Sorrow Quotes

Only tears can understand the joy of sorrow.

~ Cecil Thounaojam

That mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true — not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. “All is vanity.” ALL. This wilful world hath not got hold of unchristian Solomon’s wisdom yet.

~ Herman Melville

The mighty Mahmúd, Allah-breathing Lord,That all the misbelieving and black HordeOf Fears and Sorrows that infest the SoulScatters before him with his whirlwind Sword.

~ Omar Khayyám

Darling, if I think of all I miss now, I will go crazy. I should not think of that. I only want to think of all that I still have, and then I am rich. Your spirit is always around me, in your diary, our letters, all the things you got for our household. How proud we were of that! And the nearly six years! O God, I thank you for those years. If I never had met you, I would now not have all the sorrow; but I would have missed these riches -- and do these years not abundantly balance the lonely years I face without you?

~ Diet Eman

Do whatever you do joyfully, because discipline - the true meaning of the word - is characterized by doing something with joy. Even the little things: see them as an opportunity, a blessing, a meditation, as spiritual practice. Then, even if it's difficult, it will be good. If you use hardships in a proper way, they can even bring peace

~ Olivia Ames Hoblitzelle

The weapons of divine justice are blunted by the confession and sorrow of the offender.

~ Dante Alighieri

I have never experienced a sorrow that was not relieved by an hour of reading.

~ Daniel Pennac

You may have misery,” she continued, ignoring my plea, “you may lose hope in the sorrow of an unplanned life but as long as you have faith and trust in adoration, in affection, in love, that sorrow will turn to happiness. And that is a constant, dear.” She breathed deeply and steadily for a moment, seemingly catching her breath.“No one can know sincere happiness, Sophie, without first having known sorrow. One can never appreciate the enormity and rareness of such a fiery bliss without seeing misery, however unfair that may be.“And you will know honest happiness. Of that I am certain. Certain because it’s why you are here and also because here is your inevitability.

~ Fisher Amelie

...and I confess that, like a child, I cry. Ah, self-pity; I think we are at our most honest and sincere when we feel sorry for ourselves.

~ Iain Banks

Perhaps I am just a coward who loves to laugh at life better than I do cry with it. But when I do get to crying, boy, I can roll a mean tear.

~ Zora Neale Hurston

In freedom you form in utter disgrace,the bars of my prison this night.While you drift on currents of seraphim heights,it is I who deserve to take flight.

~ Craig Froman

Drink my friends. You can never drink too much alcohol when you have drunk too much sorrow.” - Peter Kotara.

~ Ray Anyasi

He finally comprehended that the sole impossibility regarding human sorrow is to arrive at some unsurpassable limit to it.

~ James Carlos Blake

exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in an exile’s life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement.

~ Edward Said

I'll read enoughWhen I do see the very book indeedWhere all my sins are writ, and that's myself.Give me that glass and therein will I read.No deeper wrinkles yet? Hath sorrow struckSo many blows upon this face of mineAnd made no deeper wounds?O flattering glass,Like to my followers in prosperityThou dost beguile me!

~ William Shakespeare

It was the sound of a thousand hungry children crying, ten thousand widows tearing their hair over their husband's graves, a chorus of angels singing the last dirge on the day of God's death.

~ Christopher Moore

To laugh continually is to never laugh at all. For it takes the periodic sound of sorrow from which to distinguish the sound of joy.

~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Frailty, thy name is woman!—A little month, or ere those shoes were oldWith which she follow'd my poor father's body,Like Niobe, all tears:—

~ William Shakespeare

Extreme joy and extreme sorrow are indistinguishable beyond a certain point. (Jane Brown's Body)

~ Cornell Woolrich

I wanted to share the risks the digger in Afghanistan took every day. Whenever I could I joined patrols ‘outside the wire’, walking the same dusty tracks and fields as the ordinary soldiers. I did everything in my power to keep them alive, I failed. In that year I lost ten soldiers under my command, killed in action. I personally identified the remains of each of them, sending them home to their families. More than sixty of my soldiers were wounded, some horribly.

~ John Cantwell

Because life is a symphony it must have its C Minor. Days there be when we hear only a discord of sharps and flats, and we wonder whether harmony will ever be restored. On other days we hear only an ominous, deep strain which seems to say that hope is fled. But why this chill despair? Symphonies are a blending of many tones, high and low, over and under, major and minor. One day cannot make a life a whole any more than shadows can make a picture or minor notes a symphony. We need to hear life's song, not as the discord of a single day, but as the completed harmony of all the years. Then will today's sorrow and tomorrow's disappointment ring forth in major key as glorious melody.

~ W. Waldemar W. Argow

Time wasn't the same anymore. Doors were slamming shut before we even knew they'd been opened. Good fortune can take forever to get to you, but as it turns out, sorrow is as quick as a shot.

~ Alice Hoffman

She breathed in the crisp autumn air, hoping the loveliness of nature would somehow cleanse her soul and overshadow her sorrow.

~ J.e.b. Spredemann

Wherefore is there ice and snow, chilling winds and bitter nights? Is it to mock the earth for its sunshine? No, not so! We forget that sunlight is impossible without shadows; that for every day there is a night; that for every joy there is a pain; that for every laugh there is a sob. Progress is never a straight line upward; always it is down and then around.

~ W. Waldemar W. Argow

Where is an intimate friend who’ll hear the secret from me straight out– of what human beings have been from the moment they began? They are born of toil and molded from the clay of sorrow.They wander the world for a time, then set off.

~ Omar Khayyám

They sat quietly together for a few minutes, Joe holding Fiona's hand, Fiona sniffling. No flowery words, no platitudes passed between them. Joe would have done anything to ease her suffering, but he knew nothing he might do, or say, could. Her grief would run its course, like a fever, and release her when it was spent. He would not shush her or tell her it was God's will and that her da was better off. That was rubbish and they both knew it. When something hurt as bad as this, you had to let it hurt. There were no shortcuts.

~ Jennifer Donnelly

And like that, I said goodbye to my grandmother like we were two people who met in a coffee shop, shared a lifetime of stories and left wanting more, but knowing we’d meet there again.

~ Darnell Lamont Walker

I can still hear the screams. They wake me in the night. Terrible, gut wrenching, painful screams; screams that can only come from the deepest and darkest recesses of the mind. These were not screams of pain. These were screams of years of sorrow and despair. These were screams that made your skin crawl. These were the worst screams I have ever heard. I cannot get them out of my head. Perhaps, they will be with me forever. I shouldn't be so lucky.

~ Jamie Schoffman

One day of happiness is worth more than a lifetime of sorrow .... Under ordinary circumstances, jealousy is a suspicion to the person who excites it and degrading to the person who indulges it.

~ Victor Hugo

Waste forces within him, and a desert all around, this man stood still on his way across a silent terrace, and saw for a moment, lying in the wilderness before him, a mirage of honourable ambition, self-denial, and perseverance. In the fair city of this vision, there were airy galleries from which the loves and graces looked upon him, gardens in which the fruits of life hung ripening, waters of Hope that sparkled in his sight. A moment and it was gone. Climbing to a high chamber in a well of houses, he threw himself down in his clothes on a neglected bed, and its pillow was wet with wasted tears.

~ Charles Dickens

Sorrow's a tall mountain you climb one inch at a time. You ain't supposed to do it quick, else you won't profit from the journey.

~ Jan Watson

You can find sorrow in the arithmetic, and you can find a bittersweet hope.

~ David Levithan

I could tell from Anna's face that she had already told him about dancing in Saint Petersburg and that the memory weighed on her heavily. What monstrous things, our pasts, especially when they have been lovely. She had told a secret and now had the sadness of wondering how much deeper she might dig in order to keep the first secret fed.

~ Colum Mccann

There is a bond of fellowship in sorrow that knows no conventionality.

~ Harold Bell Wright

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

~ Voltaire

In life, you don’t have miracles, you don’t have anything but whatever you can hold on to.

~ Nandanie Phalgoo

The beauty in our beliefs causes us to let our grassy goals and dreams take root, for sorrow gives seed to success, success blossoms into significance, and significance transcends the seasons that come and go with the whims of the world.

~ Kayla Severson

Mankind is like dogs, not gods - as long as you don't get mad they'll bite you - but stay mad and you'll never be bitten. Dogs don't respect humility and sorrow.

~ Jack Kerouac

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

~ Mark Twain

Humor reminds you, when you're flattened by sorrow, that you're still human.

~ Elizabeth Mccracken