Melancholy Quotes - Page 14

• But in the expression of the countenance, which was beaming all over with smiles, there still lurked (incomprehensible anomalyl) that fitful strain of melancholy which will ever be found inseparable from the perfection of the beautiful.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Beautiful, Perfection, Found

  "The Works of Edgar Allan Poe".

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• To win ones joy through struggle is better than to yield to melancholy.

  Andre Gide

  Inspirational, Happiness, Struggle

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• Fame is but an inscription on a grave, and glory the melancholy blazon on a coffin lid.

  Alexander Smith

  Coffins, Reputation, Glory

  Alexander Smith (1863). “Dreamthorp: A Book of Essays Written in the Country”, p.21

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• But solitude is sadness.' 'Yes; it is sadness. Life, however, has worse than that. Deeper than melancholy lies heart-break.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Lying, Heart, Sadness

  Charlotte Bronte (2009). “Villette: Easyread Large Edition”, p.319, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• And I realize how useless wails are and how gratuitous melancholy is.

  Mircea Eliade

  Useless, Realizing

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• I shall never forget Juliek. How could I forget this concert given before an audience of the dead and dying? Even today, when I hear that particular piece by Beethoven, my eyes close and out of the darkness emerges the pale and melancholy face of my Polish comrade bidding farewell to an audience of dying men.

  Elie Wiesel

  Farewell, Eye, Men

  Elie Wiesel, Marion Wiesel (2012). “Night”, p.134, Penguin UK

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• When you love a city and have explored it frequently on foot, your body, not to mention your soul, gets to know the streets so well after a number of years that in a fit of melancholy, perhaps stirred by a light snow falling ever so sorrowfully, you'll discover your legs carrying you of their own accord toward one of your favourite promontories

  Orhan Pamuk

  Fall, Light, Years

  Orhan Pamuk (2011). “My Name Is Red”, p.11, Faber & Faber

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• We went to the door and I let Asha in. I expected an uberawkward moment when he and Vayl met. But Asha took care of that problem right away. "So you belong to Jasmine," he said in his melancholy voice. It somehow delivered Vayl his deepest condolences without bearing a trace of malice toward me.

  Jennifer Rardin

  Condolences, Doors, Voice

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• The sinister, the terrible never deceive: the state in which they leave us is always one of enlightenment. And only this condition of vicious insight allows us a full grasp of the world, all things considered, just as a frigid melancholy grants us full possession of ourselves. We may hide from horror only in the heart of horror. (“The Medusa”)

  Thomas Ligotti

  Heart, Enlightenment, Medusa

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• To be sane, he held, was either to be sedated by melancholy or activated by hysteria, two responses which were 'always and equally warranted for those of sound insight'. All others were irrational, merely symptoms of imaginations left idle, of memories out of work. And above these mundane responses, the only elevation allowable, the only valid transcendence, was a sardonic one: a bliss that annihilated the universe with jeers of dark joy, a mindful ecstasy. Anything else in the way of 'mysticism' was a sign of deviation or distraction, and a heresy to the obvious. (“The Medusa”)

  Thomas Ligotti

  Memories, Dark, Hysteria

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• Melancholy and remorse forms the deep leaden keel which enables us to sail into the wind of reality.

  Cyril Connolly

  Sadness, Reality, Wind

  "The Unquiet Grave". Book by Cyril Connolly, 1944.

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• It was a melancholy secret that reality can arouse desires but never satisfy them.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Reality, Secret, Desire

  Erich Maria Remarque (1937). “Three Comrades”

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• Come, hearken then, ere voice of dread, with bitter tiding laden, shall summon to unwelcome bed a melancholy maiden! We are but older children, dear, who fret to find our bedtime near.

  Lewis Carroll

  Children, Voice, Bed

  Lewis Carroll (2010). “The Complete Alice in Wonderland”, p.170, Dynamite

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• She never told her love, but let concealment, like a worm 'i th' bud, feed on her damask cheek. She pinned in thought; and, with a green and yellow melancholy, she sat like Patience on a monument, smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed? We men may say more, swear more; but indeed our shows are more than will; for we still prove much in our vows but little in our love.

  William Shakespeare

  Grief, Men, Yellow

  'Twelfth Night' (1601) act 2, sc. 4, l. [108]

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• In my great melancholy, I loved life, for I love my melancholy.

  Soren Kierkegaard

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• Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

  George Eliot

  Fall, Autumn, Air

  George Eliot, John Walter Cross (2010). “George Eliot's Life, as Related in Her Letters and Journals”, p.92, Cambridge University Press

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• Jeremiah is a most melancholy prophet. He wails from beginning to end; he is often childish, is rarely indecent, and although it may be blasphemy to say so, he and his 'Lamentations' are really not worth reading.

  Annie Besant

  Reading, May, Prophet

  Annie Besant (2012). “The Theosophical Writings of Annie Besant”, p.425, Jazzybee Verlag

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• A tendancy to melancholy...let it be observed, is a misfortune, not a fault.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Faults, Misfortunes

  Abraham Lincoln (1982). “Abraham Lincoln, wisdom & wit”, Peter Pauper Pr

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• The theologian may indulge the pleasing task of describing Religion as she descended from Heaven, arrayed in her native purity. A more melancholy duty is imposed on the historian. He must discover the inevitable mixture of error and corruption which she contracted in a long residence upon Earth, among a weak and degenerate race of beings.

  Edward Gibbon

  Errors, Race, Long

  Edward Gibbon (2009). “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Edited and Abridged): Abridged Edition”, p.237, Modern Library

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• There was only the broad square with the scattered dim moons of the street lamps and with the monumental stone arch which receded into the mist as though it would prop up the melancholy sky and protect beneath itself the faint lonely flame on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which looked like the last grave of mankind in the midst of night and loneliness.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  Lonely, Loneliness, Moon

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• A noble craft, but somehow a most melancholy! All noble things are touched with that.

  Herman Melville

  Noble, Crafts, Touched

  Herman Melville (2008). “Moby-Dick”, p.77, Velvet Element Books

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• I get melancholy if I don't [write]. I need the company of people who don't exist.

  William Trevor

  Writing, People, Needs

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• Nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today. Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Nature, Holiday, Nymphs

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Ernest Spiller, Alfred Riggs Ferguson, Joseph Slater, Jean Ferguson Carr (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Nature, addresses, and lectures”, p.10, Harvard University Press

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• Now the melancholy of God protect thee, and the tailor make thy doublet of changable taffata, for thy mind is a very opal. I would have men of such constancy put to sea, that their business might be everything, and their intent everywhere, for that's it, that always makes a good voyage of nothing.

  William Shakespeare

  Men, Sea, Mind

  William Shakespeare (1857). “The Complete Works of Shakspere”, p.132

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• Melancholy overwhelms me at supersonic speed.

  Muriel Barbery

  Speed

  "The Elegance of the Hedgehog". Book by Muriel Barbery, September, 2008.

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