Sorrow

[A]lways enjoy sympathy, but never be dependent on it.
~ William Rounseville (W.R.) Alger, The Friendships of Women (1868). Introduction

I love the friendly faces of old sorrows;
I have no secrets that they do not know.
~ Karle Wilson Baker, from Burning Bush (1922). I Love the Friendly Faces of Old Sorrows

The reason I do not spend my days in despair and my nights in hopeless weeping simply is that I am in love with my own ruin. I therefore deserve no sympathy, and probably shan't get it: my own profound self-compassion is enough. I am so abominably self-conscious that no smallest detail in this tragedy eludes me. Day after day I sit in the theatre of my own life and watch the drama of my own history proceeding to its close. Pray God the curtain falls at the right moment lest the play drag on into some long and tedious anticlimax.
~ Wilhelm Nero Pilate (W.N.P.) Barbellion, in The Journal of a Disappointed Man (31 March 1919). December 20, 1916 entry

Can I see another's woe,
And not be in sorrow too?
Can I see another's grief,
And not seek for kind relief?
~ William Blake, from Songs of Innocence (1789). On Another's Sorrow

Every tear from every eye
Becomes a babe in Eternity.
~ William Blake, from The Pickering Manuscript (c. 1803). Auguries of Innocence

My mother groan'd, my father wept,
Into the dangerous world I leapt;
Helpless, naked, piping loud,
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
~ William Blake, from Songs of Experience (1794). Infant Sorrow

Seek Love in the pity of others' woe,
In the gentle relief of another's care,
In the darkness of night and the winter's snow,
In the naked and outcast, seek Love there!
~ William Blake, from The Pickering Manuscript (c. 1803). William Bond

The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
~ William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790-93). Proverbs of Hell

Then cherish pity, lest you drive an angel from your door.
~ William Blake, from Songs of Innocence (1789). Holy Thursday

When I saw that rage was vain
And to sulk would nothing gain,
Turning many a trick and wile
I began to soothe and smile.
~ William Blake, from Songs of Experience (1794). Infant Sorrow

Roaming and sorrowing still, like one who makes
The journey of life alone, and nowhere meets
A welcome or a friend, and still goes on
In darkness.
~ William Cullen Bryant, published in The Crayon (January 1855). A Rain-Dream

Red is the ultimate cure for sadness.
~ Bill Blass

There is something in me grieves
That was never born, and died.
~ William Stanley Braithwaite, Turn Me To My Yellow Leaves

Now looka here blues, I wanna talk to you
You been makin' me drinkin', gamblin', and stay out all night too
Now you got me to the place, I don't care what I do
Yeah now blues, I wanna have a little talk with you.
~ Big Bill Broonzy, Conversation with the Blues (Song title, July 1941).

Now there's some people said the Big Bill blues ain't bad
Now some people said the Big Bill blues ain't bad
Lord it must not have been them Big Bill blues they had.
~ Big Bill Broonzy, Big Bill Blues (Song title, 1932).

And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1832 edition). The Death of the Flowers

And look at the broad-faced sun, how he smiles
On the dewy earth that smiles in his ray,
On the leaping waters and gay young isles;
Ay, look, and he'll smile thy gloom away.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1832 edition). The Gladness Of Nature

In pity look on those who stray,
Benighted, in this land of light.
~ William Cullen Bryant

There is a day of sunny rest
For every dark and troubled night;
And grief may bide an evening guest,
But joy shall come with early light.
~ William Cullen Bryant, from Poems (1832 edition). Blessed are they that Mourn (written in 1820)

There is weeping on earth for the lost!
~ William Henry Burleigh, from Poems (1841). Elegiac Stanzas

In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.
~ William S. Burroughs, Queer (1985).

In no case is a man so well qualified to administer consolation as he who has himself required it, and from no person does it come with so tender a power as from him who is weighed down by his own sorrows, while soothing those of another. It is probably the only act of our life which is altogether free from selfishness.
~ William Carleton, from The Fawn of Spring-Vale, The Clarionet, and Other Tales, Volume II (1841). The Clarionet. Chapter I

O let me weep,
And fall asleep,
And forgotten fade.
~ William Cartwright, in Comedies, Tragi-comedies, With other Poems (1651). Sadness

A wail in the wind is all I hear;
A voice of woe for a lover's loss.
~ William Ellery Channing, the younger, from Thoreau, the Poet-Naturalist (1873). Memorial Verses, V: Tears in Spring

Each lonely scene shall thee restore,
For thee the tear be duly shed;
Beloved, till life can charm no more;
And mourn'd till Pity's self be dead.
~ William Collins, A Song from Shakespeare's Cymbeline (aka Fidele) (1744).

Let me be pitied first, and afterwards forgotten. I ask no more.
~ William Congreve, The Way of the World (1700). Act V, scene ix

What is't to speak? or wherefore should I speak?
What means these tears, but grief unutterable?
~ William Congreve, The Mourning Bride (1697). Act IV, scene vii

And the tear that is wiped with a little address,
May be follow'd perhaps by a smile.
~ William Cowper, The Rose

Beware of desperate steps! The darkest day,
Live till to-morrow, will have pass'd away.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). The Needless Alarm, Moral

The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.
~ William Cowper, from Poems by William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq. (1782). An Epistle. To an Afflicted Protestant Lady in France

Don't tell my heart, my achy breaky heart, I just don't think it'd understand.
~ Billy Ray Cyrus

Faith, hope, charity, there is no sadness in them; and if penitence makes the heart sad, penitence belongs to the sinner, not to the saint.
~ Robert William Dale

My heart has moments wet with tears,
My weakness is they are so few.
~ William Henry (W.H.) Davies, from Foliage: Various Poems (1913). Strong Moments

Thy sighs are gentle, sweet thy tears;
But if thou canst not help a man
To prove in substance what he feels --
Then give me Joy, who can.
~ William Henry (W.H.) Davies, from Songs of Joy: And Others (1911). Sadness and Joy

The Blues are the true facts of life expressed in words and song, inspiration, feeling, and understanding.
~ William James "Willie" Dixon

Poor lad! -- a slave at twenty-two. ... No wonder that Luke Black, slow, dull, and discouraged, shuffles to our carriage and talks hopelessly. Why should he strive?
~ William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903).

Through all the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope -- a faith in the ultimate justice of things. The minor cadences of despair change often to triumph and calm confidence. Sometimes it is faith in life, sometimes a faith in death, sometimes assurance of boundless justice in some fair world beyond. But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.
~ William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903). The Sorrow Songs

Labour itself is but a sorrowful song,
The protest of the weak against the strong.
~ Frederick William Faber, The Sorrowful World.

Between grief and nothing I will take grief.
~ William Faulkner, The Wild Palms (19 January 1939).

It's not when you realize that nothing can help you -- religion, pride, anything -- it's when you realise that you don't need any aid.
~ William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (October 1929). June Second, 1910

The truth, however, appears to be that while some of these animals may on occasion exhibit the evidences of tears, this occurs very seldom, and is the exception rather than the rule. ... Psychic weeping is not known to occur as a normal function in any animal other than man.
~ William H. Frey II, Crying: The Mystery of Tears (1985).

But we, how shall we turn to little things
And listen to the birds and winds and streams
Made holy by their dreams,
Nor feel the heart-break in the heart of things?
~ Wilfred Wilson Gibson, Lament (1918).

Heavy the sorrow that bows the head
When Love is alive and Hope is dead!
~ William Schwenck (W.S.) Gilbert, from Songs of a Savoyard (1890). Sorry Her Lot

Tears shed for self are tears of weakness, but tears shed for others are a sign of strength.
~ Billy Graham

Grief is a stone, which presses down him who bears it alone, but two draw it lightly out of the way.
~ Wilhelm Hauff, in The Oriental Story Book: A Collection of Tales (1855).

Whole years of joy glide unperceived away,
While sorrow counts the minutes as they pass.
~ William Havard, Scanderbeg: A Tragedy (1733).

Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, from Outspoken Essays, First Series (1919). Survival and Immortality

Love remembered and consecrated by grief belongs, more clearly than the happy intercourse of friends, to the eternal world; it has proved itself stronger than death.
~ William Ralph (Dean) Inge, Personal Religion and the Life of Devotion (1924).

Despair lames most people, but it wakes others fully up.
~ William James, quoted in "The Practical Cogitator, or The Thinker's Anthology" (1945).

Old age has the last word: the purely naturalistic look at life, however enthusiastically it may begin, is sure to end in sadness. ... This sadness lies at the heart of every merely positivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic scheme of philosophy.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lectures VI and VII: The Sick Soul

The normal processes of life contain moments as bad as any of those which insane melancholy is filled with, moments in which radical evil gets its innings and takes its solid turn. The lunatic's visions of horror are all drawn from the material of daily fact.
~ William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). Lectures VI and VII: The Sick Soul

[T]he sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our spontaneous cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully, to look round cheerfully, and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.
~ William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1899). The Gospel of Relaxation

Go on and cry in your coffee, but don't come bitching to me.
~ Billy Joel

No end to sorrow, caused by the same endless fears.
~ Billy Joel

Because of the bodies that lay there, you couldn't dynamite it. Because of New York's sensitivities to noise and dust, you couldn't even use small demolition charges to fill dangerous cavities or bring down the skeletal walls. There was no choice but to cut and pull and unbuild the chaos one piece at a time.
~ William Langewiesche (on the massive deconstruction of "Ground Zero"), American Ground (24 October 2002).

The richest and fullest life seems often to be possible only to those who have mourned.
~ William Henry Lyon

It's almost fitting that we will spend the next couple of hours at an event that bears the name of a legendary entertainer who saw us through so many difficult times during his marvelous career, Bob Hope.
~ Bill Macatee, Stated during CBS TV coverage of the Bob Hope Chrysler Golf Classic (1 February 2003).

Deprived of heart and hope, I cannot love for long. No man's heart can survive when once aflame.
~ Guillaume de Machaut, Hareu!-Helas! ou sera pris confors

[F]ancy is the friend of woe.
~ William Masonfrom Poems (1764). Ode. To a Friend

There is a solemn luxury in grief.
~ William Mason, from The English Garden, Book IV (1772-82).

And here's to the threadbare charm of our self-pity.
~ William Matthews, from Foreseeable Futures (1987). Fellow Oddballs

I look into my empty heart and shrink dismayed:
My soul is like a desert, and the wild wind blows
In its silent, barren spaces.
~ W. Somerset Maugham, from A Writer's Notebook (1949). 1929 entry: Lines

Modern man's despair is not despair of God at all, but despair of all that is not God. Beyond that certain despair lies Christian hope, the certainty that God alone is enough for man.
~ William McNamara, The Art of Being Human (1962).

All through the dark the wind looks for the grief it belongs to.
~ William Stanley (W.S.) Merwin, from The Carrier of Ladders (1970). Night Wind

For know, when sickening grief doth prey,
And tender love's repaid with scorn,
The sweetest beauty will decay:
What floweret can endure the storm?
~ William Julius Mickle, in Evan's Collection of Old Ballads (1784). Cumnor Hall

Out of sorrow joy has birth;
Sorrow is but muffled mirth.
~ William Cosmo Monkhouse, from A Dream of Idleness, And Other Poems (1865). The Chief Ringer's Burial

[G]rief once told brings somewhat back of peace.
~ William Morris, from The Earthly Paradise (1868-70). Prologue

Sometimes melancholy is greater than it would otherwise be, through selfishness, through not rejoicing with them that do rejoice.
~ William Mountford, Euthanasy: Or, Happy Talk Towards the End of Life (1848). Chapter XXIV

Today, our hearts and prayers go out to their loved ones left behind. And as we once again extend our respect and gratitude to the families of fallen astronauts, we must rededicate ourselves to making future exploration of this final frontier as safe as humanly possible.
~ Bill Nelson, in The Office of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State (2 February 2003). A New Commitment to Space

If you go over desert and mountain,
Far into the country of Sorrow,
To-day and to-night and to-morrow,
And maybe for months and for years;
You shall come with a heart that is bursting
For trouble and toiling and thirsting,
You shall certainly come to the fountain
At length, -- to the Fountain of Tears.
~ Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy, The Fountain of Tears

What man is able to master
And stem the great Fountain of Tears?
~ Arthur William Edgar O'Shaughnessy, The Fountain of Tears

There is scarcely anything around us but ruin and despair.
~ William Pitt, the Younger, (1806).

It's a terrible tragedy, but you don't stop flying airplanes because an airplane crashed. You don't stop driving automobiles because you have an automobile accident. It's the same sort of thing, but it's that this is so dramatic it tears at you emotionally.
~ Bill Pogue (addressing tourists at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex), The Associated Press (1 February 2003). Quotes About the Space Shuttle Disaster

There ain't a sorrow in the chorus that a lobster cannot heal.
~ William Sydney Porter (O. Henry), from The Voice of the City: Further Stories of the Four Million (1908). The Momento

Immediately after we found out about Columbia we did send word up to the crew, communicated with them, let them know what the situation was. And of course they were obviously concerned for the families and sent their condolences. And obviously they also mourn the loss of the crew, friends and colleagues.
~ William Readdy, NASA News Conference, Johnson Space Center, Houston TX (3 February 2003).

The longest sorrow finds at last relief.
~ William Rowley, A New Wonder, A Woman Never Vexed (c. 1610-1614). Act IV, scene i

Forgive me, Spirit of my spirit, for this, that I have found it easier to read the mystery told in tears and understood Thee better in sorrow than in joy.
~ George William (A.E.) Russell, Collected Poems by A.E. (1913). Preface

Pity's no seed to throw among the living.
~ William Saroyan, The Beautiful People (1941).

Here, you have moped enough!
Brace up and play the game!
But say, it's awful tough --
Day after day the same.
~ Robert William Service, Ballads of a Cheechako (1909). The Telegraph Operator

Affliction may one day smile again; and till then, sit thee down, sorrow!
~ William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost

And with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief.
~ William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. Act II, scene iv

Cease to lament for that thou canst not help;
And study help for that which thou lament'st.
~ William Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona. Act III

Come, and take choice of all my library,
And so beguile thy sorrow.
~ William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus. Act IV, scene i

Each substance of a grief hath twenty shadows.
~ William Shakespeare, King Richard II

Every one can master a grief but he that has it.
~ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing. Act III, scene ii

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

I cannot but remember such things were,
That were most precious to me. Did heaven look on,
And would not take their part?
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth

I have full cause of weeping, but this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws, or ere I'll weep. O fool, I shall go mad!
~ William Shakespeare, King Lear

If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.
~ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

Indeed the tears live in an onion that should water this sorrow.
~ William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra. Act I, scene ii

[M]elancholy is the nurse of frenzy.
~ William Shakespeare, The Taming of the Shrew. Induction, scene ii

Of comfort no man speak.
Let's talk of graves, of worms and epitaphs,
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
Let's choose executors and talk of wills.
~ William Shakespeare, King Richard III. Act III, scene ii

O sovereign mistress of true melancholy,
The poisonous damp of night disponge upon me,
That life, a very rebel to my will,
May hang no longer on me.
~ William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra. Act IV, scene ix

One woe doth tread upon another's heel,
So fast they follow.
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Patch grief with proverbs.
~ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing. Act V, scene i

Scarce I could from tears refrain;
For her griefs, so lively shown,
Made me think upon mine own.
~ William Shakespeare, Sonnets to Sundry Notes of Music, VI.

Shall we play the wantons with our woes,
And make some pretty match with shedding tears?
~ William Shakespeare, King Richard II

Sorrow ebbs, being blown with wind of words.
~ William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece

Sorrow concealed, like an oven stopp'd,
Doth burn the heart to cinders where it is.
~ William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus. Act II, scene iv

Tear him for his bad verses.
~ William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

The weight of this sad time we must obey;
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.
~ William Shakespeare, King Lear. Act V, scene iii

There's little of the melancholy element in her, my lord. She is never sad but when she sleeps, and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say she hath often dreamt of unhappiness and waked herself with laughing.
~ William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing. Act II, scene i

To weep is to make less the depth of grief.
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part III. Act II, scene i

When sorrows come, they come not as single spies,
But in battalions!
~ William Shakespeare, Hamlet. Act IV, scene v

Would I were dead, if God's good will were so,
For what is in this world but grief and woe?
~ William Shakespeare, King Henry VI, Part III. Act II, scene v

You may my glories and my state depose,
But not my griefs; still am I king of those.
~ William Shakespeare, King Richard II

My hopes, still hoping, hopeless now repine.
~ William Smith, Chloris, Or The Complaint Of The Passionate Despised Shepherd (1596). Sonnet XIV

You still whispered you would not die.
Yet in the nights I heard you cry
Like a whipped child ...
~ William De Witt (W.D.) Snodgrass, from Selected Poems 1957-1987 (1987). A Flat One

Sorrow beyond communion or control
In dumb distraction settles on the soul.
~ William Robert (W.R.) Spencer, The Year of Sorrow (1804).

[O]ur ravings and complaints are but like arrows shot up into the air at no mark, and so to no purpose, but only to fall back upon our own heads and destroy ourselves.
~ Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet, in The Works of Sir William Temple, Bart., Vol. III (1814 edition). Letter to the Countess of Essex; Upon Her Grief (29 January 1674)

My toils, my pleasures, every one,
I find are stale, and dull, and slow;
And yesterday, when work was done,
I felt myself so sad and low.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, from Ballads (1855). Love-Songs Made Easy: What Makes My Heart To Thrill And Glow? The May Fair Love Song

So he sighed and pined and ogled,
And his passion boiled and bubbled,
Till he blew his silly brains out,
And no more was by it troubled.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, from Ballads (1855). Sorrows of Werther

When a gentleman is cudgelling his brain to find any rhyme for sorrow, besides borrow and to-morrow, his woes are nearer at an end than he thinks for.
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, The History of Pendennis (1848-1850), Volume I. Chapter XV: The Happy Village

Since the 17th of April, not a day has passed that I have not thought of that night, in the sky, in the darkness, and all that has happened since. If I could turn back time I would, but since I cannot I want you to know that I am truly sorry. Major Schmidt and I were doing our best to protect ourselves in a situation where we honestly believed we were under attack.
~ Major William Umbach (in a prepared statement at the close of "Article 32" military tribunal), Reuters (23 January 2003). U.S. Pilots Apologize to Canadian Bomb Victims

In seasons of distress and grief,
My soul has often found relief,
And oft escaped the tempter's snare
By thy return, sweet hour of prayer.
~ William W. Walford, in The New York Ob­ser­ver (13 Sep­tem­ber 1845). Sweet Hour of Prayer (1845 hymn)

In love alone we hate to find
Companions of our woe.
~ William Walsh, in Letters and Poems, Amorous and Gallant (1709). Song

A prosperous man may afford to be melancholy, but if the miserable are so, they are worse than dead -- but it is sure to kill them.
~ William Ware, Zenobia; Or, The Fall of Palmyra (1838).

If I could only weep,
I think sweet help with my salt tears would come,
To ease the cruel pain that is so dumb,
And will not let me sleep.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from Yesterdays (August 1910). If I Could Only Weep

Somebody's sorrow is making me weep:
I know not her name, but I echo her cry,
For the dearly bought baby she longed so to keep,
The baby that rode to its long-lasting sleep
In the little white hearse that went rumbling by.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Poems by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1919). The Little White Hearse

The life that neither grief nor burden knows
Is dwarfed in sympathy before its close.
The life that grows majestic with the years
Must taste the bitter tonic found in tears.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from New Thought Pastels (1906). Perfection

The sorriest things in this life will seem grandest in the next.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from Custer and Other Poems (1896). Sorry

This is the way of it, sad earth over,
The heart that breaks is the heart of the lover,
And the other learns to forget.
For what is the use of endless sorrow?
Though the sun goes down, it will rise to-morrow;
And life is not over yet.
~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox, from How Salvator Won, and Other Recitations (1895). The Way of It

And there's a sunset over the mountains
I shout my scorn to the splendorous sky
For how does this light compare to all the world's suffering.
~ Dar Williams, in All My Heroes Are Dead (1991 album). Anthem

The hearts of Afro-American women are too warm and too large for race hatred. Long suffering has so chastened them that they are developing a special sense of sympathy for all who suffer and fail of justice.
~ Fannie Barrier Williams, Speech before the World's Congress of Representative Women, Chicago IL (1893). The Intellectual Progress of the Colored Women of the United States Since the Emancipation Proclamation

You can't rehearse a blues, darlin'.
~ Joe Williams

I wonder if anyone will ever know the emptiness of my life.
~ Kenneth Charles Williams, in The Kenneth Williams Diaries (1993). Personal Diary -- Last entry "Oh what's the point?"

Not so, not so, no load of woe
Need bring despairing frown;
For while we bear it, we can bear,
Past that, we lay it down.
~ Sarah Williams, in Twilight Hours, A Legacy of Verse (1868). Broken Chords. Against Tears

Sorrow makes for sincerity, I think.
~ Thomas Lanier ("Tennessee") Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire (1947). Scene Three

Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
~ William Carlos Williams, from Sour Grapes (1921). The Widow's Lament in Springtime

Now once, I was down hearted
Disappointment, was my closest friend
But then you, came and it soon departed.
~ Jackie Wilson, from Higher and Higher (1967 album). (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher

O why should tears
Be shed unto the blest and beautiful,
By us poor dwellers in the woeful shades
Of mortal being?
~ John Wilson, from The City of the Plague: And Other Poems (1816). The City of the Plague. Act II, scene i

A deep distress hath humanized my Soul.
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems in Two Volumes, Volume I (1807). Elegiac Stanzas

As high as we have mounted in delight,
In our dejection do we sink as low.
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems in Two Volumes, Volume I (1807). Resolution and Independence

And banish melancholy
By all that mind invents or hand prepares.
~ William Wordsworth, in The Keepsake (1829). The Triad (written in 1828)

I've heard of hearts unkind, kind deeds
With coldness still returning;
Alas! the gratitude of men
Hath oftener left me mourning.
~ William Wordsworth, from Lyrical Ballads (1798). Simon Lee, the old Huntsman

Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade
Of that which once was great, is passed away.
~ William Wordsworth, from Poems by William Wordsworth, Vol. II (1815). Sonnets Dedicated to National Independence and Liberty. Part I. VI: On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic

Never to blend our pleasure or our pride
With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels.
~ William Wordsworth

Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been, and may be again?
~ William Wordsworth, from Memorials of a Tour in Scotland (1803). VIII. The Solitary Reaper

The true sorrow of humanity consists in this;?-- not that the mind of man fails; but that the course and demands of action and of life so rarely correspond with the dignity and intensity of human desires: and hence that, which is slow to languish, is too easily turned aside and abused.
~ William Wordsworth, The Convention of Cintra (1809)

When we accept our pain as our own, suffering can grow into compassion. It's as if the heart opens, and out of sorrow come warmth and joy.
~ Philip W. Williams, in When A Loved One Dies (1976). Out of Sorrow

Grief is so far from retrieving a loss, that it makes it greater; but the way to lessen it is by a comparison with others' losses.
~ William Wycherley, Love in a wood; or St. James's Park (1672). Act V, scene v

Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than
you can understand.
~ William Butler Yeats, from Crossways (1889). The Stolen Child

We shall no longer hear the little cry
Of our sad hearts, that may not live nor die.
~ William Butler Yeats, from Crossways (1889). The Rose of Battle