Quotes about sorrow
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“Youth's first acquaintance with sorrow is a terrible thing—before time has taught, what it will surely teach, that grief is our natural portion, at once transitory and eternal. But the first lesson is the severest—we have not then looked among our fellows, and seen that suffering is general; and we feel as if marked out by fate for misery that has no parallel.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Fate, Youth, Feeling, Nature

“Wisdom did not belong to mortals, and those whom others called wise were only those who, through grim experience, had touched the very edges of unwelcome truths. For the wise, even joy was tinged with sorrow. No, the world made its demands upon mortals and they were immediate ones, pressingly, ferociously so, and even knowing a reasonable course was not enough to alter a mad plunge into disaster.”

Steven Erikson book Forge of Darkness

Forge of Darkness (2013)

Wisdom, Truth, World, Joy

“His eyes
All radiant with glad surprise,
Looked forward through the Centuries
And saw the seeds which sages cast
In the world’s soil in cycles past
Spring up and blossom at the last;
Saw how the souls of men had grown,
And where the scythes of Truth had mown
Clear space for Liberty’s white throne;
Saw how, by sorrow tried and proved,
The blackening stains had been removed
Forever from the land he loved;
Saw Treason crushed and Freedom crowned,
And clamorous Faction, gagged and bound,
Gasping its life out on the ground.”

Richard Realf (1832–1878) American poet

Apocalypse.

Love, Life, Men, Truth

“…some say that Happiness is not Good for Mortals & they ought to be answerd that Sorrow is not fit for Immortals & is utterly useless to any one a blight never does good to a tree & if a blight kill not a tree but it still bear fruit let none say that the fruit was in consequence of the blight.”

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

Letter to William Hayley (1803-10-07)
1810s

Happiness, Tree

“Let me say finally that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam (1967)

Love, War, World, Disappointment

“Even at the cost of what is called honor and honesty? That is comfortable philosophy, and having preached and practiced it all my days I've no right to condemn it. But the saints would call it sinful and dangerous and tell you that life should be one long penance full of sorrow, sacrifice and psalm-singing.”

Louisa May Alcott A Long Fatal Love Chase

A Long Fatal Love Chase (1866)

Life, Singing

“It was a life, she eventually concluded, that had been lived in the middle ground, where contentment and love were found in the smallest details of people's lives. It was a life of dignity and honor, not without sorrows yet fulfilling in a way that few experiences ever were. She knew Tuck understood that more than anyone.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Amanda Collier Ridley, Chapter 2, p. 35
2009, The Best of Me (2011)

Love, Life, People, Way

“No music was made from grief, moulded from sorrow.”

Juhani Aho (1861–1921) Finnish author and journalist

Juhani Aho. Yksin ("Alone," 1890, tr. as Seul 2013); cited in: Guri Barstad, ‎Karen P. Knutsen (2016), States of Decadence: On the Aesthetics of Beauty, Decline and Transgression across Time and Space Volume 1. p. 2

Music

“Do not allow your sorrow or your rage to become hostility toward people on the basis of their ethnicity or their religious views. That is unacceptable; it is out of bounds, and if you break the law, we will prosecute you for it.”

John Ashcroft (1942) American politician

Source: Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice (2006), p. 179

Hostility, People, Law, Rage

“When Siddhartha listened attentively to this river, to the song of a thousand voices; when he did not listen to the sorrow or laughter, when he did not bind his soul to any one particular voice and absorb it in his Self, but heard them all, the whole, the unity; then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om — perfection.”

Hermann Hesse (1877–1962) German writer

Source: Siddhartha (1922), p. 94

Soul, Laughter, Perfection

“Have you, with your work, made anyone glow? Erupted their sorrow? Evicted their woe? Have you been anyone's consolation through a night? Have you evoked unrehearsed emotion? Chiseled a crack in someone's encasement and watched them escape? Followed the muses wherever they led? Kept on creating when left for dead? Do not bother me with punctuation until you have earned your degree.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

"To Some Critics"
Degrees: Thought Capsules and Micro Tales (1989)

Night, Dead

“But it isn’t absence that causes sorrow. It is affection and love. Without affection, without love, such absences would cause us no pain. For this reason, even the pain caused by absence is, in the end, something good and even beautiful, because it feeds on that which gives meaning to life.”

Carlo Rovelli book The Order of Time

Source: The Order of Time (2018), p. 105

Love, Life, Pain, Beauty

“O power of Love, O wondrous mystery!
How is my dark illumined by thy light,
That maketh morning of my gloomy night,
Setting my soul from Sorrow's bondage free
With swift-sent revelation! Yea, I see
Beyond the limitation of my sight
And senses, comprehending now, aright,
Today's proportion to eternity.
Through thee, my faith in God is made me sure,
My searching eyes have pierced the misty veil;
The pain and anguish which stern Sorrow brings
Through thee become more easy to endure.
Love-strong I mount, and heaven's high summit scale;
Through thee, my soul has spread her folded wings.”

Katrina Trask (1853–1922) American writer

Love

Love, God, Pain, Faith

“How can they say confiding is relief?
Light are the woes that to the eyelids spring,
Subdued and soften'd by the tears they bring;
But there are some too long, too well conceal'd,
Too deeply felt,—that are but once reveal'd:
Like the withdrawing of the mortal dart,
And then the life-blood follows from the heart;
Sorrow, before unspoken by a sigh,
But which, once spoken, only hath to die.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Neglected One
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

Life, Confidence, Spring, Tear

“Whate’er there be of Sorrow
I’ll put off till To-morrow,
And when To-morrow comes, why then
’T will be To-day and Joy again.”

John Kendrick Bangs (1862–1922) American author, editor and satirist

The Word.

Joy

“The present! it sinketh with sorrow and care,
That but for the future, it never could bear;
We dwell in its shadow, we see by its light,
And to-day trusts to-morrow, it then will be bright.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Light, Future

“You know what I want. If I may become a clergyman, if I fulfill that position so that my work is equal to that of our Father [who was a clergy-man], then I shall thank God. I have good hope that I shall succeed, it was once said to me by someone who was further on in life than I, and who was no stranger in Jerusalem:… I believe that you are a Christian, you see, it was so good for me to hear those words… It is good to believe that there is a God who knows what we need, better than we know it ourselves, and who helps us when we need help. It is also good to believe that, just as in the olden days, now, too, an angel is not far from those who feel godly sorrow… I've carefully read the story of Elijah so often, and so often has it given me strength up to now:”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Vincent then quotes 1 Kings 19:3-15, leaving out all but the beginning of verses 14 and 15 quote from his letter to Theo, from Amsterdam, 31 May 1877 letter 118 http://vangoghletters.org/vg/letters/let118/letter.html 1870s

Life, God, Hope, Angels

“The secret belief that the Lord of conscience loves and accepts each faithful sacrifice is the ultimate and sufficient support of all goodness; dispensing with the chorus of approving voices; replacing all vain self-reliance with a Divine strength; and with the peace of a reconciled nature consoling the inevitable sorrows of a devoted life.”

James Martineau (1805–1900) English religious philosopher

Source: Hours of Thought on Sacred Things (1879), p. 190.

Love, Life, Secret, Peace

“No wearisome days, no sorrowful nights; no hunger or thirst; no anxiety or fears; no envies, no jealousies, no breaches of friendship, no sad separations, no distrusts or forebodings, no self-reproaches, no enmities, no bitter regrets, no tears, no heartaches; "And there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed away."”

Randolph Sinks Foster (1820–1903) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 300.

Death, Hunger, Pain, Friendship

“Distant or near,
in joy or in sorrow,
each in the other
sees his true helper
to brotherly freedom.”

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

Letters and Papers from Prison (1967; 1997), The Friend

Freedom, Distant, Joy

“Thus while I journey on, my Lord to meet,
My thoughts and meditations are so sweet,
Of Him on whom I lean, my strength, my stay,
I can forget the sorrows of the way.”

Horatius Bonar (1808–1889) British minister and poet

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 434.

Way, Forgetting

“There's nae sorrow there, John,
There's neither cauld nor care, John,
The day is aye fair,
In the land o' the leal.”

Carolina, Baroness Nairne (1766–1845) British musician

The Land o’ the Leal.

“Spare no effort to suppress selfishness, unless that effort would entail sorrow.”

Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general

Misattributed, Jackson's personal book of maxims

Effort, Selfishness

“The Declaration of Independence was a source of inspiration to believe in ideals that transformed us from Jews to Israelis. … I am asking today with deep sorrow: Can we, despite all our achievements, ignore the intolerable gap between what the Declaration of Independence promised and what was fulfilled, the gap between the idea and the realities of Israel? Does the condition of occupation and domination over another people fit the Declaration of Independence? Is there any sense in the independence of one at the expense of the fundamental rights of the other? Can the Jewish people whose history is a record of continued suffering and relentless persecution, allow themselves to be indifferent to the rights and suffering of a neighboring people? Can the State of Israel allow itself an unrealistic dream of an ideological end to the conflict instead of pursuing a pragmatic, humanitarian one based on social justice. I believe that despite all the objective and subjective difficulties, the future of Israel and its position in the family of enlightened nations will depend on our ability to realize the promise of the founding fathers as they canonized it in the Declaration of Independence. I have always believed that there is no military solution to the Jewish Arab conflict, neither from a moral nor a strategic one and since a solution is therefore inevitable I ask myself, why wait?”

Daniel Barenboim (1942) Israeli Argentine-born pianist and conductor

Statement at the Knesset upon receiving the Wolf Prize, May 9, 2004, transcript online https://electronicintifada.net/content/daniel-barenboims-statement-knesset-upon-receiving-wolf-prize-may-9-2004/5080 (16 May 2004) at The Electronic Intifada.

People, Family, Justice, Dreams

“Wide open and unguarded stand our gates,
Named of the four winds, North, South, East and West;
Portals that lead to an enchanted land…
Here, it is written, Toil shall have its wage
And Honor honor, and the humblest man
Stand level with the highest in the law.
Of such a land have men in dungeons dreamed
And with the vision brightening in their eyes
Gone smiling to the fagot and the sword.

O Liberty, white Goddess! is it well
To leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast
Fold Sorrow’s children, soothe the hurts of Fate,
Lift the down-trodden, but with hand of steel
Stay those who to thy sacred portals come
To waste the gifts of Freedom.”

Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907) American poet, novelist, editor

Unguarded Gates; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Men, Fate, Children, Law

“Come, gentle harp, and let me hold
Communion with thy melody,
And be my tale of sorrow told
To thee, my harp, and only thee.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(27th September 1823) Extracts from my Pocket Book. Song
The London Literary Gazette, 1823

“In durance vile here must I wake and weep,
And all my frowsy couch in sorrow steep.”

Robert Burns (1759–1796) Scottish poet and lyricist

Epistle from Esopus to Maria
Posthumous Pieces (1799)

“you don't really care about the trials of tomorrow, rather lay awake in a bed full of sorrow”

Kid Cudi (1984) American rapper, singer, songwriter, guitarist and actor from Ohio

-Pursuit of Happiness
Music

“The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.”

William Cowper (1731–1800) (1731–1800) English poet and hymnodist

To an Afflicted Protestant Lady.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“There is a strange charm in the thoughts of a good legacy, or the hopes of an estate, which wondrously alleviates the sorrow that men would otherwise feel for the death of friends.”

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright

Source: Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605–1615), Part II (1615), Book IV, Ch. 74.

Death, Men, Hope, Feeling

“The message of India to our neighbourhood and to the rest of the world has been and will be peace, friendship and cooperation. Our commitment from time immemorial has been:
May All secure happiness
May all enjoy good health
May all experiences goodness around them
Let none be in pain or sorrow.”

Shankar Dayal Sharma (1918–1999) Indian politician

Source: Commissions and Omissions by Indian Presidents and Their Conflicts with the Prime Ministers Under the Constitution: 1977-2001, P.247

Pain, Friendship, Happiness, Health

“Without religion, man is an atheist, woman is a monster. As daughter, sister, wife, and mother, she holds in her hands, under God, the destinies of humanity. In the hours of gloom and sorrow we look to her for sympathy and comfort. Where shall she find strength for trial, comfort for sorrow, save in that gospel which has given a new meaning to the name of "mother", since it rested on the lips of the child Jesus?”

Henry Benjamin Whipple (1822–1901) Bishop of Minnesota

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 618.

God, Religion, Sister, Daughters

“The whole system of symbolism impressed on the art and the life of the Middle Ages must awaken the admiration of poets in all times. In reality, what colossal unity there is in Christian art, especially in its architecture! These Gothic cathedrals, how harmoniously they accord with the worship of which they are the temples, and how the idea of the Church reveals itself in them! Everything about them strives upwards, everything transubstantiates itself; the stone buds forth into branches and foliage, and becomes a tree; the fruit of the vine and the ears of corn become blood and flesh; the man becomes God; God becomes a pure spirit. For the poet, the Christian life of the Middle Ages is a precious and inexhaustibly fruitful field. Only through Christianity could the circumstances of life combine to form such striking contrasts, such motley sorrow, such weird beauty, that one almost fancies such things can never have had any real existence, and that it is all a vast fever-dream the fever-dream of a delirious deity. Even Nature, during this sublime epoch of the Christian religion, seemed to have put on a fantastic disguise; for oftentimes though man, absorbed in abstract subtilties, turned away from her with abhorrence, she would recall him to her with a voice so mysteriously sweet, so terrible in its tenderness, so powerfully enchanting, that unconsciously he would listen and smile, and become terrified, and even fall sick unto death.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

Religion and Philosophy in Germany, A fragment https://archive.org/stream/religionandphilo011616mbp#page/n5/mode/2up, p. 26

Life, Death, God, Age

“And how madly we did worship! And how sweet it was to worship! Ah, lad, cherish love's young dream while it lasts! You will know too soon how truly little Tom Moore sang when he said that there was nothing half so sweet in life. Even when it brings misery it is a wild, romantic misery, all unlike the dull, worldly pain of after-sorrows. When you have lost her—when the light is gone out from your life and the world stretches before you a long, dark horror, even then a half-enchantment mingles with your despair.”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Love, Life, Pain, World

“Labor, like Israel, has many sorrows. Its women weep for their fallen and they lament for the future of the children of the race. It ill behooves one who has supped at labor's table and who has been sheltered in labor's house to curse with equal fervor and fine impartiality both labor and its adversaries when they become locked in deadly embrace.”

John L. Lewis (1880–1969) American labor leader

Labor and the Nation speech (September 3, 1937)

Women, Children, Future, Housing

“Behind the stream of my mind and body, behind the stream of my race and all mankind, behind the stream of plants and animals, I watch with trembling the Invisible, treading on all visible things and ascending.
Behind his heavy and blood-splattered feet I hear all living things being trampled on and crushed.
His face is without laughter, dark and silent, beyond joy and sorrow, beyond hope.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)

Hope, Laughter, Animals, Joy

“Wept o'er his wounds, or tales of sorrow done,
Shoulder'd his crutch, and shew'd how fields were won.”

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village

Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 157.

“Let us be firm, pure and faithful; at the end of our sorrow, there is the greatest glory of the world, that of the men who did not give in.”

Charles de Gaulle (1890–1970) eighteenth President of the French Republic

Soyons fermes, purs et fidèles ; au bout de nos peines, il y a la plus grande gloire du monde, celle des hommes qui n'ont pas cédé.
Speech, July 14 1943.
World War II

Men, World, Faith

“The best thing you can do is just keep busy, keep working hard, so you’re not dwelling on it all the time. Work is the best antidote for sorrow.”

Gordon B. Hinckley (1910–2008) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

Discussing the death of his wife with Larry King, 2004.

Business, Time

“There's no such thing as old age; there is only sorrow.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

"A First Word" A Backward Glance http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200271.txt (1934)

Age

“Young people have many pleasures and many sorrows, because they only have themselves to think of, so every wish and every notion assume importance; every pleasure is tasted to the full, but also every sorrow, and many who find that their wishes cannot be fulfilled, immediately put an end to their lives.”

Hermann Hesse book Gertrud

Source: Gertrude (1910), p. 32

People, Pleasure, Thinking

“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.”
Inter spem curamque, timores inter et iras, Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum: Grata superveniet quae non sperabitur hora.

Horace book Epistles

Book I, epistle iv, line 12 (translated by John Conington)
Epistles (c. 20 BC and 14 BC)

Fear, Hope, Thinking, Anger

“There are few sorrows, however poignant, in which a good income is of no avail.”

Logan Pearsall Smith (1865–1946) British American-born writer

Life and Human Nature.
Afterthoughts (1931)

“A human face, a hand, a woman's breast or a manly body, an expression of conflicting joy and pain, the infinite ocean, savage crags, the melancholy speech of black trees against the snow, the fierce power of spring blossoms and the heavy lethargy of a hot summer noon when our old friend Pan is asleep and the ghost of noon are murmuring – all this is enough to make us forget the sorrows of the world, or to give them form. In any case the determination to give form to things brings with it part of the solution for which you are seeking. The path is hard and the goal can never be reached – but it is a path.”

Max Beckmann (1884–1950) German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer

Beckmann's lecture 'Drei Briefe an eine Malerin' ('Three letters to a Woman-painter'), New York and Boston, Spring 1948; as quoted in Letters of the great artists – from Blake to Pollock, Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, 1963, p. 214
1940s

Pain, World, Spring, Tree

“Funerals in México are also about drowning sorrow with liquor. The coffee is spiked with tequila”

Rigoberto González (1970) American writer

Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (2006)

Coffee

“When we see men still so unhappily bound with prejudice and tradition that they are blind to the beauties and light of the grandest conception that science has yet won for man, we sorrow, and in sympathy again recall the plea that the unhappy Castelli made to the pope who was about to inflict punishment upon Galileo for his demonstration of the movements of the earth: "Your Holiness, nothing that can be done can now hinder the earth from moving."”

Ralph Vary Chamberlin (1879–1967) American biologist (1879-1967)

"Evolution and Theological Belief" (1911)

Men, Beauty, Light, Science

“For when do friends not delight in the sorrow of the prosperous?”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

“"Well lad, this is what you have chosen. Are you pleased with yourself?"
“ I am alive," said Bane.
“ And eight men are dead," said Landis. “ Eight souls cast out of the world. More mothers to grieve, more children to know sorrow. Is this a life you want for yourself?”
“ No it is not," Bane told him. “ But we do what we must.”
“ Not true! We do what we choose. And we face the consequences."”

David Gemmell book Midnight Falcon

Source: Rigante series, Midnight Falcon, Ch. 5

Life, Men, Children, World

“To the legion of the lost ones, to the cohort of the damned,
To my brethren in their sorrow overseas,
Sings a gentleman of England cleanly bred, machinely crammed,
And a trooper of the Empress, if you please.”

Rudyard Kipling book Barrack-Room Ballads

Gentlemen-Rankers, Stanza 1.
Barrack-Room Ballads (1892, 1896)

Singing

“My dearest little Julie, I love you as I lie dying; I shall still love you when I am dead. I beg of you, do not cry; this parting was inevitable. I would have liked to be with you until you married – Work hard and be good as you have always been; you have never caused me a moment's sorrow in you little life [Julie is 16, then]. You have beauty, good fortune; use them well. I think the best thing would be to live with your cousins in the Rue de Villejust, but I do not wish to force you to do anything. Give a memento of me to you aunt Edma [Berthe's sister], and to your cousins too; and give Monet's [painting] 'Bateaux en reparation' to your cousin Gabriel. Tell M. Degas that if he found a museum he is to choose a Manet [of her Manet paintings]. A keepsake for Monet; one for Renoir, and one of my drawings for Bartolomé. Give something to the two concierges. Do not cry, I love you more than I can tell you.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

Quote of Berthe's last letter to daughter Julie, End of Feb. 1895; as cited in Berthe Morisot, Jean-Dominique Rey; translation in English, Flammarion, S.A. (ISBN: 978-2-08-020345-8), Paris, 2016, p. 217
1881 - 1895

Love, Life, Lie, Beauty

“p>…[E]ach moment of joy but prompts the more
That madness buried at the base of dreamy souls,
That sadness in the dark citadel of the heart,
And in sorrowful eyes, images of innocence from the past.
All the Past is but an endless string of days,
All the Future is but a series of graves not yet fulfilled…
In the summer sun, fresh leaves begin to change in hue,
Weaving the autumn whose arrival is imminent—as in our lives
The green days follow in fading succession,
Weaving the shroud that covers our souls.”

Chế Lan Viên (1920–1989) Vietnamese writer

"The Graves", as quoted in Understanding Vietnam by Neil Jamieson (University of California Press, 1995), pp. 163–164

Sadness, Soul, Autumn, Change

“I entreat you to devote one solemn hour of thought to a crucified Saviour — a Saviour expiring in the bitterest agony. Think of the cross, the nails, the open wounds, the anguish of His soul. Think how the Son of God became a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, that you might live forever. Think as you lie down upon your bed to rest, how your Saviour was lifted up from the earth to die. Think amid your plans and anticipations of future gaiety, what the redemption of your soul has cost, and how the dying Saviour would wish you to act. His wounds plead that you will live for better things.”

Albert Barnes (1798–1870) American theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 72.

God, Lie, Soul, Thinking

“Keep both heart and hand in your own possession, till you see good reason to part with them; and if such an occasion should never present itself, comfort your mind with this reflection, that though in single life your joys may not be very many, your sorrows, at least, will not be more than you can bear. Marriage may change your circumstances for the better, but, in my private opinion, it is far more likely to produce a contrary result.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. XLI : Hope Springs Eternal in the Human Breast; Helen to Esther

Life, Marriage, Change, Heart

“Kunti did not know his [Karna's] fate till years later, when she was not in a position to acknowledge him as her son. The son, on his part, never forgave the mother for having abandoned him. From the minute of his birth to well after his death this child was a constant source of dread and sorrow to the mother.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Source: The End Of An Epoch, p. 30.

Death, Fate, Birth, Parting

“See mother earth her offspring's fate bemoan, And nations gaze at scenes before unknown! See the bright beams of heaven's revolving light Involved in sorrows and the veil of night! The goddess comes, she moves divinely fair”

Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784) American poet

1770s, To His Excellency, George Washington (1775)

Fate, Light, Night

“As much as He was most tender and pure, right so He was most strong and mighty to suffer.
And for every man’s sin that shall be saved He suffered: and every man’s sorrow and desolation He saw, and sorrowed for Kindness and love.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Eighth Revelation, Chapter 20

Love, Strong, Suffering

“Consent in virtue knit your hearts so fast,
That still the knot, in spite of death, does last;
For as your tears, and sorrow-wounded soul,
Prove well that on your part this bond is whole,
So all we know of what they do above,
Is that they happy are, and that they love.
Let dark oblivion, and the hollow grave,
Content themselves our frailer thoughts to have;
Well-chosen love is never taught to die,
But with our nobler part invades the sky.
Then grieve no more that one so heavenly shaped
The crooked hand of trembling age escaped;
Rather, since we beheld her not decay,
But that she vanish'd so entire away,
Her wondrous beauty, and her goodness, merit
We should suppose that some propitious spirit
In that celestial form frequented here,
And is not dead, but ceases to appear.”

Edmund Waller (1606–1687) English poet and politician

Upon the Death of My Lady Rich (1664).
Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham (1857)

Love, Death, Happiness, Age

“Behold, we live through all things,—famine, thirst,
Bereavement, pain; all grief and misery,
All woe and sorrow; life inflicts its worst
On soul and body,—but we can not die,
Though we be sick and tired and faint and worn,—
Lo, all things can be borne!”

Elizabeth Chase Allen (1832–1911) American author, journalist, poet

Endurance, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Life, Pain, Soul

“"The bitterest sorrow that man can know is to aspire to do much and to achieve nothing"… so Herodotus relates that a Persian said to a Theban at a banquet (book ix., chap. xvi.). And it is true. With knowledge and desire we can embrace everything, or almost everything; with the will nothing, or almost nothing. And contemplation is not happiness — no! not if this contemplation implies impotence. And out of this collision between our knowledge and our power pity arises.”

Miguel de Unamuno (1864–1936) 19th-20th century Spanish writer and philosopher

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), VII : Love, Suffering, Pity

Happiness, Books, Knowledge

“It was in His parting sorrow — that Jesus asked His disciples to remember Him; and never was entreaty of affection answered so; for ever since has His name been breathed in morning and evening prayers that none can count, and has brought down some gift of sanctity and peace on the anguish of bereavement, and the remorse of sin.”

James Martineau (1805–1900) English religious philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 70.

Peace, Parting

“Of all the kindes of common countrey life,
Methinkes a shepheards life is most content;
His state is quiet peace, devoyd of strife;
His thoughts are pure from all impure intent,
His pleasures rate sits at an easie rent;
He beares no mallice in his harmles hart,
Malicious meaning hath in him no part.

He is not troubled with th' afflicted minde,
His cares are onely over silly sheepe;
He is not unto jealozie inclinde,
(Thrice happie man) he knowes not how to weepe;
Whilst I the treble in deepe sorrowes keepe.
I cannot keepe the meane; for why (alas)
Griefes have no meane, though I for meane doe passe.”

Richard Barnfield (1574–1627) English poet

The Shepheard's Content, or the Happines of a Harmles Life. The Affectionate Shepheard http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/19902 (1594)

Life, Happiness, Pleasure, Peace

“A propensity to hope and joy is real riches: One to fear and sorrow, real poverty.”

David Hume book Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Part I, Essay 18: The Sceptic
Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1741-2; 1748)

Fear, Hope, Joy

“We may compare this sum of the life forces, which we call heredity, to the character of a sensitive plate in the camera. Outside pictures impress themselves more or less distinctly on the sensitive plate… Stored within heredity are all joys, sorrows, loves, hates, music, art, temples, palaces, pyramids, hovels, kings, queens, paupers, bards, prophets and philosophers, oceans, caves, volcanoes, floods, earthquakes, wars, triumphs, defeats, reverence, courage, wisdom, virtue, love and beauty, time, space, and all the mysteries of the universe. The appropriate environments will bring out and intensify all these general human hereditary experiences and quicken them again into life and action, thus modifying for good or evil, character—heredity—destiny.”

Luther Burbank (1849–1926) American botanist, horticulturist and pioneer in agricultural science

p, 125
The Training of the Human Plant (1907)

Love, Life, Wisdom, Hate

“Under the pressure of the cares and sorrows of our mortal condition, men have at all times, and in all countries, called in some physical aid to their moral consolations — wine, beer, opium, brandy, or tobacco.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795)
Thoughts and Details on Scarcity (1795)

Men, Beer, Wine, Time

“My favourite musician happens to be the same as Shakespeare's: John Dowland. His songs are sorrowful but heal the soul by their sweetness and courage.”

John Dowland (1563–1626) English Renaissance composer, lutenist, and singer

Robert Graves, letter to Idries Shah, September 6, 1968; published in Between Moon and Moon: Selected Letters of Robert Graves 1946-1972, (1984), p. 272.
Criticism

Soul, Courage

“A dumb halo of sorrow lurks in Shirin's cold gaze,
Reclining on the marble columns of the veranda,
A pregnant cat is sleeping on her lap
And slowly snores.

The Shirin's image north of the garden
Is hanging on an apple tree;
Khosrow, in love with another mistress, mockingly mutters;
How can the eye in this image
Show the trace of lover breathing eye of Shirin?…??
For a moment Khosrow beats at the bow and says:
Shirin's eye is a good target, I have ordained
That this new bow should be tried on it.

Khosrow, the king of the world,
The master of archers,
Pulled out an arrow from his quiver.
This Parthian arrow, this nimble flying hawk,
Is familiar with the bow and the thumb.

A spark rose from Mount Bistoun,
Was it the lightening from Farhad's ax?
An angry flame is blazing in the image's eye,
The loud uproar,
The loud clamor of Farhad's heart,
Is robing sleep from the cat's eye.”

Farrokh Tamimi (1934–2003) Iranian poet and translator

Poet, Farhad

Love, World, Cats, Lovers

“Egmont:
The Egmont of yon city — he is proud,
And cold, and stern, and sorrowful. He keeps
His counsel to himself. He wears a brow
That is a smiling shadow to his heart :
Perplexed with seeming mirth, that shroudeth care.
Exalted by a giddy populace,
That know not what they laud, or what they seek.
Moving 'mid those who understand him not;
Whom he has naught in common with : and worn
By furious guarding 'gainst familiar friends
Who seem, yet are not. Watched, suspected, feared;
Wearied with labour, which hath neither end
Nor yet reward; but only distant hope.
Such is the Egmont of the field and state.
But thine beloved : he is happy, frank,
Open, and known to that most dear of hearts —
Which he knows, too, and trusts it as his own.
Calm, deeply joyful; such is Egmont now.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The London Literary Gazette (28th February 1835)
Translations, From the German

Happiness, Fear, Smile, Hope

“The merit and strength of a people are measured by their enthusiasm for freedom when the only rewards from it are anguish and martyrdom, the blood and ashes of exile, the sorrow of a house driven by the waves, and the shame of a useless life that lacks the foundation and peace of mind needed to do one's share of the common task.”

José Martí (1853–1895) Poet, writer, Cuban nationalist leader

Martí : Thoughts/Pensamientos (1994)

Life, People, Peace, Freedom

“God has ends and designs in giving evil men outward mercies and present rest from sorrows and sufferings that cause saints to sigh.”

Thomas Brooks (1608–1680) English Puritan

Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices, 1652

Men, God, Suffering, Evil

“In ancient shadows and twilights
Where childhood had strayed,
The world’s great sorrows were born
And its heroes were made.
In the lost boyhood of Judas
Christ was betrayed.”

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

"Germinal" in Vale and Other Poems (1931)

World, Christ, Childhood

“Soon for me the light of day
Shall forever pass away;
Then from sin and sorrow free,
Take me, Lord, to dwell with Thee.”

William Croswell Doane (1832–1913) American bishop

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 177.

Light

“Fair Elphin, dry your cheeks!
Such sorrow does not become you,
Although you consider yourself cheated
Excessive sorrow gains nothing,
Nor will doubting God's miracles.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

The Tale of Taleisin

God, Cheating

“Faith has in it the recognition of the certainty and the justice of a judgment that is coming down crashing on every human head; and then from the midst of these fears and sorrows and the tempest of that great darkness there rises up in the night of terrors the shining of one perhaps pale, quivering, distant, but divinely given hope, "My Saviour! My Saviour! He is righteous; He has died; He lives! I will stay no longer; I will cast myself upon Him!"”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 229.

Fear, Faith, Justice, Hope

“Weep for life, with its toil and care,
Its crime to shun, and its sorrow to bear;
Let tears and the sign of tears be shed
Over the living, not over the dead!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

(21st August 1830) The Legacy of the Roses
The London Literary Gazette, 1830

Life, Tear, Dead

“"Hair loss and retrieval" (Translation of "Pérdida y recuperación del pelo")

To combat pragmatism and the horrible tendency to achieve useful purposes, my elder cousin proposes the procedure of pulling out a nice hair from the head, knotting it in the middle and droping it gently down the hole in the sink. If the hair gets caught in the grid that usually fills in these holes, it will just take to open the tap a little to lose sight of it.

Without wasting an instant, must start the hair recovery task. The first operation is reduced to dismantling the siphon from the sink to see if the hair has become hooked in any of the rugosities of the drain. If it is not found, it is necessary to expose the section of pipe that goes from the siphon to the main drainage pipe. It is certain that in this part will appear many hairs and we will have to count on the help of the rest of the family to examine them one by one in search of the knot. If it does not appear, the interesting problem of breaking the pipe down to the ground floor will arise, but this means a greater effort, because for eight or ten years we will have to work in a ministry or trading house to collect enough money to buy the four departments located under the one of my elder cousin, all that with the extraordinary disadvantage of what while working during those eight or ten years, the distressing feeling that the hair is no longer in the pipes anymore can not be avoided and that only by a remote chance remains hooked on some rusty spout of the drain.

The day will come when we can break the pipes of all the departments, and for months to come we will live surrounded by basins and other containers full of wet hairs, as well as of assistants and beggars whom we will generously pay to search, assort, and bring us the possible hairs in order to achieve the desired certainty. If the hair does not appear, we will enter in a much more vague and complicated stage, because the next section takes us to the city's main sewers. After buying a special outfit, we will learn to slip through the sewers at late night hours, armed with a powerful flashlight and an oxygen mask, and explore the smaller and larger galleries, assisted if possible by individuals of the underworld, with whom we will have established a relationship and to whom we will have to give much of the money that we earn in a ministry or a trading house.

Very often we will have the impression of having reached the end of the task, because we will find (or they will bring us) similar hairs of the one we seek; but since it is not known of any case where a hair has a knot in the middle without human hand intervention, we will almost always end up with the knot in question being a mere thickening of the caliber of the hair (although we do not know of any similar case) or a deposit of some silicate or any oxide produced by a long stay against a wet surface. It is probable that we will advance in this way through various sections of major and minor pipes, until we reach that place where no one will decide to penetrate: the main drain heading in the direction of the river, the torrential meeting of detritus in which no money, no boat, no bribe will allow us to continue the search.

But before that, and perhaps much earlier, for example a few centimeters from the mouth of the sink, at the height of the apartment on the second floor, or in the first underground pipe, we may happen to find the hair. It is enough to think of the joy that this would cause us, in the astonished calculation of the efforts saved by pure good luck, to choose, to demand practically a similar task, that every conscious teacher should advise to its students from the earliest childhood, instead of drying their souls with the rule of cross-multiplication or the sorrows of Cancha Rayada.”

Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) Argentinian writer

Historias de Cronopios y de Famas (1962)

Money, Family, Way, Feeling

“If it is necessary that each sentient being must have the possibility of achieving an overwhelming good, then it is clear that there must be some form of life after earthly death. Despite the many pointers to the existence of God, theism would be falsified if physical death was the end, for then there could be no justification for the existence of this world. However, if one supposes that every sentient being has an endless existence, which offers the prospect of supreme happiness, it is surely true that the sorrows and troubles of this life will seem very small by comparison. Immortality, for animals as well as humans, is a necessary condition of any acceptable theodicy; that necessity, together with all the other arguments for God, is one of the main reasons for believing in immortality.”

Keith Ward (1938) British philosopher, theologian, priest and scholar

Rational Theology and the Creativity of God (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982), pp. 201-202.

Life, Death, God, Happiness

“I want your life filling and stirring me. I want your happiness beneath my heart and your sorrows in my eyes and your peace in the fingers of my hand.”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. XII (p. 346)

Life, Happiness, Peace, Heart

“She said, "I'll show you a picture,
A picture of tomorrow,
There's nothing changing, it's all sorrow."

"Oh, no, please don't show me
I'm a swine, you don't wanna know me!"”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"Horrorshow" (with Carl Barat)
Lyrics and poetry

Swine, Change

“Christianity has made martyrdom sublime, and sorrow triumphant.”

Edwin Hubbell Chapin (1814–1880) American priest

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers, P. 450.

“What humiliation, what disgrace for us all, that it should be necessary for one man to exhort other men not to be inhuman and irrational towards their fellow-creatures! Do they recognise, then, no mind, no soul in them — have they not feeling, pleasure in existence, do they not suffer pain? Do their voices of joy and sorrow indeed fail to speak to the human heart and conscience — so that they can murder the jubilant lark, in the first joy of his spring-time, who ought to warm their hearts with sympathy, from delight in bloodshed or for their ‘sport,’ or with a horrible insensibility and recklessness only to practise their aim in shooting! Is there no soul manifest in the eyes of the living or dying animal — no expression of suffering in the eye of a deer or stag hunted to death — nothing which accuses them of murder before the avenging Eternal Justice? …. Are the souls of all other animals but man mortal, or are they essential in their organisation? Does the world-idea (Welt-Idee) pertain to them also — the soul of nature — a particle of the Divine Spirit? I know not; but I feel, and every reasonable man feels like me, it is in miserable, intolerable contradiction with our human nature, with our conscience, with our reason, with all our talk of humanity, destiny, nobility; it is in frightful (himmelschreinder) contradiction with our poetry and philosophy, with our nature and with our (pretended) love of nature, with our religion, with our teachings about benevolent design — that we bring into existence merely to kill, to maintain our own life by the destruction of other life. …. It is a frightful wrong that other species are tortured, worried, flayed, and devoured by us, in spite of the fact that we are not obliged to this by necessity; while in sinning against the defenceless and helpless, just claimants as they are upon our reasonable conscience and upon our compassion, we succeed only in brutalising ourselves. This, besides, is quite certain, that man has no real pity and compassion for his own species, so long as he is pitiless towards other races of beings.”

Bogumil Goltz (1801–1870) German humorist and satirist

Das Menschendasein in seinen weltewigen Zügen und Zeichen (1850); as quoted in The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh-eating https://archive.org/stream/ethicsofdietcate00will/ethicsofdietcate00will#page/n3/mode/2up by Howard Williams (London: F. Pitman, 1883), pp. 287-286.

Love, Life, Death, Men

“But sorrow return'd with the dawning of morn,
And the voice in my dreaming ear melted away.”

Thomas Campbell (1777–1844) British writer

The Soldier's Dream http://www.bartleby.com/106/267.html

Dreams

“As we look upon that agony and those tearful prayers, let us not only look with thankfulness; but lot that kneeling Saviour teach us that in prayer alone can we be forearmed against our lesser sorrows; that strength to bear flows into the heart that is opened in supplication; and that a sorrow which we are made able to endure is more truly cohijuered than a sorrow which we avoid.”

Alexander Maclaren (1826–1910) British minister

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 71.

Tear, Heart

“For Lycidas your sorrow is not dead,
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor;
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed;
And yet anon repairs his drooping head,
And tricks his beams, and with new-spangled ore
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky.
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,
Through the dear might of him that walked the waves.”

John Milton Lycidas

Source: Lycidas (1637), Line 166

Star, Dead

“{of Theatres} There, while weeping for sorrows which are not, laughing at the light jest or the ludicrous misadventure, how little is remembered of the want which makes fear the only bond that binds the living to life!”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Life, Fear, Light

“Why should I wait until tomorrow?
I've already been
I've already seen
All the sorrow that's in store”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"Beg Steal or Borrow"
Lyrics and poetry

Waiting

“.. Our life is a pilgrim's progress. I once saw a very beautiful picture: it was a landscape at evening. In the distance on the right-hand side a row of hills appeared blue in the evening mist. Above those hills the splendour of the sunset, the grey clouds with their linings of silver and gold and purple. The landscape is a plain or heath covered with grass and its yellow leaves, for it was in autumn. Through the landscape a road leads to a high mountain far, far away, on the top of that mountain is a city wherein the setting sun casts a glory. On the road walks a pilgrim, staff in hand. He has been walking for a good long while already and he is very tired. And now he meets a woman, or figure in black, that makes one think of St. Paul's word: As being sorrowful yet always rejoicing. That Angel of God has been placed there to encourage the pilgrims and to answer their questions and the pilgrim asks her: Does the road go uphill then all the way? And the answer is: "Yes to the very end."”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote of Vincent van Gogh, from his 'First Sunday Sermon' http://www.vggallery.com/misc/archives/sermon.htm: 'I Am a Stranger on the Earth..'; 29 October 1876 1870s

Life, God, Beauty, Angels

“Whilst my country remains in sorrow and subjection, it would be indelicate of me to participate in the festivities you propose. When she lifts her head and nerves her arm for a bolder struggle — when she goes forth like Miriam, with song and trimble, to celebrate her victory — I too shall lift up my head, and join in the hymn of freedom. Till then, the retirement I seek will best accord with the love I bear her, and the sadness which her present fate inspires. Nor do I forget the companions of my exile. The freedom that has been restored to me is embittered by the recollection of their captivity. My heart is with them at this hour, and shares the solitude in which they dwell. Whilst they are in prison a shadow rests upon my spirit, and the thoughts that otherwise might be free throb heavily within me. It is painful for me to speak. I should feel happy in being permitted to be silent for these reasons you will not feel displeased with me for declining the honours you solicit me to accept.”

Thomas Francis Meagher (1823–1867) Irish nationalist & American politician

Declining to accept any public entertainment in his honour, after his escape (1852)

Love, Pain, Fate, Happiness

“We probed into the nature of space and time, and of the universal, both with regard to external nature and with regard to mind. But then, we went on to consider the general disorder and confusion that pervades the consciousness of mankind. It is here that I encountered what I feel to be Krishnamurti's major discovery. What he was seriously proposing is that all this disorder, which is the root cause of such widespread sorrow and misery, and which prevents human beings from properly working together, has its root in the fact that we are ignorant of the general nature of our own processes of thought. Or to put it differently it may be said that we do not see what is actually happening, when we are engaged in the activity of thinking.”

David Bohm (1917–1992) American theoretical physicist

"A Brief Introduction to the Work of Krishnamurti" http://www.krishnamurtiaustralia.org/articles/bohm_introduction.htm

Feeling, Nature, Thinking, Universe

“The myth of Prometheus means that all the sorrows of the world have their seat in the liver. But it needs a brave man to face so humble a truth.”

Francois Mauriac book Vipers' Tangle

Le mythe de Prométhée signifie que toute la tristesse du monde a son siège dans le foie. Mais qui oserait reconnaître une vérité si humble?
Le Nœud de vipères (1932), cited from Oeuvres romanesques, vol. 2 (Paris: Flammarion, 1965) p. 166; Gerard Hopkins (trans.) Knot of Vipers (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1951) p. 151.

Truth, World

“The day goes by like a shadow o’er the heart,
With sorrow where all was delight;
The time has come when the darkies have to part:
Then my old Kentucky home, good night!”

Stephen Foster (1826–1864) American songwriter

My Old Kentucky Home. Reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Home, Time, Heart, Parting

“To understand at all what life means, one must begin with Christian belief. And I think knowledge may be sorrow with a man unless he loves.”

William Mountford (1816–1885) English Unitarian preacher and author

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 364.

Love, Life, Understanding, Knowledge

“.. The thought crossed my mind, how society today in its fall, at moments seen against the light of a renewal, stands out as a large, gloomy silhouette. Yes, for me, the drama of storm in nature, the drama of sorrow in life, is the most impressive.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from The Hague, The Netherlands, Summer 1883; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 319) p. 21 1880s, 1883

Life, Nature, Light