Sad quotes — Page 2

In Memoriam A.H.H., Canto XXVII, closing stanza; represented by the Wikisource canto transcription and independently visible on printed page 44 / scan leaf 64 of a public-domain edition. Tennyson's 'loved and lost' conclusion belongs to the elegy's grief for Arthur Hallam and its argument that love remains valuable despite bereavement; it is poetry, not a clinical grief prescription.

“The Definition of Love,” posthumously published in Miscellaneous Poems (1681), represented by Representative Poetry Online. The mathematical image belongs to a metaphysical lyric in which Fate prevents the lovers’ union.

Counsels and Maxims, T. Bailey Saunders translation, in a discussion of fortune and apparent stability.

The Consolation of Philosophy, Book II, Chapter IV, H. R. James translation (Elliot Stock, 1897), printed page 60 in Project Gutenberg #14328. The retained catalog wording ‘Nothing is wretched, but thinking makes it so.’ is a frozen clause extract from James’s longer sentence beginning ‘So true is it that...’ in Lady Philosophy’s argument about Fortune, judgment and the instability of external circumstances. It remains late-antique philosophical consolation mediated by translation, not modern cognitive-science or clinical mental-health evidence.

Hypatia — or New Foes with an Old Face, Chapter XXIV, “Lost Lambs,” Project Gutenberg #6308. Pelagia tells Philammon that men love women for their own sakes while women love “for love’s sake” during a distressed reflection on betrayal, dependence and the absent Amal. It is fictional dialogue in Kingsley’s historical novel, not a universal claim about men and women.

“A Better Resurrection,” in Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862 first edition), Devotional Pieces, printed page 137 / scan leaf 153. “My life is in the falling leaf: O Jesus, quicken me” closes the first stanza as a direct Christian prayer for renewed life; the address to Jesus and resurrection frame are essential context and are not secularized into generic recovery advice.

“A Better Resurrection,” in Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862 first edition), Devotional Pieces, printed page 137 / scan leaf 153. The poem opens “I have no wit, no words, no tears” and develops grief and numbness through Christian devotional imagery before the stanza closes in prayer. This is literary/devotional expression, not a clinical description, diagnosis or treatment recommendation.

“Remember,” first published in Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862); Project Gutenberg #16950. The sonnet later softens this request by allowing compassionate forgetting rather than demanding perpetual grief.

Closing thought of Remember; Rossetti shifts from asking to be remembered toward permitting compassionate forgetting.

Ecclesiastes 3:1 in the King James Version, opening the sequence of contrasting times and seasons.

“Annabel Lee,” written near the end of Poe’s life and published in 1849, represented by Poetry Foundation. The quotation is first-person lyric speech by the poem’s narrator inside a highly stylized elegy; its supernatural claims about angels and enduring souls remain poetic imagery.

Ethan Frome, Chapter VIII, Project Gutenberg #4517. ‘The inexorable facts closed in on him... There was no way out—none’ describes Ethan's perception after he realizes he lacks the money to elope with Mattie. It is tragic fictional narration of despair and constraint, not an objective rule that difficult circumstances have no alternatives or mental-health guidance.

Miss Billy, Chapter XVI, ‘Kate Takes a Hand,’ Project Gutenberg #3266. The line ‘It's home—all the home there is—anywhere!’ occurs at the end of the chapter after Billy decides to leave the Henshaw household because she fears disrupting it; Chapter XVII begins immediately afterward. It is Billy Neilson's distressed fictional speech about a specific domestic conflict, not a general rule about family, belonging or housing.

“A Child’s Grave at Florence,” stanza XXIX; Project Gutenberg #31015. The surrounding stanza contrasts the family’s earthly grave and silence with the child’s imagined heavenly life.

“A Child’s Grave at Florence,” stanza XXII; Project Gutenberg #31015. The poem commemorates a child who died in 1849 and frames consolation through Christian faith.

Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet XXXV, Project Gutenberg #2002. “For grief indeed is love and grief beside” occurs as the lyric speaker asks whether a new beloved can fill a place still occupied by family memory and bereavement. It remains intimate Victorian love poetry, not a clinical model or universal definition of grief.

Sonnets from the Portuguese, Sonnet XXXVI; Project Gutenberg #2002. The growth is emotional and relational within the poem, not a clinical recovery benchmark.

‘Hope,’ third stanza, in Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell, Project Gutenberg #1019. ‘She would sing while I was weeping; / If I listened, she would cease’ belongs to Brontë's deliberately bleak personification in which Hope behaves as a false, unreliable guard and finally departs. It is not simple positive-thinking advice or a clinical claim about hope.

“Remembrance,” Project Gutenberg #1019. The speaker is negotiating loyalty to a lost beloved rather than announcing a universal timetable for moving on.

“Remembrance,” in Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell (1846); Project Gutenberg #1019. The line belongs to a dramatic lyric voice and is not biographical evidence by itself.

“Remembrance,” Project Gutenberg #1019. The line follows the collapse of earlier dreams and is literary reflection on endurance, not a prescription to avoid joy or support.

“Earth Is Short,” Poems: First Series (1890), Project Gutenberg #12242. The poem proceeds into questions about heaven and God; its religious questions remain questions rather than verified metaphysical claims.

Opening lines.

Bacon, “Of Revenge”; the sentence continues by contrasting revenge with wounds that would otherwise heal.

Silas Marner; Eliot contrasts the former hoard with Eppie, whose needs and future redirect Silas’s earnings toward hope, relationship, and practical care.

Lilith: A Romance; Project Gutenberg #1640. Spoken by Mara to Lilith in a theological fantasy scene; it is not presented as empirical evidence about death or an afterlife.

“Spring and Fall: to a young child,” written in 1880 and published posthumously in 1918, represented by Poetry Foundation. Margaret is the poem’s addressed child; the meditation is literary and theological rather than a clinical account of grief development.

Hebrews 8:12 in the King James Version; concluding clause of the new-covenant promise.

Hebrews 8:12, King James Version; the verse quotes the new-covenant promise and closes it with mercy and non-remembrance of sins.

A Psalm of Life, in the stanza beginning “Trust no Future.”

Out from the Heart; Allen lists contrasting mental conditions while arguing that the inner life strongly shapes experience.

Jeremiah 31:34, King James Version; the promise appears in the description of a new covenant and includes forgiveness and no further remembrance of sin.

Luke 23:34 in the King James Version.

Meditation XVII; modernized capitalization.

“Ode on Melancholy,” in Keats: Poems Published in 1820; Project Gutenberg #23684. This is Romantic poetic imagery and not mental-health treatment advice.

Paradise Lost (1667), Book I, line 254; retained legacy short extract from the fuller Satan sentence beginning ‘The mind is its own place’ and continuing into line 255. It is the same underlying passage as the longer catalog record, not a separate fifth passage.

Genesis 50:17, King James Version; Joseph’s brothers send a message asking pardon for their earlier wrongdoing against him.

The Prophet, “On Joy and Sorrow.”

The Prophet, “On Children”; Gibran contrasts parents’ memory of yesterday with children belonging to a life that moves forward.

The Prophet, “On Joy and Sorrow.”

The Prophet, “On Love.”

Ecclesiastes 3:4 in the King James Version.

Psalm 147:3 in the King James Version; the verse describes care for people whose hearts have been broken.

Psalm 34:18 in the King James Version; the verse speaks of divine nearness to the brokenhearted.

Psalm 56:3 in the King James Version.

Jo's Boys; the reassurance follows a setback and reframes a difficult year as experience that may later prove unusually helpful rather than simply wasted time.

Meditations, Book IV, in George Long’s translation; this is the central clause of the retreat passage.

Frankenstein; the narrator reflects on the psychological strain created by sudden changes in circumstances.

De Profundis, public-domain 1913 Methuen text; the sentence appears in Wilde’s description of prison time and the apparent sameness of suffering.

De Profundis, public-domain 1913 Methuen text; Wilde writes from prison about suffering, memory, humiliation, and the changed experience of time.

“Sympathy,” published in Lyrics of the Hearthside (1899) and represented by Poetry Foundation. The caged-bird image became one of Dunbar’s most influential metaphors for constrained freedom and suffering; the record keeps the poem’s figurative language rather than assigning one exhaustive historical interpretation.

1 Thessalonians 4:13, King James Version; Paul addresses sorrow concerning those who have died and frames the following passage around hope.

2 Corinthians 2:7 in the King James Version; excerpt from Paul’s instruction about receiving and comforting a repentant member.

Ephesians 1:7, King James Version; the verse links redemption and forgiveness with grace in the opening blessing of the letter.

Romans 12:15 in the King James Version.

Final line of Ode to the West Wind; the changing seasons become a metaphor for historical and personal renewal.

Apology, final paragraph in Jowett’s translation; Socrates closes after the jury has sentenced him to death.

Proverbs 17:22, King James Version.

Psalm 103:12 in the King James Version.

Psalm 126:5 in the King James Version.

Psalm 30:11 in the King James Version; opening clause.

Psalm 42:11, King James Version; the psalm repeatedly addresses a downcast and disquieted soul while directing attention toward hope.

The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, saying 37, D. Lyman Jr. translation (1856).

Revelation 21:4, King James Version; the verse continues with the end of death, sorrow, crying, and pain in the new creation.

“To Daffodils,” from Hesperides (1648), represented by Project Gutenberg #1211. The poem develops a conventional lyric comparison between short-lived flowers and human mortality.

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 101.

Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 4.

Letter 63 urges remembrance of a lost friend while continuing to participate in friendship and life.

Letter 63, on grief for lost friends, argues against both emotional numbness and endless mourning.

Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, first edition 1747, represented by the Thomas Gray Archive. The famous line concludes a poem cataloguing the future troubles awaiting schoolboys; it is ironic poetic reflection, not a general recommendation against knowledge.

“De Profundis I,” Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. The poem reflects on recurring seasons and a past bereavement; it does not prescribe a universal grief timetable.

“De Profundis I,” Project Gutenberg #3168. The passage belongs to one speaker's reflection on bereavement and seasonal return.

“How Great My Grief,” Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. It is a dramatic lyric statement and is not automatically read as direct autobiography.

‘Neutral Tones,’ in Wessex Poems and Other Verses, Project Gutenberg #3167. ‘We stood by a pond that winter day’ opens Hardy's four-stanza dramatic lyric, whose drained winter landscape becomes part of the speaker's memory of a failed relationship. The landscape is poetic imagery, not evidence that winter or particular natural scenes cause sadness.

“The Last Chrysanthemum,” Project Gutenberg #3168. The corpse comparison is figurative seasonal language inside the poem.

“The Last Chrysanthemum,” Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. Floral death is poetic seasonal imagery, not literal human bereavement.

“The Self-Unseeing,” Project Gutenberg #3168. The exclamation closes a poem of retrospective domestic memory and should not be detached from that remembered household scene.

Leaves of Grass (1855), untitled first-edition poem later known as “Song of Myself,” printed page 56 (Wikisource scan page 62). The line belongs to the poem’s final movement, later numbered section 52; the 1855 record remains tied to the unnumbered first edition rather than inheriting later section structure.

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.

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

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.

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

Act 4, Scene 1.