Quotes About Melancholy

truth I know not why I am so sad. It wearies me: you say it wearies you; But how I got it--came by it.

For some nights I slept profoundly; but still every morning I felt the same lassitude, and a languor weighed upon me all day. I felt myself a changed girl. A strange melancholy was stealing over me, a melancholy that I would not have interrupted. Dim thoughts of death began to open, and an idea that I was slowly sinking took gentle, and, somehow, not unwelcome possession of me. If it was sad, the tone of mind which this induced was also sweet. Whatever it might be, my soul acquiesced in it.

In the fourth century, John Cassian described a condition among his fellow monks that he called "acedia": a "weariness or distress of heart . . . akin to dejection" that took "possession" of unhappy souls and left them lazy, sluggish, restless, and solitary. Later, acedia became widely translated as sloth, one of the seven deadly sins, and blended with melancholy in the popular mind. Both required, at the very least, confession and penitence.

When Lincoln was thirty-two, he wrote, "I am now the most miserable man living.

people often said that Lincoln had two distinct moods. But those who knew him well saw, as Ficklin did, that he "was naturally despondent and sad." It's not that his moods turned in a cycle, as day gives way to night, but that he lived in the night and made a strong effort to bring the sun in. "Gloom and sadness were his predominant state," said Herndon.

No element of Mr. Lincoln's character," declared his colleague Henry Whitney, "was so marked, obvious and ingrained as his mysterious and profound melancholy." His law partner William Herndon said, "His melancholy dripped from him as he walked.

He arrived tentatively at his own idea, that melancholy arose from natural, sometimes beneficent forces. Talking about it in plain human terms was his first step toward claiming his own ground as a person who, through no fault of his own, needed help.

But that did not make Mirko happy - the world was melting away; what was a grade compared with the world? He gazed through the windows and watched the thickly falling snow.

También ella sonreía, pero la suya era una sonrisa melancólica, la sonrisa de las cosas perdidas.

Que quede bien claro: el alma, como le dicen, es, pareciera, no cristalina sino pantanosa. Los motivos que la inducen, en esta cuadra, a dejarse llevar, como los llaman, al juego y a la exaltación, en la siguiente, con la misma arbitrariedad, y en forma no menos imprevisible, la sumen, para usar una vez más la expresión, en una intensa melancolía. En todo caso pareciera, ¿no?

De qué hierbas, entonces, tus ojos de doncella, di, melancolía se azulan... y se deslíen... de cuáles?

Si a uno no lo asaltaba la melancolía, se podía caminar hacia el atardecer con pájaros sobre y en la cabeza o los oídos.

There can be few places more conducive to the quiet, solitary contemplation of melancholy thoughts than a window-seat; and if beyond the window-panes there is a steely vignette of November murk and withered twigs, so much the better.

Under the greenwood tree, who something something me", tum-te-tum the weather,' Tom remarked. 'Shocking memory for poetry.

I drove in last night,' he said. 'I couldn't sleep, it was too hot. So I went outside. I was feeling melancholy. Then I danced with a beautiful girl, and I felt better. What's your story?

When experiencing a work of art, a curious exchange takes place; the work projects its aura, and we project our own emotions and precepts on the work. The melancholy in Michelangelo's architecture is fundamentally the viewer's sense of his/her own melancholy enticed by the authority of the work. Enigmatically, we encounter ourselves in the work.

I, too, seem to be a connoisseur of rain, but it does not fill me with joy; it allows me to steep myself in a solitude I nurse like a vice I've refused to vanquish.

When lovely woman stoops to folly And finds too late that men betray What charm can soothe her melancholy What art can wash her guilt away?

I get really homesick inside.

The rooms in those days were unfashionably sad enough to commit suicide in, and, in fact, that to me was the Château's charm, that it didn't have any objections to one's committing suicide. Things since then had gone steadily downhill

Te quiero, te quiero, te quiero, con la butaca y el libro muerto, por el melancólico pasillo, en el oscuro desván del lirio, en nuestra cama de la luna y en la danza que sueña la tortuga. ¡Ay, ay, ay, ay! Toma este vals de quebrada cintura.

At the heart of all great art is an essential melancholy.

I am the immense shadow of my tears

What are the girls thinking of? At least half are nostalgic for death, and for a temple, and for all of those clothes.