Fulke Greville - Gilbert Harding - William Blake - Lord Byron - William Wordsworth - Orhan Pamuk - William Shakespeare - Sophocles - Dorothy Parker - George Eliot - Rudyard Kipling - Peter Ackroyd - Aldous Huxley - Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Mark Twain - James Joyce - Job 6:10 - Job 17:7 - Ecclesiastes 1:18 - Ecclesiastes 7:3 - Proverbs 14:13 - Proverbs 15:13 - Elizabeth Wurtzel - Emily Bronte - Seneca - Laurence Sterne - Jane Austen - John Webster -
Life is a top which whipping Sorrow driveth. Fulke Greville, 1554-1628, Caelica
I wish the future were over ... The one cheerful thing about living is that every day one lives you know it’s one less. Gilbert Harding, interview BBC
Can I see another’s woe.
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another’s grief
And not seek for kind relief? William Blake
But life will suit
Itself to Sorrow’s most detested fruit,
Like to the apples on the Dead Sea’s shore,
All ashes to the taste. Lord Byron, Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
Sorrow is knowledge: they who do not know the most
Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth,
The Tree of Knowledge is not that of Life. Lord Byron, Don Juan
She had a tall man’s height or more
No bonnet screened her from the heat
A long drab-coloured coat she wore
A mantle reaching to her feet
Before me begging did she stand
Pouring out sorrows like the sea
Grief after grief on English land
Such woes I knew could never be. William Wordsworth, Beggars
Books, which we mistake for consolation, only add depth to our sorrow. Orhan Pamuk, My Name is Red
Come, and take choice of all my library,
And so beguile thy sorrow. William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus IV i 34
Ay, now begins our sorrows to approach. ibid. IV iv 71, Tamora to Saturnius
For sorrow ends not when it seemeth done. William Shakespeare, Richard II I ii 9, Duchess of Gloucester to John of Gaunt
Hath sorrow struck
So many blows upon this face of mine
And made no deeper wounds? ibid. II IV i 268-270, Richard to Northumberland and Bolingbroke
Sorrow breaks seasons and reposing hours,
Makes the light morning and the noontide night. William Shakespeare, Richard III I iv 72-73, Brackenbury to Clarence
It were lost sorrow to wail one that’s lost. ibid. III II ii 11, Duchess of York to Boy and Girl
Since sudden sorrow
Serves to say thus: some good thing comes tomorrow. William Shakespeare, II Henry IV IV i 309-310, Westmoreland
Sorrow would be a rarity most beloved
If all could so become it. William Shakespeare, The History of King Lear IV iii 24-25
A most poor man, made lame by fortune’s blows,
Who by the art of known and feeling sorrows
Am pregnant to good pity. ibid. IV v 213-215, Edgar
We are fellows still,
Serving alike in sorrow. William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens IV ii 18-19
A countenance more in sorrow than in anger. William Shakespeare, Hamlet I ii 231
When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions! ibid. King to Queen et al, IV v 74-75
For sorrow, like a heavy hanging bell
Once set on ringing, with his own weight goes. William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece 1493-1494
One sorrow never comes but brings an heir
That may succeed as his inheritor. William Shakespeare, Pericles IV l62-63, Cleon
My plenteous joys,
Wanton in fullness, seek to hide themselves
In drops of sorrow. William Shakespeare, The Tragedy of Macbeth I iv 33-35, Duncan
Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break. ibid. IV iii 209
The keenest sorrow is to recognise ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities. Sophocles
Sorrow is tranquility remembered in emotion. Dorothy Parker, Here Lies, 1939
These bitter sorrows of childhood! When sorrow is new and strange, when hope has not yet got wings to fly beyond the days and weeks, and the space from summer to summer seems measureless. George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss p28
There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer – committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear. George Eliot, Felix Holt: The Radical
There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope. George Eliot
There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
But when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear. Rudyard Kipling, The Power of the Dog 1909
Sorrow was always the bedfellow of depravity. Peter Ackroyd, English Music
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
One third, more or less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am must endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching, through irreversible time, through a world wholly indifferent to our well-being, toward decrepitude and the certainty of death. The remaining two thirds of all sorrow is homemade and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary. Aldous Huxley, Island
Sorrow compressed my heart, and I felt I would die, and then ... Well, then I woke up. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
The source of all humour is not laughter, but sorrow. Mark Twain
Every bond is a bond to sorrow. James Joyce
Then should I yet have comfort; yea, I would harden myself in sorrow: let him not spare; for I have not concealed the words of the Holy One. Job 6:10
Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow. Job 17:7
He that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. Ecclesiastes 1:18
Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. Ecclesiastes 7:3