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Sad Quotes by William Shakespeare

Browse 6 quotations connecting William Shakespeare with Sad, with meanings, source notes and related themes.

Sources

Where these sad quotations appear

Sources represented here include All’s Well That Ends Well, Hamlet, Macbeth.

6 shown
Quotations

6 matching quotations with meanings and source context

Source identified1
The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.

“The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.”

Voice: Fictional character · First Lord

Human life is pictured as a fabric woven from favorable and painful threads rather than a story made from only one kind of experience.

Source details

All’s Well That Ends Well, Act IV, Scene 3; the First Lord reflects that human life is woven from good and ill together while discussing Bertram and Parolles. Verified against Wikisource’s 1910 facsimile transcription of the 1623 First Folio (folio spelling “The webbe of our life, is of a mingled yarne”); direct evidence resolves to the reviewed Act IV transcription.

Source identified2
When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.

“When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.”

Voice: Fictional character · Claudius

Difficulty often feels cumulative: one loss can arrive alongside others, making the burden larger than any isolated event.

Source details

Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 5; Claudius describes multiple troubles arriving together after Polonius’s death.

Source identified3
Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.

“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.”

Voice: Fictional character · Malcolm

Putting grief into words can make suffering more shareable; silence may intensify pressure when pain has no form of expression.

Source details

Macbeth, Act IV, Scene III, reviewed against the scan-backed 1918 Yale text. Malcolm tells Macduff 'Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak / Whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.' The frozen catalog row instead reads 'knits up the o'er-wrought heart'; that substantive inherited wording variation is disclosed rather than silently rewritten. The passage remains dramatic grief counsel, not clinical guidance.

Source identified4
To mourn a mischief that is past and gone is the next way to draw new mischief on.

“To mourn a mischief that is past and gone is the next way to draw new mischief on.”

Voice: Fictional character · Duke of Venice

Grief over what cannot be changed can become a second injury when it prevents attention to what can still be done.

Source details

Othello, Act I, Scene III, reviewed against the scan-backed 1910 First Folio facsimile on Wikisource. The Duke's 'To mourne a Mischeefe that is past and gon' sentence is part of the same attempt to redirect Brabantio after Desdemona's marriage; this collection preserves modernized spelling and punctuation rather than Folio orthography.

Source identified5
Parting is such sweet sorrow.

“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

Voice: Fictional character · Juliet

The phrase holds affection and pain together: separation hurts precisely because the relationship being left is valued.

Source details

Romeo and Juliet, Act 2, Scene 2; Juliet speaks as the lovers part for the night.

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