Quotes about sorrow
page 4

“The eyes mirror the heart of a person. An entire life can be seen through them. Love, sorrow, deceit, pain. If you look closely, it’s all there.”

Gail Tsukiyama (1957) American writer

Source: The Language of Threads

Love, Life, Pain, Heart

“If it is true that there is no greater sorrow than to remember a
happy time in a state of misery, it is just as true that calling up a
moment of anguish in a tranquil mood, seated quietly at one's desk, is
a source of profound satisfaction.”

Primo Levi book The Periodic Table

Source: The Periodic Table

Happiness, Mood, Time

“Sorrow floats.”

John Irving book The Hotel New Hampshire

Source: The Hotel New Hampshire

“We all have our sorrows, and although the exact delinaments, weight and dimensions of grief are different for everyone, the color of grief is common to us all.
I know, he said, because he was human, and therefore, in a way, he did.”

Diane Setterfield book The Thirteenth Tale

Source: The Thirteenth Tale

Color, Way

“Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Faith, Sad, Wise, Life

“Sorrow is better than fear. Fear is a journey, a terrible journey. But, sorrow is at least an arriving.”

Alan Paton (1903–1988) South African writer and activist

Fear

“Christ is sufficient. We do not need "support groups" for each and every separate tribulation. The most widely divergent sorrows may all be taken to the foot of the same old rugged cross and find there cleansing, peace, and joy.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: These Strange Ashes

Peace, Support, Joy, Christ

“… two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.”

Aldous Huxley book Island

Source: Island

Universe

“A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don’t get to choose our own hearts. We can’t make ourselves want what’s good for us or what’s good for other people. We don’t get to choose the people we are.”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

People, Understanding, Heart

“Gatsby turned out all right at the end; it is what preyed on Gatsby, what foul dust floated in the wake of his dreams that temporarily closed out my interest in the abortive sorrows and short-winded elations of men.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Men, Dreams

“It was a fine cry — loud and long — but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.”

Toni Morrison book Sula

Source: Sula (1973)

Cry, Sad

“One can be in love with several people at the same time, feel the sorrow with each, and not betray any of them.”

Gabriel García Márquez (1927–2014) Colombian writer

Love, People, Feeling, Time

“Harper, your song has a sorrowful sound,
Though the tune was written as gay.
Your voice is sad and your hands are slow
And your eye meeting mine turns away.”

Anne McCaffrey book Dragonsong

Source: Dragonsong

Sadness

“God abandons only those who abandon themselves, and whoever has the courage to shut up his sorrow within his own heart is stronger to fight against it than he who complains.”

George Sand La Petite Fadette

Source: La Petite Fadette

God, Courage, Heart, Fight

“Your tears do not wash away your sorrows. They feed someone else's joy. And that is why you must learn to swallow your own tears.”

Amy Tan The Joy Luck Club

Source: The Joy Luck Club

Tear, Learning, Joy

“Humor and paradox are often the only ways to respond to life's sorrow with grace.”

Matthew Fox (1966) American actor

Life, Way

“You must reach inside yourselves where I live like a story, not old, not young laughing at my own sorrow, weeping pearls at weddings, wielding a torch to melt sand into something clear and bright.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Source: The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

Wedding

“Give me your hand
out of the depths
sown by your sorrows.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

“Never forget that God is your friend. And like all friends, He longs to hear what's been happening in your life. Good or bad, whether it's been full of sorrow or anger, or even when you're questioning why terrible things have to happen.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

Life, God, Question, Anger

“therefore i live for today-
certain of finding at sunrise
guidance and strength for the way.
power for each moment of weakness,
hope for each moment of pain,
comfort for every sorrow,
sunshine and joy after rain!”

Billy Graham (1918–2018) American Christian evangelist

Source: Hope for Each Day: Words of Wisdom and Faith

Pain, Hope, Way, Joy

“As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy.”

George MacDonald book Phantastes

Source: Phantastes

Life, Pleasure, Truth, Sadness

“Can I see another's woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another's grief,
And not seek for kind relief?”

William Blake On Another's Sorrow

On Another's Sorrow, st. 1
1780s, Songs of Innocence (1789–1790)

Sad

“Life will always be sorrowful. We can't change it, but we can change our attitude toward it.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Source: A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

Life, Change

“If you know someone who tries to drown their sorrows, you might tell them sorrows know how to swim.”

H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer

Source: P.S. I Love You

“To care passionately for another human creature brings always more sorrow than joy; but at the same time, Elinor, one would not be without experience. Anyone who has never really loved has never really lived..”

Agatha Christie book Sad Cypress

Source: Sad Cypress

Love, Passion, Time, Joy

“To Sorrow
I bade good morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me, and so kind.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Bk. IV, l. 173
Endymion (1818)
Source: The Complete Poems
Context: To Sorrow
I bade good-morrow,
And thought to leave her far away behind;
But cheerly, cheerly,
She loves me dearly;
She is so constant to me, and so kind:
I would deceive her
And so leave her,
But ah! she is so constant and so kind.

Love

“Music… will help dissolve your perplexities and purify your character and sensibilities, and in time of care and sorrow, will keep a fountain of joy alive in you.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Music, Time, Help, Joy

“Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

Source: The Road

World, Time

“Yet there be certain times in a young man’s life, when, through great sorrow or sin, all the boy in him is burnt and seared away so that he passes at one step to the more sorrowful state of manhood”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Life, Boy, Time

“The sorrow that lay cold in her mother's heart… converted it into a tomb.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter

Heart

“War is not heroic. War is not exhilarating. War is full of despair. It is dark. It is dreadful. It is a thing of sorrow and gloom. That is why people fear war. That is why people choose to avoid it.
~Izuru Kira”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

War, People, Fear, Despair

“To bow to the fact of our life's sorrows and betrayals is to accept them; and from this deep gesture we discover that all life is workable. As we learn to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.”

Jack Kornfield (1945) American writer

Life, Imagination, Freedom, Learning

“perhaps grief is as much regret for what we have never had as sorrow for what we have lost.”

David Nicholls book Us

Source: Us

“Such is the life of a man. Moments of joy, obliterated by unforgettable sorrow.”

Marcel Pagnol (1895–1974) novelist, playwright and filmmaker from France

Life, Joy

“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Love, People, Suffering, Hurtful

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Joy, Sad, Deep, Happy

“For the happy man prayer is only a jumble of words, until the day when sorrow comes to explain to him the sublime language by means of which he speaks to God.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

God, Happiness

“That's all the glory my heart is after,
Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you.
I'd rather write about laughing than crying,
For laughter makes men human, and courageous.”

Francois Rabelais book Gargantua and Pantagruel

Source: Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1564)
Context: Readers, friends, if you turn these pages
Put your prejudice aside,
For, really, there's nothing here that's outrageous,
Nothing sick, or bad — or contagious.
Not that I sit here glowing with pride
For my book: all you'll find is laughter:
That's all the glory my heart is after,
Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you.
I'd rather write about laughing than crying,
For laughter makes men human, and courageous.

Men, Courage, Laughter, Heart

“Tape the sound of the moon fading at dawn. Give it to your mother to listen to when she's in sorrow.”

Yoko Ono (1933) Japanese artist, author, and peace activist

“The busy bee has no time for sorrow.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

Source: 1790s, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790–1793), Proverbs of Hell, Line 11

Business, Bee, Time

“True sorrow is as rare as true love.”

Stephen King book Carrie

Source: Carrie

Love

“One for sorrow, two for mirth, three for a wedding, four for a birth, five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret that's never been told.
~ Simon”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Secret, Birth, Wedding

“When I run the world, librarians will be exempt from tragedy. Even their smaller sorrows will last only for as long as you can take out a book.”

Karen Joy Fowler book We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Books, World

“Oh, seek, my love, your newer way;
I'll not be left in sorrow.
So long as I have yesterday,
Go take your damned tomorrow!”

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

Love, Way

“What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
Degenerate sons and daughters,
Life is too strong for you—
It takes life to love Life.”

Edgar Lee Masters (1868–1950) American writer

Love, Life, Hope, Strong

“He warned me the greediest wishes cause the greatest sorrows.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

“We tend to forget at times that it is the little ones, the children, who do suffer the greatest hurt. If we cannot comprehend why certain sorrows are visited upon us, how on earth can they?”

Sharon Kay Penman book The Sunne in Splendour

Source: The Sunne in Splendour

Children, Suffering, Time, Hurt

“Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

World, Joy, Sad

“Black for hunting through the night
For death and sorrow, the color’s white
Gold for a bride in her wedding gown,
And red to call enchantment down.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Death, Color, Wedding, Night

“So of course time is necessary. But nevertheless damn painful, for it transforms all the pieces of your life - joy and sorrow, youth and age, love and hate, terror and bliss - from fire into smoke rising up the air and dissipating on a breeze.”

Charles Frazier (1950) American writer

Love, Life, Pain, Hate

“To each his suff'rings: all are men,
Condemn'd alike to groan,
The tender for another's pain;
Th' unfeeling for his own.
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.”

Thomas Gray (1716–1771) English poet, historian

St. 10 <br class="br"> Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=odec (written 1742–1750)

Men, Pain, Fate, Happiness

“Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate contracts for objects of mere occasional interest may be dissolved at pleasure — but the state ought not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest, and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with other reverence; because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary and perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue, and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are to be born. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primaeval contract of eternal society, linking the lower with the higher natures, connecting the visible and the invisible world, according to a fixed compact sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds all physical and all moral natures, each in their appointed place. This law is not subject to the will of those, who by an obligation above them, and infinitely superior, are bound to submit their will to that law. The municipal corporations of that universal kingdom are not morally at liberty at their pleasure, and on their speculations of a contingent improvement, wholly to separate and tear asunder the bands of their subordinate community, and to dissolve it into an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of elementary principles. It is the first and supreme necessity only, a necessity that is not chosen, but chooses, a necessity paramount to deliberation, that admits no discussion, and demands no evidence, which alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This necessity is no exception to the rule; because this necessity itself is a part too of that moral and physical disposition of things, to which man must be obedient by consent or force: but if that which is only submission to necessity should be made the object of choice, the law is broken, nature is disobeyed, and the rebellious are outlawed, cast forth, and exiled, from this world of reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and unavailing sorrow.”

Edmund Burke book Reflections on the Revolution in France

Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)

Pleasure, World, Peace, Law

“On this present, fallen earth there is sorrow, suffering, sickness and death. On the new earth there will be life—everlasting life, unending health, joy, and gladness forever and ever.”

Paul P. Enns (1937) American theologian

Source: Heaven Revealed (Moody, 2011), p. 112

Life, Death, Health, Suffering

“Pandora, waking: …
I am alone. These faces in the mirrors
Are but the shadows and phantoms of myself;
They cannot help nor hinder. No one sees me,
Save the all-seeing Gods…
She lifts the lid. A dense mist rises from the chest
and fills the room. Pandora falls senseless on
the floor. Storm without.

Chorus of Dreams from the Gate of Horn: …
Fever of the heart and brain,
Sorrow, pestilence, and pain,
Moans of anguish, maniac laughter,
All the evils that hereafter
Shall afflict and vex mankind,
All into the air have risen
From the chambers of their prison;
Only Hope remains behind.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) American poet

The Masque of Pandora and Other Poems (1875)

God, Pain, Dreams, Hope

“Vital is the relation between earthly sorrow and eternal satisfaction. The travail to which God's saints are subjected results in the birth of nobler natures and more sanctified spirits. Pain always promotes progress, and suffering invariably ensures success.”

John McClellan Holmes (1834–1911) US Christian minister and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 556.

God, Pain, Birth, Nature

“I thought, beloved, to have brought to you
A gift of quietness and ease and peace,
Cooling your brow as with the mystic dew
Dropping from twilight trees.
Homeward I go not yet; the darkness grows;
Not mine the voice to still with peace divine:
From the first fount the stream of quiet flows
Through other hearts than mine.
Yet of my night I give to you the stars,
And of my sorrow here the sweetest gains,
And out of hell, beyond its iron bars,
My scorn of all its pains.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

"For Brian when he is grown up this handful of The Nuts of Knowledge I have gathered on The Secret Streams".
The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Pain, Peace, Star, Hell

“The damps of autumn sink into the leaves and prepare them for the necessity of their fall; and thus insensibly are we, as years close around us, detached from our tenacity of life by the gentle pressure of recorded sorrow.”

Walter Savage Landor (1775–1864) British writer

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 8.

Life, Autumn

“Take care, while you are young, that you can think in those days, 'I never whitened a hair of her dear head, I never marked a sorrowful line in her face!' For of all the many things that you can think when you are a man, you had better have that by you, Woolwich!”

Charles Dickens book Bleak House

Source: Bleak House (1852-1853), Ch. 34

Thinking

“The compassionate heart of his majesty finds no pleasure in cruelties or in causing sorrow to others; he is ever sparing of the lives of his subjects, wishing to bestow happiness upon all.”

Akbar (1542–1605) 3rd Mughal Emperor

Ain-i-Akbari by Abul Fazl. quoted from Lal, K. S. (1999). Theory and practice of Muslim state in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 2

Happiness, Pleasure, Heart

“Love is just a little bit of death in the heart,
For how often can one love in certainty that love will be returned?
Giving so much love, and receiving so little of it;
Because people are fickle, or indifferent? Who knows?
During moments together as in hours apart,
I'm mindful that the moon fades, flowers wither, souls pass away…
They wander lost in the somber darkness of sorrow,
Those fools who follow the footprints of love.
Because life is an endless desert,
And love is an entangling web.
Love is just a little bit of death in the heart.”

Xuân Diệu (1916–1985) Vietnamese poet

"Love" [Yêu], as quoted in "Shattered Identities and Contested Images: Reflections of Poetry and History in 20th-Century Vietnam" by Neil Jamieson, in Crossroads: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 7, No. 2, 1992, pp. 86–87, and in Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), p. 162
Variant translation by Huỳnh Sanh Thông:
To love is to die a little in the heart,
for when you love can you be sure you're loved?
You give so much, so little you get back—
the other lets you down or looks away.
Together or apart, it's still the same.
The moon turns pale, blooms fade, the soul's bereaved...
They'll lose their way amidst dark sorrowland,
those passionate fools who go in search of love.
And life will be a desert bare of joy,
and love will tie the knot that binds to grief.
To love is to die a little in the heart.

Love, Life, Death, People

“Pleasant is it to the unhappy to speak, and to recall the sorrows of old time.”
Dulce loqui miseris veteresque reducere questus.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book V, Line 48 (tr. J. H. Mozley)

Time

“There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow; but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Letter to Hester Thrale (12 April 1781) http://books.google.com/books?id=184WAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA736

Love, Wisdom

“In our weakness, His strength is ours. In our conflicts, His victories are ours. In our bereavements and sorrows, His grace is ours. He had not where to lay His weary head, that we might have His bosom on which to lean our fevered brows. He endured the cross, and despised the shame, that, instead of weeping and wailing, we might share His immortal blessedness.”

Richard Fuller (minister) (1804–1876) United States Baptist minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 246.

Victory

“My people are in the world again. No sorrow will live in my heart as long as that joy — save one, and I thank you for that, too.”

Peter S. Beagle book The Last Unicorn

The Last Unicorn (1968)

People, World, Heart, Joy

“Ere sin could blight or sorrow fade,
Death came with friendly care;
The opening bud to heaven conveyed,
And bade it blossom there.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

Epitaph on an Infant
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Death

“The sin is yours, but the shame and sorrow are mine, the past I cannot retrieve, the future is still unspoiled and I will not embitter it by any willful sin. Before I was innocently guilty, now I should be doubly guilty if I went back to the 'gay free life I love.' Atone for the wrong you have done me by ceasing to tempt and trouble me. I will not yield, though you hunt me to death.”

Louisa May Alcott A Long Fatal Love Chase

A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866)

Love, Life, Death, Past

“One of the hardest things I do as FBI Director is call the chiefs and sheriffs in departments around the nation when officers have been killed in the line of duty. I call to express my sorrow and offer the FBI’s help. Officers like Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, two of NYPD’s finest who were gunned down by a madman who thought his ambush would avenge the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. I make far too many calls. And, there are far too many names of fallen officers on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and far too many names etched there each year.”

James Comey (1960) American lawyer and the seventh director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

2010s, Hard Truths: Law Enforcement (2015)

Death, Law, Memory, Help

“Spare your life, lest you consume it with sorrow and care.”

Stobaeus Ancient Greek anthologist

52
Pythagorean Ethical Sentences

Life

“O, to have the soul bathed all day long in this thought, " as the pebble in the willow brook " until the words come like the tears, because the heart is full, and we cannot help it; to feel, in the darkest hour, that there is an unseen Spectator whose eyes rest on us like morning on the flowers; and that in the severest sorrow, we can sink into a presence full of love and sympathy, deeper than ever breathed from earth or sky or loving hearts— a presence in which all fears and anxieties melt away as ice-crystals in the warm ocean. This is heaven.”

Edward Thomson (1810–1870) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 432.

Love, Fear, Feeling, Soul

“For that mist may break when the sun is high
And this soul forget its sorrow
And the rose ray of the closing day
May promise a brighter morrow.”

Emily Brontë (1818–1848) English novelist and poet

What Use Is It To Slumber Here?

Soul, Sun, Forgetting

“Let hopes and sorrows, fears and angers be,
And think each day that dawns the last you'll see;
For so the hour that greets you unforeseen
Will bring with it enjoyment twice as keen.”

John Conington (1825–1869) British classical scholar

Book I, epistle iv, p. 108
Translations, The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry of Horace (1869), Epistles

Fear, Hope, Thinking, Anger

“…That we wished to fly in heaven, two birds with the wings of one,
And to grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree.
Earth endures, heaven endures; some time both shall end,
While this unending sorrow goes on and on for ever.”

Bai Juyi (772–846) Chinese poet of the Tang Dynasty

在天願作比翼鳥
在地願為連理枝
天長地久有時盡
此恨綿綿無絶期
The last four lines.
"A Song of Unending Sorrow"

Bird, Time, Flying

“Thou sorrow, venom Elfe.
Is this thy play,
To spin a web out of thyselfe
To Catch a Fly?
For Why?
[…]
To tangle Adams race
In's stratigems
To their Destructions, spoil'd, made base
By venom things
Damn'd Sins.”

Edward Taylor (1642–1729) American poet

"Upon a Spider Catching a Fly" St. 1 & 8

Flying

“I wrote what I did because as a woman, as a mother I was oppressed and broken-hearted, with the sorrows and injustice I saw, because as a Christian I felt the dishonor to Christianity — because as a lover of my country I trembled at the coming day of wrath.
It is no merit in the sorrowful that they weep, or to the oppressed and smothering that they gasp and struggle, not to me, that I must speak for the oppressed — who cannot speak for themselves.”

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) Abolitionist, author

On Uncle Tom's Cabin in a letter to Lord Denman (20 January 1853).

Lovers, Heart, Country

“How fast we learn in the day of sorrow! Scripture shines out in a new effulgence; every verse seems to contain a sunbeam, every promise stands out in illuminated splendor; things hard to be understood become in a moment plain.”

Horatius Bonar (1808–1889) British minister and poet

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 555.

Learning

“Laura and I have come to Blacksburg today with hearts full of sorrow. This is a day of mourning for the Virginia Tech community -- and it is a day of sadness for our entire nation. We've come to express our sympathy. In this time of anguish, I hope you know that people all over this country are thinking about you, and asking God to provide comfort for all who have been affected.Yesterday began like any other day. Students woke up, and they grabbed their backpacks and they headed for class. And soon the day took a dark turn, with students and faculty barricading themselves in classrooms and dormitories -- confused, terrified, and deeply worried. By the end of the morning, it was the worst day of violence on a college campus in American history -- and for many of you here today, it was the worst day of your lives.It's impossible to make sense of such violence and suffering. Those whose lives were taken did nothing to deserve their fate. They were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now they're gone -- and they leave behind grieving families, and grieving classmates, and a grieving nation.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Remarks by the President at Virginia Tech Memorial Convocation http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2007/04/20070417-1.html (April 17, 2007) <br class="br">2000s, 2007

God, Fate, People, Sadness

“But love for an object eternal and infinite feeds the mind with joy alone, and a joy which is free from all sorrow. This is something greatly to be desired and to be sought with all our strength.”
Sed amor erga rem aeternam et infinitam sola laetitia pascit animum, ipsaque omnis tristitiae est expers; quod valde est desiderandum totisque viribus quaerendum.

Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677) Dutch philosopher

I, 10; translation by W. Hale White (Revised by Amelia Hutchison Stirling)
On the Improvement of the Understanding (1662)

Love, Joy

“Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle
Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime?
Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,
Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime!”

George Gordon Byron book The Bride of Abydos

Canto I, stanza 1; this can be compared to: "Know'st thou the land where the lemon-trees bloom, / Where the gold orange glows in the deep thicket's gloom, / Where a wind ever soft from the blue heaven blows, / And the groves are of laurel and myrtle and rose!" Goethe, Wilhelm Meister.
The Bride of Abydos (1813)

Love, Rage

“When I am dead, no pageant train
Shall waste their sorrows at my bier,
Nor worthless pomp of homage vain
Stain it with hypocritic tear.”

Edward Everett (1794–1865) American politician, orator, statesman

"The Dirge of Alaric, the Visigoth" In The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal Vol. V, No. 25 (January-June 1823), p. 64.

Tear, Training, Dead

“The most of my sufferings and sorrows were occasioned by my own unwillingness to be nothing, which I am, and by struggling to be something.”

Edward Payson (1783–1827) American religious leader

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 335.

Suffering

“For once in my life
I won’t let sorrow hurt me,
Not like it’s hurt me before, oh
For once I have something I know won't desert me
‘Cause I’m not alone anymore.”

Stevie Wonder (1950) American musician

For Once In My Life
Song lyrics

Life, Hurt

“Who goeth a borrowing
Goeth a sorrowing.”

Thomas Tusser (1524–1580) English poet

"June's Abstract".
A Hundred Points of Good Husbandry (1557)

“My spirits.... now lean towards sadness and melancholy. I too am beginning to feel my age. Then, as one moves on in life sorrows multiply, and necessarily it is harder to keep cheerful... [I experienced] violent disappointments, that I might even call grief.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875) French landscape painter and printmaker in etching

Quote in Corot's letter to Jean-Gabriel Scheffer, 27 Dec. 1845; as quoted in Corot, Gary Tinterow, Michael Pantazzi, Vincent Pomarède - Galeries nationales du Grand Palais (France), National Gallery of Canada, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.), 1996, p. 142
this is one of the very few negative expressions by Corot; he is then 49.
1820 - 1850

Life, Age, Sadness, Disappointment