Quotations About Sorrows II

似水流年 (sorrow quotes)



Genuine sorrows are very tranquil in appearance in the deep bed they have dug for themselves. But, seeming to slumber, they corrode the soul like that frightful acid which penetrates crystal. ~ Honore de Balzac

Sorrow, the heart must bear,
Sits in the home of each, conspicuous there.
Many a circumstance, at least,
Touches the very breast.
For those
Whom any sent away,--he knows:
And in the live man's stead,
Armor and ashes reach
The house of each.
~ Robert Browning


Nothing comes to us too soon but sorrow.
~ Philip James Bailey


Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.
~ Oscar Wilde


Sorrow is held the eldest child of sin.
~ John Webster

Whatever, below God, is the object of our love, will, at some time or other, be the matter of our sorrow. ~ Richard Cecil


It is those who make the least display of their sorrow who mourn the deepest. ~ Edwin Hubbell Chapin


Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seamed with scars; martyrs have put on their coronation robes glittering with fire, and through their tears have the sorrowful first seen the gates of heaven. ~ Edwin Hubbell Chapin


It is with sorrows, as with countries, each man has his own. ~ Francois August Rene de Chateaubriand


Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths. ~ Philip James Bailey


Past sorrows, let us moderately lament them;
For those to come, seek wisely to prevent them. ~ John Webster


Thou canst not tell how rich a dowry sorrow gives the soul, how firm a faith and eagle sight of God. ~ Henry Alford


Sorrow is Mount Sinai. If one will, one may go up and talk with God, face to face.
~ Henry Ward Beecher


Sorrow makes men sincere. ~ Henry Ward Beecher


Sorrows, as storms, bring down the clouds close to the earth; sorrows bring heaven down close; and they are instruments of cleansing and purifying. ~ Henry Ward Beecher


The path of sorrow, and that path alone,
Leads to the lands where sorrow is unknown. ~ William Cowper


Sorrow is a stone that crushes a single bearer to the ground, while two are able to carry it with ease. ~ Philip James Bailey


Sorrow itself is not so hard to bear as the thought of sorrow coming. Airy ghosts that work no harm do terrify us more than men in steel with woody purpose. ~ Thomas Bailey Aldrich


Some natural sorrow, loss, or pain,
That has been and may be again. ~ William Wordsworth


Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine. ~ Saint Thomas Aquinas


Sorrow preys upon
Its solitude, and nothing more diverts it
From its sad visions of the other world
Than calling it at moments back to this.
The busy have no time for tears.
~ Lord Byron

Quotations About Sorrows I

Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break. ~ William Shakespeare


Great sorrows have no leisure to complain:
Least ills vent forth, great griefs within remain. ~ William Goffe


Sorrow is not evil, since it stimulates and purifies. ~ Giuseppe Mazzini


We pick our own sorrows out of the joys of other men, and from their sorrows likewise we derive our joys. ~ Owen Felltham


There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery. ~ Dante


Great sorrows cannot speak. ~ Dr. John Donne


The capacity of sorrow belongs to our grandeur, and the loftiest of our race are those who have had the profoundest sympathies, because they have had the profoundest sorrows. ~ Henry Giles


As the Christian's sorrows multiply, his patience grows, until, with sweet, unruffled quiet, he can confront the ills of life, and, though inwardly wincing, can calmly pursue his way to the restful grave, while his old, harsh voice is softly cadenced into sweetest melody, like the faint notes of an angel's whispered song. As patience deepens, charity and sympathy increase. ~ George Horace Lorimer


Ah, if you knew what peace there is in an accepted sorrow! ~ Madame Guyon


Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.
~ George Eliot


To the old, sorrow is sorrow; to the young, it is despair. ~ George Eliot


Even by means of our sorrows we belong to the eternal plan. ~ Wilhelm von Humboldt


The sorrow which calls for help and comfort is not the greatest, nor does it come from the depths of the heart. ~ Wilhelm von Humboldt


Part of our good consists in the endeavor to do sorrows away, and in the power to sustain them when the endeavor fails,--to bear them nobly, and thus help others to bear them as well. ~ Leigh Hunt


From the very summit of his sorrows, where he had gone to die, Moses, for the first time in his life, caught a view of the land of Canaan. He did not know, as he went over the rocks, torn and weary, how lovely the prospect was from the top. In this world, it frequently happens that when man has reached the place of anguish, God rolls away the mist from his eyes, and the very spot selected as the receptacle of his tears, becomes the place of his highest rapture. ~ Joel Tyler Headley


In the bitter waves of woe,
Beaten and tossed about
By the sullen winds which blow
From the desolate shores of doubt.
~ Washington Gladden

Poems About Sorrow

Who never ate his bread in sorrow,
Who never spent the darksome hours
Weeping, and watching for the morrow,--
He knows ye not, ye gloomy Powers.
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe



Do not cheat thy Heart and tell her,
"Grief will pass away,
Hope for fairer times in future,
And forget to-day."
Tell her, if you will, that sorrow
Need not come in vain;
Tell her that the lesson taught her
Far outweighs the pain.
~ Adelaide Anne Procter


I walked a mile with Pleasure,
She chattered all the way;
But left me none the wiser,
For all she had to say.
I walked a mile with Sorrow
And ne'er a word said she;
But, oh, the things I learned from her
When Sorrow walked with me!
~ Robert Browning Hamilton



There's no way to make sorrow light
But in the noble bearing; be content;
Blows given from heaven are our due punishment;
All shipwrecks are not drownings; you see buildings
Made fairer from their ruins.
~ William Rowley


Sorrow treads heavily, and leaves behind
A deep impression, e'en when she departs:
While joy trips by with steps light as the wind,
And scarcely leaves a trace upon our hearts
Of her faint foot-falls: only this is sure,
In this world nought, save misery, can endure.
~ Emma Catherine Embury




When the cold breath of sorrow is sweeping
O'er the chords of the youthful heart,
And the earnest eye, dimm'd with strange weeping,
Sees the visions of fancy depart;
When the bloom of young feeling is dying,
And the heart throbs with passion's fierce strife,
When our sad days are wasted in sighing,
Who then can find sweetness in life?
~ Emma Catherine Embury


When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions: first, her father slain;
Next, your son gone, and he most violent author
Of his own just remove; the people muddied,
Thick and unwholesome in their thoughts and whispers
For good Polonius' death, and we have done but greenly
In hugger-mugger to inter him; poor Ophelia
Divided from herself and her fair judgment,
Without the which we are pictures or mere beasts;
Last, and as much containing as all these,
Her brother is in secret come from France,
Feeds on his wonder, keeps himself in clouds,
And wants not buzzers to infect his ear
With pestilent speeches of his father's death,
Wherein necessity, of matter beggared,
Will nothing stick our person to arraign
In ear and ear.
~ William Shakespeare

Inspirational Poems III

Life Sculpture

By George Washington Doane (27 May 1799 - 27 April 1859)

Chisel in hand stood a sculptor boy
With his marble block before him,
And his eyes lit up with a smile of joy,
As an angel-dream passed o'er him.

He carved the dream on that shapeless stone,
With many a sharp incision;
With heaven's own flight the sculpture shone,
He'd caught that angel-vision.

Children of life are we, as we stand
With our lives uncarved before us,
Waiting the hour when, at God's command,
Our life-dream shall pass o'er us.

If we carve it then on the yielding stone,
With many a sharp incision,
Its heavenly beauty shall be our own,
Our lives, that angel-vision.




The Heart of The Tree

What does he plant who plants a tree?
He plants a friend of sun and sky;
He plants the flag of breezes free;
The shaft of beauty, towering high;
He plants a home to heaven anigh
For song and mother-croon of bird
In hushed and happy twilight heard
The treble of heaven's harmony
These things he plants who plants a tree.

What does he plant who plants a tree?
He plants cool shade and tender rain,
And seed and bud of days to be,
And years that fade and flush again;
He plants the glory of the plain;
He plants the forest's heritage;
The harvest of a coming age;
The joy that unborn eyes shall see
These things he plants who plants a tree.

What does he plant who plants a tree?
He plants, in sap and leaf and wood,
In love of home and loyalty
And far-cast thought of civic good
His blessings on the neighbourhood
Who in the hollow of His hand
Holds all the growth of all our land
A nation's growth from sea to sea
Stirs in his heart who plants a tree.

By Henry Cuyler Bunner (3 August 1855 - 11 May 1896)

Inspirational Poems II

Plant A Tree
By Lucy Larcom (5 March 1826 - 27 April 1893)

He who plants a tree
Plants a hope.
Rootlets up through fibres blindly grope;
Leaves unfold into horizons free.
So man's life must climb
From the clods of time
Unto heavens sublime.
Canst thou prophesy, thou little tree,
What the glory of thy boughs shall be?

He who plants a tree
Plants a joy;
Plants a comfort that will never cloy;
Every day a fresh reality,
Beautiful and strong,
To whose shelter throng
Creatures blithe with song.
If thou couldst but know, thou happy tree,
Of the bliss that shall inhabit thee!

He who plants a tree,
He plants peace.
Under its green curtains jargons cease.
Leaf and zephyr murmur soothingly;
Shadows soft with sleep
Down tired eyelids creep,
Balm of slumber deep.
Never hast thou dreamed, thou blessed tree,
Of the benediction thou shalt be.

He who plants a tree,
He plants youth;
Vigor won for centuries in sooth;
Life of time, that hints eternity!




A Psalm of Life
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (27 February 1807 - 24 March 1882)

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers, |
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, however pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait.

Inspirational Poems I

Solitude
By Ella Wheeler Wilcox (5 November 1855 - 30 October 1919) "The Golden Girl"

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air.
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go.
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all.
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life's gall.

Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.



Be Strong
By Maltbie Davenport Babcock (3 August 1858 - 18May 1901)

Be strong!
We are not here to play, to dream, to drift;
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift;
Shun not the struggle -- face it; 'tis God's gift.

Be strong!
Say not,"The days are evil. Who's to blame?"
And fold the hands and acquiesce -- oh shame!
Stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God's name.

Be strong!
It matters not how deep intrenched the wrong,
How hard the battle goes, the day how long;
Faint not -- fight on! Tomorrow comes the song!