Lament Quotes

• My grief lies all within,
  And these external manners of lament
  Are merely shadows to the unseen grief
  That swells with silence in the tortured soul.

  William Shakespeare

  Lying, Grief, Silence

  William Shakespeare, Charles R. Forker (2002). “King Richard II: Third Series”, p.410, Cengage Learning EMEA

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• Lament is a cry of belief in a good God, a God who has His ear to our hearts, a God who transfigures the ugly into beauty. Complaint is the bitter howl of unbelief in any benevolent God in this moment, a distrust in the love-beat of the Father's heart.

  Ann Voskamp

  Father, Heart, Ears

  Ann Voskamp (2011). “One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are”, p.175, Zondervan

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• Cease to lament for that thou canst not help; and study help for that which thou lamentest.

  William Shakespeare

  Grief, Helping, Study

  William Shakespeare, John Payne Collier (1853). “The Works of Shakespeare: The Text Regulated by the Recently Discovered Portfolio of 1632, Containing Early Manuscript Emendations ; with a History of the Stage, a Life of the Poet, and an Introduction to Each Play”, p.103

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• A lament in one ear, maybe, but always a song in the other

  Sean O'Casey

  Song, Ears, Enchanting

  E. H. Mikhail, Sean O'Casey, John O'Riordan (1974). “The sting and the twinkle: conversations with Sean O'Casey”

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• It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

  Seneca the Younger

  Inspirational, Happiness, Laughter

  "Personal Quotes/ Biography". www.imdb.com.

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• Nothing heals us like letting people know our scariest parts: When people listen to you cry and lament, and look at you with love, it's like they are holding the baby of you.

  Anne Lamott

  Baby, People, Looks

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• To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind.

  Edmund Burke

  Past, Age, Complaining

  'Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents' (1770) p. 4

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• The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn't there something reassuring about it! -- that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another's eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms -- nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Eye, Loss, Color

  "You Must Remember This". Book by Joyce Carol Oates, 1987.

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• We Are All the Same
  Listen to the reeds as they sway apart;
  Hear them speak of lost friends.
  At birth, you were cut from your bed,
  Crying and grasping in separation.
  Everyone listens, knowing your song.
  You yearn for others who know your name,
  And the words to your lament.
  We are all the same, all the same,
  Longing to find our way back;
  Back to the one, back to the only one.

  Rumi

  Love, Song, Cutting

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• This is the point being missed by readers who lament Liquor's lack of hot sex scenes, probably because they aren't old enough to understand that a passionate relationship could be about anything other than sex.

  Poppy Z. Brite

  Sex, Hot, Passionate

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• When thou hast truly thanked the Lord for every blessing sent, But little time will then remain for murmur or lament.

  Hannah More

  Gratitude, Blessing, Littles

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• Alas, where is there still a sea in which one could drown: thus our lament resounds – across shallow swamps.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Sea, Swamps, Shallow

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• No to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Laughing, Detest

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• Grieving, like being blind, is a strange business; you have to learn how to do it. We seek company in mourning, but after the early bursts of tears, after the praises have been spoken, and the good days remembered, and the lament cried, and the grave closed, there is no company in grief. It is a burden borne alone.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Grief, Good Day, Grieving

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• Everyone performs bad actions... A bad person is someone who does not lament his bad actions.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Doe, Action, Persons

  Jonathan Safran Foer (2013). “Everything Is Illuminated”, p.145, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Human nature is divided; it contains both darkness and light. You can choose to accept the darkness and lament it, or you can choose to expand the light until the darkness no longer dominates.

  Deepak Chopra

  Light, Darkness, Human Nature

  Deepak Chopra (2012). “Spiritual Solutions: Answers to Life's Greatest Challenges”, p.145, Harmony

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• We should cultivate the optimistic temperament, and endeavour to see the good that dwells in everything. If we sit down and lament over the imperfection of our bodies and our minds, we profit nothing; it is the heroic endeavour to subdue adverse circumstances that carries our spirit upward.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Optimistic, Optimism, Imperfection

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.1595, Manonmani Publishers

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• There's a wonderful old Italian joke about a poor man who goes to church every day and prays before the statue of a great saint,'Dear saint-please, please, please...give me the grace to win the lottery.' This lament goes on for months. Finally the exasperated statue come to life, looks down at the begging man and says in weary disgust,'My son-please, please, please...buy a ticket.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Son, Italian, Winning

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• For me, it's always a little sad getting out of bed. Every morning after I get up, I always gaze longingly at my bed and lament, 'You were wonderful last night. I didn't want it to end. I can't wait to see you again.

  Jim Gaffigan

  Morning, Night, Waiting

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• I do think environmental writers need to be forward thinking, not just lamenting our losses. We do need to lament; in some ways it's important to be the vessels for grief for all that's being lost on our planet. But we also need to be forward thinking.

  Alison Hawthorne Deming

  Grief, Loss, Thinking

  Nashville Review Interview, as.vanderbilt.edu. December 1, 2012.

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• Men wrongly lament the flight of time, blaming it for being too swift; they do not perceive that its passage is sufficiently long, but a good memory, which nature has given to us, causes things long past to seem present.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Time, Memories, Past

  Leonardo Da Vinci (2015). “Thoughts on Art and Life: "Behind the Genius"”, p.84, eKitap Projesi

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• My heart sobbed a lament that was hard to ignore.

  Katie MacAlister

  Broken Heart, My Heart, Hard

  Katie Macalister (2006). “Even Vampires Get the Blues”, p.115, Penguin

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• I didn't want normal until I didn't have it anymore

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Want, Normal

  Maggie Stiefvater (2010). “Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception”, p.139, North Star Editions, Inc.

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• The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. In many parts of the planet, the elderly lament that once beautiful landscapes are now covered with rubbish.

  Pope Francis

  Beautiful, Home, Elderly

  Pope Francis (2016). “Praise Be to You: On Care for Our Common Home”, p.17, BookBaby

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• Enjoy the blessing of strength while you have it and do not bewail it when it is gone, unless, forsooth, you believe that youth must lament the loss of infancy, or early manhood the passing of youth. Life's race-course is fixed; Nature has only a single path and that path is run but once, and to each stage of existence has been allotted its own appropriate quality; so that the weakness of childhood, the impetuosity of youth, the seriousness of middle life, the maturity of old age.. each bears some of Nature's fruit, which must be garnered in its own season.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Strength, Running, Business

  Marcus Tullius Cicero, Clinton Walker Keyes (1992). “Cicero in Twenty-eight Volumes: Cato Maior de Senectute. Laelius de Amicitia. De Divinatione”

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