“All the world is sad and dreary,
Everywhere I roam.”

As quoted at Family Book of Best Loved Poems, by David L. George, (1952)
Old Folks at Home

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update May 22, 2020. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "All the world is sad and dreary, Everywhere I roam." by Stephen Foster?
Stephen Foster photo
Stephen Foster 8
American songwriter 1826–1864

Related quotes

Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Ed Harcourt photo
Jean Jacques Rousseau photo

“Days of absence, sad and dreary,
Clothed in sorrow's dark array,—
Days of absence, I am weary:
She I love is far away.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Day of Absence, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

George MacDonald photo

“Room to roam, but only one home
For all the world to win.”

Phantastes (1858)
Context: Thou goest thine, and I go mine —
Many ways we wend;
Many days, and many ways,
Ending in one end.
Many a wrong, and its curing song;
Many a road, and many an inn;
Room to roam, but only one home
For all the world to win.

Ernest Hemingway photo
Victor Hugo photo
Nikolai Gogol photo

“What a dreary world we live in, gentlemen.”

Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) Russian writer

How the Two Ivans Quarrelled (1835)

Aleksandar Hemon photo

“All the lives I could live, all the people I will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is all that the world is.”

Variant: All the lives we could live, all the people we will never know, never will be, they are everywhere. That is what the world is.
Source: The Lazarus Project

Will Durant photo

“In a measure the Great Sadness was lifted from me, and, where I had seen omnipresent death, I saw now everywhere the pageant and triumph of life.”

Will Durant (1885–1981) American historian, philosopher and writer

Transition (1927)
Context: I felt more keenly than before the need of a philosophy that would do justice to the infinite vitality of nature. In the inexhaustible activity of the atom, in the endless resourcefulness of plants, in the teeming fertility of animals, in the hunger and movement of infants, in the laughter and play of children, in the love and devotion of youth, in the restless ambition of fathers and the lifelong sacrifice of mothers, in the undiscourageable researches of scientists and the sufferings of genius, in the crucifixion of prophets and the martyrdom of saints — in all things I saw the passion of life for growth and greatness, the drama of everlasting creation. I came to think of myself, not as a dance and chaos of molecules, but as a brief and minute portion of that majestic process... I became almost reconciled to mortality, knowing that my spirit would survive me enshrined in a fairer mold... and that my little worth would somehow be preserved in the heritage of men. In a measure the Great Sadness was lifted from me, and, where I had seen omnipresent death, I saw now everywhere the pageant and triumph of life.

Related topics