Quotes about sorrow (1014 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Jewish history is full of suffering and terrible sorrow. But it is also full of immeasurable joy. We honor the suffering through remembrance. We honor the joy through celebration.”

Megan Marie Hart (1983) American opera singer

From "Persönliche Notiz", in the recital program for the opening event of festival year "100 days, 1700 years – Jewish life in Darmstadt". https://www.darmstadt-tourismus.de/en/visit/events/events/artikel/detail/juedisches-leben-in-darmstadt-festjahr-100-tage-1700-jahre.html Liedgut – Famous Musicians of Jewish Origin (2021), p. 2 http://web.archive.org/web/20210902070031/https://staatstheater-darmstadt.s3.eu-central-1.amazonaws.com/produktion/programmbuch/994?response-content-disposition=inline%3B%20filename%3D%22210831_PH_Liedgut_web.pdf%22&response-cache-control=public&X-Amz-Content-Sha256=UNSIGNED-PAYLOAD&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAUCI3T77LT4YWGJ7O%2F20210902%2Feu-central-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20210902T070031Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=600&X-Amz-Signature=d36591acd16fc78b29808a50bfaf03d75dc5d97aaab1945548d8ad24040d4a9d.
Original: (de) Jüdische Geschichte ist voll von Leiden und schrecklichem Kummer. Aber sie ist auch voll von unermesslicher Freude. Wir ehren das Leiden durch Erinnern. Wir ehren die Freude durch Feiern.

History , Suffering , Joy

“If my art has nothing to do with people's pain and sorrow, what is 'art' for?”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

Pain , People , Art

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Source: Clippings from My Notebook

Faith , Peaceful

“Worrying is carrying tomorrow's load with today's strength- carrying two days at once. It is moving into tomorrow ahead of time. Worrying doesn't empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.”

Corrie ten Boom (1892–1983) Dutch resistance hero and writer

Time

“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”

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

Courageous , Courage

“Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish;
Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.”

Thomas Moore Come

Come, ye Disconsolate.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Heart

“I like living. I have sometimes been wildly despairing, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Foreword
An Autobiography (1977)

Despair

“To Love is to reach God.
Never will a Lover's chest
feel any sorrow.
Never will a Lover's robe
be touched by mortals.
Never will a Lover's body
be found buried in the earth.
To Love is to reach God.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Hush Don't Say Anything to God (1999)

Love , God , Feeling , Lovers

“But let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

"Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye" · Duet with Judy Collins on Soundstage (January 1976) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVJImYNGqwk
Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)
Context: I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm,
Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,
Yes many loved before us, I know that we are not new,
In city and in forest they smiled like me and you,
But let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

Love , Way

“Work is the best antidote to sorrow, my dear Watson.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Return of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Return of Sherlock Holmes

“Sorrowful and great is the artist's destiny.”

Franz Liszt (1811–1886) Hungarian romantic composer and virtuoso pianist

As quoted in Joseph Machlis, The Enjoyment of Music: An Introduction to Perceptive Listening (1963) Page 107.

“What does your sorrow do while you sleep? -It’s awake and waiting. And when it loses patience, it wakes me up.”

Ivo Andrič (1892–1975) novelist, short story writer

Sleep , Waiting , Patience

“I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death.”

Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese writer

Epilogue, p. 328
My Country and My People (1935)

Life , Death , Wisdom , Age

“Let your tears roll tonight, but tomorrow you will start the battle again. What defeats us, always, is just our own sorrow.”

Amin Maalouf (1949) Francophone Lebanese writer based in France

Source: The First Century After Beatrice

Tear

“But sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. […] True sorrow is as rare as true love.”

Stephen King book Carrie

Source: Carrie

Love

“If I had to tell you how humans made their way to Earth, it would go like this: In the beginning, there was nothing at all but the moon and the sun. And the moon wanted to come out during the day, but there was something so much brighter that seemed to fill up all those hours. The moon grew hungry, thinner and thinner, until she was just a slice of herself, and her tips were as sharp as a knife. By accident, because that is the way most things happen, she poked a hole in the night and out spilled a million stars, like a fountain of tears.

Horrified, the moon tried to swallow them up. And sometimes this worked, because she got fatter and rounder.. But mostly it didn't, because there were just so many. The stars kept coming, until they made the sky so bright that the sun got jealous. He invited the stars to his side of the world, where it was always bright. What he didn't tell them, though, was that in the daytime, they'd never be seen. So the stupid ones leaped from the sky to the ground, and they froze under the weight of their own foolishness.

The moon did her best. She carved each of these blocks of sorrow into a man or a woman. She spent the rest of her time watching out so that her other stars wouldn't fall. She spent the rest of her time holding onto whatever scraps she had left.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Stupidity , World , Way , Star

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

“First of all the deathless gods who dwell on Olympus made a golden race of mortal men who lived in the time of Cronos when he was reigning in heaven. And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them.”

Hesiod book Works and Days

Source: Works and Days (c. 700 BC), line 109.

Men , God , Age , Time

“Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain
That has been, and may be again.”

William Wordsworth The Solitary Reaper

The Solitary Reaper.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Pain , Nature , Loss

“When you feel restless, sad, sorrowful and embittered, look for the cause, and if it is not worth being sorry about (and nothing that does not offend God is worth being sorry about), get rid of your anxiety; if you do not see the causes but feel restless and dissatisfied all the same, put up with it, arm yourself with patience, let the storm pass, and your inner peace will return.
This union, my sister, demands a heart at peace, calm, unalterable, like some place in heaven, and we can and must acquire it fighting hard whatever threatens if from outside ourselves.”

Francisco Palau (1811–1872) Beatified Spanish Discalced Carmelite friar and priest

Letter to Juana Gratia (1857)

God , Sadness , Peace , Feeling

“There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto V, lines 121–123 (tr. Longfellow).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Time , Happiness

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

Laozi (-604) semi-legendary Chinese figure, attributed to the 6th century, regarded as the author of the Tao Te Ching and fou…

This quotation's origin is actually unknown, however it is not found in the Dao De Jing.
生命是一连串的自发的自然变化。逆流而动只会徒增伤悲。接受现实，万物自然循着规律发展。
Misattributed
Variant: Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them — that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

Powerful , Life , Way , Nature

“This passage from nothingness to real being, this quitting of oneself is a birth accompanied by pain, for by it natural love is excluded. All grief except grief for sin comes from love of the world. In God is neither sorrow, nor grief, nor trouble. Wouldst thou be free from all grief and trouble, abide and walk in God, and to God alone. As long as love of the creature is in us, pain cannot cease.”

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) German theologian

Sermon VII : Outward and Inward Morality
Meister Eckhart’s Sermons (1909)

Love , God , Pain , World

“Tears are silent sorrow, screaming for comfort.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

2005

Tear

“Spiritual awakening is not a special feeling, state, or experience. It is not a goal or destination, somewhere to reach in the future. As the Buddha was trying to tell us (though few actually listened), it is not a superhuman achievement or attainment. You don’t have to travel to India to find it. It is not a special state of perfection reserved for the lucky or the privileged few. It is not an exclusive club. It is not an out-of-body experience, and it does not involve living in a cave, shutting off all your beautiful senses, detaching yourself from the realities of this modern world. It cannot be transmitted to you by a fancy bearded (or non-bearded) guru, nor can it be taken away or lost. You do not have to become anyone’s disciple or follower, or give away all your possessions. You do not have to join a cult. You do not have to follow anyone.

Rather, is a constant and ancient invitation – throughout every moment of your life – to trust and embrace yourself exactly as you are, in all your glorious imperfection. It is about being fully present and awake to each precious moment, coming out of the epic movie of past and future (“The Story of Me”) and showing up for life, knowing that even your feelings of non-acceptance are accepted here. It is about radically opening up to this extraordinary gift of existence, embracing both the pain and the joy of it, the bliss and the sorrow, the ecstasy and the overwhelm, the certainty and the doubt. Knowing that you are never separate from the Whole, never broken, never truly lost.”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/writings/shockingly-simple-principles-of-spiritual-awakening/

“Please, don't talk to me about 'Pure Awareness' or 'Dwelling in the Absolute'.
I want to see how you treat your partner,
your kids, your parents, your precious body.
Please, don't lecture me about 'the illusion of the separate self' or how you achieved permanent bliss in just 7 days.
I want to feel a genuine warmth radiating from your heart.
I want to hear how well you listen,
take in information that doesn't fit your personal philosophy.
I want to see how you deal with people who disagree with you.
Don't tell me how awakened you are, how free you are from ego.
I want to know you beneath the words.
I want to know what you're like when troubles befall you.
If you can fully allow your pain and not pretend to be invulnerable.
If you can feel your anger yet not step into violence.
If you can grant safe passage to your sorrow yet not be its slave.
If you can feel your shame and not shame others:
If you can fuck up, and admit it.
If you can say 'sorry', and really mean it.
If you can be fully human in your glorious divinity.
Don't talk to me about your spirituality, friend.
I'm really not that interested.
I only want to meet YOU.
Know your precious heart.
Know the beautiful human struggling for the light.
Before 'the spiritual one'.
Before all the clever words.”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.facebook.com/LifeWithoutACentre/posts/1523252961105640

“The greatest sorrow and burden you can lay on the Father, the greatest unkindness you can do to him is not to believe that he loves you.”

John Owen (1616–1683) English theologian

Source: Communion with God

Love

“Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
That I shall say good night till it be morrow.”

William Shakespeare book Romeo and Juliet

Variant: Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.
Source: Romeo and Juliet

Good Night , Goodbye , Parting , Night

“Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

God

“We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost.”

Erich Maria Remarque book All Quiet on the Western Front

Source: All Quiet on the Western Front

Men , Children

“Our dreams have been doctored. We belong no where. We sail unanchored on troubled seas. We may never be allowed ashore. Our sorrows will never be sad enough. Our joys never happy enough. Our dreams never big enough. Our lives never important enough. To matter..”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

Sadness , Dreams , Joy , Sea

“I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Quote in a letter to Ella Wolfe, "Wednesday 13," 1938, as cited in Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo by Hayden Herrera (1983) ISBN 0-06-091127-1 , p. 197. In a footnote (p.467), Herrera writes that Kahlo had heard this joke from her friend, the poet José Frías.
1925 - 1945
Variant: I tried to drown my sorrows but the bastards learned how to swim.

Learning

“Drink today, and drown all sorrow;
You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow;
Best, while you have it, use your breath;
There is no drinking after death.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

Death , Drink

“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

“But the soul has no culture. The soul has no nations. The soul has no colour or accent or way of life. The soul is forever. The soul is one. And when the heart has its moment of truth and sorrow, the soul can't be stilled.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Life , Truth , Way , Soul

“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

Life , Children , People , Lie

“In our darkest hour, in my deepest despair,
Will you still care? Will you be there?
In my trials and my tribulations,
Through our doubts and frustrations,
In my violence and my turbulence,
Through my fear and my confessions,
And my anguish and my pain,
Through my joy and my sorrow,
In the promise of another tomorrow,
I'll never let you part,
For you're always in my heart.”

Michael Jackson (1958–2009) American singer, songwriter and dancer

Will You Be There
Dangerous (1991)

Pain , Fear , Heart , Joy

“Work is a wonderful regulator of mind and body. I forget all sorrow, grief, bitterness, and I even ignore them altogether in the joy of working.”

Camille Pissarro (1830–1903) French painter

In a letter to his son, Lucien; as quoted in: Brother Thomas (O.S.B.), ‎Rosemary Williams (1999) Creation Out of Clay: The Ceramic Art and Writings of Brother Thomas. p. 45
undated quotes

Joy , Forgetting

“In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”

Solomon (-990–-931 BC) king of Israel and the son of David

Ecclesiastes, 1:18 http://bible.cc/ecclesiastes/1-18.htm, King James Version

Wisdom , Knowledge

“The young feel sorrows much more sharply that the old; the latter are nearer the safety exit.”

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa book The Leopard

I giovani sentono i dolori più acerbamente dei vecchi: per questi l'uscita di sicurezza è più vicina.
Page 184
Il Gattopardo (1958)

Feeling

“Granted that I have the great wisdom to rid myself of the haunting dread of my own death, there remains the death of others and the death of so many feelings and so much sweetness. It is not the conception of truth that will change sorrow. Sorrow, like joy, is absolute.
And yet! The infinite grandeur of our misery becomes confused with glory and almost with happiness, with cold haughty happiness. Was it out of pride or joy that I began to smile when the first white streaks of dawn turned my lamp pale and I saw I was alone in the universe?”

Henri Barbusse (1873–1935) French novelist

The Inferno (1917), Ch. XIV

Death , Wisdom , Truth , Smile

“Woman, please let me explain
I never meant to cause you sorrow or pain
So let me tell you again and again and again…
I love you
Now and forever.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

"Woman"
Lyrics, Double Fantasy (1980)

Love , Pain

“Was there no sword, nothing with which to batter down these walls, this protection, this begetting of children and living behind curtains, and becoming daily more involved and committed, with books and pictures? Better burn one’s life out like Louis, desiring perfection; or like Rhoda leave us, flying past us to the desert; or choose one out of millions and one only like Neville; better be like Susan and love and hate the heat of the sun or the frost-bitten grass; or be like Jinny, honest, an animal. All had their rapture; their common feeling with death; something that stood them in stead. Thus I visited each of my friends in turn, trying, with fumbling fingers, to prise open their locked caskets. I went from one to the other holding my sorrow — no, not my sorrow but the incomprehensible nature of this our life — for their inspection. Some people go to priests; others to poetry; I to my friends, I to my own heart, I to seek among phrases and fragments something unbroken — I to whom there is not beauty enough in moon or tree; to whom the touch of one person with another is all, yet who cannot grasp even that, who am so imperfect, so weak, so unspeakably lonely. There I sat.”

Virginia Woolf book The Waves

Bernard, section IX
The Waves (1931)

Tree , Hate , Making love , Sun

“Stop trying to heal yourself; fix yourself; even awaken yourself. Stop trying to Fast-Forward the movie of your life Let go of 'letting go'. Healing is not a destination.
Your pain, your sorrow, your doubts, your longings, your fearful thoughts: they are not mistakes, and they are not asking to be 'healed'. They are asking to be held. Here, now, lightly in the loving, healing arms of present awareness.”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

“Be willing to expose your unhappiness. Give a voice to the sorrow, the anger, the fear, the deep loneliness burning at your core. Break some taboos. Say the ‘wrong’ thing. Shatter the false image. You may lose followers. You may lose friends. You may lose your job. You will certainly lose your mask.

Change may scare the shit out of you. Good. It’s supposed to. You may lose everything and you may have to begin life again. But the soul will rejoice. It has been through myriad deaths and rebirths. It couldn’t give a fuck about protecting itself from change. It finds change thrilling, life-giving, erotic even.

Yes, there is a bigger Happiness that embraces and celebrates even our deepest unhappiness!”

Jeff Foster (1980) Spiritual teacher

Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/B5RcCpknF7y/

“You, who must rely on others for their happiness, will perpetually be planted in a life of grief and sorrow.”

Gandolfo – (RJ Intindola)

1992

Happiness , Life

“Your cause of sorrow must not be measured by his worth, for then it hath no end.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Source: Macbeth: Playgoer's Edition

“Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.”

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

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Beauty , Home

“Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.”

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

De Profundis (1897)
Variant: Where there is no love there is no understanding.

“No matter where; of comfort no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth”

William Shakespeare Richard II

Variant: Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth,
Let's choose executors and talk of wills
Source: Richard II

“It was cold autumn weather, but in spite of the cold they wandered up and down the roads of the Park for nearly three hours. They agreed to break off their intercourse; every bond, he said, is a bond to sorrow.”

James Joyce book Dubliners

Source: Dubliners

Autumn , Weather

“Then Ben wailed again, hopeless and prolonged. It was nothing. Just sound. It might have been all time and injustice and sorrow become vocal for an instant by a conjunction of planets.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury (1929)

Time

“The source of all humor is not laughter, but sorrow.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Variant: The secret source of humor is not joy but sorrow; there is no humor in heaven.

Laughter

“Behind every trial and sorrow that He makes us shoulder, God has a reason.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

God

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As long as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.”

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

23 February 1944 http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~param/quotes/annefrank.html
(1942 - 1944)
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

God , People , Beauty , Feeling

“sorrow… is a wound that bleeds when any hand but that of
love touches it”

Oscar Wilde book De Profundis

Source: De Profundis

Love

“There's a sorrow and pain in everyone's life, but every now and then there's a ray of light that melts the loneliness in your heart and brings comfort like hot soup and a soft bed.”

Hubert Selby Jr. Requiem for a Dream

Source: Requiem for a Dream

Life , Pain , Light , Heart

“Fair as the moon and joyful as the light;
Tot wan with waiting, not with sorrow dim; Not as she is, but was when hope shone bright;
Not as she is, but as she fills his dreams.”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

Dreams , Hope , Light , Waiting

“And sleep, that sometime shuts up sorrow's eye, Steal me awhile from mine own company.”

William Shakespeare A Midsummer Night's Dream

Source: A Midsummer Night's Dream

Sleep

“But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,
All losses are restored and sorrows end.”

William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet

Thinking , Loss

“If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow”

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian poet and writer

Anger

“Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

Sleep , Wine

“When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only to dream forever.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Life , Pleasure , Dreams

“Everything is sorrow for the wise.”

Patañjali (-200–-150 BC) ancient Indian scholar(s) of grammar and linguistics, of yoga, of medical treatises

Source: The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

“Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow.”

Orhan Pamuk (1952) Turkish novelist, screenwriter, and Nobel Prize in Literature recipient

Source: My Name is Red

Books

“Sorrow comes in great waves… but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us. And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.”

Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic

Strong

“In my dream, I was drowning my sorrows
But my sorrows they learned to swim”

Bono (1960) Irish rock musician, singer of U2

Dreams , Learning

“What are heavy? sea-sand and sorrow.
What are brief? today and tomorrow.
What are frail? spring blossoms and youth.
What are deep? the ocean and truth.”

Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet

Truth , Youth , Spring , Sea

“Pleasures may turn a heart to stone, riches may make it callous, but sorrows cannot break it. Hearts live by being wounded.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Pleasure , Heart

“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”

William Shakespeare Macbeth

Variant: The grief that does not speak whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break.
Source: Macbeth

Heart

“All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.”

Karen Blixen (1885–1962) Danish writer

As quoted in The Human Condition (1958) by Hannah Arendt. This appears as part of a statement in a 1957 interview where she speaks of a friend's comments about her:
I am not a novelist, really not even a writer; I am a storyteller. One of my friends said about me that I think all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them, and perhaps this is not entirely untrue. To me, the explanation of life seems to be its melody, its pattern. And I feel in life such an infinite, truly inconceivable fantasy.
Interview with Bent Mohn in The New York Times Book Review (3 November 1957)
Paraphrased variant : All suffering is bearable if it is seen as part of a story.

“The joys of love… last only a moment. The sorrows of love last all the life long.”

Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer

Source: The Joys of Love

Love , Life , Joy

“I tried to drown my sorrows, but the bastards learned how to swim, and now I am overwhelmed by this decent and good feeling.”

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) Mexican painter

Variant: I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows. But now the damned things have learned to swim, and now decency and good behavior weary me.

Feeling , Learning

“Sometimes we love with nothing more than hope. Sometimes we cry with everything except tears. In the end that’s all there is: love and its duty, sorrow and its truth. In the end that’s all we have - to hold on tight until the dawn”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Love , Truth , Hope , Tear

“In the time of your life, live—so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.”

William Saroyan The Time of Your Life

The Time of Your Life (1939)
Context: Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart. Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle, but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret. In the time of your life, live — so that in the wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.
Context: In the time of your life, live — so that in that good time there shall be no ugliness or death for yourself or for any life your life touches. Seek goodness everywhere, and when it is found, bring it out of its hiding-place and let it be free and unashamed. Place in matter and in flesh the least of the values, for these are things that hold death and must pass away. Discover in all things that which shines and is beyond corruption. Encourage virtue in whatever heart it may have been driven into secrecy and sorrow by the shame and terror of the world. Ignore the obvious, for it is unworthy of the clear eye and the kindly heart. Be the inferior of no man, nor of any man be the superior. Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart. Despise evil and ungodliness, but not men of ungodliness or evil. These, understand. Have no shame in being kindly and gentle, but if the time comes in the time of your life to kill, kill and have no regret. In the time of your life, live — so that in the wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it.

Life , World , Smile , Time

“Although not a very old man, I have yet lived a great deal in my life, and I have known sorrow too bitter and joy too keen to allow me to become either cast down or elated for more than a very brief period over any success or defeat.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Life , Success , Joy

“I still love you. And sometimes, my friend, the love that I have, and can't give to you, crushes the breath from my chest. Sometimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Love , Star , Laughter , Sleep

“How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.”

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

When You Are Old http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/1756/, st. 1–3
The Rose (1893)
Source: The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats
Context: p>When you are old and gray and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.</p