If there is a hell upon earth it is to be found in a melancholy man’s heart.
—Robert Burton (1577–1640) English Scholar, Clergyman
Four be the things I am wiser to know:
Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I’d been better without:
Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:
Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
—Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American Humorist, Journalist
Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
The soul would have no rainbow had the eyes no tears.
—John Vance Cheney (1848–1922) American Poet, Essayist, Librarian
Ah, this beautiful world! Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and heaven itself lies not far off; and then it suddenly changes and is dark and sorrowful, and the clouds shut out the day. In the lives of the saddest of us there are bright days when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms. Then come the gloomy hours, when all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark. Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not; and oftentimes we call a man cold when he is only sad.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82) American Poet, Educator, Academic
One can never be the judge of another’s grief. That which is a sorrow to one, to another is joy. Let us not dispute with any one concerning the reality of his sufferings; it is with sorrows as with countries—each man has his own.
—Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand (1768–1848) French Writer, Academician, Statesman
The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.
—Eudora Welty (1909–2001) American Short Story Writer, Novelist
A sorrow’s crown of sorrow is remembering happier times.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92) British Poet
Never a tear bedims the eye that time and patience will not dry.
—Bret Harte (1836–1902) American Short Story Writer, Poet
Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, great as each may be, their highest comfort given to the sorrowful is a cordial introduction into another’s woe. Sorrow’s the great community in which all men born of woman are members at one time or another.
—Sean O’Casey (1880–1964) Irish Dramatist, Memoirist
Grief should be the instructor of the wise: sorrow is knowledge; they who know the most must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth,—the tree of knowledge is not that of life.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
Prayer has comforted us in sorrow and will help strengthen us for the journey ahead.
—George W. Bush (b.1946) American Head of State, Businessperson
There is peace and rest and comfort in sorrow.
—Soren Kierkegaard (1813–55) Danish Philosopher, Theologian
A coal fire softens iron, and sorrow softens a man’s heart, but both revert to the original hardness.
—Austin O’Malley (1858–1932) American Aphorist, Ophthalmologist
The sorrows and disasters of Europe always brought fortune to America.
—Stephen Leacock (1869–1944) Canadian Humorist, Writer
I haven’t a clue about the biology or the psychology involved when a person dissolves into tears, but it is quite fascinating to note what turns them on. There are wives who can cascade over a late husband or a burned dinner, and equally pour tears of joy over a new bonnet or a renovated bathroom…. A while ago I took a ship back from Europe. Amid the tumbling confetti … I found myself misty-eyed watching a young lady waving a tearful farewell to her boyfriend on the dock. I couldn’t figure out if I was crying at her plight, or in delight that he wasn’t coming along with us.
—Malcolm S. Forbes (1919–1990) American Publisher, Businessperson
Nature refuses to sympathize with our sorrow. She seems not to have provided for, but by a thousand contrivances against it. She has bevelled the margins of the eyelids that the tears may not overflow on the cheek.
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) American Philosopher
He that hath so many and great causes of joy, and yet is in love with sorrow and peevishness, deserves to starve in the midst of plenty, and to want comfort, while he is encircled with blessings.
—Jeremy Taylor
What is the noble truth of suffering? Birth is suffering, ageing is suffering and sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering.
—Buddhist Teaching
Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion.
—Samuel Johnson (1709–84) British Essayist
Sorrow is to the soul what the worm is to wood.
—Turkish Proverb
Wherever souls are being tried and ripened, in whatever commonplace and homely way, there God is hewing out the pillars for His temple.
—Phillips Brooks (1835–93) American Episcopal Clergyman, Author
Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Poet, Dramatist, Essayist, Novelist
To fight aloud is very brave, but gallanter, I know, who charge within the bosom, the Cavalry of Woe.
—Emily Dickinson (1830–86) American Poet
In this sad world of ours, sorry comes to all, and it often comes with bitter agony. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now believe that you will ever feel better. But this is not true. You are sure to be happy again. Knowing this, truly believing it, will make you less miserable now.
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–65) American Head of State
Sorrow is like a precious treasure, shown only to friends.
—African Proverb
We come to learn that it does not pay to grieve too much over our errors. Ordinarily we try to do the best we can.
—Thomas Lansing Masson (1866–1934) American Anthropologist, Editor, Author
When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616) British Playwright
The busy have no time for tears.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (1788–1824) English Romantic Poet
The man who has learned to triumph over sorrow wears his miseries as though they were sacred fillets upon his brow, and nothing is so admirable as a man bravely wretched.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
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