Quotes about sigh

A collection of quotes on the topic of sigh, likeness, herring, love.

Quotes about sigh

“Love is a smoke made with the fume of sighs.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Source: Romeo and Juliet

love, Valentine's Day, Wedding, Love

“Wine enters through the mouth,
Love, the eyes.
I raise the glass to my mouth,
I look at you,
I sigh.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

Love, Wine

“If only, if only," the woodpecker sighs,
"The bark on the tree was as soft as the skies."
While the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely,
Crying to the moo-oo-oon,
"If only, If only.”

Louis Sachar book Holes

Source: Holes

Tree, Wolf, Waiting, Cry

“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever;
One foot in sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.”

William Shakespeare book Much Ado About Nothing

Balthazar, Act II, scene iii.
Source: Much Ado About Nothing (1598)

Men, Sea

“I have loved in life and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above life's joy and sorrow.
My heart, aflame in love, set afire every heart that came in touch with it.
My heart has been rent and joined again;
My heart has been broken and again made whole;
My heart has been wounded and healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart has died, and thanks be to love, it lives yet.
I went through hell and saw there love's raging fire,
and I entered heaven illumined with the light of love.
I wept in love and made all weep with me;
I mourned in love and pierced the hearts of men;
And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the flood caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth trembled, and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved,
I shook the throne of God in heaven.
I bowed my head low in humility, and on my knees I begged of love,
"Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy secret."
She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth, and spoke softly in my ear,
"My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover,
and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

Source: The Dance of the Soul

Love, Life, Death, Men

“What a strange machine man is! You fill him with bread, wine, fish, and radishes, and out comes sighs, laughter, and dreams.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book Zorba the Greek

Source: Zorba the Greek (1946), Ch. 23

Dreams, Fish, Laughter, Wine

“Here sighs and lamentations and loud cries
were echoing across the starless air,
so that, as soon as I set out, I wept.
Strange utterances, horrible pronouncements,
accents of anger, words of suffering,
and voices shrill and faint, and beating hands—
all went to make a tumult that will whirl
forever through that turbid, timeless air,
like sand that eddies when a whirlwind swirls.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto III, lines 22–30 (tr. Mandelbaum).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Suffering, Anger

“OH! hear a pensive captive's prayer,
For liberty that sighs;
And never let thine heart be shut
Against the prisoner's cries.”

Anna Laetitia Barbauld The Mouse's Petition

The Mouse's Petition (1773)

Heart

“Faithful:Alanna sighed. "When I want to stop learning, I guess.”

Tamora Pierce Lioness Rampant

Source: Lioness Rampant

Learning

“Quite, quite,' she thought with a little sigh. 'It's always like this in their adventures. To save and be saved. I wish somebody would write a story sometime about the people who warm up the heroes afterward.”

Tove Jansson book Moominland Midwinter

Source: Moominland Midwinter

People

“How does he love me? With adoration, with fertile tears,
With groans that thunder love, with sighs of fire.”

William Shakespeare Twelfth Night

Source: Twelfth Night

Love, Tear

“Romance takes place in the middle distance. Romance is looking in at yourself through a window clouded with dew. Romance means leaving things out: where life grunts and shuffles, romance only sighs.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

Life

“A sigh isn't just a sigh. We inhale the world and breathe out meaning. While we can. While we can.”

Salman Rushdie book The Moor's Last Sigh

Source: The Moor's Last Sigh

World

“She gave me for my pains a world of sighs.”

William Shakespeare Othello

Source: Othello

Pain, World

“He sighed. It had come to this. He was a responsible authority, and people could use terms like "core values" at him with impunity.”

Terry Pratchett book Making Money

Source: Making Money

People

“Wine comes in at the mouth
And love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.”

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939) Irish poet and playwright

A Drinking Song http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1399/ <br class="br">The Green Helmet and Other Poems (1910)

Love, Truth, Wine

“Honestly," she sighed, "I don't know what kind of life we'll have together, with me always flying off in one direction and you in the other."
I smiled. "It's a good thing the world's round," I said.”

Kenneth Oppel (1967) Canadian children's writer

Life, World, Smile, Flying

“Nïx clasped her hands over her chest,
sighing, “He gave you his heart. That’s so romantic.
So much better than a candy heart.
Those get stuck in the fangs, you know.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Variant: Nïx clasped her hands over her chest, sighing, “He gave you his heart. That’s so romantic. So much better than a candy heart. Those get stuck in the fangs, you know.
Source: Lothaire

Heart

“In his early twenties, a man started collecting paintings, many of which later became famous: Picasso, Van Gogh, and others. Over the decades he amassed a wonderful collection. Eventually, the man’s beloved son was drafted into the military and sent to Vietnam, where he died while trying to save his friend. About a month after the war ended, a young man knocked on the devastated father’s door. “Sir,” he said, “I know that you like great art, and I have brought you something not very great.” Inside the package, the father found a portrait of his son. With tears running down his cheeks, the father said, “I want to pay you for this.ℍ “No,” the young man replied, “he saved my life. You don’t owe me anything.ℍ The father cherished the painting and put it in the center of his collection. Whenever people came to visit, he made them look at it. When the man died, his art collection went up for sale. A large crowd of enthusiastic collectors gathered. First up for sale was the amateur portrait. A wave of displeasure rippled through the crowd. “Let’s forget about that painting!” one said. “We want to bid on the valuable ones,” said another. Despite many loud complaints, the auctioneer insisted on starting with the portrait. Finally, the deceased man’s gardener said, “I’ll bid ten dollars.ℍ Hearing no further bids, the auctioneer called out, “Sold for ten dollars!” Everyone breathed a sigh of relief. But then the auctioneer said, “And that concludes the auction.” Furious gasps shook the room. The auctioneer explained, “Let me read the stipulation in the will: “Sell the portrait of my son first, and whoever buys it gets the entire art collection. Whoever takes my son gets everything.ℍ It’s the same way with God Almighty. Whoever takes his Son gets everything.”

Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)

Source: Through the Year with Jimmy Carter: 366 Daily Meditations from the 39th President

Life, God, War, People

“Stray birds of summer come to my window to sing and fly away. And yellow leaves of autumn, which have no songs, flutter and fall there with a sigh.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Autumn, Bird, Singing, Summer

“You fed it.' The badger sighed. 'Sometimes I think you'll feed.”

Tamora Pierce The Realms of the Gods

Source: The Realms of the Gods

Thinking

“By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing.
And he vows his passion is,
Infinite, undying.
Lady make note of this --
One of you is lying.”

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

Lying, Passion, Time

“Granny sighed. "You have learned something," she said, and thought it safe to insert a touch of sternness into her voice. "They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.”

Terry Pratchett book Equal Rites

Source: Equal Rites

Knowledge, Learning

“I stifled a sigh and ignored the Imprinted Drunk Vision Girl.”

P. C. Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Girl

“I sighed and stared off without any particular focus. "I miss him so much."
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Will it ever get better?"
The question seemed to catch her by surprise. "I… I don't know.”

Richelle Mead Blood Promise

Source: Blood Promise

Question

“Fear no more, says the heart, committing its burden to some sea, which sighs collectively for all sorrows, and renews, begins, collects, lets fall”

Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway

Source: Mrs. Dalloway

Fear, Heart, Sea

“I sighed. I hated the maze of bureaucracy with a passion, but I've found the best way to deal with it is to smile and act stupid. That way, no one gets confused.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Dead Witch Walking

Hate, Stupidity, Smile, Way

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Introduction..., p. 1 (1843).
Context: Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.

People, World, Religion, Soul

“The sigh of all the seas breaking in measure round the isles soothed them; the night wrapped them; nothing broke their sleep, until, the birds beginning and the dawn weaving their thin voices in to its whiteness”

Virginia Woolf book To the Lighthouse

Source: To the Lighthouse

Bird, Sleep, Sea, Night

“Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld
So I can sigh eternally.”

Kurt Cobain (1967–1994) American musician and artist

Pennyroyal Tea.
Song lyrics, In Utero (1993)

“But, Madam, let your grief be laid aside,
And let the fountain of your tears be dry'd,
In vain they flow to wet the dusty plain,
Your sighs are wafted to the skies in vain,
Your pains they witness, but they can no more,
While Death reigns tyrant o'er this mortal shore.”

Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) American poet

"To a Gentleman and Lady on the Death of the Lady's Brother and Sister, and a Child of the Name of Avis, aged one Year." st. 2, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773)

Death, Pain, Tear

“In between these four whitewashed walls, on this tiled floor, notice the broken corners, how some tiles have been worn smooth, how many feet have passed this way, and look how interesting this trail of ants is, travelling along the joins as if they were valleys, while up above, projected against the white sky of the ceiling and the sun of the lamp, tall towers are moving, they are men, as the ants well know, having, for generations, experienced the weight of their feet and the long, hot spout of water that falls from a kind of pendulous external intestine, ants all over the world have been drowned or crushed by these, but it seems they will escape this fate now, for the men are occupied with other things. […]
Let's take this ant, or, rather, let's not, because that would involve picking it up, let us merely consider it, because it is one of the larger ones and because it raises its head like a dog, it's walking along very close to the wall, together with its fellow ants it will have time to complete its long journey ten times over between the ants' nest and whatever it is that it finds so interesting, curious or perhaps merely nourishing in this secret room […]. One of the men has fallen to the ground, he's on the same level as the ants now, we don't know if he can see them, but they see him, and he will fall so often that, in the end, they will know by heart his face, the color of his hair and eyes, the shape of his ear, the dark arc of his eyebrow, the faint shadow at the corner of his mouth, and later, back in the ants' nest, they will weave long stories for the enlightenment of future generations, because it is useful for the young to know what happens out there in the world. The man fell and the others dragged him to his feet again, shouting at him, asking two different questions at the same time, how could he possibly answer them even if he wanted to, which is not the case, because the man who fell and was dragged to his feet will die without saying a word. Only moans will issue from his mouth, and in the silence of his soul only deep sighs, and even when his teeth are broken and he has to spit them out, which will prompt the other two men to hit him again for soiling state property, even then the sound will be of spitting and nothing more, that unconscious reflex of the lips, and then the dribble of saliva thickened with blood that falls to the floor, thus stimulating the taste buds of the ants, who telegraph from one to the other news of this singularly red manna fallen from such a white heaven.
The man fell again. It's the same one, said the ants, the same ear shape, the same arc of eyebrow, the same shadow at the corner of the mouth, there's no mistaking him, why is it that it is always the same man who falls, why doesn't he defend himself, fight back. […] The ants are surprised, but only fleetingly. After all, they have their own duties, their own timetables to keep, it is quite enough that they raise their heads like dogs and fix their feeble vision on the fallen man to check that he is the same one and not some new variant in the story. The larger ant walked along the remaining stretch of wall, slipped under the door, and some time will pass before it reappears to find everything changed, well, that's just a manner of speaking, there are still three men there, but the two who do not fall never stop moving, it must be some kind of game, there's no other explanation […]. [T]hey grab him by the shoulders and propel him willy-nilly in the direction of the wall, so that sometimes he hits his back, sometimes his head, or else his poor bruised face smashes into the whitewash and leaves on it a trace of blood, not a lot, just whatever spurts forth from his mouth and right eyebrow. And if they leave him there, he, not his blood, slides down the wall and he ends up kneeling on the ground, beside the little trail of ants, who are startled by the sudden fall from on high of that great mass, which doesn't, in the end, even graze them. And when he stays there for some time, one ant attaches itself to his clothing, wanting to take a closer look, the fool, it will be the first ant to die, because the next blow falls on precisely that spot, the ant doesn't feel the second blow, but the man does.”

José Saramago book Raised from the Ground

Source: Raised from the Ground (1980), pp. 172–174

Men, Fate, Secret, World

“Why, being dead, do you rely on yourself? You were able to die of your own accord; you cannot come back to life of your own accord. We were able to sin by ourselves, and we are still able to, nor shall we ever not be able to. Let our hope be in nothing but in God. Let us send up our sighs to him; as for ourselves, let us strive with our wills to earn merit by our prayers.”
Quid de se praesumit mortuus? Mori potuit de suo, reviviscere de suo non potest. Peccare per nos ipsos et potuimus et possumus nec tamen per nos resurgere aliquando poterimus. Spes nostra non sit, nisi in Deo 14. Ad illum gemamus, in illo praesumamus; quod ad nos pertinet, voluntate conemur, ut oratione mereamur.

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

348A:4 Against Pelagius; English translation from: Newly Discovered Sermons, 1997, Edmund Hill, John E. Rotelle, New City Press, New York, ISBN 1565481038, 9781565481039 pp. 311-312. http://books.google.com/books?id=0XjYAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Let+us+send+up+our+sighs+to+him,+let+us+rely+on+him%22&dq=%22Let+us+send+up+our+sighs+to+him,+let+us+rely+on+him%22&hl=en&ei=Q75kTajHBoO8lQfW9cTaBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAA Editor’s comment: “This sounds like a slightly Pelagian remark! But it is presumably intended to reverse what one may call the Pelagian order of things; and see the last few sections of the sermon, 9-15, on the effect of the heresy on prayer.” http://books.google.com/books?id=0XjYAAAAMAAJ&q=%22This+sounds+like+a+slightly+Pelagian+remark%22&dq=%22This+sounds+like+a+slightly+Pelagian+remark%22&hl=en&ei=9cBkTYenLsKqlAfs56mVBg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA <br class="br">Sermons

Life, God, Hope, Dead

“He who is himself crossed in love is able from time to time to master his passion, for he is not the creature but the creator of his own misery; and if a lover is unable to control his passion, he at least knows that he is himself to blame for his sufferings. But he who is loved without reciprocating that love is lost beyond redemption, for it is not in his power to set a limit to that other's passion, to keep it within bounds, and the strongest will is reduced to impotence in the face of another's desire. Perhaps only a man can realize to the full the tragedy of such an undesired relationships; for him alone the necessity to resist t is at once martyrdom and guilt. For when a woman resists an unwelcome passion, she is obeying to the full the law of her sex; the initial gesture of refusal is, so to speak, a primordial instinct in every female, and even if she rejects the most ardent passion she cannot be called inhuman. But how disastrous it is when fate upsets the balance, when a woman so far overcomes her natural modesty as to disclose her passion to a man, when, without the certainty of its being reciprocated, she offers her love, and he, the wooed, remains cold and on the defensive! An insoluble tangle this, always; for not to return a woman's love is to shatter her pride, to violate her modesty. The man who rejects a woman's advances is bound to wound her in her noblest feelings. In vain, then, all the tenderness with which he extricates himself, useless all his polite, evasive phrases, insulting all his offers of mere friendship, once she has revealed her weakness! His resistance inevitably becomes cruelty, and in rejecting a woman's love he takes a load of guild upon his conscience, guiltless though he may be. Abominable fetters that can never be cast off! Only a moment ago you felt free, you belonged to yourself and were in debt to no one, and now suddenly you find yourself pursued, hemmed in, prey and object of the unwelcome desires of another. Shaken to the depths of your soul, you know that day and night someone is waiting for you, thinking of you, longing and sighing for you - a woman, a stranger. She wants, she demands, she desires you with every fibre of her being, with her body, with her blood. She wants your hands, your hair, your lips, your manhood, your night and your day, your emotions, your senses, and all your thought and dreams. She wants to share everything with you, to take everything from you, and to draw it in with her breath. Henceforth, day and night, whether you are awake or asleep, there is somewhere in the world a being who is feverish and wakeful and who waits for you, and you are the centre of her waking and her dreaming. It is in vain that you try not to think of her, of her who thinks always of you, in vain that you seek to escape, for you no longer dwell in yourself, but in her. Of a sudden a stranger bears your image within her as though she were a moving mirror - no, not a mirror, for that merely drinks in your image when you offer yourself willingly to it, whereas she, the woman, this stranger who loves you, she has absorbed you into her very blood. She carries you always within her, carries you about with her, no mater whither you may flee. Always you are imprisoned, held prisoner, somewhere else, in some other person, no longer yourself, no longer free and lighthearted and guiltless, but always hunted, always under an obligation, always conscious of this "thinking-of-you" as if it were a steady devouring flame. Full of hate, full of fear, you have to endure this yearning on the part of another, who suffers on your account; and I now know that it is the most senseless, the most inescapable, affliction that can befall a man to be loved against his will - torment of torments, and a burden of guilt where there is no guilt.”

Stefan Zweig book Beware of Pity

Beware of Pity (1939)

Love, Hate, Friendship, Fate

“When I was one-and-twenty
I heard him say again,
"The heart out of the bosom
Was never given in vain;
'Tis paid with sighs a plenty
And sold for endless rue."
And I am two-and-twenty
And oh, 'tis true, 'tis true.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 13, st. 2.
A Shropshire Lad (1896)

Heart

“An unaffected man in a negative light
Could not have borne his labor nor have died
Sighing that he should leave the banjo’s twang.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction (1942), It Must Change

Light

“What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

As quoted in Quote, Unquote (1977) by Lloyd Cory, p. 197
Disputed

Love, Men, Help

“Her Majesty's new Ministers proceeded in their career like a body of men under the influence of some deleterious drug. Not satiated with the spoilation and anarchy of Ireland, they began to attack every institution and every interest, every class and calling in the country…As time advanced it was not difficult to perceive that extravagance was being substituted for energy by the Government. The unnatural stimulus was subsiding. Their paroxysms ended in prostration. Some took refuge in melancholy, and their eminent chief alternated between a menace and a sigh. As I sat opposite the Treasury Bench the Ministers reminded me of one of those marine landscapes not very unusual on the coasts of South America. You behold a range of exhausted volcanoes. Not a flame flickers on a single pallid crest. But the situation is still dangerous. There are occasional earthquakes, and ever and anon the dark rumbling of the sea.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Attacking William Gladstone's Liberal Government
Source: Speech to the Conservatives of Manchester (3 April 1872), quoted in William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), pp. 530-531.

Men, Time, Sea, Country

“So, then, Oxford Street, stonyhearted stepmother, thou that listenest to the sighs of orphans, and drinkest the tears of children, at length I was dismissed from thee.”

Thomas De Quincey book Confessions of an English Opium-Eater

Pt. I.
Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822-1856)

Children, Tear

“'O gin I find anither ladye,'
He said wi' sighs and tears,
'I wot my coortin' sall not be
Anither thirty years:

For gin I find a ladye gay,
Exactly to my taste,
I'll pop the question, aye or nay,
In twenty years at maist.”

Lewis Carroll (1832–1898) English writer, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer

The Lang Coortin, last two stanzas
Rhyme? and Reason? (1883)

Question, Tear

“A kind of music far superior, in my opinion, to that of operas, and which in all Italy has not its equal, nor perhaps in the whole world, is that of the 'scuole'. The 'scuole' are houses of charity, established for the education of young girls without fortune, to whom the republic afterwards gives a portion either in marriage or for the cloister. Amongst talents cultivated in these young girls, music is in the first rank. Every Sunday at the church of each of the four 'scuole', during vespers, motettos or anthems with full choruses, accompanied by a great orchestra, and composed and directed by the best masters in Italy, are sung in the galleries by girls only; not one of whom is more than twenty years of age. I have not an idea of anything so voluptuous and affecting as this music; the richness of the art, the exquisite taste of the vocal part, the excellence of the voices, the justness of the execution, everything in these delightful concerts concurs to produce an impression which certainly is not the mode, but from which I am of opinion no heart is secure. Carrio and I never failed being present at these vespers of the 'Mendicanti', and we were not alone. The church was always full of the lovers of the art, and even the actors of the opera came there to form their tastes after these excellent models. What vexed me was the iron grate, which suffered nothing to escape but sounds, and concealed from me the angels of which they were worthy. I talked of nothing else. One day I spoke of it at Le Blond's; "If you are so desirous," said he, "to see those little girls, it will be an easy matter to satisfy your wishes. I am one of the administrators of the house, I will give you a collation [light meal] with them." I did not let him rest until he had fulfilled his promise. In entering the saloon, which contained these beauties I so much sighed to see, I felt a trembling of love which I had never before experienced. M. le Blond presented to me one after the other, these celebrated female singers, of whom the names and voices were all with which I was acquainted. Come, Sophia, — she was horrid. Come, Cattina, — she had but one eye. Come, Bettina, — the small-pox had entirely disfigured her. Scarcely one of them was without some striking defect.
Le Blond laughed at my surprise; however, two or three of them appeared tolerable; these never sung but in the choruses; I was almost in despair. During the collation we endeavored to excite them, and they soon became enlivened; ugliness does not exclude the graces, and I found they possessed them. I said to myself, they cannot sing in this manner without intelligence and sensibility, they must have both; in fine, my manner of seeing them changed to such a degree that I left the house almost in love with each of these ugly faces. I had scarcely courage enough to return to vespers. But after having seen the girls, the danger was lessened. I still found their singing delightful; and their voices so much embellished their persons that, in spite of my eyes, I obstinately continued to think them beautiful.”

Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) Genevan philosopher

Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1765-1770; published 1782), On the musicians of the Ospedale della Pieta (book VII)

Love, Marriage, Age, World

“If I could only have you near
To breathe a sigh or two
I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
On this winters night with you”

Gordon Lightfoot (1938) Canadian singer-songwriter

Song For A Winter's Night, Track 10, United Artists A hauntingly beautiful version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbgfXp5M02M <br class="br">The Way I Feel (1967)

Love, Winter, Night, Happiness

“Then Sir Launcelot saw her visage, but he wept not greatly, but sighed.”

Thomas Malory book Le Morte d'Arthur

Book XXI, ch. 11
Le Morte d'Arthur (c. 1469) (first known edition 1485)

“The heaviest burden: “What, if some day or night, a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life, as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life must return to you, all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight between the trees and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over again and again—and you with it, speck of dust!’ Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god, and never have I heard anything more divine!’ If this thought were to gain possession of you, it would change you as you are, or perhaps crush you. The question in each and every thing, “do you want this once more and innumerable times more?””

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist

would lie upon your actions as the greatest weight. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?.
Sec. 341
The Gay Science (1882)

Life, God, Pain, Lie

“She sighs for the thought she has. She would like to be silent, but she must speak.
"We don't love each other any more," she says, embarrassed by the greatness of the things she utters; "but we did once, and I want to see our love again."”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

Light (1919), Ch. XXIII - Face To Face

Love

“He who died at Azan sends
This to comfort all his friends:—
Faithful friends! It lies I know
Pale and white and cold as snow;
And ye say, 'Abdallah’s dead!'
Weeping at the feet and head.
I can see your falling tears,
I can hear your sighs and prayers;
Yet I smile and whisper this:
I am not the thing you kiss.
Cease your tears and let it lie;
It was mine—it is not I.”

Edwin Arnold (1832–1904) British poet and journalist

After Death in Arabia.

Lie, Faith, Smile, Kiss

“Sometimes we'll sigh — sometimes we'll cry
And we'll know why just you and I know true love ways.”

Buddy Holly (1936–1959) American singer-songwriter

True Love Ways, written by Buddy Holly and Norman Petty (1958)
Song lyrics, Singles

Love, Way, Cry

“The West is the fitting tomb for all the sorrow and the sighing, all the errors and the follies of the Past: for all its withered Hopes and all its buried Loves! From the East comes new strength, new ambition, new Hope, new Life, new Love! Look Eastward! Aye, look Eastward!”

Lewis Carroll book Sylvie and Bruno

Source: Sylvie and Bruno (1889), Chapter 25 : Looking Eastward

Love, Life, Hope, Error

“O bitter is it to abide
In weariness alway:
At dawn to sigh for eventide,
At eventide for day.
Thy noon hath fled: thy sun hath shone:
The brightness of thy day is gone:
What need to lag and linger on
Till life be cold and gray?”

Lewis Carroll Three Sunsets and Other Poems

The Valley of the Shadow of Death (1868)
Three Sunsets and Other Poems (1898)

Life, Sun

“He asked my religion and I replied 'agnostic'. He asked how to spell it, and remarked with a sigh: 'Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1960s, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1967-1969)
Context: He asked my religion and I replied 'agnostic'. He asked how to spell it, and remarked with a sigh: 'Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all worship the same God. This remark kept me cheerful for about a week.

God, Religion

“Hear no evil, and see no evil, abase not thyself, neither sigh and weep. Speak no evil, that thou mayest not hear it spoken unto thee, and magnify not the faults of others that thine own faults may not appear great; and wish not the abasement of anyone, that thine own abasement be not exposed.”

Bahá'u'lláh book The Hidden Words

The Hidden Words

Appearance, Evil

“The darkness. Goddamn the darkness. It seemed to Garraty they had been buried alive in it. Immured in it. Dawn was a century away. Many of them would never see the dawn. Or the sun. They were buried six feet deep in the darkness. All they needed was the monotonous chanting of the priest, his voice muffled but not entirely obscured by the new-packed darkness, above which the mourners stood. The mourners were not even aware that they were here, they were alive, they were screaming and scratching and clawing at the coffin-lid darkness, the air was flaking and rusting away, the air was turning into poison gas, hope fading until hope itself was darkness, and above all of it the nodding chapel-bell voice of the priest and the impatient, shuffling feet of mourners anxious to be off into the warm May sunshine. Then, overmastering that, the sighing, shuffling chorus of the bugs and the beetles, squirming their way through the earth, come for the feast…I could go crazy, Garraty thought. I could go right the fuck off my rocker.”

Stephen King book The Long Walk

The Long Walk (1979)

Way, Sun, Hope

“Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower.”

Karl Marx (1818–1883) German philosopher, economist, sociologist, journalist and revolutionary socialist

Source: Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (1843)

Soul, Religion, Time, Happiness

“There has to be a balance, Vin," Elend said. "Somehow, we'll find it. The balance between whom we wish to be and whom we need to be." He sighed. "But for now," he said, nodding to the side, "we simply have to be satisfied with who we are.”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

Source: The Hero of Ages

“Alas! how easily things go wrong!
A sigh too deep or a kiss too long,
And then comes a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.”

George MacDonald book Phantastes

Source: Phantastes (1858)

Life, Kiss

“Jordan slammed the coatrack down on the ground and sighed. "if you were a vampire, this would have been a lot more useful."

"yes," said jace. "or, you know, just someone with a lot of coats.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

“Sometimes," he sighed, "I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

Thinking

“She thought she kept seeing him because she wanted to see him," Macey explained.
"Ooooh," Bex and Liz sighed together.
"It's a by-product of very dramatic kissing," Macey went on like a doctor identifying a common side effect.”

Ally Carter book Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Kiss

“I heard a sigh, as though the books were breathing. I felt that this was where I belonged. This was where I lived.”

Alice Hoffman book The Ice Queen

Source: The Ice Queen

Books

“Sounds like you've got it all planned out."
"Honey, I've got more plans than Wes has ugly shoes."
"And that's a lot." I laugh.
"It sure is," she says with a sigh.”

Laurie Faria Stolarz (1972) American writer

Source: Deadly Little Lies

Shoe

“There was once a big atomic bomb
That wanted to be a bullet.
His friends all asked why, when he was such a big atomic bomb, he would want to be a tiny bullet.
"I miss", he sighed, "the personal touch.”

Tuli Kupferberg (1923–2010) American anarchist, poet, publisher and musician.

Personality

“Was it just her, or did lovers look more adoringly at each other in this city? Especially in the springtime.

'Die, bastards.'

She sighed. It wasn't their fault that they were bastards who should die.”

Kresley Cole book A Hunger Like No Other

Source: A Hunger Like No Other

Lovers

“When you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up?” (…)
A sigh of longing. “To be honest, I wanted to be ruler of the entire world. Or the ruler’s trophy wife.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Surrender

World

“Nïx lay on her side, bending her elbow to casually prop her head in her hand. With a sigh she said, “Bowen, I took you on as my pet project because I like to ogle you. Due to your rowr factor.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night

“Sighing dismally, she acknowledged that some things just weren't humanly possible - not even Martha Stewart could fold fitted sheets.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

“When Kino had finished, Juana came back to the fire and ate her breakfast. They had spoken once, but there is not need for speech if it is only a habit anyway. Kino sighed with satisfaction - and that was conversation.”

John Steinbeck book The Pearl

Source: The Pearl

“Sighing, she shut the book with a snap. “All right. You need to vent, so I’ll listen to you vent. But do it quickly, because Rydstorm was about to plunder Sabine with his thick, hard—”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Twice as Hot

Books

“I would remain nearer you for what time there is."

"Gone in one faerie sigh," she quoted.

Leather-clad fingers brushed over her short hair, rested on her cheek. "I can hold my breath.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Valiant

Quotes, Time

““You can prove anything you want by coldly logical reason—if you pick the proper postulates. We have ours and Cutie has his.”
“Then let’s get at those postulates in a hurry. The storm’s due tomorrow.”
Powell sighed wearily. “That’s where everything falls down. Postulates are based on assumptions and adhered to by faith. Nothing in the Universe can shake them. I’m going to bed.””

Isaac Asimov book I, Robot

Source: I, Robot (1950), “Reason”, p. 63

Faith, Universe

“Sebastian sighed an exaggerated sigh and swung the door shut. Clary stared at Jace. "What the f-"
"Language, Fray." Jace's eyes danced. "Relax.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Dance

“There is no point in keeping vengeance or stubbornness. These things" -he sighed- "these things I so regret in my life. Pride. Vanity. Why do we do the things we do?
Morrie Schwartz”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Life

“I turned to Thalia. ‘I’ll hold the flower while you beat up the thief?’
She sighed. ‘Fine. Let’s go catch this jerk.”

Rick Riordan book The Demigod Files

Source: The Demigod Files

Jerk, Flowers

“Bomb', Reyes said, not bothering to look up.
'One of ours?' Maddox insisted…
'Hardly. I know better than to blow myself up,' Reyes sighed.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: The Darkest Night

“When I hear somebody sigh that "Life is hard," I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?"”

Sydney J. Harris (1917–1986) American journalist

"Purely Personal Prejudices" http://books.google.com/books?id=DLcEAQAAIAAJ&q=%22When+I+hear+somebody+sigh+that+Life+is+hard+I+am+always+tempted+to+ask+Compared+to+what%22&pg=PA241#v=onepage <br class="br">Strictly Personal (1953)

Inspirational, Business, Life, Funny

“Those Grimm brothers," she said with a sigh, "they'll never amount to anything." And she was right because all they ever became was writers.”

Vivian Vande Velde (1951) American writer

Source: Cloaked in Red

“Damn, that werewolf melts my butter,” Mari sighed. “He’s so miserable,” she added delightedly.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dark Needs at Night's Edge

“Still think she is worth it?” Mahon asked quietly.

“Of course. She is my mate.”

Mahon sighed. “So you decided then.”

“Do you think we’d be laying here bleeding in the snow if I wasn’t sure?”

“Good point.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Bleeds - Awake

Thinking

“Sage," he said. "What are you wearing?"
I sighed and stared down at the dress. "I know. It's red. Don't start. I'm tired of hearing about it."
"Funny," he said. "I don't think I could ever get tired of looking at it.”