Sorrow quotes
1.2K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside sorrow — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"What language shall I borrow To thank Thee, dearest Friend, For this, Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end? O make me Thine forever, And should I fainting be, Lord, let me never, never Outlive my love for Thee."
"The pity of living only once is that there is no way, ever, to be sure which sorrows are inevitable."
"Build up your health. Do not dwell in silence upon your sorrows."
"Through the senses, anger comes, and sorrow comes."
"Endless sorrow has fallen upon my heart."
"Sorrow and suffering make for character if they are voluntarily borne, but not if they are imposed."
"When great armies go to war, Sorrow is the sole winner."
"To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth all the years of sorrow that are to come."
"Rather, I think one should write, as nearly as possible, as if he were the first person on earth and was humbly and sincerly putting on paper that which he saw and experienced and loved and lost; what his passing thoughts were and his sorrows and desires."
"We are the zanies of sorrow. We are clowns whose hearts are broken."
"There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation."
"There is some joy in weeping. For our tears Fill up the cup, then wash our pain away."
"Concealed sorrow bursts the heart, and rages within us as an internal fire."
"There is something more awful in happiness than in sorrow--the latter being earthly and finite, the former composed of the substance and texture of eternity, so that spirits still embodied may well tremble at it."
"The sorrow that lay cold in her mother's heart... converted it into a tomb."
"No more let sins and sorrows grow, Nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make His blessings flow Far as the curse is found."
"Recently, one friend asked me, "How can I force myself to smile when I am filled with sorrow? It isn't natural." I told her she must be able to smile to her sorrow, because we are more than our sorrow. A human being is like a television set with millions of channels. If we turn the Buddha on, we are the Buddha. If we turn sorrow on then we are sorrow. If we turn a smile on, we really are the smile. We can not let just one channel dominate us. We have the seed of everything in us, and we have to seize the situation in our hand, to recover our own sovereignty."
"I was ever the realist, sometimes to my sorrow. But seldom to my regret."
"Yet I also suspected that what I was seeing was but a part of the truth and perhaps not even the most important part; beneath these faces, these clothes, accents, rudenesses, was power and sorrow, both unadmitted, unrealized, the power of inventors, the sorrow of the disconnected."
"I say things that can be defined as prayers. But I don't pray to a power or ask an entity to intercede in the earthly scheme, because I don't believe that happens. But if I see a really unfortunate person in the street, I do pray, yes, though I suppose it's really more like a mantra to ease my own sorrow."
