quotations about sorrow
In this sad world of ours sorrow comes to all, and to the young it comes with bittered agony because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to expect it.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
letter to Fanny McCullough, December 23, 1862
Times lose no time; nor do they roll idly by; through our senses they work strange operations on the mind. Behold, they went and came day by day, and by coming and going, introduced into my mind other imaginations and other remembrances; and little by little patched me up again with my old kind of delights, unto which that my sorrow gave way.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
Ah done been in sorrow's kitchen and Ah done licked out all de pots. Ah done died in grief and been buried in de bitter waters, and Ah done rose agin from de dead lak Lazarus.
ZORA NEALE HURSTON
Jonah's Gourd Vine
In my time of sorrow,
In my time of feeling bad
Oh what I'd give
Just to relive
All of the good times that I've had.
MARIANNE FAITHFUL
"In My Time of Sorrow"
It is with men as with trees: if you lop off their finest branches, into which they were pouring their young life-juice, the wounds will be healed over with some rough boss, some odd excresence; and what might have been a grand tree expanding into liberal shade, is but a whimsical misshapen trunk. Many an irritating fault, many an unlovely oddity, has come of a hard sorrow, which has crushed and maimed the nature just when it was expanding into plenteous beauty; and the trivial erring life which we visit with our harsh blame, may be but as the unsteady motion of a man whose best limb is withered.
GEORGE ELIOT
Mr. Gilfil's Love Story
Disappointments weigh so heavy
Leave it's wreckage all around
Once a good man, once respected
Sorrow breaks a good man down
WAYLON JENNINGS
"Another Blue Day"
The sorrows of other men seem to us like clouds of rain that empty themselves in the distance, and whose long-travelling thunder comes to us mellowed and subdued; but our own troubles are like a storm bursting right overhead, and sending down its bolts upon us with direct plunge.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
Sorrow comes in great waves ... but it rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us it leaves us on the spot, and we know that if it is strong we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. It wears us, uses us, but we wear it and use it in return; and it is blind, whereas we after a manner see.
HENRY JAMES
letter to Miss Grace Norton, July 28, 1883
All sorrows are less with bread.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
Sorrow is how we learn to love. Your heart isn't breaking. It hurts because it's getting larger. The larger it gets, the more love it holds.
RITA MAE BROWN
Riding Shotgun
There is not unmitigated ill in the sharpest of this world's sorrows;
I touch not the sore of thy guilt; but of human griefs I counsel thee,
Cast off the weakness of regret, and gird thee to redeem thy loss:
Thou has gained, in the furnace of affliction, self-knowledge, patience and humility,
And these be as precious ore, that waiteth the skill of the coiner:
Despise not the blessings of adversity, nor the gain thou hast earned so hardly,
And now thou hast drained the bitter, take heed that thou lose not the sweet.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
Light sorrows speak, but deeper ones are dumb.
SENECA
Hippolytus
Sorrow's child sits by the river
Sorrow's child hears not the water
NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS
"Sorrow's Child"
Alas! sorrow from happiness is oft evolved.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Die Natürliche Tochter
How fast we learn in the day of sorrow! Scripture shines out in a new effulgence; every verse seems to contain a sunbeam, every promise stands out in illuminated splendor; things hard to be understood become in a moment plain.
HORATIUS BONAR
attributed, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers
Joy and sorrow are like milk and cookies. That's how well they go together.
NEIL GAIMAN
American Gods
Not to sorrow freely is never to open the bosom to the sweets of sunshine.
WILLIAM GILMORE SIMMS
Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside
Sorrow turns the stars into mourners, and every wind of heaven into a dirge.
DAVID HANNAY
attributed, Day's Collacon
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet