quotations about sorrow
Can calm despair and wild unrest
Be tenants of a single breast,
Or sorrow such a changeling be?
ALFRED TENNYSON
In Memoriam
When sparrows build and the leaves break forth
My old sorrow wakes and cries.
JEAN INGELOW
Song of Old Love
I walked a mile with Sorrow
And ne'er a word said she;
But, oh, the things I learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me.
ROBERT BROWNING HAMILTON
Along the Road
I know
If we touched
We'd lose
Our sorrow
SPAIN
"If We Kissed"
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
One sorrow never comes but brings an heir,
That may succeed as his inheritor.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
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
The sorrowful dislike the gay, and the gay the sorrowful.
HORACE
Epistles
Great things can rise from fetid pits of wanton death and sorrow.
PETE ABRAMS
Sluggy Freelance, December 22, 2017
Sorrow is held the eldest child of sin.
JOHN WEBSTER
The Duchess of Malfi
When you have a sorrow that is too great it leaves no room for any other.
ÉMILE ZOLA
La Bête Humaine
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
I found more joy in sorrow
Than you could find in joy.
SARA TEASDALE
The Answer
Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
Joy may be a miser,
But Sorrow's purse is free.
RICHARD HENRY STODDARD
Persian Song
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
Sorrows are gardeners: they plant flowers along waste places, and teach vines to cover barren heaps.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
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
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