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Sorrow Quotes

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Sorrow Quotes

“Reflection is the business of man; a sense of his state is his first duty: but who remembereth himself in joy? Is it not in mercy then that sorrow is allotted unto us?”

Men Firsts States Joy Duty Sorrow Reflection Mercy

Author:William Shakespeare

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seamed with scars; martyrs have put on their coronation robes glittering with fire, and through their tears have the sorrowful first seen the gates of Heaven.”

Firsts Soul Character Suffering Heaven Fire Tears Sorrow Massive Gates Strongest Scar Martyr Robes Sorrowful Coronation Gates Of Heaven

Author:Bill Vaughan

“Childhood is like a mirror, which reflects in afterlife the images first presented to it. The first thing continues forever with the child. The first joy, the first sorrow, the first success, the first failure, the first achievement, the first misadventure, paint the foreground of his life.”

Firsts Children Joy Forever Childhood Sorrow Achievement Mirrors Paint Afterlife Foreground Misadventure

Book:Character

Source: Character

“Moderate sorrow Fits vulgar love, and for a vulgar man: But I have lov'd with such transcendent passion, I soar'd, at first, quite out of reason's view, And now am lost above it.”

Men Firsts Reason Passion Lost Views Fit Sorrow Soar Vulgar Moderates Transcendent

Author:John Dryden

“There is nothing--no circumstance, no trouble, no testing--that can ever touch me until, first of all, it has gone past God and past Christ right through to me. If it has come that far, it has come with a great purpose, which I may not understand at the moment. But as I refuse to become panicky, as I lift up my eyes to Him and accept it as coming from the throne of God for some great purpose of blessing to my own heart, no sorrow will ever disturb me, no circumstance will cause me to fret, for I shall rest in the joy of what my Lord is--that is the rest of victory!”

“Every man is of importance to himself, and, therefore, in his own opinion, to others; and, supposing the world already acquainted with his pleasures and his pains, is perhaps the first to publish injuries or misfortunes which had never been known unless related by himself, and at which those that hear them will only laugh, for no man sympathises with the sorrows of vanity.”

Men World Writing Firsts Pain Pleasure Known Opinion Laughing Sorrow Importance Every Man Vanity Related Injury Misfortunes Publish Supposing

Book:The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper: Including the Series Edited with Prefaces, Biographical and Critical

Source: The Works of the English Poets, from Chaucer to Cowper: Including the Series Edited with Prefaces, Biographical and Critical

“This conversion into prayer of our everyday joys, sorrows, hopes and desires is at first a conscious labor, but after a while it becomes second nature, so that converse with God becomes inextricably and wonderfully woven into the fabric of our lives.”

Firsts Joy Desire Prayer Our Lives Sorrow Conscious Labor Everyday Conversion Fabric Woven Converses

Author:Sheila Cassidy

“The first book by an African American I read was Carl T. Rowan's memoir, Go South to Sorrow. I found it on the bookshelf at the back of my fifth-grade classroom, an adult book. I can remember the quality of the morning on which I read. It was a sunlit morning in January, a Saturday morning, cold, high, empty. I sat in a rectangle of sunlight, near the grate of the floor heater in the yellow bedroom. And as I read, I became aware of warmth and comfort and optimism. I was made aware of my comfort by the knowledge that others were not, are not, comforted. Carl Rowan at my age was not comforted.”

“A woman's counsel brought us first to woe, And made her man his paradise forego, Where at heart's ease he liv'd; and might have been As free from sorrow as he was from sin.”

Men Firsts Heart Has Beens Made Might Women Sin Sorrow Ease Paradise Woe Might Have Been

Book:Selections from the poetry of Dryden, including his plays and translations. [The editor's preface signed: C. B., i.e. Charles Bathurst.]

Source: Selections from the poetry of Dryden, including his plays and translations. [The editor's preface signed: C. B., i.e. Charles Bathurst.]

“The day of the Nativity of the Mother of God is a day of universal joy, because through the Mother of God, the entire human race was renewed, and the sorrow of the first mother, Eve, was transformed into joy.”

Firsts Humans Joy Mother Religious Race Sorrow Universal Human Race Transformed Virgin Mary Blessed Mother Nativity

Author:John of Damascus

“Monkey Beach is a moody, powerful novel full of memorable characters. Reading it was like entering a pool of emerald water to discover a haunted world shivering with loss and love, regret and sorrow, where the spirit world is as real as the human. I was sucked into it with the very first sentence and when I left, it was with a feeling of immense reluctance.”

“The first lesson of life is to burn our own smoke; that is, not to inflict on outsiders our personal sorrows and petty morbidness, not to keep thinking of ourselves as exceptional cases.”

Thinking Firsts Life Is Cases Sorrow Lessons Smoke Life Lesson Outsiders Petty Exceptional

Author:James Russell Lowell

“And yet we constantly reclaim some part of that primal spontaneity through the youngest among us, not only through their sorrow and anger but simply through everyday discoveries, life unwrapped. To see a child touch the piano keys for the first time, to watch a small body slice through the surface of the water in a clean dive, is to experience the shock, not of the new, but of the familiar revisited as though it were strange and wonderful.”

Firsts Children Body Water Watches Wonderful Childhood Strange Keys Sorrow Discovery First Time Experience Clean Everyday Surface Familiar Piano Shock Spontaneity Primal Piano Keys

Author:Anna Quindlen

“Was it not most meet that a woman should first see the risen Saviour? She was first in the transgression; let her be first in the justification. In yon garden she was first to work our wo; let her in that other garden be the first to see Him who works our weal. She takes first the apple of that bitter tree which brings us all our sorrow; let her be the first to see the Mighty Gardener, who has planted a tree which brings forth fruit unto everlasting life.”

Should Firsts Tree Sorrow Garden Fruit Bitter Apples Justification Easter Everlasting Gardener Saviour Risen Transgression Everlasting Life

Author:Charles Spurgeon

“The violence of sorrow is not at the first to be striven withal; being, like a mighty beast, sooner tamed with following than overthrown by withstanding.”

Firsts Violence Sorrow Following Beast Tamed Withstanding

Book:Sir Philip Sidney: Selected Prose and Poetry

Source: Sir Philip Sidney: Selected Prose and Poetry

“It is abundantly evident that, however natural it may be for us to feel sorrow at the death of our relatives, that sorrow is an error and an evil, and we ought to overcome it. There is no need to sorrow for them, for they have passed into a far wider and happier life. If we sorrow for our own fancied separation from them, we are in the first place weeping over an illusion, for in truth they are not separated from us; and secondly, we are acting selfishly, because we are thinking more of our own apparent loss than of their great and real gain.”

Ifs Thinking Needs Feels Firsts May Real Death Evil Natural Loss Acting Ought Sorrow Illusion Gains Overcoming Errors Separation Evident Weeping Happier Life

Author:Charles Webster Leadbeater

“The domestic relations precede, and in our present existence are worth more than all our other social ties. They give the first throb to the heart, and unseal the deep fountains of its love. Home is the chief school of human virtue. Its responsibilities, joys, sorrows, smiles, tears, hopes, and solicitudes form the chief interest of human life.”

Giving Firsts Humans Heart Home School Form Joy Social Interest Existence Responsibility Virtue Tears Sorrow Relation Chiefs Human Life Ties Fountain Solicitude

Book:Essays, Literary & Political

Source: Essays, Literary & Political

“So I say, if you cannot learn to love real art; at least learn to hate sham art and reject it. It is not because the wretched thing is so ugly and silly and useless that I ask you to cast it from you; it is much more because these are but the outward symbols of the poison that lies within them; look through them and see all that has gone to their fashioning, and you will see how vain labour, and sorrow, and disgrace have been their companions from the first-and all this for trifles that no man really needs!”

Source: The Collected Works of William Morris: With Introductions by His Daughter May Morris

“How many families, whose members have been dispersed and scattered far and wide, in the restless struggles of life, are then reunited, and meet once again in that happy state of companionship and mutual goodwill, which is a source of such pure and unalloyed delight; and one so incompatible with the cares and sorrows of the world, that the religious belief of the most civilized nations, and the rude traditions of the roughest savages, alike number it among the first joys of a future condition of existence, provided for the blessed and happy!”

Source: The Pickwick Papers: The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club

“When we shall come home, and enter into the possession of our Brother's fair kingdom, and when our heads shall find the weight of the eternal crown of glory, then we shall look back to pains and sufferings and then we will see life and sorrow to be less than one step or stride from a prison to glory. Our little inch of time-suffering is not worthy of our first night's welcome-home to heaven.”

“Rather, I think one should write, as nearly as possible, as if he were the first person on earth and was humbly and sincerly putting on paper that which he saw and experienced and loved and lost; what his passing thoughts were and his sorrows and desires.”

Ifs Thinking Should Writing Firsts Persons Earth Desire Lost Saws Sorrow Paper Passing Passings First Person Loved And Lost

Book:Selected letters, 1940-1956

Source: Selected letters, 1940-1956

“There are probably very few people who have not at some time of their lives had some quality of genius. If they have not had such, it is probable that they have also been without great sorrow or great pain. They would have needed only to live sufficiently intently for a time for some quality to reveal itself. The poems of first love are a case in point, and certainly such love is a sufficient stimulus.”

People Ifs Firsts Pain Love Is Quality Cases Genius Needed Sorrow Sufficient First Love Stimulus

Book:Sex & Character

Source: Sex & Character

“The wild swan's death-hymn took the soul Of that waste place with joy Hidden in sorrow: at first to the ear The warble was low, and full and clear.”

Firsts Soul Joy Clear Sorrow Waste Lows Ears Hymns Swans

Book:Delphi Complete Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (Illustrated)

“I have a lot of special memories with my parents but my toughest one is, I had, as a teenager, a pretty insatiable appetite for beer. The first time I got drunk my father found me throwing up in the bathroom. I was 15, maybe 16, and the disappointment in his voice, I can hear it to this day, and the sorrow that that brought to him. He just felt like a failure as a father, and Id give anything to take that day back because that was so hard on him. In time, my life got better, and his did too, but that was really memorable, one of those memories Id like to forget.”

“When we look at the settling of America we see a Bible in hand and God. Every Thanksgiving has God and the peacefulness of gratitude. It was important when the Twin Towers were hit and the sorrow with them that the first thing Congress did was sing "God Bless America."”

Firsts Looks Important Hands America Sorrow Gratitude Congress Settling Bless Twins Towers God Bless Peacefulness Twin Towers God Bless America

Author:Bill Cosby

“All my life one of my greatest desires has been to travel-to see and touch unknown countries, to swim in unknown seas, to circle the globe, observing new lands, seas, people, and ideas with insatiable appetite, to see everything for the first time and for the last time, casting a slow, prolonged glance, then to close my eyes and feel the riches deposit themselves inside me calmly or stormily according to their pleasure, until time passes them at last through its fine sieve, straining the quintessence out of all the joys and sorrows.”

“She was no longer that happy creature who in earlier youth wandered with me on the banks of the lake and talked with ecstasy of our future prospects. The first of those sorrows which are sent to wean us from the earth had visited her, and its dimming influence quenched her dearest smiles.”

Firsts Earth Influence Youth Sorrow Creatures Lakes Ecstasy Our Future Prospects

Book:Frankenstein

Source: Frankenstein

“A shade of sorrow passed over Taliesin's face. 'There are those,' he said gently, 'who must first learn loss, despair, and grief. Of all paths to wisdom, this is the cruelest and longest. Are you one who must follow such a way? This even I cannot know. If you are, take heart nonetheless. Those who reach the end do more than gain wisdom. As rough wool becomes cloth, and crude clay a vessel, so do they change and fashion wisdom for others, and what they give back is greater than what they won.”

Ifs Knows Way Giving Firsts Heart Said Ends Faces Loss Grief Path Greater Fashion Sorrow Despair Gains Rough Shade Clay Giving Back Vessel Crude Wool

Book:The High King: The Chronicles of Prydain

Source: The High King: The Chronicles of Prydain

“To acknowledge our ancestors means we are aware that we did not make ourselves, that the line stretches all the way back, perhaps to God; or to Gods. We remember them because it is an easy thing to forget: that we are not the first to suffer, rebel, fight, love and die. The grace with which we embrace life, in spite of the pain, the sorrow, is always a measure of what has gone before.”

Source: Alice Walker: Collected Poems: Her Blue Body Everything We Know: Earthling Poems 1965-1990

“Everything we knew condemned us, and our questioning condemned us most of all. Knowledge was the way of our people, and knowledge was dangerous. It was the first thing that freed you and the thing that put you in peril. It was the key to the ten gates. I saw them clearly now, each and every one, the gates that were there for me. Ashes, Bones, Grass, Heart, Stone, Love, Sorrow, Blood, Earth, Sky.”

People Way Firsts Heart Earth Saws Blood Sky Dangerous Keys Sorrow Ten Stones Bones Grass Gates Questioning Ashes Peril Sorrow Love

Author:Alice Hoffman

“In the first place, [his eyes] never laughed when he laughed. Have you ever noticed this peculiarity some people have? It is either the sign of an evil nature or of a profound and lasting sorrow.”

People Firsts Eye Evil Sorrow Profound His Eyes Lasting Laughed

Author:Mikhail Lermontov

“He was born in fury and he lived in lightning. Tom came headlong into life. He was a giant in joy and enthusiasms. He didn't discover the world and its people, he created them. When he read his father's books, he was the first. He lived in a world shining and fresh and as uninspected as Eden on the sixth day. His mind plunged like a colt in a happy pasture, and when later the world put up fences, he plunged against the wire, and when the final stockade surrounded him, he plunged right through it and out. And as he was capable of giant joy, so did he harbor huge sorrow.”

People World Mind Firsts Book Joy Father Born Huge Sorrow Capable Shining Finals Enthusiasm Giants Toms Lightning Fence Wire Fury Harbors Eden Pastures Colts

Book:East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

“at first, when we truly love someone, our greatest fear is that the loved one will stop loving us. what we should fear and dread, of course, is that we wont stop loving them, even after they are dead and gone. for i still love you with the whole of my heart. i still love you. and sometimes, my friend, the love that i have and cant give to you, crushed the breast from my chest. soemtimes, even now, my heart is drowning in a sorrow that has no stars without you, and no laughter, and no sleep.”

Source: Shantaram: A Novel

“I think that love is more like a light that you carry. At first childish happiness keeps it lighted and after that romance. Then motherhood lights it and then duty . . . and maybe after that sorrow. You wouldn't think that sorrow could be a light, would you, dearie? But it can. And then after that, service lights it. Yes. . . . I think that is what love is to a woman . . . a lantern in her hand.”

Thinking Firsts Hands Light Romance Love Is Duty Sorrow Motherhood Lanterns

Author:Bess Streeter Aldrich

“Pippin glanced in some wonder at the face now close beside his own, for the sound of that laugh had been gay and merry. Yet in the wizard's face he saw at first only lines of care and sorrow; though as he looked more intently he perceived that under all there was a great joy: a fountain of mirth enough to set a kingdom laughing, were it to gush forth.”

Firsts Enough Care Faces Joy Sound Lines Wonder Laughing Saws Sorrow Gay Kingdoms Fountain Wizards Merry Mirth Great Joy Pippin

Book:The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings

Source: The Return of the King: Being the Third Part of the Lord of the Rings

“Youth must be the worst time in anybody's life. Everything's happening for the first time, which means that sorrow, then, lasts forever. Later, you can see that there was something very beautiful in it. That's because you ain't got to go through it no more.”

Firsts Mean Lasts Beautiful Forever Worst Youth Sorrow Happenings First Time Very Beautiful Worst Times

Author:James A. Baldwin

“These nights are endless, and a man can sleep through them, or he can enjoy listening to stories, and you have no need to go to bed before it is time. Too much sleep is only a bore. And of the others, any one whose heart and spirit urge him can go outside and sleep, and then, when the dawn shows, breakfast first, then go out to tend the swine of our master. But we two, sitting here in the shelter, eating and drinking, shall entertain each other remembering and retelling our sad sorrows. For afterwards a man who has suffered much and wandered much has pleasure out of his sorrows.”

“I was observing her closely as I talked, and after a while I began to get the impression that she was not, in fact, quite so merry and smiling a girl as I had been led to believe at first. She seemed to be coiled in herself, as though with a secret she was jealously guarding. The deep-blue eyes moved too quickly about the room, never settling or resting on one thing for more than a moment; and over all her face, though so faint that they might not even have been there, those small downward lines of sorrow.”

Source: Tales of the unexpected

“In a world where people die every day, I think the important thing to remember is that for each moment of sorrow we get when people leave this world there's a corresponding moment of joy when a new baby comes into this world. That first wail is-well, it's magic, isn't it? Perhaps it's a hard thing to say, but joy and sorrow are like milk and cookies. That's how well they go together. I think we should all take a moment to meditate on that.”

“Mr Thornton would rather have heard that she was suffering the natural sorrow. In the first place, there was selfishness enough in him to have taken pleasure in the idea that his great love might come in to comfort and console her; much the same kind of strange passionate pleasure which comes stinging through a mother's heart, when her drooping infant nestles close to her, and is dependent upon her for everything.”

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (Illustrated)

“But pearls are for tears, the old legend says," Gilbert had objected. "I'm not afraid of that. And tears can be happy as well as sad. My very happiest moments have been when I had tears in my eyes—when Marilla told me I might stay at Green Gables—when Matthew gave me the first pretty dress I ever had—when I heard that you were going to recover from the fever. So give me pearls for our troth ring, Gilbert, and I'll willingly accept the sorrow of life with its joy." -Anne”

Source: The Complete Novels of Lucy Maud Montgomery - 20 Titles in One Volume: Including Anne of Green Gables Series, Emily Starr Trilogy, The Blue Castle, The Story Girl & Pat of Silver Bush Series: Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, Anne of Ingleside, Anne's House of Dreams, Rainbow Valley, Emily of New Moon, The Golden Road, Magic for Marigold, A Tangled Web, Jane of Lantern Hill & many more

“Your first task is to see the sorrow in you and around you; your next, to long intensely for liberation. The very intensity of longing will guide you; you need no other guide.”

Needs Firsts Long Spiritual Spirituality Next Sorrow Tasks Longing Guides Liberation Intensity

Author:Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

“I believe a man is born first unto himself - for the happy developing of himself, while the world is a nursery, and the pretty things are to be snatched for, and pleasant things tasted; some people seem to exist thus right to the end. But most are born again on entering manhood; then they are born to humanity, to a consciousness of all the laughing, and the never-ceasing murmur of pain and sorrow that comes from the terrible multitudes of brothers.”

Source: The Selected Letters of D. H. Lawrence

“All worldly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow; acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisitions and storing-up, and building, and meeting; and, faithful to the commands of an eminent Guru, set about realizing the Truth. That alone is the best of religious observances.”

“It is important to me that everybody who has been hurt know that the sorrow I feel is genuine. First and most important, my family, my friends, my staff, my cabinet, Monica Lewinsky and her family and the American people. I have asked all for their forgiveness.”

People Knows Feels Firsts Has Beens Important Hurt Sorrow My Friends My Family Genuine Apology Staff Cabinets Been Hurt Monica

Author:William J. Clinton

“Given my last position, that I was the first U.S attorney post 9/11 in New Jersey, I understand acutely the pain and sorrow and upset of the family members who lost loved ones that day at the hands of radical Muslim extremists. And their sensitivities and concerns have to be taken into account.”

“Love yourself and be awake- Today, tomorrow, always. First establish yourself in the way, Then teach others, And so defeat sorrow. To straighten the crooked You must first do a harder thing- Straighten yourself. You are your only master. Who else? Subdue yourself, And discover your master.”

Way Firsts Today Teach Love You Masters Tomorrow Sorrow Harder Defeat Self Worth Buddhist Awake Over You Love Yourself Crooked

Author:Gautama Buddha