quotes, quotations and passages on sadness

Where there is sorrow
there is holy ground.

De Profundis

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses, who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. So you must not be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. . . . Rainer Maria Rilke Letters to a Young Poet

Those who have suffered much are like those who know many languages; they have learned to understand and to be understood by all. Anne Sophie Swetchine

Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can, and common suffering is a far stronger link than common joy. Alphonse de Lamartine

Just as you cannot escape life's problems, you cannot avoid painful feelings and emotions. What can you do with sorrow and grief? You can accept them into your life the way water is accepted into the ground and taken up by the tree. Let these emotions become a part of your life without asking why. Accept life and death, experience the rituals of grief and sorrow, and free yourself to live. Grief and sorrow bring forth the tears that are the water the soul needs to survive. If you feel no sorrow and no grief, you will dry up and wither away as the tree does in a time of drought. Bernie Siegel

And this I do believe above all, especially in times of greater discouragement,
that I must believe--that I must believe in my fellow people--that I must believe
in myself--that I must believe in God--if life is to have any meaning.

Margaret Chase Smith

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If we are willing, the experience of grief can deepen
and widen our ability to participate in life.

John Claypool

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are
rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

Charles Dickens

Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'er- fraught heart, and bids it break.

William Shakespeare

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside,
somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature, and God.
Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes
to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As long as this exists,
and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort
for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be.

Anne Frank

The weariest night, the longest day,
sooner or later must perforce come to an end.

Baroness Emmuska Orczy

sadness 2

Suffering accepted and vanquished. . . . will give you a serenity
which may well prove the most exquisite fruit of your life.

Cardinal Mercier

It is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life which a sad experience
has brought us is worth our personal share of pain. The growth of
higher feeling within us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with
it a sense of added strength. We can no more wish to return to a
narrower sympathy than painters or musicians can wish to return to
their cruder manner, or philosophers to their less complete formulas.

George Eliot

The Rainy Day

The day is cold and dark and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the moldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold and dark and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the moldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining:
Thy fate is the common fate of all:
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

Henry W. Longfellow

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Sadness is related to the opening of your heart.
If you allow yourself to feel sad, especially if you can cry,
you will find that your heart opens wider
and you can feel more love and more joy.

Shakti Gawain

The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called
days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection
and despair you feel rise in you a challenge of life,
and then the promise of future accomplishments.

Gustave Flaubert

Every person has his or her secret sorrows which the world knows not;
and often times we call someone cold when that person is only sad.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

If it weren't for the dark days,
we wouldn't know what it is to walk in the light.

Earl Campbell

So much pleasure, and so little joy; so much learning, and so little wisdom. . .
the one divine thing left to us is sadness. . . . Without sadness, where
were brotherliness? . . . She is the Spartan sauce which gives gusto
to the remainder-viands of life, the broken meats of love. . . . All things
take on beauty which pass through the hueless flame of her aureole.

Francis Thompson

Ester asked why people are sad.
"That’s simple," says the old man. "They are the prisoners of their personal
history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They
never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They
accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people's ideas, and it is more
than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.

Paulo Coelho
The Zahir

Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness
gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like
the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the
higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the
bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That's its balance.

Osho
Everyday Osho

Articles and book excerpts on sadness:

The Rainy Days tom walsh

God can heal your heart. God can rescue you from despair and
give you something to rejoice about again. It won't happen
overnight, but it will happen. All you have to do is be willing
to give every piece of your broken heart to God.

Barbara Johnson

The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you
are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set
aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your
sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire.
You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way
smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You
may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and
distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department
can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down.

Lemony Snicket
The Bad Beginning

The only sadnesses that are dangerous and unhealthy are the ones
that we carry around in public in order to drown them out with the
noise; like diseases that are treated superficially and foolishly, they
just withdraw and after a short interval break out again all the more
terribly; and gather inside us and are life, are life that is
unlived, rejected, lost, life that we can die of.

Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet

sadness 2

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.

Khalil Gibran

Sadness does not last forever when we walk in the direction
of that which we always desired.

Paulo Coelho
The Fifth Mountain

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