quotations about sorrow
Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
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
One sorrow never comes but brings an heir,
That may succeed as his inheritor.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
When you have a sorrow that is too great it leaves no room for any other.
ÉMILE ZOLA
La Bête Humaine
When sparrows build and the leaves break forth
My old sorrow wakes and cries.
JEAN INGELOW
Song of Old Love
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
Can calm despair and wild unrest
Be tenants of a single breast,
Or sorrow such a changeling be?
ALFRED TENNYSON
In Memoriam
They say my tears come from the bottle that stands beside me all the time
But I wonder if they know the sorrow that always overtakes the wine
PORTER WAGONER
"Sorrow Overtakes the Wine"
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
The violence of sorrow is not at the first to be striven withal; being like a mighty beast, sooner tamed with following than overthrown by withstanding.
PHILIP SIDNEY
The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia
Sorrow wrings the sad soul, and bends it down to earth.
HORACE
attributed, Day's Collacon
Happiness is valued only when sorrow is tasted.
KUNCHACKO BOBAN
"Two decades of Kunchacko Boban", onmanorama, August 9, 2017
The sorrowful dislike the gay, and the gay the sorrowful.
HORACE
Epistles
Time is the physician of every sorrow.
EUPHRON
attributed, Day's Collacon
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"
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
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
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
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"
Sorrows are like thunderclouds--in the distance they look black, over our heads scarcely gray.
JEAN PAUL RICHTER
Hesperus