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For of all sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’ John Greenleaf Whittier, The Brewing of Soma, 1872
A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one. William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice I i, Antonio
I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano;
A stage where every man must play a part,
And mine a sad one. ibid. I i 77
In truth I know not why I am so sad. It wearies me. The Merchant of Venice 2004 starring Al Pacino & Jeremy Irons & Joseph Fiennes & Lynn Collins & Zuleikha Robinson & Kris Marshall & Charlie Cox & Heather Goldenhersh & Mackenzie Crook & Jonh Sessions & Gregor Fisher & Ron Cook et al, director Michael Radford, Antonio
There is no measure in the occasion that breeds
it, therefore the sadness is without limit. William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing I ii 3-4, Conrad to Don John
’Tis good to be sad and say nothing. As You Like It, Globe Theatre, Jaques, Sky Arts 2012
I have of late ... lost all my mirth. William Shakespeare, Hamlet II ii 289-290, Hamlet to Guildenstern & Rosencrantz
I’m coming back in … and it’s the saddest moment of my life. Ed White, first American spacewalk Gemini 4 mission 3 June 1965
All the world is sad and dreary
Everywhere I roam,
Oh! Darkies, how my heart grows weary,
Far from the old folks at home. Stephen Collins Foster, The Old Folks at Home, 1851
There is a deep sadness to American poverty, greater than the sadness of any other kind. It’s because America has such an ideology of success. Will Self
Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top. John Keats
my mother, poor fish,
wanting to be happy, beaten two or three times a
week, telling me to be happy: ‘Henry, smile!
why don’t you ever smile?’
and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the
saddest smile I ever saw. Charles Bukowski
Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can’t even cry. Charles Bukowski, You Get so Alone at Times that it Just Makes Sense
You’re fucked. You thought you were going to be someone, but now it’s obvious you’re nobody. You haven’t got as much talent as you thought you had, and there was no Plan B, and you got no skills and no education, and now you’re looking at forty or fifty years of nothing. Less than nothing, probably. That’s pretty heavy. That’s worse than having the brain thing, because what you got now will take a lot longer to kill you. You’ve got the choice of a slow, painful death, or a quick, merciful one. Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down
When you’re sad – like really sad – you only want to be with other people who are sad. ibid.
I wondered why I couldn’t go the whole way doing what I should any more. This made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn’t go the whole way doing what I shouldn’t, the way Doreen did, and this made me even sadder and more tired. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
I cannot explain the sadness
That’s fallen on my breast.
An old, old fable haunts me
And will not let me rest. Heinrich Heine
You are shaking hands with the most miserable man on Earth. Lloyd George to Lord Hankey
The sadness will last for ever. Vincent van Gogh
The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down. Lemony Snicket, The Bad Beginning
Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you too? When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself, it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart and causing it to crumble into ruins. Gustave Flaubert
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not;
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell
Of saddest thought. Percy Bysshe Shelley, To a Skylark
Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought. Percy Bysshe Shelley
The tears stream down my cheeks from my unblinking eyes. What makes me weep so? There is nothing saddening here. Perhaps it is liquefied brain. Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable
The boy was lying, fast asleep, on a rude bed upon the floor; so pale with anxiety, and sadness, and the closeness of his prison, that he looked like death; not death as it shews in shroud and coffin, but in the guise it wears when life has just departed; when a young and gentle spirit has, but an instant, fled to Heaven: and the gross air of the world has not had time to breathe upon the changing dust it hallowed. Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
‘I often wish I’d got on better with your father,’ he said.
‘But he never liked anyone who – our friends,’ said Clarissa; and could have bitten her tongue for thus reminding Peter that he had wanted to marry her.
Of course I did, thought Peter; it almost broke my heart too, he thought; and was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunken day. I was more unhappy than I’ve ever been since, he thought. And as if in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall. There above them it hung, that moon. She too seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the moonlight. Virginia Woolf, Mrs Dalloway
Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, halfway down, in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waves swayed this way and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so sad. Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse