Quotes & Sayings About Grief And Happiness

Never give way to melancholy: nothing encroaches more; I fight against it vigorously. One great remedy is, to take short views of life. Are you happy now? Are you likely to remain so till this evening? or next week? or next year? Then why destroy present happiness by a distant misery, which may never come at all, or you may never live to see it? For every substantial grief has twenty shadows, and most of them shadows of your own making. — Sydney Smith

The more you want to dig a hole and burry yourself in it, the more you need to run and be ALIVE and do things. The more you want to do nothing, the more you need to do something. The more you want to be selfish, just think about yourself and your own pain, the more you need to look outward and try to cheer other people up. Then you will find happiness for yourself, when you give yourself away in any way you can. — Lisa Bedrick

More than once, the broken moon would cast through the window a silver light and remind me of independent events yielding to their own momentum and interacting under natural laws while my mind would impose happiness, grief, beauty, ruin, justice and chaos. — Leonard Seet

One flesh they are; and one flesh, so I'd guess,
Has but one heart, come grief or happiness. — Geoffrey Chaucer

It is a curious fact, and makes life very interesting, that, generally speaking, none of us have any expectation that things are going to happen till the very moment when they do happen. We wake up some morning with no idea that a great happiness is at hand, and before night it has come, and all the world is changed for us; or we wake bright and cheerful, with never a guess that clouds of sorrow are lowering in our sky, to put all the sunshine out for a while, and before noon all is dark. Nothing whispers of either the joy or the grief. No instinct bids us to delay or to hasten the opening of the letter or telegram, or the lifting of the latch of the door at which stands the messenger of good or ill. — Susan Coolidge

They will try to ascribe a purpose to my death, as though it were a punishment, but don't you do so, in order that I continue to live in all the shadows of your longing. I will always be in your sleep and your wakefulness. I will be with you praying, propitiating and yearning for you, in sadness, in sorrow, in dismay and in the most profound happiness. — Mohamed Latiff Mohamed

If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her. But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild. — C.S. Lewis

Happy Endings are an illusion. Real life is filled with brief moments of fleeting happiness, but ultimately every life is a tragedy that ends in death and grief. — Oliver Gaspirtz

Knowledge of the truth I may perhaps have attained to; happiness certainly not. What shall I do? Accomplish something in the world, men tell me. Shall I then publish my grief to the world, contribute one more proof for the wretchedness and misery of existence, perhaps discover a new flaw in human life, hitherto unnoticed? I might then reap the rare reward of becoming famous, like the man who discovered the spots on Jupiter. I prefer, however, to keep silent. — Soren Kierkegaard

Friendship improves happiness, abates misery by doubling our joy and dividing our grief. — John

And I can't be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight. — J.D. Salinger

The difference between shallow happiness and a deep, sustaining joy is sorrow. Happiness lives where sorrow is not. When sorrow arrives, happiness dies. It can't stand pain. Joy, on the other hand, rises from sorrow and therefore can withstand all grief. Joy, by the grace of God, is the transfiguration of suffering into endurance, and of endurance into character, and of character into hope
and the hope that has become our joy does not (as happiness must for those who depend up on it) disappoint us. — Walter Wangerin Jr.

[She] had heard it said that there was only one emotion which, in recollection, was capable of resurrecting the full immediacy and power of the original - one emotion that time could never fade, and that would drag you back any number of years into the pure, undiluted feeling, as if you were living it anew. It wasn't love ... and it wasn't hate, or anger, or happiness, or even grief. Memories of those were but echoes of the true feeling.
It was shame. Shame never faded. — Laini Taylor

Molly, a home is not a place. It's not a country or a town or a building or possession. Home is with the other half of your soul, the person who shares your grief and helps you carry the burden of loss. Home is with the person who throughout it all never gives up on you and brings you eternal happiness. That, Molly dear, is your home sweet home. — Tillie Cole

By forty, is there anyone who hasn't had to recognize that happiness, as understood by youth, is illusory? That the best one can hope for is an absence of too many tragedies and that the road through the inevitable grief be, if not smooth, then steady? — Robin Black

William's mother, dead these six years. He spoke of her with love, but without grief. Six years, and whatever the loss, happiness steals back. — Mary Stewart

And grief, for anyone who has ever experienced it, is exactly like a predator. It steals first your happiness, and then - if you allow it - everything else. — Michelle Moran

Listen! I know it's not right to talk. Better to set an example, better to just start - I have already started - and - and can one really be unhappy? Oh, what do my grief and my misfortune matter if I have the strength to be happy? You know, I don't understand how one can walk by a tree and not be happy at the sight of it! Or to speak with a man and not be happy in loving him? Oh, it's just that I can't express it - and yet there are so many things at every stop so beautiful that even the most desolate of men find them beautiful. Look at a child, look at Go's sunrise, look at the grass, how it grows, look into eyes that look at you and love you - — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If our inward griefs were written on our brows, how many who are envied now would be pitied. It would seem that they had their deadliest foe in their own breast, and their whole happiness would be reduced to mere seeming. — Pietro Metastasio

Truth is, I just shrug and soldier on. As kind as I am, as well-meaning and helpful as I try to be, I have no feelings finally, for good or ill. In the depths of my being, no matter what happens, I am left cold, impenetrable to remorse, to grief, to happiness, though I can pretend well enough even to the point of fooling myself. I am trying to say I am finally, terribly, unfeeling. My soul resides in a still, deep, beautiful, emotionless, calm cold pond of silence. — E.L. Doctorow

Grief - Happiness is to feel that one's soul is good; there is no other, in truth, and this kind of happiness may exist even in sorrow, so that there are griefs perfable to every joy, and such as would be preferred by all those who have felt them. — Joseph Joubert

Instead of dwelling on the wickedness and grief of those who have sinned, I rejoice to read how many have abandoned their sinful practices and are now on the road back to righteousness and happiness. Let us rejoice in the spirit of forgiveness, which is the comforting message of the Atonement. — Theodore M. Burton

We are not strong enough to stand up against endless grief, And yet pain is the constant drone of life. So if we are to have any happiness at all, it is only in the passing instant. — Charles Frazier

Humans have a sense of spontaneity and emotion. We have a dichotomy between grief and happiness. — Morena Baccarin

She stood back and wiped the sweat-sting from her eyes. The air was clean. Her hands brown with dirt. Pride surged through her, raw and immense; she had believed happiness to be an absence - of fear, of pain, of grief - but here it roared in her as powerful as any sadness. — Anthony Marra

Every torment they had experienced was returned to them an intoxication. It seemed to them that the griefs , the sleeplessness, the tears, the anguish, the dismay, the despair, became caresses and radiance ... and that their sorrows were so many servants preparing their joy. To have suffered, how good it is! Their grief made a halo around their happiness. — Victor Hugo

I see now how things even up, how they are squared away, and how they balance under the law of love and justice. No year of life is emotionally, spiritually or even materially, all drought or all rainfall; nor is it all sun. The road turns a little every day, and one day there's a sudden twist we didn't dream was there, and for every loss there is somewhere a gain, for every grief a happiness, for every deprivation a giving. — Faith Baldwin

As she wrote her pulse quickened to the pleasure of forming the phrases,--her blood warmed to the joy of the working. She was experiencing a return of the familiar sensation of happiness in constructing. Quite suddenly, in fancy she caught in the far distance a glimpse of silver wings. It gave her a warm thrill of gratification too deep for words. Immediately she knew through some inner consciousness, that no matter what the future would hold--joy or sorrow, happiness or grief--that no matter where life's paths would lead her--through sharp and stony ways or beside still waters--buried deep within her was an indestructible capacity to visualize a white bird flying. She might never get close to the way of its winging, but always there would be joy in lifting her eyes to the glory of its distant flight. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

But what was there to say?
Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honey-colored shoulder had a semicircle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief.
Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much. — Arundhati Roy

Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joys, and dividing our grief — Marcus Tullius Cicero

I must love and be loved. I must feel that my dear and chosen friends are happier through me. When I have wandered out of myself in my endeavour to shed pleasure around, I must again return laden with the gathered sweets on which I feed and live. Permit this to be, unblamed - permit a heart whose sufferings have been, and are, so many and so bitter, to reap what joy it can from the necessity it feels to be sympathized with - to love. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Change the way you think and you will change the way you feel. — Charmaine Smith Ladd

In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self. — Mahavira

Happiness does not await us all. One needn't be a prophet to say that there will be more grief and pain than serenity and money. That is why we must hang on to one another. — Anton Chekhov

The way to experience ultimate happiness is to let go of all worries and regrets, and to know that being happy is the most satisfying of life's feelings. Reflect back on all the progress in your life and allow the positive, creative and joyous thoughts to outshine and overwhelm any sorrow or grief that may linger in the recesses of your mind. Knowing that disease and disaster are natural parts of life is the key to overcoming adversity with a calm and happy spirit. Happiness is waiting there in front of you. Only you can decide whether or not you choose to experience it. Take this to heart. — Toshitsugu Takamatsu

When I am gone, release me, let me go. I have so many things to see and do, You mustn't tie yourself to me with too many tears, But be thankful we had so many good years. I gave you my love, and you can only guess How much you've given me in happiness. I thank you for the love that you have shown, But now it is time I travelled on alone. So grieve for me a while, if grieve you must, Then let your grief be comforted by trust. It is only for a while that we must part, So treasure the memories within your heart. — Robert Bryndza

Catfish always drink alcoholic ether if begged, for every catfish enjoys heightened intoxication; gross indulgence can be calamitous, however; duly, garfish babysit for dirty catfish children, helping catfish babies get instructional education just because garfish get delight assisting infants' growth and famously inspire confidence in immature catfish, giving experience (and joy even); however, blowfish jeer insightful garfish, disparaging inappropriately, doing damage, even insulting benevolent, charming, jovial garfish, hurting and frustrating deeply; joy fades but hurt feelings bring just grief; inevitable irritation hastens feeling blue; however, jovial children declare happiness, blowfishes' evil causes dejection, blues; accordingly, always glorift jolly, friendly garfish! — John Green

For a writer, grief is a reservoir, boredom is recuperation and happiness is rust. — Ashutosh Gupta

Why is this painful journey so indispensable to the acquisition of true wisdom? ... It is as if the mind were a squeamish organ that refused to entertain difficult truths unless encouraged to do so by difficult events. "Happiness is good for the body," Proust tells us, "but it is grief which develops the strengths of the mind." These griefs put us through a form of mental gymnastics which we would have avoided in happier times. Indeed, if a genuine priority is the development of our mental capacities, the implication is that we would be better off being unhappy than content, better off pursuing tormented love affairs than reading Plato or Spinoza. (Proust writes) A woman whom we need and who makes us suffer elicits from us a whole gamut of feelings far more profound and more vital than does a man of genius who interests us. — Alain De Botton

The fountain of content must spring up in the mind, and he who hath so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief he proposes to remove. — Samuel Johnson

Everything you experience is a blessing and pushes you toward realizing your true self. — Vivian Amis

N.V.N.
(translated by Jane Kenyon)
There is a sacred, secret line in loving
which attraction and even passion cannot cross,
even if lips draw near in awful silence
and love tears at the heart.
Friendship is weak and useless here,
and years of happiness, exalted and full of fire,
because the soul is free and does not know
the slow luxuries of sensual life.
Those who try to come near it are insane
and those who reach it are shaken by grief,
So now you know exactly why
my heart beats no faster under your hand. — Anna Akhmatova

All the joys of earth will not assuage our thirst for happiness; while a single grief suffices to shroud life in a sombre veil, and smite it with nothingness at all points. — Sophie Swetchine

According to His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, when you're happy everything in life is bearable and grief and stress are just passing emotions. Happiness is not something that you feel after something good happens. It is a state of living that is present whether good things are happening or not, whether you're suffering or not. — J. Thomas

But when something like Angelina's murder happens," the doctor told him (Decker), "it's human nature to assume a bunker mentality. Let's shore up our defenses and put up our guard so that when something like this happens again -- when, not if -- we won't be blindsided. Problem is, we become so risk averse, we cut ourselves off from the potentially dangerous things that could bring great happiness and joy. We stop taking chances, and without those sometimes risky chances, there's no way we can win big. Our best case scenario become losing not /too/ badly. /At least no one died/ becomes our mantra. Yes, we're trapped here in this prison that we've made, where we can't possibly be happy, but at least we're not devastated by our loss and our grief. — Suzanne Brockmann

If you did not live lovingly and love deeply, you would not feel the pain of separation. But neither would you feel the joy, passion, and happiness that living fully and loving deeply bring. — Susan Barbara Apollon

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.
Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope. — Alexandre Dumas

TIMMS: I don't see how we can understand it. Most of the stuff poetry's about hasn't happened to us yet.
HECTOR: But it will, Timms. It will. And then you will have the antidote ready! Grief. Happiness. Even when you're dying. We're making your deathbeds here, boys.
LOCKWOOD: Fucking Ada.
HECTOR: Poetry is the trailer! Forthcoming attractions! — Alan Bennett

Maybe his grief was like her wounded arm. Slowly healing. Gradually becoming les consuming as life delivered other worries and other joys. Other sources of pain and happiness. She wanted that for him. More life. More happiness. — Veronica Rossi

I just try to write what I think would really happen, and with grief and tragedy, there are these naturally occurring moments of levity and humor and absurdity. I think that's what life is really like. Sadness gets interrupted, and happiness gets interrupted. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

The benefits of a philosophy of neo-religious pessimism are nowhere more apparent than in relation to marriage, one of modern society's most grief-stricken arrangements, which has been rendered unnecessarily hellish by the astonishing secular supposition that it should be entered into principally for the sake of happiness. Christianity and Judaism present marriage not as a union inspired and governed by subjective enthusiasm but rather, and more modestly, as a mechanism by which individuals can assume an adult position in society and thence, with the help of a close friend, undertake to nurture and educate the next generation under divine guidance. These limited expectations tend to forestall the suspicion, so familiar to secular partners, that there might have been more intense, angelic or less fraught alternatives available elsewhere. Within the religious ideal, friction, disputes and boredom are signs not of error, but of life proceeding according to plan. — Alain De Botton

For a moment Tess felt her strange, inappropriate happiness teeter. It was as though she were balanced on a narrow crevice surrounded by chasms of grief. One wrong thought and down she'd tumble. — Liane Moriarty

Om is the presence which steals away. It steals away the ordinary mundane existence of strife, struggle and duality; it steals away anxiety, aggression, fear, grief and sorrow; it steals away the debris of anger, hatred, confusion and ignorance, to fill us with the nectar of joy, immortality and life eternal. — Banani Ray

She had been born to cradle other people's children, wear their hand-me-down clothing, eat their leftovers, live on borrowed happiness and grief, grow old beneath other people's roofs, die one day in her miserable little room in the far courtyard in a bed that did not belong to her, and be buried in a common grave in the public cemetery. — Isabel Allende

We don't go to the ocean for anything as simple as happiness, do we? We
go there to feel alive. Like life, the ocean holds chance and change, grief and terror and beauty. It promises mortality, not peace. — Eileen Wilks

I had accepted that all the dark memories were mine. But I had never realized that the beautiful ones were mine too. I had a right to them. And the right to embrace them, regardless of what happened before and after. I had a right to my happiness, as well as my grief. — Linda Olsson

The world was horrible. But life continued. What is more, life's usual proportions stayed the same. The ratio of good and evil, grief and happiness, remained unchanged. — Sergei Dovlatov

Time passes, day by day. The greatness of this country lies in the inexorable journey it has taken through time.
Time is like an enormous pot, into which all ugliness and beauty are thrown, all happiness and grief, all life and all death.
Cycle follows cycle, living life and dying death. Only the great River rolls on, unending. — Yo Yo

Verily, I swear, 'tis better to be lowly born, and range with humble livers in content, than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief, and wear a golden sorrow. — William Shakespeare

She always used to suspect that the price for happiness, the price for enjoying the company of a person you loved, was the steadily increasing risk of losing them, and at times, when she considered the possibility that she might lose Isabel or Clancy or, in the early days, Todd, Bernice didn't think she could stand it, didn't think she could go on living in a universe whose laws forced her to submit to such a terrible fear. Now she sees what a small price it is to pay, what staggering joy she received in return. You should be willing to pay that price for as little as a few days or hours with a person you love, she thinks, rubbing her fingers across a patch of linoleum the years have worn down to a cloudy smear. — Stephen Lovely

Grief and sadness knits two hearts in closer bonds that happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger than common joys. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Hope, tell me how could it be possible that grief and happiness are scattered all over the world so unevenly? Why do some people get all the troubles and misfortunes while the others are intoxicated with the abundance of material belongings, fat bellies and money? Why is there such injustice? Or, maybe, we are mistaken it's unfair!? — Igor Eliseev

With emotions ranging from fear, grief and anger to happiness and relief, the process of bringing home a child who needs in-home care can be complicated — Charisse Montgomery

Oh, what do my grief and my misfortune matter if I have the strength to be happy? — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Happiness is so nonsynonymous with joy or pleasure that it is not infrequently sought and felt in grief and deprivation. — Wilhelm Von Humboldt

God gifted a Zoo; with a paralyzed care taker. — Durgesh Satpathy

It has taken years to continue to live into the truth that if I believe we are from God and for God, then we are from Goodness and for Goodness. To greet sorrow today does not mean that sorrow will be there tomorrow. Happiness comes too, and grief, and tiredness, disappointment, surprise and energy. Chaos and fulfilment will be named as well as delight and despair. This is the truth of being here, wherever here is today. It may not be permanent but it is here. I will probably leave here, and I will probably return. To deny here is to harrow the heart. Hello to here. — Padraig O Tuama

Happiness
a small-scale, endearing, harmonious happiness
surely dwelt here beneath the low-powered lamps in the tiny rooms of these houses. A small-scale happiness and a modest harmony: let a man cry out, let him rage, let him howl with grief with all the power of which he was capable, what more than these could he ever hope to gain in this life? — Fumiko Enchi

Grief, as in everything, should be experienced in moderation. There is a time to grieve heavily but then there is a time to set it aside and become happy in life again. — Aleksandra Layland

The wave is the signature of every experience of life. By understanding the nature of waves and their characteristics, and applying that understanding to our lives, we can navigate life with a little more grace. — Jeffrey R. Anderson

Souls that have lived in virtue are in general happy, and when separated from the irrational part of their nature, and made clean from all matter, have communion with the gods and join them in the governing of the whole world. Yet even if none of this happiness fell to their lot, virtue itself, and the joy and glory of virtue, and the life that is subject to no grief and no master are enough to make happy those who have set themselves to live according to virtue and have achieved it. — Sallust

And then she was there, her face pressed to his neck, her arms tight around him. A shudder rocketed through her. Grief, happiness, sorrow. A thousand emotions ripped through him, tearing at his heart and blocking his throat. He froze for a moment, not really believing that she was there, in his arms. For the first time in months, he was holding his wife. And at that moment, nothing else mattered. Not the missing hand. Not the months he'd spent away. He wrapped his arm around her and held her tight. Breathed in the scent of her hair. Savored the feel of her body against his. "I'm sorry," he whispered. "I'm so sorry." And when she crawled into the bed with him, he didn't argue. He held her as best he could and tried not to embarrass himself by crying. — Jessica Scott

I thought upon the way in which we'd always shared each other's happiness, believing it would make the moment burn brighter and longer, but sadness can be shared too, perhaps sharing makes is burn briefer and less bright. — Tom Rob Smith

If there were no life beyond this earth-life, some people I have known would gain immortality by the nobility of our memory of them. With every friend I love who has been taken into the brown bosom of the earth a part of me has been buried there; but their contribution of happiness, strength, and understanding to my being remains to sustain me in an altered world. — Helen Keller

The ladies, who had condoled so thoroughly with her during her time of grief, found it rather more difficult to participate in her happiness, which takes a true and proper friend indeed. — Jo Baker

Your tale is of the longest," observed Monks, moving restlessly in his chair.
It is a true tale of grief and trial, and sorrow, young man," returned Mr. Brownlow, "and such tales usually are; if it were one of unmixed joy and happiness, it would be very brief. — Charles Dickens

Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness. — Albert Camus

Classical Sanskrit prose writers made very long sentences like this: "Lost in the forest and in thought, bent upon death and at the root of a tree, fallen upon calamity and her nurse's bosom, parted from her husband and happiness, burnt with the fierce sunshine and the woes of widowhood, her mouth closed with silence as well as by her hand, held fast by her companions as well as by grief, I saw her with her kindred and her graces all gone, her ears and her soul left bare, her ornaments and her aims abandoned, her bracelets and her hopes broken, her companions and the needle-like grass-spears clinging round her feet, her eyes and her beloved fixed within her bosom, her sighs and her hair long, her limbs and her merits exhausted, her aged attendants and her streams of tears falling down at her feet...." and it goes on. — Abraham Eraly

Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety ... One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine. — Victor Hugo

Her tears fell abundantly
but her grief was so truly artless, that no dignity could have made it more respectable in Emma's eyes
and she listened to her and tried to console her with all her heart and understanding
really for the time convinced that Harriet was the superior creature of the two
and that to resemble her would be more for her own welfare and happiness than all that genius or intelligence could do.
It was rather too late in the day to set about being simple-minded and ignorant; but she left her with every previous resolution confirmed of being humble and discreet, and repressing imagination all the rest of her life. — Jane Austen

I've been moving a little to the music while I worked ... and then I realize I am actually dancing. It feels wonderful, though I can feel how stiff my muscles are, how rigidly I've been holding myself ... Mostly I've been moving cautiously, numbly, steeled because I know, at any moment, I may be ambushed by overwhelming grief. You never know when it's coming, the word or gesture or bit of memory that dissolved you entirely ... It happens every day at first, then not for a day or two, then there's a week when grief washes in every morning, every afternoon. — Mark Doty

Are you what is called a lucky man? Well, you are sad every day. Each day has its great grief or its little care. Yesterday you were trembling for the health of one who is dear to you, today you fear for your own; tomorrow it will be an anxiety about money, the next day the slanders of a calumniator, the day after the misfortune of a friend; then the weather, then something broken or lost, then a pleasure for which you are reproached by your conscience or your vertebral column; another time, the course of public affairs. Not to mention heartaches. And so on. One cloud is dissipated, another gathers. Hardly one day in a hundred of unbroken joy and sunshine. And you are of that small number who are lucky! As for other men, stagnant night is upon them. — Victor Hugo

We should be sure that in our pursuit of happiness and positivity, we do not lose our ability to experience the other side of life, as well. Feelings of grief and respect for the departed, are honourable thoughts to have and honourable feelings to feel. In seeking happiness, we must not be so afraid of sorrow, that we lose the ability to cope with it properly. There is a healthy way to cope with both sorrow and joy; both need to be looked straight in the face, in the eyes. — C. JoyBell C.

Embracing what is We're conditioned to believe that painful feelings are "bad" and that pleasurable ones are "good." It's often easier - though not healthier - for us to avoid grief and sorrow, while only embracing sensations like happiness, confidence, and love. — Sharon Salzberg

No one knew she cried in the night for Lyle and her lost happiness, that under that biscuit crust exterior she was all butter grief and hunger. — Dorothy Allison

Such terrifying powers we possess, but what a sorry lot of gods some men are. And the worst of it is not the cruelty but the arrogance, the sheer hubris of those who bring only violence and fear into the animal world, as if it needed any more of either. Their lives entail enough frights and tribulations without the modern fire-makers, now armed with perfected, inescapable weapons, traipsing along for more fun and thrills at their expense even as so many of them die away. It is our fellow creatures' lot in the universe, the place assigned them in creation, to be completely at our mercy, the fiercest wolf or tiger defenseless against the most cowardly man. And to me it has always seemed not only ungenerous and shabby but a kind of supreme snobbery to deal cavalierly with them, as if their little share of the earth's happiness and grief were inconsequential, meaningless, beneath a man's attention, trumped by any and all designs he might have on them, however base, irrational, or wicked. — Matthew Scully

Forever is as troublesome and as emotive a word can be, withholding infinite happiness, infinite hope, infinite grief and infinite desire. — Ashutosh Gupta

Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys. — Alphonse De Lamartine

Lucky that man whose children make his happiness in life and not his grief, the anguished disappointment of his hopes. — Euripides

One of the earliest and most vivid memories of Robin's childhood was of the day that the family dog had been put down. She herself had been too young to understand what her father was saying; she took the continuing existence of Bruno, her oldest brother's beloved Labrador, for granted. Confused by her parents' solemnity, she had turned to Stephen for a clue as to how to react, and all security had crumbled, for she had seen, for the first time in her short life, happiness and comfort drain out of his small and merry face, and his lips whiten as his mouth fell open. She had heard oblivion howling in the silence that preceded his awful scream of anguish, and then she had cried, inconsolably, not for Bruno, but for the terrifying grief of her brother. — Robert Galbraith

A home is not a place. It's not a country or a town or a building or possession. Home is with the other half of your soul, the person who shares in your grief and helps you carry the burden of loss. Home is with the person who throughout it all never gives up on you and brings you eternal happiness. — Tillie Cole

Even the Savior of the world, the Only Begotten Son of God, was obliged to come to earth and to take upon himself an earthly tabernacle. He experienced joy and sorrow, happiness and grief, lasting satisfaction and frequent disappointments. As Paul has written, "Though he were a Son yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him." — Alma P Burton

An empty stomach is better than full and grief is better than happiness. — Irving Stone

Each moment is a miracle encompassing everything: the joy and sorrow, the failure and success, the disappointment and happiness, the celebration and grief. — Kazuaki Tanahashi

Childhood is supposed to be happy, and if you can't remember yours with any happiness, what hope have you later, when life starts handing you fresh grief? — Amity Gaige

Absolutely everybody wants to be liked (law 1).

Everyone feels different inside (less confident, less able, etc.) from how they infer other people to feel (law 2).

Few honest and courageous people who have achieved anything of real value in life do not feel a fraud much of the time (law 3).

Acceptance of these three 'laws' alone would save an awful lot of people an awful lot of grief! — David Smail

Nature and Passion are powerful, but they are also full of grief. True happiness would have the calm and order of bourgeois routine without its utilitarian ignobility and boredom. — W. H. Auden

The friend who knows a lot more than you do will bring difficulties, and grief, and sickness, as medicine, as happiness, as the essence of the moment when you're beaten when you hear Checkmate, and can finally say, I trust you to kill me. — Rumi

Jesus wiped his tears on the back of his hand, blew his nose, who knows where, and yes, there is no point spending the whole day here, the desert is what it is, it surrounds us, in some ways protects us, but when it comes to giving, it gives us nothing, it simply looks on, and when the sun suddenly clouds over, so that we find ourselves thinking, The sky mirrors our sorrow, we are being foolish, because the sky is quite impartial and neither rejoices in our happiness nor is cast down by our grief. — Jose Saramago

To what exactly had I felt entitled with Bill? There is an answer: Joy. Not happiness, which by that time seemed a fantasy one had to agree to give up in order to keep from going mad. By forty, is there anyone who hasn't had to recognize that happiness, as understood by youth, is illusory? That the best one can hope for is an absence of too many tragedies and that the road through the inevitable grief be, if not smooth, then steady? Daily life was a pale gray thing, it seemed, and to expect otherwise was to be a fool - at best. — Robin Black