Quotes & Sayings About Sorrow

Daniel was very like a child in all the parts of his character. He was strongly affected by whatever was present, and apt to forget the absent. He acted on impulse, and too often had reason to be sorry for it; but he hated his sorrow too much to let it teach him wisdom for the future. — Elizabeth Gaskell

The camera may do justice to laughter, but must degrade sorrow. — W. H. Auden

Didn't know anyone could see it," Samuel said. "You know, Lee, I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody. And my life has not been a full orchestra for a long time now. A single note only - and that note unchanging sorrow. I'm not alone in my attitude, Lee. It seems to me that too many of us conceive of a life as ending in defeat. — John Steinbeck

We could be like a father determined to provide everything for his family. He devotes every energy to that end and succeeds; only then does he discover that what they needed most, to be together as a family, has been neglected. And he reaps sorrow in place of contentment. — Boyd K. Packer

Perhaps I may record here my protest against the efforts, so often made, to shield children and young people from all that has to do with death and sorrow, to give them a good time at all hazards on the assumption that the ills of life will come soon enough. Young people themselves often resent this attitude on the part of their elders; they feel set aside and belittled as if they were denied the common human experiences. — Jane Addams

By accepting and learning to embrace the inevitable sorrows of life, we realize that we can experience a more enduring sense of happiness. — Sharon Salzberg

Sorrows, as storms, bring down the clouds close to the earth; sorrows bring heaven down close; and they are instruments of cleansing and purifying. — Henry Ward Beecher

That was the one thing about the rain that likened it to sorrow: You did your best to remain untouched, safe and dry, but if and when you failed, there came a point in which you started seeing the problem less in terms of drops than as an incessant gush, and thereby you decide you might as well get drenched. — Elif Shafak

A Saigon Proverb: Doe la chine tran, neu buon la thua. Life is a struggle in which sorrow leads to defeat. — Kim Thuy

There is no greater sorrow
Than to recall a happy time
When miserable. — Dante Alighieri

Awareness is a choiceless consciousness. Awareness is the capacity to embrace, accept and include both joy and sadness, love and aloneness, light and darkness, male and female qualities and life and death.
Through saying "yes" and accepting both tendencies and including whatever aspect that happens in the moment, we meet our unlimited and boundless inner being. The inner man and woman need to find their own independence and integrity. — Swami Dhyan Giten

Ah, the dear earth! The beautiful earth! She wants all that we have--the touch of our hands, the song of our hearts.
She wants to draw out from us all that is within, hidden even from ourselves.
This is her sorrow, that she finds out some things only to know that she has not found all. She loses before she attains.
Ah, the dear earth! We shall never deceive you.

(They sing.)
I shall crown you with my garland, before I take leave.
You ever spoke to me in all my joys and sorrows.
And now, at the end of the day, my own heart will break in speech.
Words came to me, but not the tune, and the song that I never sang to you remains hidden behind my tears. — Rabindranath Tagore

And now, said Ada, Van is going to stop being vulgar - I
mean, stop forever! Because I had and have and shall always
have only one beau, only one beast, only one sorrow, only one joy. — Vladimir Nabokov

Studies of cancer patients show that attitudes of mind have very little effect on clinical outcome. We may say we are fighting cancer, but cancer is merely fighting us; we may think we have beaten it, when it has only gone away to regroup. It is all just the universe doing its stuff, and we are the stuff it is being done to. And so, perhaps, with grief. We imagine we have battled against it, been purposeful, overcome sorrow, scrubbed the rust from our soul, when all that has happened is that grief has moved elsewhere, shifted its interest. — Julian Barnes

I feel as if part of me is now made of sorrow, some new and tender organ that will pain me until the day I die. I know Maren is safe and well, and made beautiful in all ways. My grief is not for her but for myself - because I miss her . . . because she is missing from me. — Carrie Anne Noble

When someone who is suffering looks to you for compassion, it's indeed a blessing; you are chosen to be their Light in a moment of sorrow. — Michelle Cruz-Rosado

I'm not one of those people that wears something once and tosses it aside. I wear my shoes until they beg to be thrown away. Parting is such sweet sorrow - and then it's onto the next pair. — Rachel Nichols

Silence is not only never thirsty, but also never brings pain or sorrow. — Hippocrates

Feeling sorrow is fine, he says. It's right. But you need to use those feelings, channel them into action. Just as you did with your brother. You have such strength, such courage, such power within you. — Moira Young

How should a man caught in this net of routine not forget that he is a man, a unique individual, one who is given only this one chance of living, with hopes and disappointments, with sorrow and fear, with the longing for love and the dread of the nothing and of separateness? — Erich Fromm

Present unhappiness is selfish; past sorrow is compassionate. — Philibert Joseph Roux

The sorrow of God lies in our fear of Him, our fear of life, and our fear of ourselves. He anguishes over our self-absorption and self-sufficiency ... God's sorrow lies in our refusal to approach Him when we sinned and failed. — Brennan Manning

And now you have a small map of the princess's heart (hatred, sorrow, kindness, empathy), the heart that she carried down inside her as she went down the golden stairs and through the kitchen and, finally, just as the sky outside the castle began to lighten, down into the dark dungeon with the rat and the serving girl. — Kate DiCamillo

Sorrow only increased with knowledge. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

Thy's bleeding heart confides in the With one's thoughts and troubles Let the kiss thy's lips To ease thou's pain Thy am thou's comfort Lie thou's head on mine pillow Of soft consolation And let the drown Thou's sorrow Away — Solange Nicole

Some of you say, "Joy is greater than sorrow," and others say, "Nay, sorrow is the greater."
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. — Kahlil Gibran

It is enough to have been created, to have embodied for a moment the infinite and tumultuously creative spirit. It is infinitely more than enough to have been used, to have been the rough sketch for some perfected creation. Looking into the future, I saw without sorrow, rather with quiet interest, my own decline and fall. — Olaf Stapledon

She could only hope they could read the depth of sorrow in her face, to recognize that it was true, and not fleeting. — Markus Zusak

EPITAPH ON AN INFANT Ere Sin could blight or Sorrow fade, Death came with friendly care: The opening Bud to Heaven convey'd, And bade it blossom there. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Forgive me, Spirit of my spirit, for this, that I have found it easier to read the mystery told in tears and understood Thee better in sorrow than in joy. — George William Russell

Pools of sorrow waves of joy are drifting thorough my open mind possessing and caressing m — John Lennon

On the moral plane, true friends enjoy the same protection as the sense of smell confers upon dogs. They scent the sorrow of their friends, they divine its causes, and they clasp it to their minds and hearts. — Honore De Balzac

It's as if a child with a brush and too much enthusiasm has been set free with a tin of black paint inside me. — Jenny Downham

It was a day of winter east wind, and I had now for some time entered into that dreary fellowship with the winds and their changes, so little known, so incomprehensible by the healthy. The north and east owned a terrific influence, making all pain more poignant, all sorrow sadder. — Charlotte Bronte

When my mother died, I thought I'd drown in sorrow. But my grandmother said something very wise, and I've always held it close to my heart. She said that not even the sea is infinite, and neither is grief. — T. Frohock

For there to be light, there must be darkness. For there to be joy, there must be sorrow. For there to be beauty, there must be the grotesque. — Penelope King

I like spring, but it is too young. I like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because its leaves are a little yellow, its tone mellower, its colours richer, and it is tinged a little with sorrow and a premonition of death. Its golden richness speaks not of the innocence of spring, nor of the power of summer, but of the mellowness and kindly wisdom of approaching age. It knows the limitations of life and is content. From a knowledge of those limitations and its richness of experience emerges a symphony of colours, richer than all, its green speaking of life and strength, its orange speaking of golden content and its purple of resignation and death — Lin Yutang

There is melancholy in the wind and sorrow in the grass — Charles Kuralt

Weapons are the tools of violence;all decent men detest them.Weapons are the tools of fear;a decent man will avoid themexcept in the direst necessityand, if compelled, will use themonly with the utmost restraint.Peace is his highest value.If the peace has been shattered,how can he be content?His enemies are not demons,but human beings like himself.He doesn't wish them personal harm.Nor does he rejoice in victory.How could he rejoice in victoryand delight in the slaughter of men?He enters a battle gravely,with sorrow and with great compassion,as if he were attending a funeral — Laozi

What was it like to lose him? Asked Sorrow.
There was a long pause before I responded:
It was like hearing every goodbye ever said to
me - said all at once. — Lang Leav

During times of disaster sorrow brings people together in a spirit of friendship, and influences man to recognize the blessings of becoming his brother's keeper. — Napoleon Hill

At the end of the season of sorrows comes the time of rejoicing. Spring, like a well-oiled clock, noiselessly indicates this time. — Roger Zelazny

The sorrow was no less in reality, but it became less oppressive from having some one in precisely the same relation to it as that in which she stood. — Elizabeth Gaskell

I sense
a thousand strands of sorrow are sewn
into an inch of my spirit. — Li Qingzhao

The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment. It is commonly observed, that among soldiers and seamen, though there is much kindness, there is little grief; they see their friend fall without any of that lamentation which is indulged in security and idleness, because they have no leisure to spare from the care of themselves; and whoever shall keep his thoughts equally busy will find himself equally unaffected with irretrievable losses. — Samuel Johnson

We have been living through a time of sorrow. Our seed remains seed. Our nostrils are dusty. — Warren Eyster

My father was temperamentally nervous and obsessively religious - to the point of psychoneurosis. From him I inherited the seeds of madness. The angels of fear, sorrow, and death stood by my side since the day I was born. — Edvard Munch

For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge the more grief. — Anonymous

This world is so full of care and sorrow that it is a gracious debt we owe to one another to discover the bright crystals of delight hidden in somber circumstances and irksome tasks. — Helen Keller

Becoming aware of the intense suffering of billions of animals, and of our own participation in that suffering, can bring up painful emotions: sorrow and grief for the animals; anger at the injustice and deception of the system; despair at the enormity of the problem; fear that trusted authorities and institutions are, in fact, untrustworthy; and guilt for having contributed to the problem. Bearing witness means choosing to suffer. Indeed, empathy is literally 'feeling with.' Choosing to suffer is particularly difficult in a culture that is addicted to comfort
a culture that teaches that pain should be avoided whenever possible and that ignorance is bliss. We can reduce our resistance to witnessing by valuing authenticity over personal pleasure, and integration over ignorance. — Melanie Joy

The path of sorrow, and that path alone, leads to the land where sorrow is unknown. — William Cowper

Anger and the sorrow it produces are far more harmful than the things which make us angry. — Marcus Aurelius

Give sustenance, Allah.
Give sustenance to me. — Khaled Hosseini

No! You have hope! You have motive! Labour must be the cure, not sympathy! Labour is the only radical cure for rooted sorrow! — Syrie James

The vampires took everything from me, but I'm looking into the eyes of one who has the power to give me back a reason to live, who can heal my gaping hole of sorrow. — J.A. London

We have listened here to the delegates who have recalled the terrible human suffering, and the great material destruction of the late war in the Pacific. It is with feelings of sorrow that we recall the part played in that catastrophic human experience by the old Japan. — Shigeru Yoshida

Savannah's mind brushed his and found genuine regret for her sorrow. "How did you find me?"
"I always know where you are, every moment. Five years ago you said you needed time, and I gave it to you. But I've never left you. I never will."

-Savannah & Gregori — Christine Feehan

To be afraid is the condition of loving knowledge. Were I not dying of fear, I'd not know how to exist myself, I wouldn't get the notices of existence, I wouldn't record with delight the miniscule passage of a blue tit, its wing dipped in gold on the dusk. Were I not dying of sorrow I wouldn't with nostalgia be present at the creation of the world, the squirrel nuptials this morning I wouldn't care. Creatures are born to a backdrop of adieux. — Helene Cixous

What if I've forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud? ... the thought fills me with an almost unbearable sorrow. — Haruki Murakami

Fairy tales in childhood are stepping stones throughout life, leading the way through trouble and trial. The value of fairy tales lies not in a brief literary escape from reality, but in the gift of hope that goodness truly is more powerful than evil and that even the darkest reality can lead to a Happily Ever After. Do not take that gift of hope lightly. It has the power to conquer despair in the midst of sorrow, to light the darkness in the valleys of life, to whisper "One more time" in the face of failure. Hope is what gives life to dreams, making the fairy tale the reality. — L.R. Knost

We say, sorrow, disaster, calamity. God says, chastening and it sounds sweet to him though it is a discord to our ears. Don't faint when you are rebuked, and don't despise the chastening of the Lord. In your patience possess your souls. — Oswald Chambers

Sorrow is sorrow. — Lailah Gifty Akita

But the storm-whipsers sound more pleased to me. Excited eve
— N.D. Wilson

For himself, he grew desperate; his sorrow was of the king that will not lament, he neither wept nor prayed - he cursed and defied - execrated God and man, and gave himself up to reckless dissipation. — Emily Bronte

(Streets of Sorrow)
Oh, farewell you streets of sorrow
Oh, farewell you streets of pain
I'll not return to feel more sorrow
Through the years I've lived through terror
And in the darkened streets, the pain
Oh, how I long to find some solace
In my mind, I curse the strain
So, farewell, you streets of sorrow
And, farewell, you streets of pain — The Pogues

In the midst of sorrow, faith draws the sting out of every trouble, and takes out the bitterness from every affliction. — Richard Cecil

Nature has neither love nor hate, and with indifference smiles upon the light at heart and to the heavy brings a deeper sorrow. — W. Somerset Maugham

leave for Charlottetown to attend Queen's Academy. Their charmed circle would be broken; and, in spite of the jollity of their little festival, there was a hint of sorrow in every gay young heart. — L.M. Montgomery

Be yourself! Don't be somebody! Be humble to authority, but be assertive! Mind your solemn duty and responsibility to the Supreme God, for you shall give account to Him in the end! You were created uniquely, mind your mind! Mind the things that can change your mindset, and mind people! People are always alert to do all things possible to change your mind set. They wish you become the reason for their joy even if it causes you an inner pain! They wish you halt a purposeful journey. They wish you look and see, hear and listen, think and act, as they do! Their joy is to see you being like them, and their sorrow and envy is to see you living your true you! Be yourself! If only you living your true you please God, no problem exists! Just be yourself and mind your mind! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Grief should be the instructor of the wise; Sorrow is Knowledge. — Lord Byron

In times of trouble you can count on your self. In times of disaster you can count on your friends. In times of sorrow you can count on your Father. — William C. Richardson

Ricky just listens. He isn't shocked. He isn't surprised. He listens to me because he knows. He knows the shame and the guilt and the sorrow and the rage. And he does not judge me. He just listens. — Emily Andrews

Jolly felt salty tears on her lips, and for the first time in her life it occurred to her that sorrow tasted exactly like the sea. — Kai Meyer

And it was at this time that Sir Myles died of his hurt, for it is often so that death and misfortune befall some, whiles others laugh and sing for hope and joy, as though such grievous things as sorrow and death could never happen in the world wherein they live. — Howard Pyle

He sought not to efface sorrow by forgetfulness, but to magnify and dignify it by hope. He said: - Have a care of the manner in which you turn towards the dead. Think not of that which perishes. Gaze steadily. You will perceive the living light of your well-beloved dead in the depths of heaven. — Victor Hugo

I entrench myself in books equally against sorrow and the weather. — Leigh Hunt

I have discovered, passionate grief does not link us with the dead but cuts us off from them. This becomes clearer and clearer. It is just at those moments when I feel least sorrow - getting into my morning bath is usually one of them - that H. rushes upon my mind in her full reality, her otherness. Not, as in my worst moments, all foreshortened and patheticized and solemnized by my miseries, but as she is in her own right. This is good and tonic. — C.S. Lewis

Only one-fourth of the sorrow in each man's life is caused by outside uncontrollable elements, the rest is self-imposed by failing to analyze and act with calmness. — Holbrook Jackson

Cursed the crown that brought such grief to me — J. Leigh Bralick

When the horror of his grief was new to him, and every object in life, however trifling or however important, seem saturated with his one great sorrow. — Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Through this evening of sentences cut short because their completed meaning was always sorrow, of normal life dissolved to tears, the chords of Beethoven sounded serenely. — Rebecca West

The very word "sorrow" colours the fact of sorrow, the pain of it. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

One can be in love with several people at the same time, feel the sorrow with each, and not betray any of them. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief. — Kahlil Gibran

Free yourself from the poisonous and laborious burden of holding a grudge. When you hold a grudge, you want someone else's sorrow to reflect your level of hurt, but the two rarely meet. Let go ... Sometimes, forgiveness is simply a reflection of loving yourself enough to move on. — Steve Maraboli

Kahlil Gibran says Your joy can fill you only as deeply your sorrow has carved you. — Karen Marie Moning

Excess of happiness and excess of sorrow, both are hazardous. Emotions require a balanced diet too. — Chandan Sharma

Sorrow is the mere rust of the soul. Activity will cleanse and brighten it. — Samuel Johnson

There is the kiss of welcome and of parting, the long, lingering, loving, present one; the stolen, or the mutual one; the kiss of love, of joy, and of sorrow; the seal of promise and receipt of fulfillment. — Thomas Chandler Haliburton

The sorrow of war inside a soldier's heart was in a strange way similar to the sorrow of love. It was a kind of nostalgia, like the immense sadness of a world at dusk. It was a daness, a missing, a pain which could send one soaring back into the past. The sorrow of the battlefield could not normally be pinpointed to one particular event, or even one person. If you focused on any one event it would soon become a tearing pain. — Bao Ninh

Knowing cats, a lifetime of cats, what is left is a sediment of sorrow quite different from that due to humans: compounded of pain for their helplessness, of guilt on behalf of us all. — Doris Lessing

Because of sorrow, my awareness of life's pulse is strongly detectable. It is syncopation while I journey, a lap of ocean in the eyes of every person I meet. This awareness informs the flesh of my stories. Grief has been an odd companion, at first a terror, but now I am all the better having accepted it for its intrinsic worth. — Patricia Hickman

Right you guessed the rising morrow
And scorned to tread the mire you must:
Dust's your wages, son of sorrow,
But men may come to worse than dust.
Souls undone, undoing others,-
Long time since the tale began.
You would not live to wrong your brothers:
Oh lad, you died as fits a man. — A.E. Housman

What signifies sadness, sir; a man grows lean on it. — Henry MacKenzie

The world we inhabit is one where children feel sorrow long before they have the words to express it. — Russ Ramsey

The man whose silent daysIn harmless joys are spent,Whom hopes cannot delude,Nor sorrow discontent:That man needs neither towersNor armour for defence,Nor secret vaults to flyFrom thunder's violence. — Thomas Campion

If there is anything certain in life, it is this. Time doesn't always heal. Not really. I know they say it does, but that is not true. What time does is to trick you into believing that you have healed, that the hurt of a great loss has lessened. But a single word, a note of a song, a fragrance, a knife point of dawn light across an empty room, any one of these things will take you back to that one moment you have never truly forgotten. These small things are the agents of memory. They are the sharp needle points piercing the living fabric of your life.

Life, my children, isn't linear where the heart is concerned. It is filled with invisible threads that reach out from your past and into your future. These threads connect every second we have lived and breathed. As your own lives move forward and as the decades pass, the more of these threads are cast. Your task is to weave them into a tapestry, one that tells the story of the time we shared. — Stephen Lee

Surely it is not true blessedness to be free of sorrow while there is sorrow and sin in the world. Sorrow is a part of love and love does not seek to throw it off. — George Eliot

Flashes of my past lives kept crawling across my vision. I had Akima's laugh, Eve's blind ability to love, and Marrah's unwavering belief in family. I was all of these women and none of them. Their souls carried along inside of me but unmistakable from my own.
I saw their lives in pieces, their triumphs and sorrows, loved ones gained and lost. They were all different yet somehow the same. We were sisters and daughters, lovers and wives.
Pacey O'Brien-Lilith — Ashley Jeffery

I've fallen. I must have slipped. Hit my head on something. I think I'm going to be sick. Everything is red. I can't get up. One for sorrow, two for joy, three for a girl . . . Three for a girl. I'm stuck on three, I just can't get any further. My head is thick with sounds, my mouth thick with blood. Three for a girl. I can hear the magpies - they're laughing, mocking me, a raucous cackling. A tiding. Bad tidings. I can see them now, black against the sun. Not the birds, something else. Someone's coming. Someone is speaking to me. Now look. Now look what you made me do. — Paula Hawkins