quotations about sorrow
Sorrow is held the eldest child of sin.
JOHN WEBSTER
The Duchess of Malfi
Sorrow turns the stars into mourners, and every wind of heaven into a dirge.
DAVID HANNAY
attributed, Day's Collacon
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
Happiness is valued only when sorrow is tasted.
KUNCHACKO BOBAN
"Two decades of Kunchacko Boban", onmanorama, August 9, 2017
Two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Island
Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Romeo and Juliet
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
Alas! sorrow from happiness is oft evolved.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
Die Natürliche Tochter
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
Joy may be a miser,
But Sorrow's purse is free.
RICHARD HENRY STODDARD
Persian Song
The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
A Defence of Poetry
Drownin' your sorrows only irrigates 'em.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
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
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
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Hamlet
As long as skies are blue, and fields are green,
Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow,
Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Adonais
Sorrow's child sits by the river
Sorrow's child hears not the water
NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS
"Sorrow's Child"
Deeper I'm falling
Into the arms of sorrow
Blindly descending
Into the arms of sorrow
There must be serenity
There must be deliverance
Deeper I'm falling
Blindly descending
Deeper I'm falling
KILLSWITCH ENGAGE
"The Arms of Sorrow"
Past sorrows, let us moderately lament them;
For those to come, seek wisely to prevent them.
JOHN WEBSTER
The Duchess of Malfi
A scrap of sorrow, like a bird, lights on the heart.
I carry this in my body, seed
in an unswept corner, husk-encowled and seeming safe.
But they guard me, these small pains,
from growing sure
of myself and perhaps forgetting.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"To Hear the Falling World"