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Quotes About Sorrow

The tragedy of the woman's death, and of his own share in it, were as nothing in the disaster of his bright irreclaimableness.
~ Edith Wharton
Ah lucklesse babe, borne vnder cruell starre, And in dead parents balefull ashes bred, Full litle weenest thou, what sorrowes are Left thee for portion of thy liuelihed, Poore Orphane in the wide world scattered, As budding braunch rent from the natiue tree, And throwen forth, till it be withered: Such is the state of men: thus enter wee Into this life with woe, and end with miseree.
~ Edmund Spenser
Deare knight, as deare, as euer knight was deare, That all these sorrowes suffer for my sake, High heuen behold the tedious toyle, ye for me take . . .
~ Edmund Spenser
Oftimes it haps, that sorrowes of the mynd Find remedie vnsought, which seeking cannot fynd.
~ Edmund Spenser
Yet can he neuer dye, but dying liues, And doth himselfe with sorrow new sustaine, That death and life attonce vnto him giues. And painefull pleasure turnes to pleasing paine. There dwels he euer, miserable swaine, Hatefull both to him selfe, and euery wight; Where he through priuy griefe, and horrour vaine, Is woxen so deform'd, that he has quight Forgot he was a man, and Gealosie is hight.
~ Edmund Spenser
For louers heauen must passe by sorrowes hell.
~ Edmund Spenser
His louely words her seemd due recompence Of all her passed paines: one louing howre For many yeares of sorrow can dispence: A dram of sweete is worth a pound of sowre: Shee has forgott, how many, a woeful stowre For him she late endurd; she speakes no more Of past . . . Before her stands her knight, for whom she toyld so sore.
~ Edmund Spenser
Huge sea of sorrow, and tempestuous griefe, Wherein my feeble barke is tossed long, Far from the hoped hauen of reliefe, Why doe thy cruel billowes beat so strong, And thy moyst mountaines each on others throng, Threatening to swallow vp my fearfull lyfe?
~ Edmund Spenser
Everything I touched or did spoke to me of sadness. Each article of clothing—shirt, tie, jacket—felt cut out of different bolts of sadness, each a peculiar weave and shape and hang of sadness, as though sadness came in lots of styles.
~ Edmund White
Gabriel, the man she might have tied the knot with except that it was not meant to be. Putting memories to sleep, like putting an animal down.
~ Edna O'Brien
Oh Father, oh Mother, forgive us, for we know not what we do.
~ Edna O'Brien
the lonely evening sound of the mothers, saying it is not our fault that we weep so, it is nature's fault that makes us first full, then empty.
~ Edna O'Brien
it was then I cried, cried for the fact of not having cried and for the immensity of tears yet to be shed.
~ Edna O'Brien
If I could feel like myself I'd thank God but I don't feel and never will.
~ Edna O'Brien
THE TWO OTHER GIRLS in the room, Mabel and Deirdre, said I imagined it. But they were wrong. My brother appeared to me there. A beam of light from the streetlamp lay in a crooked zigzag along the floor, toward the bed, and my brother stepped onto it, his face pensive but not crying, dressed as he might be for a wedding, his good suit, his collar and tie, and not a mark on him, no bloodstain
~ Edna O'Brien
her untimely death. Death for her meant death for us both.
~ Edna O'Brien
Perhaps Hurston saw in her mother, Lucy, a version of Persephone, who is so missed when she's gone that the world literally starts to die. This type of grief, as Toni Morrison writes in Sula , has no top and no bottom, just circles and circles of sorrow.
~ Edwidge Danticat
In my sleep, I see my mother rising, like the mother spirit of the rivers, above the current that drowned her. She is wearing a dress of glass, fashioned out of the hardened clarity of the river, and this dress flows like raised dust behind her as she runs towards me and enfolds me in her smoke-light arms. Her face is like mine now, in fact it is the exact same long, three-different-shades-of-night face, and she is smiling a both-row-of-teeth revealing smile.
~ Edwidge Danticat
Thus, too, they came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles, which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose.
~ Albert Camus
Live to the point of tears.
~ Albert Camus
Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.
~ Albert Camus
This dog, Robin Adair, was the joy of Eve's heart – or he had been, when her heart still could hold joy and not merely fever and delirium.
~ Albert Payson Terhune
Being only a dog, Lad had no way of knowing his vanished deities ever would come back to him. Pitifully he followed the Mistress upstairs and down and everywhere she moved, as she prepared for the departure. He refused to be consoled when she patted him and when she said she and the Master would be back in a few days. His classic head drooped. His plumed tail hung disconsolate. He was the picture of utter misery.
~ Albert Payson Terhune
Sunnybank Gray Dawn outlived all the Little People I have spoken of—except Tippy—in this book. Dawn was the last of the great Sunnybank collies. He died on May 30, 1929, leaving bitter heartaches behind him. Peace to his white soul!)
~ Albert Payson Terhune