Lament Quotes - Page 2

• Somewhere out in the darkness, a phoenix was singing in a way Harry had never heard before: a stricken lament of terrible beauty. And Harry felt, as he had felt about phoenix song before, that the music was inside him, not without: It was his own grief turned magically to song.

  J. K. Rowling

  Song, Grief, Phoenix

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• Every lover's lament has an element of boasting.

  Mason Cooley

  Love, Elements, Boast

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• I've built many doorways and set out traps so that no one will be able to reach this place. That's what the angel said. This is a castle of darkness for the angel and I alone. Only within this yielding gloom can I lament the misfortune that has rained down all around me, only here am I permitted to scorn and pity the ugliness, the filthiness of how I smile and pretend at being pure in the light of day.

  Mizuki Nomura

  Angel, Light, Darkness

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• I will weep and wail for the mountains and take up a lament concerning the desert pastures. They are desolate and untraveled, and the lowing of cattle is not heard. The birds of the air have fled and the animals are gone.

  Jeremiah

  Animal, Air, Bird

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• One is constantly reminded of the infinite lavishness and fertility of Nature-inexhaustible abundance amid what seems enormous waste. And yet when we look into any of her operations that lie within reach of our minds, we learn that no particle of her material is wasted or worn out. It is eternally flowing from use to use, beauty to yet higher beauty; and we soon cease to lament waste and death, and rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable, unspendable wealth of the universe.

  John Muir

  Nature, Lying, Learning

  John Muir (1997). “Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays”, p.296, Library of America

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• All observations of life are harsh, because life is. I lament that fact, but I cannot change it.

  Margaret Atwood

  Facts, Life Is, Harsh

  Margaret Atwood (2007). “The Tent”, p.27, Anchor

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• I have tried sedulously not to laugh at the acts of man, nor to lament them, nor to detest them, but to understand them.

  Baruch Spinoza

  Men, Laughing, Understanding

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• I intend 'Dämmerung' to be an ironic meditation on the financial rewards of poetry and a tragicomic lament on the passing of time and the changes in literary taste. The other poets mentioned are my poetic cohort from the U.K. I wrote the piece in situ, as it were, while making a television documentary about World War I in Germany.

  Simon Armitage

  War, Meditation, Ironic

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• We are more prone to murmur at the punishment of our faults than to lament them.

  Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington

  Punishment, Faults

  Marguerite Countess of Blessington, Marguerite GARDINER (Countess of Blessington.) (1839). “Desultory Thoughts and Reflections”, p.34

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• While we lament the apparent injustice of pain and suffering, how often do we forget that every good thing in a fallen world is wholly a gift of God's mercy and grace.

  Matt Chandler

  Pain, Grace, Suffering

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• A common lament of the World War II generation is the absence today of personal responsibility

  Tom Brokaw

  War, Responsibility, Generations

  Tom Brokaw (1998). “The Greatest Generation”, Random House Large Print Publishing

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• The often heard lament, 'I have so little time,' gives the lie to the
  delusion that the daily is of little significance.

  Kathleen Norris

  Lying, Giving, Littles

  Kathleen Norris (1998). “The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy, and "women's Work"”, p.16, Paulist Press

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• You do not lament the loss of hair of one who has been beheaded.

  Joseph Stalin

  Loss, Hair, Lost Friendship

  Joseph Stalin (1970). “Selected writings”

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• The life of an Indian is like the wings of the air. That is why you notice the hawk knows how to get his prey. The Indian is like that. The hawk swoops down on its prey, so does the Indian. In his lament he is like an animal. For instance, the coyote is sly, so is the Indian. The eagle is the same. That is why the Indian is always feathered up, he is a relative to the wings of the air.

  Black Elk

  Native American, Animal, Air

  John Gneisenau Neihardt, Black Elk, Raymond J. DeMallie (1984). “The Sixth Grandfather: Black Elk's teachings given to John G. Neihardt”, Univ of Nebraska Pr

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• Labor, like Israel, has many sorrows. Its women weep for their fallen and they lament for the future of the children of the race. It ill behooves one who has supped at labor's table and who has been sheltered in labor's house to curse with equal fervor and fine impartiality both labor and its adversaries when they become locked in deadly embrace.

  John L. Lewis

  Children, Race, Israel

  Labor and the Nation, delivered 3 September 1937 in Washington D.C.

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• I once picked up a woman from a garbage dump and she was burning with fever; she was in her last days and her only lament was: My son did this to me. I begged her: You must forgive your son. In a moment of madness, when he was not himself, he did a thing he regrets. Be a mother to him, forgive him. It took me a long time to make her say: I forgive my son. Just before she died in my arms, she was able to say that with a real forgiveness. She was not concerned that she was dying. The breaking of the heart was that her son did not want her. This is something you and I can understand.

  Mother Teresa

  Mother, Regret, Real

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• And over your unconsecrated head you'll hear the howling wolves lament their fate and yours the livelong year.

  Charles Baudelaire

  Fate, Years

  Charles Baudelaire, Richard Howard (1983). “Les Fleurs Du Mal”, p.72, David R. Godine Publisher

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• It gladdens me to know that Baldr’s father [Odin] makes ready the benches for a banquet. Soon we shall be drinking ale from the curved horns. The champion who comes into Odin’s dwelling [Valhalla] does not lament his death. I shall not enter his hall with words of fear upon my lips. The Æsir will welcome me. Death comes without lamenting… Eager am I to depart. The Dísir summon me home, those whom Odin sends for me [Valkyries] from the halls of the Lord of Hosts. Gladly shall I drink ale in the high-seat with the Æsir. The days of my life are ended. I laugh as I die.

  Ragnar Lodbrok

  Father, Drinking, Home

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• People are storytelling creatures. We like stories that go somewhere, and therefore we like trends - because trends are things that either get better or get worse, so we can either rejoice or lament. But we mistakenly depict many things as trends moving in some direction. We take the "full house" of variation in a system and try to represent it as a single number, when in fact what we should be doing is studying the variation as it expands and contracts. If you look at the history of the variation in all its complexity, then you see there's no trend.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Moving, People, House

  Interview With Michael Krasny, www.motherjones.com. January/February 1997.

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• Neither rejoice nor lament prematurely; for whatever may happen, all will be well if we only have health; for happiness exists--merely in the imagination.

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  Happiness, Imagination, May

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1866). “The Letters of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1769-1791)”, p.133

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• But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Strong, Eye, Past

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1283, Delphi Classics

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• But God has the most fun with artists and writers: he inflames them with the desire to rival his own creations, then douses their overheated ambitions with a cold spray from the garden hose of reality. If they persist, he slams them to the ground and tweaks them on the proboscis for good measure. A fortunate few break free and prosper; the others lament the day they didn't become bank clerks.

  Rick Bayan

  Fun, Ambition, Garden

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• Far in the pillared dark Thrush music went- Almost like a call to come in To the dark and lament. But no, I was out for stars: I would not come in. I meant not even if asked, And I hadn't been.

  Robert Frost

  Music, Stars, Dark

  Robert Frost (1963). “Selected poems”

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• I get an audience personally involved in a song - because I'm involved myself. It's not something I do deliberately: I can't help myself. If the song is a lament at the loss of love, I get an ache in my gut. I feel the loss myself and I cry out the loneliness, the hurt and the pain that I feel.

  Frank Sinatra

  Song, Hurt, Pain

  Source: www.slate.com

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• ...secretly I lament the hundreds [of fish] we never caught because we forever persisted in fishing only the likliest holding water.

  Tom Sutcliffe

  Sea, Fishing, Rivers

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