“Men of ill judgment ignore the good that lies within their hands, till they have lost it.”
Melancholic feeling
Melancholic Quotes — page 83 of 412
“Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.”
“Far from affording artists continuous inspiration, mass-media sources for art have become a dead end. They have combined with the abstractness of institutional art teaching to produce a fine-arts culture given over to information and not experience. This faithfully echoes the drain of concreteness from modern existence- the reign of mere unassimilated data instead of events that gain meaning by being absorbed into the fabric of imaginative life.”
“There are things you can replace, and others you cannot. The time has come to weigh those things, this space is getting hot.”
“The world's a hard place, Danny. It don't care. It don't hate you and me, but it don't love us, either. Terrible things happen in the world, and they're things no one can explain. Good people die in bad, painful ways and leave the folks that love them all alone. Sometimes it seems like it's only the bad people who stay healthy and prosper. The world don't love you, but your momma does and so do I.”
“Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.”
“Marriage I think For women Is the best of opiates. It kills the thoughts That think about the thoughts, It is the best of opiates. So said Maria. But too long in solitude she'd dwelt, And too long her thoughts had felt Their strength. So when the man drew near, Out popped her thoughts and covered him with fear. Poor Maria! Better that she had kept her thoughts on a chain, For now she's alone again and all in pain; She sighs for the man that went and the thoughts that stay To trouble her dreams by night and her dreams by day.”
“Seal my lips on aches and pains. They are increasing, and love of rehearsing them is becoming sweeter as the years go by.”
“The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call.”
“In this mob of I's inside, which one is me? Hear me out. I know I'm wandering, but don't start putting a lid on this racket. No telling what I'll do then. Every moment I'm thrown by your story. One moment it's happy, and I'm singing. One moment it's sad, and I'm weeping. It turns bitter, and I pull away. But then you spill a little grace, and just like that, I'm all light. It's not so bad, this arrangement, actually.”
“Fashion breaks my heart.”
“Time was not passing...it was turning in a circle.”
“His youth seemed never so vanished as now in the contrast between the utter loneliness of this visit and that riotous, joyful party of four years before. Things that had been the merest commonplaces of his life then, deep sleep, the sense of beauty around him, all desire, had flown away and the gaps they left were filled only with the great listlessness of his disillusion.”
“For a moment the last sunshine fell with romantic affection upon her glowing face; her voice compelled me forward breathlessly as I listened - then the glow faded, each light deserting her with lingering regret, like children leaving a pleasant street at dusk.”
“First of all, I swore it was two people playing. When I finally admitted to myself that was one man, I gave up the piano for a month. I figured it was hopeless to practice.”
“As I look back on it, I'm glad that I had this false image. I was who everyone else - my parents, my friends, society - wanted me to be. I was a pleaser, someone who wanted to make everyone happy, to not let anyone down. Now, I'm not like that.”
“Personality is born out of pain. It is the fire shut up in the flint.”
“One of ennui's most terribel components is the overwhelming feeling of ennui that comes over you whenever you try to explain it.”
“Silence emerges from the sound of rain and spreads in a crescendo of gray monotony over the narrow street I contemplate. I’m sleeping while awake, standing by the window, leaning against it as against everything. I search in myself for the sensations I feel before these falling threads of darkly luminous water that stand out from the grimy building facades and especially from the open windows. And I don’t know what I feel or what I want to feel. I don’t know what to think or where I am.”
“Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.”