't laugh or be sad with him….”

Roberto Bolaño book 2666

Source: 2666

Study, Reading

“They're beautiful. But sad.'
Everything's sad if you make it so, I said.”

John Fowles book The Collector

Source: The Collector

Beauty

“You shy, Francesca?” Javier asks me later on.

I shake my head. “Not really.” I’m just sad, I want to say. And I’m lonely.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

“The saddest kind of sad is the sad that tries not to be sad. You know, when Sad tries to bite its lip and not cry and smile and go, "No, I'm happy for you?"”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

That's when it's really sad.
Rolling Stone magazine/iTunes podcast (December 2005)
On the "chin-up sad" tone of one of his new songs on his upcoming album "Continuum"

Smile, Cry, Happiness

“If I were dead, I wouldn't be sad, and I wouldn't be glad, because I wouldn't be.”

Marcus Sedgwick (1968) British writer and illustrator

Dead

“The question, O me! so sad, recurring -
What good amid these, O me, O life?
That you are here - that life
exists and identity,
that the powerful play goes on,
and you may contribute a verse.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Source: The Leaves of Grass

Life, Question

“I'm allergic to sad memories. It's the worst.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Memory

“It sounded artificial, like a beauty pageant contestant pledging world peace. I did feel sad, but articulating it seemed cheap to me.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

World, Peace, Beauty, Feeling

“Our mind is the canvas on which the artists lay their colour; their pigments are our emotions; their chiaroscuro the light of joy, the shadow of sadness. The masterpiece is of ourselves, as we are of the masterpiece.”

Kakuzo Okakura book The Book of Tea

Source: The Book of Tea

Light, Joy

“Maybe that's why a broken machine always makes me a little sad, because it isn't able to do what it was meant to do… Maybe it's the same with people," Hugo continued. "If you lose your purpose… it's like your broken.”

Brian Selznick book The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Source: The Invention of Hugo Cabret

People

“Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Love, Angels, Way, Flowers

“But I saw the pain and sadness in everything, and swirled it round my mouth like a fine wine.”

Emma Forrest (1976) British journalist, novelist and screenwriter

Source: Your Voice in My Head

Pain, Wine

“I shall think of you
Whenever I am most happy, whenever I am Most sad, whenever I see a beautiful thing.
You are a burning lamp to me, a flame
The wind cannot blow out, and I shall hold you High in my hand against whatever darkness.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Source: Collected Poems

Beauty, Thinking, Happiness

“Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar…”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

Home

“Somewhere in him, a shadow turned mournfully over. You had to run with a night like this so the sadness could not hurt”

Ray Bradbury book Something Wicked This Way Comes

Source: Something Wicked This Way Comes

Hurt, Night

“The first rose on my rose-tree
Budded, bloomed, and shattered,
During sad days when to me
Nothing mattered.

Grief of grief has drained me clean;
Still it seems a pity
No one saw,—it must have been
Very pretty.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American poet

Source: Renascence and Other Poems

Tree

“… Sadness of not knowing enough words to [express what you mean]…”

Jonathan Safran Foer (1977) Novelist

“Once, when I was young and true.
Someone left me sad -
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Variant: A Very Short Song

Once, when I was young and true,
Someone left me sad-
Broke my brittle heart in two;
And that is very bad.

Love is for unlucky folk,
Love is but a curse.
Once there was a heart I broke;
And that, I think, is worse.
Source: Enough Rope

Love, Thinking, Heart

“There are times in your life when, despite the steel weight of your memories and the sadness that seems to lie at your feet like a shadow, you suddenly and strangely feel perfectly okay.”

Kevin Brockmeier book The View from the Seventh Layer

Source: The View from the Seventh Layer

Life, Lie, Feeling, Memory

“… she had regained what I thought she had lost forever, the magical sadness which had drawn me to her, the thwarted look that had seemed to say, "Surely I was made for some other purpose than this?”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.”

Rohinton Mistry A Fine Balance

Source: A Fine Balance

Pain, Time, Happiness

“There is no hatred in my love for you. Only a sadness I feel all the more strongly for my inability to explain or describe it.”

David Foster Wallace book The Broom of the System

Source: The Broom of the System

Love, Feeling

“Turn off the light," she says as she walks away, creating a smallthat smells sweet and chemical. It makes me sad because it's the smell she makes when she's leaving.”

Augusten Burroughs book Running with Scissors

Source: Running with Scissors

Light

“I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,
The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,
Those of my own life, who by turns had flung
A shadow across me.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning book Sonnets from the Portuguese

Source: Sonnets from the Portuguese

Life, Tear

“Death isn't funny. Then why are there so many jokes about death? Jill, with us — us humans — death is so sad that we must laugh at it.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

Death

“We were quiet on the car ride home. I turned on the radio and found a station playing "Hey Jude." It was true, I didn't want to make it bad. I wanted to take the sad song and make it better. It's just that I didn't know how.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Cars, Home

“I watched the spinning stars, grateful, sad and proud, as only a man who has outlived his destiny and realizes he might yet forge himself another, can be.”

Roger Zelazny Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 1 (pp. 29-30)

Star

“Wow. When he started looking back on the war with Kronos as the good old days--that was sad.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

War

“The sad truth about humanity… is that people believe what they're told. Maybe not the first time, but by the hundredth time, the craziest of ideas just becomes a given.”

Neal Shusterman (1962) American novelist

Source: UnWholly

People, Truth, Idea, Time

“That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

Beauty, Silence, Change, Heart

“Sometimes, when you’re sad you don’t know what to do, it helps to be angry. But then the tears come back again all the same, and you fall asleep with the salty taste of them on your lips.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Tear, Help

“The sad ones are those who waste their energy in trying to hold it back, for they can only feel bitterness in loss and no joy in gain.”

John Steinbeck book Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Source: Travels with Charley: In Search of America

Feeling, Loss, Joy

“I am learning how to be angry and sad and lonely and joyful and excited and afraid and happy.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Learning, Happiness

“Tell the truth through whichever veil comes to hand – but tell it. Resign yourself to the lifelong sadness that comes from never being satisfied.”

Zadie Smith (1975) British writer

Truth

“Every arrangement in life carried with it the sadness, the sentimental shadow, of its not being something else, but only itself.”

Lorrie Moore Birds of America

Source: Birds of America

Life

“I am both happy and sad at the same time, and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Variant: So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Time, Happiness

“Parting with friends is a sadness. A place is only a place.”

Frank Herbert (1920–1986) American writer

Parting

“The most elementary of good manners… at a social gathering one does not bring up the subject of personalities, sad topics or unfortunate facts, religion, or politics.”

Laura Esquivel book Like Water for Chocolate

Source: Like Water for Chocolate

Religion, Personality

“Every time you don't follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual sadness.”

Shakti Gawain (1948–2018) Author

Feeling, Sense, Loss, Time

“Then I went to bed and cried into my pillow. I wasn't sad, not at all. It was just so beautiful to have an intense feeling and the right words at the same time.

What are we but our stories?”

James Patterson book Sam's Letters to Jennifer

Source: Sam's Letters to Jennifer

Beauty, Feeling, Time

“He nods, as if to acknowledge that endings are almost always a little sad, even when there is something to look forward to on the other side.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Love the One You're With

Moving On, Sad

“She never utters a sound even when she's crying, and that makes me a little sad. Doesn't seem right. When you cry, people should hear you. The world should stop.”

Libba Bray Going Bovine

Source: Going Bovine

People, World, Cry

“Nobody but a Southerner knows the wrenching rinsing sadness of the cities of the North.”

Walker Percy book The Moviegoer

Source: The Moviegoer

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

Hyperion http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/5436, Bk. III, Ch. IV (1839). <br class="br">Variant: Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad. <br class="br">Context: "Ah! this beautiful world!" said Flemming, with a smile. "Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and Heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly; and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms and kiss it. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark. Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad."

Deep, Depressing, Happy, Heartbreaking

“There are no do overs and some things just aren't going to happen. It is a little sad but you just have to embrace what is”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun