quotations about sorrow
Sorrows are like thunderclouds--in the distance they look black, over our heads scarcely gray.
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
Hesperus
Sorrow's tearing down the house that happiness once built.
DOLLY PARTON
"Sorrow's Tearing Down the House"
Some sorrows are but footprints in the snow, which the genial sun effaces, or, if it does not wholly efface, changes into dimples.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
Men die, but sorrow never dies;
The crowding years divide in vain,
And the wide world is knit with ties
Of common brotherhood in pain.
SUSAN COOLIDGE
The Cradle Tomb in Westminster Abbey
Lord, have pity on me. My evil sorrows strive with my good joys; and on which side is the victory, I know not.
ST. AUGUSTINE
Confessions
The sorrowful dislike the gay, and the gay the sorrowful.
HORACE
Epistles
Sorrow wrings the sad soul, and bends it down to earth.
HORACE
attributed, Day's Collacon
I found more joy in sorrow
Than you could find in joy.
SARA TEASDALE
The Answer
It would seem that by our sorrows only are we called to a knowledge of the Infinite. Are we happy? The limits of life constrain us on all sides.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
Happiness is valued only when sorrow is tasted.
KUNCHACKO BOBAN
"Two decades of Kunchacko Boban", onmanorama, August 9, 2017
Ah, don't be sorrowful, darling,
And don't be sorrowful, pray;
Taking the year together, my dear,
There isn't more night than day.
ALICE CARY
Don't Be Sorrowful, Darling
When sorrow sleepeth, wake it not,
But let it slumber on.
M. A. STODART
Song
Sing away sorrow, cast away care.
MIGUEL DE CERVANTES
Don Quixote
One sorrow never comes but brings an heir,
That may succeed as his inheritor.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
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
Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must take care of what has been given. Brush her hair, help her into her little coat, hold her hand, especially when crossing a street. For, think, what if you should lose her? Then you would be sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness would be yours. Take care, touch her forehead that she feel herself not so utterly alone.
MARY OLIVER
"Love Sorrow", Red Bird: Poems
I know
If we touched
We'd lose
Our sorrow
SPAIN
"If We Kissed"
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
Great things can rise from fetid pits of wanton death and sorrow.
PETE ABRAMS
Sluggy Freelance, December 22, 2017
Sorrow's child sits by the river
Sorrow's child hears not the water
NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS
"Sorrow's Child"