Top 100 Great Sorrow Quotes
#1. A great sorrow, and one that I am only beginning to understand: we don't get to choose our own hearts. We can't make ourselves want what's good for us or what's good for other people. We don't get to choose the people we are.
Donna Tartt
#2. Christ is with you. Do not abandon Him and He will not abandon you. You will see great sorrow, and in that sorrow you will be happy. This is my last message to you: in sorrow seek happiness. Work, work unceasingly.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#3. A good Soul hath neither too great joy, nor too great sorrow: for it rejoiceth in goodness; and it sorroweth in wickedness. By the means whereof, when it beholdeth all things, and seeth the good and bad so mingled together, it can neither rejoice greatly; nor be grieved with over much sorrow.
Pythagoras
#4. Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment.
'There were stars,' He said. 'They burned my eyes.'
... from a Himmel street window, he wrote, the stars set fire to my eyes.
Markus Zusak
#5. The truth is life is full of joy and full of great sorrow, but you can't have one without the other.
Andre Dubus III
#6. There comes to everyone a turning point in their lives, M. Poirot. They stand at the crossroads and have to decide. My profession interests me enormously; it is a sorrow - a very great sorrow - to abandon it. But there are other claims. There is, M. Poirot, the happiness of a human being.
Agatha Christie
#7. Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow.
Anne Fortier
#8. Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.
Leo Tolstoy
#9. People live for love. They kill for love. They die for love. They have songs, poems, novels, sculptures, paintings, myths, legends. It's one of the most powerful brain systems on Earth for both great joy and great sorrow.
Helen Fisher
#10. Great sorrow or great joy should bring intense hunger
not abstinence from food, as our novelists will have it.
Arthur Conan Doyle
#11. With old and young great sorrow is followed by a sleepless night, and with the old great joy is as disturbing; but you, I suppose, finds happiness more natural and its rest is not disturbed by it.
W. Somerset Maugham
#12. There is no dealing with great sorrow as if it were under the control of our wills. It is a terrible phenomenon, whose laws we must study, and to whose conditions we must submit, if we would mitigate it.
Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
#13. I believe that there are many herbs and many trees that are worth much in Europe for dyes and for medicines; but I do not know, and this causes me great sorrow. Arriving at this cape, I found the smell of the trees and flowers so delicious that it seemed the pleasantest thing in the world.
Christopher Columbus
#14. Now and then one sees a face which has kept its smile pure and undefiled. It is a woman's face usually; often a face which has trace of great sorrow all over it, till the smile breaks. Such a smile transfigures: such a smile, if the artful but knew it, is the greatest weapon a face can have.
Helen Hunt
#15. Suffering and pain are always obligatory for a broad consciousness and a deep heart. Truly great men I think, must feel great sorrow in this world.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#18. People are less self-conscious in the intimacy of family life and during the anxiety of a great sorrow. The dazzling varnish of anextreme politeness is then less in evidence, and the true qualities of the heart regain their proper proportions.
Stendhal
#19. There is no despair so absolute as that which comes from the first moments of our first great sorrow when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and healed, to have despaired and recovered hope.
George Eliot
#20. When the horror of his grief was new to him, and every object in life, however trifling or however important, seem saturated with his one great sorrow.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon
#21. This last month I have felt the burden of a city. Its great sorrow has pressed in on my soul. Its vice and sin have bowed me upon my knees in tears.
Oswald J. Smith
#22. You took me to adventure and to love. We two have shared great joy and great sorrow. And now I stand at the gate of the paddock watching you run in an ecstasy of freedom, knowing you will return to stand quietly, loyally, beside me.
Pam Brown
#23. The consequences of ignoring the Lord and His prophets are certain and often accompanied by great sorrow and regret.
Joseph B. Wirthlin
#25. I learned that I was never alone, that there was Someone always very close by and, indeed, within me, giving me strength in times of weakness and desolation, light in times of darkness, joy in times of great sorrow and pain, and the will to struggle on when continuing seemed futile.
Joseph F. Girzone
#26. When we tell the story of our own conversion, I would have it done with great sorrow, remembering what we used to be, and with great joy and gratitude, remembering how little we deserve these things.
Charles Spurgeon
#28. I cannot sleep - great joy is as restless as great sorrow.
Fanny Burney
#29. But I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all.
Zora Neale Hurston
#30. Mowrer and his family made it safely to Tokyo. His wife, Lillian, recalled her great sorrow at having to leave Berlin. "Nowhere have I had such lovely friends as in Germany," she wrote. "Looking back on it all is like seeing someone you love go mad - and do horrible things.
Erik Larson
#31. A great sorrow, like a mariner's quadrant, brings the sun at noon down to the horizon, and we learn where we are on the sea of life.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#32. You will see great sorrow, and in that sorrow you will be happy. This is my last message to you: in sorrow seek happiness. Work, work unceasingly. Remember my words, for although I shall talk with you again, not only my days but my hours are numbered.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#33. Yet there be certain times in a young man's life, when, through great sorrow or sin, all the boy in him is burnt and seared away so that he passes at one step to the more sorrowful state of manhood
Rudyard Kipling
#34. Truly great men must, I think, experience great sorrow on the earth.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#35. Mrs. Nixon and I share the sorrow of millions of Americans at the death of Louis Armstrong. One of the architects of an American art form, a free and individual spirit, and an artist of worldwide fame, his great talents and magnificent spirit added richness and pleasure to all our lives.
Richard M. Nixon
#36. If your Life is full of Sorrow, then beg, steal, or borrow ENTHUSIASM from a great soul to make your Life whole.-RVM
R.v.m.
#37. As this world was not intended to be a state of any great satisfaction or high enjoyment, so neither was it intended to be a mere scene of unhappiness and sorrow.
Joseph Butler
#38. Great sorrows have no leisure to complain:
Least ills vent forth, great griefs within remain.
William Goffe
#39. Everything is impermanent: happiness, sorrow, a great meal, a powerful empire, what we're feeling, the people around us, ourselves.
Sharon Salzberg
#40. You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat. Losing after great striving is the story of man, who was born to sorrow, whose sweetest songs tell of saddest thought, and who, if he is a hero, does nothing in life as becomingly as leaving it.
Roger Kahn
#42. The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by their own plentitude.
Oscar Wilde
#43. He looked at her an instant, for the effect of the graceful girlish figure with pale, passionate face and dark eyes full of sorrow, pride and resolution was wonderfully enhanced by the gloom of the great room, and glimpses of a gathering storm in the red autumn sky.
Louisa May Alcott
#44. I never knew a sorrow that an hour of reading could not assuage, a great man had once said. Let's put it to the test.
Anna Gavalda
#45. An endless scream pierced the frigid night air and shook the world with its rage and sorrow. The aged stone and brick that had withstood the great quake over a hundred years ago now trembled before its pain, and even the austere grimace of the lonely grotesque, its only witness, softened in pity.
Ava Zavora
#46. Great suffering brings with it the power of great endurance. When sorrow is deepest all the forces of patience and courage are banded together to do their duty. So while we are cowards before petty troubles, great sorrows make us brave by rousing our truer manhood.
Rabindranath Tagore
#47. I find great happiness in my relationships with old friends, living mirrors that reflect histories of laughter and sorrow, triumphs and failures, births and deaths, on both sides.
Diane Von Furstenberg
#48. My hands moved up and down the keyboard, summoning great waves of music, each one crested with sorrow, loneliness, and anger. Tides of emotion rose and fell, gradually finding their way down my arms and to the keys, becoming harmonies that filled and then dissipated into the air like mist.
Sarah Beard
#49. I believe the Negro blood counts, and counts to my advantage - though it has caused me at times a life of great humiliation and sorrow.
Henry Ossawa Tanner
#50. Oh, believe me, that when three great passions, such as sorrow, love, and gratitude fill the heart, ennui can find no place." "You
Alexandre Dumas
#51. I saw the various museum displays including scenes of torture while feeling heartfelt remorse and sorrow over the great pain and suffering inflicted on South Koreans by Japan's colonial rule,
Junichiro Koizumi
#52. She knew as well as anyone that the world could be a place of trial and sorrow, that there was injustice and suffering and heartlessness - there was enough of all that to fill the great Kalahari twice over, but what good did it do to ponder that and that alone? None, she thought.
Alexander McCall Smith
#54. Children of yesterday, / Heirs of to-morrow, / What are you weaving? / Labor and sorrow? / Look to your looms again. / Faster and faster / Fly the great shuttles / Prepared by the Master, / Life's in the loom, / Room for it - / Room!
Mary Lasswell
#55. The artist's business is to take sorrow when it comes. The depth and capacity of his reception is the measure of his art; and when he turns his back on his own suffering, he denies the very laws of his being and closes the door on everything that can ever make him great.
Freya Stark
#56. The look on her face is one of horror, or perhaps sorrow so great that it might as well be horror. Past a certain point, it's all the same thing.
N.K. Jemisin
#57. This is the difference between depression and sorrow - sorrowful, you are in great trouble because something matters so much; depressed, you are miserable because nothing really matters.
J. E. Buckrose
#58. Real sorrow is incompatible with hope. No matter how great that sorrow may be, hope raises it one hundred cubits higher.
Isidore Ducasse Lautreamont
#59. She feels a great pang of loss, an unexpected welling of sorrow mixed with confusion.
Julianna Baggott
#60. A long while yet will you keep that great mother's grief. But it will turn in the end into quiet joy, and your bitter tears will be only tears of tender sorrow that purifies the heart and delivers it from sin.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
#61. Above all things let us never forget that mankind constitutes one great brotherhood; all born to encounter suffering and sorrow, and therefore bound to sympathize with each other.
Albert Pike
#62. it is good to have wealth. It is great to leave in comfort. It is awesome to obtain possessions but, don't be too eager for material possessions for the same material possessions that bring joy are the same possessions that bring sorrow and pain and also leave a big had I know on our minds
Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
#63. When you have a sorrow that is too great it leaves no room for any other.
Emile Zola
#64. Sorrow is not sickness-unless it becomes a permanent state of mental ill-health. The point is there are indeed stages of grief, as all the therapists tell us, but they do not obey some great unseen timetable.
Bel Mooney
#65. Out of sorrow entire worlds have been built
out of longing great wonders have been willed
they're only little tears darling let them spill
and lay your head upon my shoulder.
Nick Cave
#66. The woods are never solitary
they are full of whispering, beckoning, friendly life. But the sea is a mighty soul, forever moaning of some great, unshareable sorrow, which shuts it up into itself for all eternity.
L.M. Montgomery
#67. sorrow or a wound can heal, allowing us to grow into our fullest, most compassionate identity, our greatness of heart. When we truly come to terms with sorrow, a great and unshakable joy is born in our heart. HEALING
Jack Kornfield
#68. Pain, sorrow, anger, these are all powerful emotions. Allowed to rule and left unchecked, they would destroy you. However, through training and willpower you can choose to harness those feelings and use them for something great.
Jonathan Yanez
#69. Sorrow comes in great waves ... but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us. And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain.
Henry James
#70. Interpretation is the evidence of growth and knowledge, the latter through sorrow ? that great teacher.
Eleanora Duse
#71. Although not a very old man, I have yet lived a great deal in my life, and I have known sorrow too bitter and joy too keen to allow me to become either cast down or elated for more than a very brief period over any success or defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt
#73. The care of God for us is a great thing, if a man believe it at heart: it plucks the burden of sorrow from him.
Euripides
#74. Though sorrow may impede my heart,
It is of great love to have known you.
C. Elizabeth
#75. As I developed as an artist and studied art history, I noticed that all the great works were dealing with the human condition. [Art] had humor in it. It had sex in it. But it also had sorrow running through it.
Eric Drooker
#77. I don't know how to describe the sound of a world crashing. Maybe there is no sound, just a great emptiness, an enveloping sorrow, a creeping nothingness that coils itself around you like a stiff wire.
Charles M. Blow
#78. I, answering in the end, began: 'Alas,
how many yearning thoughts, what great desire,
have lead them through such sorrow to their fate?
Dante Alighieri
#79. I have never had a current state of mind. My mind changes a great deal. I am very affected by any sorrow or sad thing, and I am very affected by joy and beauty.
Luise Rainer
#80. But far within him something cried For the great tragedy to start, The pang in lingering mercy fall And sorrow break upon his heart. - EDWIN MUIR
Doris Lessing
#81. We are all such egotists that a sorrow or hardship - provided it is great enough - flatters our self-importance. We feel that a calamity by overtaking us has distinguished us above our fellows. A man likes not to be ignored even by a railway accident. A man with a grievance is always happy.
W.N.P. Barbellion
#82. Sorrow and frustration have their power. The world is moved by people with great discontents. Happiness is a drug. It can make men blind and deaf and insensible to reality. There are times when only sorrow can give to sorrow.
Winifred Holtby
#83. Those who suffer great adversity and sorrow and go on to serve their fellowmen develop a great capacity to understand others. Like the prophets, they have acquired a higher understanding of the mind and will of Christ.
CARLOS H. AMADO
#84. The dream was marvellous but the terror was great; we must treasure the dream whatever the terror; for the dream has shown that misery comes at last to the healthy man, the end of his life is sorrow.
Anonymous
#85. Hard it is to suffer through stupid people. They make you feel sorry for them, and if your sorrow is as great as your hurt, you will allow them to go free of punishment, for their eyes are the eyes of dogs that have done wrong and know it, and are afraid.
Richard Llewellyn
#86. No great truth bursts upon man without having its hemisphere of darkness and sorrow.
Edwin Hubbel Chapin
#87. I think if you have lost a great happiness and try to recall it, you are only asking for sorrow, but if you do not try to dwell on the happiness, sometimes you find it dwelling in your heart and body, silent but sustaining.
Ursula K. Le Guin
#88. She did not like seeing her loved ones like this, bent over with sorrow; everything in her wanted to cry out, to thrash and scream at the sight of it. But she knew that great grief came from great love, and that their grief was an honor to her. And she did love them so very much.
Anne Ursu
#89. Under every burden, ... God will slip His hand. Every gulf of sorrow, ... His great love has spanned, Into every heart-ache, ... God will our His balm: Ease the pain and anguish, ... bring a blessed calm.
Frances J Roberts
#90. Great grief makes sacred those upon whom its hand is laid. Joy may elevate, ambition glorify, but sorrow alone can consecrate.
Horace Greeley
#91. Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, great as each may be, their highest comfort given to the sorrowful is a cordial introduction into another's woe. Sorrow's the great community in which all men born of woman are members at one time or another.
Sean O'Casey
#92. With no matter what human being, taken individually, I always find reasons for concluding that sorrow and misfortune do not suit him; either because he seems too mediocre for anything so great, or, on the contrary, too precious to be destroyed.
Simone Weil
#93. It is not that the Englishman can't feel-it is that he is afraid to feel. He has been taught at his public school that feeling is bad form. He must not express great joy or sorrow, or even open his mouth too wide when he talks-his pipe might fall out if he did.
E. M. Forster
#94. When great depths of unrelenting sorrow are punctuated by great peaks of joy and liberation, the result is delicious.
Georges St-Pierre
#96. There is no sorrow I have thought about more than that - to love what is great, and try to reach it, and yet to fail.
George Eliot
#97. We have listened here to the delegates who have recalled the terrible human suffering, and the great material destruction of the late war in the Pacific. It is with feelings of sorrow that we recall the part played in that catastrophic human experience by the old Japan.
Shigeru Yoshida
#98. The burden of this world is too great for one man to bear, and the world's sorrow too heavy for one heart to suffer.
Oscar Wilde
#99. I have had more than half a century of such happiness. A great deal of worry and sorrow, too, but never a worry or a sorrow that was not offset by a purple iris, a lark, a bluebird, or a dewy morning glory.
Mary McLeod Bethune
#100. I am full of the sorrow that goes with changes in surroundings, those successive stages of annihilation that slowly lead to the great and final void.
Isabelle Eberhardt
