Sorrow Quotes

“Love Sorrow

Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must
take care of what has been
given. Brush her hair, help her
into her little coat, hold her hand,
especially when crossing a street. For, think,

what if you should lose her? Then you would be
sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness
would be yours. Take care, touch
her forehead that she feel herself not so

utterly alone. And smile, that she does not
altogether forget the world before the lesson.
Have patience in abundance. And do not
ever lie or ever leave her even for a moment

by herself, which is to say, possibly, again,
abandoned. She is strange, mute, difficult,
sometimes unmanageable but, remember, she is a child.
And amazing things can happen. And you may see,

as the two of you go
walking together in the morning light, how
little by little she relaxes; she looks about her;
she begins to grow.”
― Mary Oliver, Red Bird

“The Weaver”

“My life is but a weaving
Between my God and me.
I cannot choose the colors
He weaveth steadily.

Oft’ times He weaveth sorrow;
And I in foolish pride
Forget He sees the upper
And I the underside.

Not ’til the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly
Will God unroll the canvas
And reveal the reason why.

The dark threads are as needful
In the weaver’s skillful hand
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned

He knows, He loves, He cares;
Nothing this truth can dim.
He gives the very best to those
Who leave the choice to Him.”
― Grant Colfax Tullar

“But sorry is the Kool-Aid of human emotions. [...] True sorrow is as rare as true love.”
― Stephen King, Carrie

“I think a lot of psychopaths are just geniuses who drove so fast that they lost control.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.”
― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Those who do not know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either”
― Golda Meir

“Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy.”
― Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“Un-winged and naked, sorrow surrenders its crown to a throne called grace.”
― Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams

“...the heart has no tears to give,--it drops only blood, bleeding itself away in silence.”
― Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin

“If you know someone who tries to drown their sorrows, you might tell them sorrows know how to swim.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You

“It's funny, how one can look back on a sorrow one thought one might well die of at the time, and know that one had not yet reckoned the tenth part of true grief.”
― Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart

“Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that came down to us from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures. And of these histories most fair still in the ears of the Elves is the tale of Beren and Lúthien”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion

“Because no retreat from the world can mask what is in your face.”
― Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

“I wept because I could not believe anymore and I love to believe. I can still love passionately without believing. That means I love humanly. I wept because from now on I will weep less. I wept because I have lost my pain and I am not yet accustomed to its absence.”
― Anaïs Nin

“What are heavy? sea-sand and sorrow.
What are brief? today and tomorrow.
What are frail? spring blossoms and youth.
What are deep? the ocean and truth.”
― Christina Rossetti

“Sorrow compressed my heart, and I felt I would die, and then . . . Well, then I woke up.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Dream of a Ridiculous Man

“Though sorrow may impede my heart,
It is of great love to have known you.”
― C. Elizabeth

“Chase away sorrow by living”
― Melissa Marr, Darkest Mercy

“She knew that was not an honest prayer, and she did not linger over it. The right prayer would have been, Lord . . . I am miserable and bitter at heart, and old fears are rising up in me so that everything I do makes everything worse.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Home

“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

“It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

“A Strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me but now I am almost ashamed of its complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else.”
― Françoise Sagan, Bonjour tristesse

“Fire tests gold, suffering tests brave men.”
― Seneca

“For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge the more grief.”
― Anonymous, The Holy Bible: King James Version

“When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”
― Kahlil Gibran

“The source of all humor is not laughter, but sorrow.”
― Mark Twain

“It lit up like a Christmas Tree Hazel Grace...”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

“Even when a river of tears
courses through
this body,
the flame of love
cannot be quenched.”
― Izumi Shikibu, The Ink Dark Moon: Love Poems by Ono no Komachi and Izumi Shikibu, Women of the Ancient Court of Japan

“The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow.”
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

“A withered maple leaf has left its branch and is falling to the ground; its movements resemble those of a butterfly in flight. Isn't it strange? The saddest and deadest of things is yet so like the gayest and most vital of creatures?”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons