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Quotes About Sorrow

And there you are on the shore, fitful and thoughtful, trying to attach them to an idea — some news of your own life. But the lilies are slippery and wild—they are devoid of meaning, they are simply doing, from the deepest spurs of their being, what they are impelled to do every summer. And so, dear sorrow, are you.
~ Mary Oliver
The face of the moose is as sad as the face of Jesus.
~ Mary Oliver
because my life without you would be a place of parched and broken trees
~ Mary Oliver
When I was young, I was attracted to sorrow. It seemed interesting. It seemed an energy that would take me somewhere. Now I am older . . . and I hate sorrow. I see that it has no energy of its own, but uses mine, furtively. I see that it is leaden, without breath, and repetitious, and unsolvable. And now I see that I am sorrowful about only a few things, but over and over.
~ Mary Oliver
Adults can change their circumstances; children cannot. Children are powerless, and in difficult situations they are the victims of every sorrow and mischance and rage around them, for children feel all of these things but without any of the ability that adults have to change them.
~ Mary Oliver
Adults can change their circumstances; children cannot. Children are powerless, and in difficult situations they are the victims of every sorrow and mischance and rage around them, for children feel all of these things but without any of the ability that adults have to change them. Whatever can take a child beyond such circumstances, therefore, is an alleviation and a blessing.
~ Mary Oliver
Water rolled down the face of the old house like tears
~ Mary Roberts Rinehart
She had said she wanted to be a "princess for the world." The world's sorrow for her untimely death made it undeniably clear that she was, indeed, "the people's princess," as Tony Blair had so eloquently called her.
~ Mary Robertson
I looked upon the sea, it was to be my grave
~ Mary Shelley
We rest; A dream has power to poison sleep. We rise; One wandering thought pollutes the day. We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep, Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away; It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow, The path of departure still is free. Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but mutability!
~ Mary Shelley
is it not a duty to the survivors that we should refrain from augmenting their unhappiness by an appearance of immoderate grief? It is also a duty owed to yourself; for excessive sorrow prevents improvement or enjoyment, or even the discharge of daily usefulness, without which no man is fit for society.
~ Mary Shelley
I was new to sorrow, but it did not the less alarm me.
~ Mary Shelley
Justine shook her head mournfully. I do not fear to die, she said; that pang is past. God raises my weakness and gives me courage to endure the worst. I leave a sad and bitter world; and if you remember me and think of me as of one unjustly condemned, I am resigned to the fate awaiting me. Learn from me, dear lady, to submit in patience to the will of heaven!
~ Mary Shelley
My heart, which was before sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy; I exclaimed, Wandering spirits, if indeed ye wander, and do not rest in your narrow beds, allow me this faint happiness, or take me, as your companion, away from the joys of life.
~ Mary Shelley
Yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connexion; and why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel? The time at length arrives, when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity; and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished.
~ Mary Shelley
The cup of life was poisoned for ever; and although the sun shone upon me, as upon the happy and gay of heart, I saw around me nothing but a dense and frightful darkness, penetrated by no light but the glimmer of two eyes that glared upon me.
~ Mary Shelley
Thus not the tenderness of friendship, nor the beauty of earth, nor of heaven, could redeem my soul from woe: the very accents of love were ineffectual. I was encompassed by a cloud which no benefical influence could penetrate. The wounded deer dragging its fainting limbs to some untrodden brake, there to gaze upon the arrow which had pierced it, and to die - was but a type of me.
~ Mary Shelley
misery had her dwelling in my heart...
~ Mary Shelley
It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.
~ Mary Shelley
What is the world, except that which we feel? Love, and hope, and delight, or sorrow and tears; these are our lives, our realities, to which we give the names of power, possession, misfortune, and death.
~ Mary Shelley
I, a miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to enjoyment.
~ Mary Shelley
Cursed, cursed creator! Why did I live? Why, in that instant, did I not extinguish the spark of existence which you had so wantonly bestowed?
~ Mary Shelley
The blood flowed freely in my veins, but a weight of despair and remorse pressed on my heart, which nothing could remove.
~ Mary Shelley
I leave a sad and bitter world; and if you remember me, and think of me as of one unjustly condemned, I am resigned to the fate awaiting me.
~ Mary Shelley