Quotes about sorrow (1014 quotes, page 7)

“But howsoever I might behold and desire, I could in no wise see this point in all the Shewing.
But how I understood and saw of the work of mercy, I shall tell somewhat, as God will give me grace. I understood this: Man is changeable in this life, and by frailty and overcoming falleth into sin: he is weak and unwise of himself, and also his will is overlaid. And in this time he is in tempest and in sorrow and woe; and the cause is blindness: for he seeth not God. For if he saw God continually, he should have no mischievous feeling, nor any manner of motion or yearning that serveth to sin.
Thus saw I, and felt in the same time; and methought that the sight and the feeling was high and plenteous and gracious in comparison with that which our common feeling is in this life; but yet I thought it was but small and low in comparison with the great desire that the soul hath to see God.”

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

Summations, Chapter 47
Context: Two things belong to our soul as duty: the one is that we reverently marvel, the other that we meekly suffer, ever enjoying in God. For He would have us understand that we shall in short time see clearly in Himself all that we desire.
And notwithstanding all this, I beheld and marvelled greatly: What is the mercy and forgiveness of God? For by the teaching that I had afore, I understood that the mercy of God should be the forgiveness of His wrath after the time that we have sinned. For methought that to a soul whose meaning and desire is to love, the wrath of God was harder than any other pain, and therefore I took that the forgiveness of His wrath should be one of the principal points of His mercy. But howsoever I might behold and desire, I could in no wise see this point in all the Shewing.
But how I understood and saw of the work of mercy, I shall tell somewhat, as God will give me grace. I understood this: Man is changeable in this life, and by frailty and overcoming falleth into sin: he is weak and unwise of himself, and also his will is overlaid. And in this time he is in tempest and in sorrow and woe; and the cause is blindness: for he seeth not God. For if he saw God continually, he should have no mischievous feeling, nor any manner of motion or yearning that serveth to sin.
Thus saw I, and felt in the same time; and methought that the sight and the feeling was high and plenteous and gracious in comparison with that which our common feeling is in this life; but yet I thought it was but small and low in comparison with the great desire that the soul hath to see God.

Life , God , Feeling , Soul

“The greatest truths are ever known through the heart; and this sublimest of all truths, the amazing sacrifice which Eternal Love has made for guilty man, can be comprehended only by the heart, — by communion with that Love in its sorrows, sacrifices, triumphs, joys.”

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

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 245.

Love , Truth , Heart , Joy

“It is the small flock of God. "Whoever receives in my name one of those little" said Jesus, "It is myself who receives." What thinks the one that sticks, that maims, or inflicts to their pure souls more black sorrow than death? (…) The curse of a crowd of children, is a cataclysm, a horror prodigy, a chain of dark mountains in the sky, with a cavalcade of thunder and lightning in their tops. It is the infinite of the cries of all deep, is a not know what highly powerful unforgiving and extinguishing any hope of forgiveness.”

Léon Bloy (1846–1917) French writer, poet and essayist

Léon Bloy, Octavio de Faria, portuguese edition, page 101. Léon Bloy, Octavio de Faria, portuguese edition, page 101. https://books.google.com.br/books?id=wI4SAAAAYAAJ&q=%C3%89+o+rebanho+dos+pequenos+de+Deus.+%22Quem+quer+que+receba+em+meu+nome+um+desses+pequenos%22+disse+Jesus&dq=%C3%89+o+rebanho+dos+pequenos+de+Deus.+%22Quem+quer+que+receba+em+meu+nome+um+desses+pequenos%22+disse+Jesus&hl=pt-BR&sa=X&ved=0CBsQ6AEwAGoVChMI0Ovrgrn5yAIVQpGQCh3fFwGB

Death , God , Children , Hope

“Whoever recites the first four verses of Suratul Baqarah, Ayatul Kursi (verse 255 of Suratul Baqarah) along with the two verses which follow it (verses 256 and 257 up to ‘Wa Hum Fiha Khalidun’), and the last three verses (of this same Surah) will not see any bad or sorrow in his life or his wealth; Satan will not come near him; and he will not forget the Qur’an.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Thawabul A’mal, Page 234
Shi'ite Hadith

Life , Forgetting , Wealth

“Bright flower! whose home is everywhere
Bold in maternal nature's care
And all the long year through the heir
Of joy or sorrow,
Methinks that there abides in thee
Some concord with humanity,
Given to no other flower I see
The forest through.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

To the Daisy (third poem), st. 1 (1803).

Home , Flowers , Nature , Joy

“It may remain for us to learn … that our task is only beginning; and that there will never be given to us even the ghost of any help, save the help of unutterable unthinkable Time. We may have to learn that the infinite whirl of death and birth, out of which we cannot escape, is of our own creation, of our own seeking;—that the forces integrating worlds are the errors of the Past;—that the eternal sorrow is but the eternal hunger of insatiable desire;—and that the burnt-out suns are rekindled only by the inextinguishable passions of vanished lives.”

Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) writer

Source: Out of the East, pp. 156–7.

Death , Hunger , World , Error

“[A]dventures befall the unadventurous as readily, if not as frequently, as the bold. Adventures are a logical and reliable result—and have been since at least the time of Odysseus—of the fatal act of leaving one's home, or trying to return to it again. All adventures happen in that damned and magical space, wherever it may be found or chanced upon, which least resembles one's home. As soon as you have crossed your doorstep or the county line, into that place where the structures, laws, and conventions of your upbringing no longer apply, where the support and approval (but also the disapproval and repression) of your family and neighbors are not to be had: then you have entered into adventure, a place of sorrow, marvels, and regret.”

Michael Chabon book Gentlemen of the Road

Afterword
Gentlemen of the Road (2007)

Family , Law , Home , Support

“I was given the freedom to discover my own inclination and talents, to fashion my inmost pleasures and sorrows myself and to regard the future not as an alien higher power but as the hope and product of my own strength.”

Hermann Hesse book Gertrud

Source: Gertrude (1910), p. 4

Pleasure , Hope , Fashion , Freedom

“Burns's Brother Gilbert, a man of much sense and worth, has told me that Robert, in his young days, in spite of their hardship, was usually the gayest of speech; a fellow of infinite frolic, laughter, sense and heart; far pleasanter to hear there, stript cutting peats in the bog, or such like, than he ever afterwards knew him. I can well believe it. This basis of mirth, a primal element of sunshine and joyfulness, coupled with his other deep and earnest qualities, is one of the most attractive characteristics of Burns. A large fund of Hope dwells in him; spite of his tragical history, he is not a mourning man. He shakes his sorrows gallantly aside; bounds forth victorious over them.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Man of Letters

Hope , History , Sense , Laughter

“In every pang that rends the heart
The Man of Sorrows had a part”

Michael Bruce (1746–1767) Scottish poet and hymnist

"Where high the heavenly temple stands".

Heart , Parting

“Thou hast no sorrow in thy song,
No winter in thy year.”

John Logan (1748–1788) Scottish minister and historian

To the Cuckoo, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Winter

“You take my hand,
I'll take your hand
Together we may get away
This much madness is too much sorrow
It's impossible to make it today.”

Neil Young (1945) Canadian singer-songwriter

Down by the River
Song lyrics, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (1969)

Madness

“It is all a matter of comparing one’s own life with something worse and consoling oneself with the relativity of human fortunes. When I was eight or nine I had an experience which came clearly to mind when I read your advice. I used to know a family in a little village near mine: father, mother and sons: they were small landowners and had an inn. Very energetic people, especially the woman. I knew (I had heard) that besides the sons we knew, this woman had another son nobody had seen, who was spoken of in whispers, as if he were a great disgrace for the mother, an idiot, a monster or worse. I remember that my mother referred to this woman often as a martyr, who made great sacrifices for this son, and put up with great sorrows. One Sunday morning about ten, I was sent to this woman’s: I had to deliver some crocheting and get the money. I found her shutting the door, dressed up to go out to mass, she had a hamper under her arm. On seeing me she hesitated then decided. She told me to accompany her to a certain place, and that she would take delivery and give me the money on our return. She took me out of the village, into an orchard filled with rubbish and plaster; in one corner there was a sort of pig sty, about four feet high, and windowless, with only a strong door. She opened the door and I could hear an animal-like howling. Inside was her son, a robust boy of 18, who couldn’t stand up and hence scraped along on his seat to the door, as far as he was permitted to move by a chain linked to his waist and attached to the ring in the wall. He was covered with filth, and his eyes shone red, like those of a nocturnal animal. His mother dumped the contents of her basket – a mixed mess of household leftovers – into a stone trough. She filled another trough with water, and we left. I said nothing to my mother about what I had seen, so great an impression it had made on me, and so convinced was I that nobody would believe me. Nor when I later heard of the misery which had befallen that poor mother, did I interrupt to talk of the misery of the poor human wreck who had such a mother.”

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) Italian writer, politician, theorist, sociologist and linguist

Gramsci, 1965, p. 737 cited in Davidson, 1977, p. 35.

Life , Money , People , Family

“Fallen from his lofty and heroic station; now finally restored to the perception of truth; weighed to earth by the recollection of his own deeds; consoled no longer by a consciousness of rectitude, for the loss of offspring and wife – a loss for which he was indebted to his own misguided hand; Wieland was transformed at once into the man of sorrow?”

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) American novelist, historian and editor

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

Truth , Loss

“Alas! how light a cause may move
Dissension between hearts that love!
Hearts that the world in vain had tried,
And sorrow but more closely tied;
That stood the storm when waves were rough,
Yet in a sunny hour fall off,
Like ships that have gone down at sea
When heaven was all tranquillity.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

Lalla Rookh http://www.columbia.edu/itc/mealac/pritchett/00generallinks/lallarookh/index.html (1817), Part IX: The Light of the Harem

Love , World , Light , Heart

“But now he sleeps endlessly.
Now the moss and the grass
open with sure fingers
the flower of his skull.
And now his blood comes out singing;
singing along marshes and meadows,
slides on frozen horns,
faltering souls in the mist
stumbling over a thousand hoofs
like a long, dark, sad tongue,
to form a pool of agony
close to the starry Guadalquivir.
Oh, white wall of Spain!
Oh, black bull of sorrow!
Oh, hard blood of Ignacio!
Oh, nightingale of his veins!”

Federico García Lorca Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías

Pero ya duerme sin fin.
Ya los musgos y la hierba
abren con dedos seguros
la flor de su calavera.
Y su sangre ya viene cantando:
cantando por marismas y praderas,
resbalando por cuernos ateridos,
vacilando sin alma por la niebla,
tropezando con miles de pezuñas
como una larga, oscura, triste lengua,
para formar un charco de agonía
junto al Guadalquivir de las estrellas.
¡Oh blanco muro de España!
¡Oh negro toro de pena!
¡Oh sangre dura de Ignacio!
¡Oh ruiseñor de sus venas!
Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias (1935)

Sadness , Soul , Flowers , Sleep

“Someone to hold onto
And keep me from all fear
Someone to be my guiding light
And keep me ever dear
To keep me from my selfishness
To keep me from my sorrow
To lead me on to givingness
So I can see a new tomorrow.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

If I Ever Needed Someone
Song lyrics, His Band and the Street Choir (1970)

Fear , Light , Selfishness

“Days that need borrow
No part of their good morrow
From a fore-spent night of sorrow.”

Richard Crashaw (1612–1649) British writer

Wishes for the Supposed Mistress

Parting , Night

“People complain about their griefs and sorrows and how they pray to God but find no relief from pain. But grief itself is a gift from God. It is the symbol of His compassion.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[In the Company of the Holy Mother, 220-221]

God , Pain , People

“When everyone sorrows, no one hears the sorrows.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Donde se lamentan todos, no se oyen lamentos.
Voces (1943)

“(…) To take the world as real and one’s self as unreal is ignorance, the cause of sorrow. To know the self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy. It is all very simple. Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are. When you can see everything as it is, you will also see yourself as you are. It is like cleansing a mirror. The same mirror that shows you the world as it is, will also show you your own face. The thought ‘I am’ is the polishing cloth. Use it.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Reality
Source: "I am That." P.29.

World , Peace , Imagination , Reality

“To be alive is to feel the joy of being./ In spite of the sorrows and joys of life/ The primary joy is that of being./ That of my existence. / That I exist is the most fundamental experience is joy for me!/ I, who do not deserve to, really exist./ I, who need not, do exist!/ I, who may not, do exist.”

Kuruvilla Pandikattu (1957) Indian philosopher

Death: Live It! p. 130.
Death: Live It! (2005)

Life , Feeling , Joy

“I cannot shift the blame for Chechnya, for the sorrow of numerous mothers and fathers. I made the decision, therefore I am responsible.”

Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007) 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR

Interview on Russian television (2000), as quoted in the BBC Obituary (23 April 2007) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6584481.stm
2000s

Decision

“I dreamed a dream, that I had flung a chain
Of roses around Love,—I woke, and found
I had chained Sorrow.”

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

The Literary Souvenir, 1826 (1825) The Forsaken
Other Gift Books

Love , Dreams

“Glory to him, but to us a sorrow.”

Homér Iliad

IV. 197 (tr. R. Lattimore).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

“Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Hart-leap Well, part ii.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Pleasure , Feeling

“[From Reginald Clinton]: I do not believe that the heart is turned from the Creator by enjoying his works. Of what avail is the sweet breath of the rose, the morning song of the lark? The pleasure they impart is not matter of necessity, and yet we delight in both. The soul of the poet is as much His gift as the fragrance of the flower, or the lay of the bird; and the page where inspired words record heroic deed, touching sorrow, or natural loveliness, is one of those pleasures for which we should be thankful. I, for my part, believe most devoutly in the Almighty mercy, when I see how much that is beautiful and gladdening has been scattered over our pilgrimage here.”

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

Heath's book of Beauty, 1833 (1832)

Pleasure , Beauty , Soul , Flowers

“I saw three manners of longing in God, and all to one end; of which we have the same in us, and by the same virtue and for the same end.
The first is, that He longeth to teach us to know Him and love Him evermore, as it is convenient and speedful to us. The second is, that He longeth to have us up to His Bliss, as souls are when they are taken out of pain into Heaven. The third is to fulfill us in bliss; and that shall be on the Last Day, fulfilled ever to last. For I saw, as it is known in our Faith, that the pain and the sorrow shall be ended to all that shall be saved. And not only we shall receive the same bliss that souls afore have had in heaven, but also we shall receive a new, which plenteously shall be flowing out of God into us and shall fulfill us; and these be the goods which He hath ordained to give us from without beginning. These goods are treasured and hid in Himself; for unto that time Creature is mighty nor worthy to receive them.”

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

The Sixteenth Revelation, Chapter 75

Love , God , Pain , Faith

“Also God shewed that sin shall be no shame to man, but worship. For right as to every sin is answering a pain by truth, right so for every sin, to the same soul is given a bliss by love: right as diverse sins are punished with diverse pains according as they be grievous, right so shall they be rewarded with diverse joys in Heaven according as they have been painful and sorrowful to the soul in earth. For the soul that shall come to Heaven is precious to God, and the place so worshipful that the goodness of God suffereth never that soul to sin that shall come there without that the which sin shall be rewarded; and it is made known without end, and blissfully restored by overpassing worship.”

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

The Thirteenth Revelation, Chapter 38

Love , God , Pain , Truth

“Yet, some explorers do not return. And the loss settles unfairly on a few. The families here today shared in the courage of those they loved. But now they must face life and grief without them. The sorrow is lonely; but you are not alone. In time, you will find comfort and the grace to see you through. And in God's own time, we can pray that the day of your reunion will come.”

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

2000s, 2003, Columbia space shuttle disaster (February 2003)

Love , Life , God , Family

“From far, far in the distant past,
Down to this day, this very instant,
Those things we have longed for most
Have not been attained, and we sorrow.”

Ippen (1239–1289) Japanese Buddhist monk, founder of the Jishu school.

"Hymn of Amida's Vow" (Chapter 1, p. 3).
No Abode: The Record of Ippen (1997)

Distant , Past

“A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.”

William Winwood Reade (1838–1875) British historian

Source: The Martyrdom of Man (1872), Chapter IV, "Intellect", p. 385.

Religion , Beauty , Success

“I have had a son killed, a son-in-law die during the last battle of Nashville, another son has thrown himself away, a second son-in-law is in no better condition, I think I have had sorrow enough without having my bank account examined by a Committee of Congress.”

Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) American politician, 17th president of the United States (in office from 1865 to 1869)

Letter to his friend Colonel William G. Moore, complaining of Congressional investigations.... (1 May 1867).
Quote

Law , Thinking

“I have laid sorrow to sleep;
Love sleeps.
She who oft made me weep
Now weeps.”

Arthur Symons (1865–1945) British poet

Love and Sleep, st. 1.

Love , Sleep

“We weep before the Blessed Mother's shrine,
To think upon her sorrows, but her joys
What nun could ever know a tithing of?
The precious hours she watched above His sleep
Were worth the fearful anguish of the end.
Yea, lack of love is bitterest of all.”

Sara Teasdale (1884–1933) American writer and poet

"Marianna Alcoforando"
Helen of Troy and Other Poems (1911)

Love , Fear , Thinking , Sleep

“The very word "sorrow" colours the fact of sorrow, the pain of it.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

3rd Public Talk, Brockwood Park, UK (5 September 1981)
1980s

Pain

“Go, forget me! why should sorrow
O’er that brow a shadow fling?
Go, forget me, and to-morrow
Brightly smile and sweetly sing!
Smile,—though I shall not be near thee;
Sing,—though I shall never hear thee!”

Charles Wolfe (1791–1823) Irish poet

Go, forget me!

Smile , Singing , Forgetting

“Behold therefore, this England of the Year 1200 was no chimerical vacuity or dreamland, peopled with mere vaporous Fantasms, Rymer's Foedera, and Doctrines of the Constitution, but a green solid place, that grew corn and several other things. The Sun shone on it; the vicissitude of seasons and human fortunes. Cloth was woven and worn; ditches were dug, furrowfields ploughed, and houses built. Day by day all men and cattle rose to labour, and night by night returned home weary to their several lairs. In wondrous Dualism, then as now, lived nations of breathing men; alternating, in all ways, between Light and Dark; between joy and sorrow, between rest and toil, between hope, hope reaching high as Heaven, and fear deep as very Hell. Not vapour Fantasms, Rymer's Foedera at all!”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Past and Present (1843)

Men , People , Fear , Hope

“When my mother died, my father's early widowhood gave him social cachet he would not have had if they had divorced. He was a bigger catch for the sorrow attached.”

Amy Hempel book The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel

The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel, (2006)

José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955) Spanish liberal philosopher and essayist

"The Dehumanization of Art"
The Dehumanization of Art and Ideas about the Novel (1925)

Fate , Art , Personality , Forgetting

“A Creature not too bright or good
For human nature's daily food;
For transient sorrows, simple wiles,
Praise, blame, love, kisses, tears and smiles.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Stanza 2.
She Was a Phantom of Delight http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww259.html (1804)

Love , Food , Smile , Kiss

“In the course of reading he became more and more melancholy and finally became completely gloomy. When the reading was over he uttered in a voice full of sorrow: "Goodness, how sad is our Russia!"”

Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852) Russian writer

On Alexander Pushkin in Four Letters Concerning Dead Souls (1843)

Sadness , Reading

“I told him how we kept fewer forms between us and God; retaining, indeed, no more than, perhaps, the nature of mankind in the mass rendered necessary for due observance. I told him I could not look on flowers and tinsel, on wax- lights and embroidery, at such times and under such circumstances as should be devoted to lifting the secret vision to Him whose home is Infinity, and His being — Eternity. That when I thought of sin and sorrow, of earthly corruption, mortal depravity, weighty temporal woe — I could not care for chanting priests or mumming officials; that when the pains of existence and the terrors of dissolution pressed before me — when the mighty hope and measureless doubt of the future arose in view — _then_, even the scientific strain, or the prayer in a language learned and dead, harassed: with hindrance a heart which only longed to cry — "God be merciful to me, a sinner!"”

Charlotte Brontë book Villette

Source: Villette (1853), Chapter XXXVI: The Apple of Discord

God , Pain , Secret , Hope

“A little work, a little gay
To keep us going—and so good-day!

A little warmth, a little light
Of love’s bestowing—and so, good-night.

A little fun, to match the sorrow
Of each day’s growing—and so, good-morrow!

A little trust that when we die
We reap our sowing—and so—good-bye!”

George du Maurier book Trilby

Trilby (1894). Compare:
:PEU DE CHOSE
La vie est vaine,
Un peu d’amour,
Un peu de haine,
Et puis—Bonjour!

La vie est brève:
Un peu d’espoir,
Un peu de rève
Et puis—Bon soir!
::Léon de Montenaeken; translated by Louise Chandler Moulton as:
:Ah, brief is Life,
Love’s short sweet way,
With dreamings rife,
And then—Good-day!

And Life is vain—
Hope’s vague delight,
Grief’s transient pain,
And then—Good-night.

Love , Light , Night

“Joy and Sorrow have as source the very soul who planned their course.”

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

Rewards of Passion (Sheer Poetry) (1981)

Soul , Joy

“Well, there is sorrow in the world, but goodness too; and goodness that is not greenness, either, no more than sorrow is.”

Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet

Source: The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade (1857), Ch. 5

World

“Drink: the immortal waters quench the spirit's longing.
Art thou not now, bright one, all sorrow past, in elation,
Made young with joy, grown brother-hearted with the vast,
Whither thy spirit wending flits the dim stars past
Unto the Light of Lights in burning adoration.”

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

The Nuts of Knowledge (1903)

Art , Star , Drink , Light

“The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

One Word is Too Often Profaned (1821), st. 2

Star , Night

“The mighty Mahmud, Allah-breathing Lord
That all the misbelieving and black Horde
Of Fears and Sorrows that infest the Soul
Scatters before him with his whirlwind Sword.”

Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) Persian poet, philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer

The Rubaiyat (1120)

Fear , Soul

“I will indulge my sorrows, and give way
To all the pangs and fury of despair.”

Joseph Addison book Cato

Act IV, scene iii.
Cato, A Tragedy (1713)

Way , Despair

“A shadow leaned over me, whispering, in the darkness,
Thoughts without sound;
Sorrowful thoughts that filled me with helpless wonder
And held me bound.”

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) English poet

"The Shadow" in The Empire Review (1923) Vol. 37, p. 620

“This painting, this work you miss so much [the two sisters Morisot painted a lot together] is a cause of much trouble and concern, you know this as well as I do and yet, child that you are, you are already weeping for the loss of the very thing that darkened you mood only recently. Think of it, yours is not the very worst lot: you have a real affection, a devoted heart that is yours an yours alone, do not be ungrateful for the dealings of fate, think of the great sorrow that is solitude; whatever anyone says or does, womankind has immense need of affection; to want to retreat into yourself is to attempt the impossible.”

Berthe Morisot (1841–1895) painter from France

in Berthe's letter to her sister Edma, c. 1870; as cited in The Correspondence of Berthe Morisot, ed. Denis Rouart; Camden, London 1986 / Kinston, R. I. Moyer Bell, 1989, p. 29
1860 - 1870

Fate , Mood , Thinking , Solitude

“He was magnificent, and I will never forget that in that moment, I first loved him. And I never stopped loving him. I do now and always will. No one ever brought me more sorrow or pain or joy than he did. No, nothing, not even my sons, has ever outweighed the love I feel and still feel for him. And I believe – had I known what the future held for us: all the trouble, torment, battle, and grief of our lives – I still believe that I would have yielded my heart into his keeping as I did then”

Alice Borchardt book The Dragon Queen

The Dragon Queen

Love , Pain , Feeling , Future

“Anger is stronger than fear, stronger than sorrow.”

Dan Millman book Way of the Peaceful Warrior

p 69 - Book one: The winds of change - The web of illusion
Way of the Peaceful Warrior (1980)

Fear , Anger

“And therefore to-day is thrilling
With a past day's late fulfilling;
And the multitudes are enlisted
In the faith that their fathers resisted,
And, scorning the dream of to-morrow,
Are bringing to pass, as they may,
In the world, for its joy or its sorrow,
The dream that was scorned yesterday.”

Arthur O'Shaughnessy Ode

Music and Moonlight (1874), Ode

World , Faith , Dreams , Past

“Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

Part II, section 1.
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847)

Strong , Silence

“It is not in the bright, happy day, but only in the solemn night, that other worlds are to be seen shining in their long, long distances. And it is in sorrow — the night of the soul — that we see farthest, and know ourselves natives of infinity, and sons and daughters of the Most High.”

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

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

World , Soul , Daughters , Night

“When we feel how God was in our sorrows, we shall trust the more blessedly that He will be in our deaths.”

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

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

Death , God , Feeling

“One of us sings in the street, and we listen to him;
The words ring over us like vague bells of sorrow.
He sings of a house he lived in long ago.
It is strange; this house of dust was the house I lived in;
The house you lived in, the house that all of us know.”

Conrad Aiken (1889–1973) American novelist and poet

The House of Dust (1916 - 1917)

Singing , Housing

“And almost every one when age,
Disease, or sorrows strike him,
Inclines to think there is a God,
Or something very like Him.”

Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–1861) English poet

Dipsychus http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/C/CloughArthurHugh/verse/poemsproseremains/dipsychusprologue.html, Pt. I, sc. v (1862).

God , Age , Disease , Thinking

“Yes I have spoken on Gandhi ji’s Vaishnav Jan bhajan at many places. In fact, I used to deliver hour-long speeches describing why Gandhi ji loved this bhajan. If we think carefully and dwell on each word of this song, composed 500 years ago, we will find that everything said in it is still relevant, especially for our public life. He speaks against corruption and importance of personal integrity. In short, it is a manifesto for public life and morality. So, I worked around the words and would say: … "A people’s representative is one who feels the pain of others; one who removes the sorrows of others and yet does not let a trace of pride or arrogance come into his heart."
This used to be part of my worker development programmes. I used to analyse each line of this bhajan and explain why Gandhi ji promoted these values in public life; it contains all the wisdom you need for public life. It is a great misfortune for our country that this bhajan is played only on October 2 at Rajghat. It should have become an instrument of inculcating moral values. Gandhi ji liked this bhajan because Gandhi’s DNA and the elements of this geet match each other. I hold it up as a model of conduct for our party and RSS workers. In the RSS, there is an old tradition of remembering this bhajan every morning. Their pratah smaran (morning remembrance) starts with Gandhi ji’s name.”

Narendra Modi (1950) Prime Minister of India

Narendra Modi quoted from Kishwar, Madhu (2014). Modi, Muslims and media: Voices from Narendra Modi's Gujarat. p.379-380
2013

Love , Life , Wisdom , Pain

“We must turn inwards to search deep within ourselves. “Is my heart still vibrant with life? Can I still experience the source of love and compassion within me? Does my heart still melt at the pain and sorrow of others? Have I cried along with those who are suffering? Have I really tried to wipe another’s tears to console them or given someone at least a single meal or a set of clothing?” Like this, we can honestly introspect. Then the soothing moonlight of compassion will spontaneously shine within our minds.”

Mata Amritanandamayi (1953) Hindu spiritual leader and guru

Compassion: The Only Way to Peace (2007)

Love , Life , Pain , Search

“I have staked my career—my life itself—on the things I could see, on the stories I could credit, and on the eventual vindication, when the book was closed, of the reasonable and skeptical approach. In the face of twenty-five years of bloodshed, mayhem, criminality, and the universal human pastime of ruination, I have clung fiercely to Occam’s razor, seeking always to keep my solutions unadorned and free of conjecture, and never to resort to conspiracy or any kind of prosecutorial woolgathering. My mother, whenever she was confronted by calamity or personal sorrow, invoked cosmic emanations, invisible empires, ancient prophecies, and intrigues; it has been the business of my life to reject such folderol and seek the simpler explanation. But we were fools, she and I, arrant blockheads, each of us blind to or heedless of the readiest explanation: that the world is an ungettable joke, and our human need to explain its wonders and horrors, our appalling genius for devising such explanations, is nothing more than the rim shot that accompanies the punch line.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

The God of Dark Laughter https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/04/09/the-god-of-dark-laughter, The New Yorker (April 9, 2001)

Life , Books , World , Fools

“To the Kathakali Man these stories are his children and his childhood. He has grown up within them. They are the house he was raised in, the meadows he played in. They are his windows and his way of seeing. So when he tells a story, he handles it as he would a child of his own. He teases it. He punishes it. He sends it up like a bubble. He wrestles it to the ground and lets it go again. He laughs at it because he loves it. He can fly you across whole worlds in minutes, he can stop for hours to examine a wilting leaf. Or play with a sleeping monkey's tail. He can turn effortlessly from the carnage of war into the felicity of a woman washing her hair in a mountain stream. From the crafty ebullience of a rakshasa with a new idea into a gossipy Malayali with a scandal to spread. From the sensuousness of a woman with a baby at her breast into the seductive mischief of Krishna's smile. He can reveal the nugget of sorrow that happiness contains. The hidden fish of shame in a sea of glory.
He tells stories of the gods, but his yarn is spun from the ungodly, human heart.
The Kathakali Man is the most beautiful of men. Because his body is his soul. His only instrument. From the age of three he has been planed and polished, pared down, harnessed wholly to the task of story-telling. He has magic in him, this man within the painted mark and swirling skirts.
But these days he has become unviable. Unfeasible. Condemned goods. His children deride him. They long to be everything that he is not. He has watched them grow up to become clerks and bus conductors. Class IV non-gazetted officers. With unions of their own.
But he himself, left dangling somewhere between heaven and earth, cannot do what they do. He cannot slide down the aisles of buses, counting change and selling tickets. He cannot answer bells that summon him. He cannot stoop behind trays of tea and Marie biscuits.
In despair he turns to tourism. He enters the market. He hawks the only thing he owns. The stories that his body can tell.
He becomes a Regional Flavour.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

page 230-231.
The God of Small Things (1997)

Love , Men , God , War

“The fact that there is a spiritual power in us, that is to say, a power which testifies to the unity of our life with the life of others, which impels us to regard others as other selves — this fact conies home to us even more forcibly in sorrow than in joy. It is thrown into clearest relief on the background of pain.
In the glow of achievement we are apt to be full of a false self-importance. But in moments of weakness we realise, through contrast, the infinitely superior strength of the power whose very humble organs and ministers we are. It is then we come to understand that, isolated from it, we are nothing; at one with it, identified with it, we participate in its eternal nature, in its resistless course.”

Felix Adler (1851–1933) German American professor of political and social ethics, rationalist, and lecturer

Section 1 : The Meaning of Life
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)

Life , Pain , Home , Understanding

“… happiness is not for this world — a conviction that cannot be too soon acquired : it will destroy a thousand vain expectations, dissipate the most perplexing of our illusions — the early knowledge that life is but a trial, whose triumph is hereafter, and this earth a place appointed for that sorrow and patient endurance which is gradually fitting us for a better and a happier state.”

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

Traits and Trials of Early Life (1836)

Life , World , Knowledge , Happiness

““Oh! the years I have lost,” will be the exclamation of a man, if he be not philosophical, and not possess Friedrich Nietzsche’s appreciation of the value of sorrow in education.”

Oscar Levy (1867–1946) German physician and writer

Source: The Revival of Aristocracy (1906), p. 37.

Education

“Prostrate on earth the bleeding warrior lies,
And Isr'el's beauty on the mountains dies.
How are the mighty fallen!
Hush'd be my sorrow, gently fall my tears,
Lest my sad tale should reach the alien's ears:
Bid Fame be dumb, and tremble to proclaim
In heathen Gath, or Ascalon, our shame
Lest proud Philistia, lest our haughty foe,
With impious scorn insult our solemn woe.”

William Somervile (1675–1742) English poet

The Lamentation of David over Saul and Jonathan.

Sadness , Beauty , Mountain , Tear

“Pity the sorrows of a poor old man,
Whose trembling limbs have borne him to your door,
Whose days are dwindled to the shortest span;
Oh give relief, and Heaven will bless your store.”

Thomas Moss (minister) (1740–1808) British writer

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

“Sleep, sleep, beauty bright,
Dreaming o'er the joys of night.
Sleep, sleep: in thy sleep
Little sorrows sit and weep.”

William Blake A Cradle Song

A Cradle Song, st. 1
1790s, Poems from Blake's Notebook (c. 1791-1792)

Beauty , Dreams , Sleep , Joy

“With a sudden clarity which went beyond the immediacy of his pain or sorrow, Sol Weintraub suddenly understood perfectly why Abraham had agreed to sacrifice Isaac, his son, when the Lord commanded him to do so.
It was not obedience.
It was not even to put the love of God above the love of his son.
Abraham was testing God.
By denying the sacrifice at the last moment, by stopping the knife, God had earned the right—in Abraham’s eyes and the hearts of his offspring—to become the God of Abraham.”

Dan Simmons book The Fall of Hyperion

Source: The Fall of Hyperion (1990), Chapter 45 (p. 491)

Love , God , Pain , Heart

“For my own part, I may desire in general to be other than I am; I may condemn and dislike my whole form, and beg of Almighty God for an entire reformation, and that He will please to pardon my natural infirmity: but I ought not to call this repentance, methinks, no more than the being dissatisfied that I am not an angel or Cato. My actions are regular, and conformable to what I am and to my condition; I can do no better; and repentance does not properly touch things that are not in our power; sorrow does.. I imagine an infinite number of natures more elevated and regular than mine; and yet I do not for all that improve my faculties, no more than my arm or will grow more strong and vigorous for conceiving those of another to be so.”

Michel De Montaigne book Essays

Book III, Ch. 2
Essais (1595), Book III

God , Angels , Imagination , Nature

“The tears that you spill, the sorrowful, are sweeter than the laughter of snobs and the guffaws of scoffers.”

Khalil Gibran (1883–1931) Lebanese artist, poet, and writer

A Handful of Sand on the Shore

Tear , Laughter

“The time-state of attainment eliminates so accurately the time-state of aspiration, that the actual seems the inevitable, and, all conscious intellectual effort to reconstitute the invisible and unthinkable as a reality being fruitless, we are incapable of appreciating our joy by comparing it with our sorrow.”

Samuel Beckett book Proust

Proust (1957), p. 4

Reality , Effort , Time , Joy

“The mystery is that the world is at it is -- a mystery that is the source of all joy and all sorrow, of all hope and fear, and the source of development both creative and degenerative. The contingency of all into which time enters is the source of pathos, comedy, and tragedy.”

John Dewey (1859–1952) American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer

Time and Individuality (1940)

World , Fear , Hope , Time

“I have often felt a bitter sorrow at the thought of the German people, which is so estimable in the individual and so wretched in the generality. A comparison of the German people with other peoples arouses a painful feeling, which I try to overcome in every possible way.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Goethes Gespraeche (December 13, 1813)

Pain , People , Way , Feeling

“To my deprivation, to my sorrow, sinew was brave.
The world would not be if not for my offspring.
I am a bard to be praised. The unskilful
May he be possessed by the ravens and eagle and bird of wrath.”

Taliesin (534–599) Welsh bard

Book of Taliesin (c. 1275?), The Death-song of Uther Pendragon

World , Bird

“And in this word that Jesus said: Wilt thou see her? methought it was the most pleasing word that He might have given me of her, with that ghostly Shewing that He gave me of her. For our Lord shewed me nothing in special but our Lady Saint Mary; and her He shewed three times. The first was as she was with Child; the second was as she was in her sorrows under the Cross; the third is as she is now in pleasing, worship, and joy.”

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

The Eleventh Revelation, Chapter 25

Time , Joy

“We feel much sorrow for you, the elm tree had said. But what kind of sorrow—a real and sincere sorrow, or the superficial and pedantic sorrow of the immortal for a frail and flickering creature that was about to die?”

Clifford D. Simak book All Flesh is Grass

Source: All Flesh is Grass (1965), Chapter 24 (p. 247)

Feeling , Tree , Sincerity

“Let the rose fall, another rose
Will bloom upon the self-same tree;
Let the bird die, ere evening close
Some other bird will sing for me.
It is for the beloved to love,
'Tis for the happy to be kind;
Sorrow will more than death remove
The associate links affections bind.”

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

(2nd April 1831) Lines Supposed to be the Prayer of the Supplicating Nymph in Mr. Lawrence Macdonald’s Exhibition of Sculptures
The London Literary Gazette, 1831

Love , Death , Bird , Tree

“He was not actually drunk, but emotion made him feel as if he were. Sorrow, loss, anger—these were as good as a bottle of the very worst gin.”

Michael Swanwick book Jack Faust

Source: Jack Faust (1997), Chapter 19, “Ashes” (pp. 318-319)

Feeling , Loss , Anger

“Ali and Sanaubar had little in common, least of all their respective appearances. While Sanaubar’s brilliant green eyes and impish face had, rumor has it, tempted countless men into sin, Ali had a congenital paralysis of his lower facial muscles, a condition that rendered him unable to smile and left him perpetually grim-faced. It was an odd thing to see the stone-faced Ali happy, or sad, because only his slanted brown eyes glinted with a smile or welled with sorrow. People say that eyes are windows to the soul. Never was that more true than with Ali, who could only reveal himself through his eyes.I have heard that Sanaubar’s suggestive stride and oscillating hips sent men to reveries of infidelity.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner (2003), Ch. 2

Men , People , Sadness , Smile

“Farewell, and when to-morrow
Seems little, like to-day,
And we find life's deepest sorrow
Melts gradual away;
Yet do not quite forget me.”

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

(1837 1) (Vol. 49) Songs - I.
The Monthly Magazine

Life , Forgetting

“Smoking has a sedative effect upon the nerves, and enables a man to bear the sorrows of this life (of which every one has his share) not only decently, but dignifiedly.”

George Borrow book Lavengro

Source: Lavengro (1851), Ch. 23

Life

“It quieted pain and sorrow,
Like love overcoming strife;
It seemed the harmonious echo
From our discordant life.”

Adelaide Anne Procter (1825–1864) English poet and songwriter

"A Lost Chord".
Legends and Lyrics: Second Series (1861)

Love , Life , Pain

“No true work since the world began was ever wasted; no true life since the world began has ever failed. Oh, understand those two perverted words "failure" and "success." and measure them by the eternal, not by the earthly standard. When after thirty obscure, toilsome, unrecorded years in the shop of the village carpenter, one came forth to be preeminently the man of sorrows, to wander from city to city in homeless labors, and to expire in lonely agony upon the shameful cross — was that a failure? Nay, my brethren. it was the death of Him who lived that we might follow His footsteps, it was the life, it was the death of the Son of God.”

Frederic William Farrar (1831–1903) British clergyman and author

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 113.

Life , Death , God , World

“And that brings me to the other big lesson that I want to share with you today. It’s a lesson about how to get through those struggles, and that is, instead of letting your hardships and failures discourage or exhaust you, let them inspire you. Let them make you even hungrier to succeed. Now, I know that many of you have already dealt with some serious losses in your lives. Maybe someone in your family lost a job or struggled with drugs or alcohol or an illness. Maybe you’ve lost someone you love […]. […] So, yes, maybe you’ve been tested a lot more and a lot earlier in life than many other young people. Maybe you have more scars than they do. Maybe you have days when you feel more tired than someone your age should ever really feel. But, graduates, tonight, I want you to understand that every scar that you have is a reminder not just that you got hurt, but that you survived. And as painful as they are, those holes we all have in our hearts are what truly connect us to each other. They are the spaces we can make for other people’s sorrow and pain, as well as their joy and their love so that eventually, instead of feeling empty, our hearts feel even bigger and fuller. So it’s okay to feel the sadness and the grief that comes with those losses. But instead of letting those feelings defeat you, let them motivate you. Let them serve as fuel for your journey.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2010s, Commencement speech for Martin Luther King Jr. College Prep graduates (2015)

Love , Life , Pain , People

“We're in a freefall into future. We don't know where we're going. Things are changing so fast, and always when you're going through a long tunnel, anxiety comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. It's a very interesting shift of perspective and that's all it is… joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes.”

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

Sukhavati (2002, reissued 2007)

Hell , Change , Future

“A loyal-hearted man rejoices at a friend's advancement; a disloyal man cries out in sorrow when something pleasant befalls his friend and he is there to see it.”

Wolfram von Eschenbach book Parzival

Der getriwe ist friundes êren vrô:
der ungetriwe wâfenô
rüefet, swenne ein liep geschiht
sînem friunde und er daz siht.
Bk. 13, st. 675, line 17; p. 337.
Parzival

Heart

“Sorrow and scarlet leaf,
Sad thoughts and sunny weather:
Ah me, this glory and this grief
Agree not well together!”

Thomas William Parsons (1819–1892) American writer

Sadness , Weather

“On the whole, there is one thing that is very common; you can find it in each and in everyone, in yourself just as I find it in myself: sin and sins. There is one thing that is very rare: true sorrow over one’s sin, which no doubt is why it is made necessary every holy day to pray in the opening prayer in the church service “that we might learn to sorrow over our sins.””

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: 1850s, An Upbuilding Discourse December 20, 1850, P. 152

Learning

“Having still in my recollection so many excellent men, to whose grandfathers, upon the same spots, my grandfather had yielded cheerful obedience and reverence, it is not without sincere sorrow that I have beheld many of the sons of these men driven from their fathers' mansions, or holding them as little better than tenants or stewards, while the swarms of Placemen, Pensioners, Contractors, and Nabobs…have usurped a large part of the soil.”

William Cobbett (1763–1835) English pamphleteer, farmer and journalist

Political Register (21 December 1816), quoted in Karl W. Schweizer and John W. Osborne, Cobbett and His Times (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1990), p. 31.

Men , Parting , Sincerity