“Thinking that it would console him, she took a piece of charcoal and erased the innumerable loves that he still owed her for, and she voluntarily brought up her own most solitary sadnesses so as not to leave him alone in his weeping.”
Melancholic feeling
Melancholic Quotes — page 144 of 412
“I think quite often we hold onto trauma because we don't process it.”
“People carry around resentment for years! And that creates daily stress.”
“So much of what holds us back in life are the long-held resentments stemming from childhood.”
“Long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.”
“Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work-- the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside-- the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don't show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within-that you don't feel until it's too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again.”
“but I felt that Tom would drift on forever seeking, a little wistfully, for the dramatic turbulence of some irrecoverable football game”
“A trauma is something one repeats and repeats, after all, and this is the tragedy of the Iqbals--that they can't help but reenact the dash they once made from one land to another, from one faith to another, from one brown mother country into the pale, freckled arms of an imperial sovereign.”
“I despise making the most of one's time. Half of the pleasures of life consist of the opportunities one has neglected.”
“Occupation is the scythe of time.”
“We're all the same, we all think its better somewhere else; its better being older if you're younger - or its better being younger when we're older.”
“Life for women in ancient Greece was hard - you had to fight for every inch of ground you got. Both Thetis and Briseis are strong, passionate women and in another time and place their lives would have been very different. Part of the tragedy of their characters is how much they have to offer - and how little of that they get to realize. Thetis spends the whole novel fighting the limitations placed on her, desperately trying to eke out the best she can from a bad situation. This makes her fierce and terrifying.”
“When I'm dead and no longer the threat. My comfort is that all the great artists since the beginning of time have always been completely misunderstood and never fully appreciated until they were dead.”
“The world changes, and all that once was strong now proves unsure.”
“I am old, Gandalf. I don't look it, but I am beginning to feel it in my heart of hearts. Well-preserved indeed! Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can't be right. I need a change, or something.”
“Where the roots of private virtue are diseased, the fruit of public probity cannot but be corrupt.”
“Distance is the only cure for certain diseases.”
“Montreal was a very active jazz center until club owners started putting in strippers instead of music. Before long, there was nothing to hear.”
“Neglecting to broaden their view has kept some people doing one thing all their lives.”
“Fragility is the quality of things that are vulnerable to volatility.”