Melancholy Quotes - Page 18

• I'm just melancholy by nature, and a lot of that gets into my writing.

  Edwidge Danticat

  Writing

  "Edwidge Danticat: The “Create Dangerously” Interview". Interview with Kam Williams, www.kamwilliams.com. November 23, 2010.

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• I feel like I'm at a place in my life where I'm really strangely happy, and in awe of how great the world can be, and I think that's because I have gone through periods of looking at the world through a really melancholy lenses. It's all just flip sides of the same coin.

  Laurel Nakadate

  Thinking, Lenses, Gone

  Source: therumpus.net

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• It had been boldly predicted by some of the early Christians that the conversion of the world would lead to the establishment of perpetual peace. In looking back, with our present experience, we are driven to the melancholy conclusion that, instead of diminishing the number of wars, ecclesiastical influence has actually and very seriously increased it.

  William Edward Hartpole Lecky

  Christian, Religious, War

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• I have only one thing to say to the melancholy man: 'Look into the distance.' ... When you look at the stars or the ocean's expanse, your eye is completely relaxed; once your eye is relaxed, your mind is unfettered.

  Emile Chartier

  Stars, Distance, Ocean

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• The cat makes himself the companion of your hours of solitude, melancholy and toil.

  Theophile Gautier

  Cat, Solitude, Toil

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• Naught so sweet as melancholy.

  Robert A. Burton

  Sweet, Sadness, Misery

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• I think I'm someone who is really prone to melancholy, and the super heavy, thick shows kind of spiral me out into not being able to be as happy a person as I think I deserve to be, so I tend to watch things like 30 Rock and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Anything Tina Fey's involved in. And Parks and Rec. I love comedies!

  Sara Bareilles

  Thinking, Rocks, Fey

  Source: www.glamour.com

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• I think it's probably true that creative people are touched by melancholy more than the average person, and to the extent that delving into that shadow world produces good work, I'm all for it. But I think you have to be able to step back from the work, and say, "Look how miserable I felt. Look how beautifully I wrote about it. Now I'm going to get an iced coffee and chat with a friend." Writing should be a way out of despair.

  David Starkey

  Coffee, Writing, Thinking

  Source: andreaauten.wordpress.com

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• Awkwardness is where tension is, and tension is where the story is. It's also where the comedy is, which I'm interested in; when it resolves it tends to resolve toward melancholy, a certain resignation, which I find interesting as well.

  Lorrie Moore

  Interesting, Stories, Comedy

  The Believer interview, www.believermag.com. October 2005.

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• It is an unfortunate thing for the Christian to be melancholy. If there is any man in the world that has a right to have a bright, clear face and a flashing eye, it is the man whose sins are forgiven him, who is saved with God's salvation.

  Charles Spurgeon

  Christian, Eye, Men

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• I tend to want to listen to melancholy music, but sometimes if you're feeling too sad, you can't.

  Kim Gordon

  Feelings, Want, Sometimes

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Society expects man to be a passive social animal who believes like the People of the Field in "Jurgen" that "to do what you always have done" and "what is expected of you" are the twin rules of life. This, is course, is not true. The wanton crucifixion of impulses, the unnecessary blocking and frustration of the drives and urges, are an evil that reflects itself in sophistication, ennui and boredom, dissatisfaction, melancholy, fatigue, anxiety and neurosis.

  Abraham Myerson

  Life, Block, Believe

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• It is impossible that a fish doesn't carry any smell of the sea and a real love, of the melancholy!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Love, Real, Sea

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• The competition for the future of crime fiction is fierce, as it should be, but don't take your eyes off Craig McDonald. He's wily, talented and-rarest of the rare-a true original. He writes melancholy poetry that actually has melancholy poets wandering around, but don't turn your backs on them, either. I am always eager to see what he's going to do next.

  Laura Lippman

  Eye, Writing, Mcdonalds

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• There are some people who think that they should be always mourning, that they should put a continual constraint upon themselves, and feel a disgust for those amusements to which they are obliged to submit. For my own part, I confess that I know not how to conform myself to these rigid notions. I prefer something more simple, which I also think would be more pleasing to God.

  Francois Fenelon

  Simple, Thinking, People

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• Melancholy men of all others are most witty, which causeth many times a divine ravishment, and a kinde of Enthusiasmus, which stirreth them up to bee excellent Philosophers, Poets, Prophets, etc.

  Aristotle

  Witty, Men, Etc

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• There is a certain silence that can emanate from a lifeless object as from a chair lately used, or from a piano with old dust upon its keys, or from anything that has answered to the need of a man, for pleasure or for work. This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so; for the chair may have been left by a laughing child or the last notes of the piano may have been raucous and gay. Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo.

  Beryl Markham

  Children, Gay, Men

  Beryl Markham (2012). “West with the Night”, p.58, Open Road Media

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• The whole life of Demosthenes... leaves the impression of a melancholy state of things, and of the brazen insolence of wickedness. A particularly striking idea of how things really were in Greece can be obtained from one feature of life - the sons who turned out badly.... the sons of gifted but arrogant fathers turned out merely arrogant, the grandsons hopeless; it is respect alone that sustains families and gives them traditions.

  Jacob Burckhardt

  Father, Son, Ideas

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• I have two doctors, my left leg and my right. When body and mind are out of gear (and those twin parts of me live at such close quarters that the one always catches melancholy from the other) I know that I shall have only to call in my doctors and I shall be well again.

  G. M. Trevelyan

  Doctors, Two, Mind

  G.M. Trevelyan (1949). “CLIO A MUSE AND OTHER ESSAYS”

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• Have we not huddled in bunkers, while some premonition of tomorrow hung in the air and a comrade started singing? Oh, it felt so melancholy! And it was kitsch.

  Robert Musil

  Air, Singing, Kitsch

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• It is a melancholy truth, that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of its benefits than is done by its abandoned prostitution to falsehood.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Done, Benefits, Prostitution

  Thomas Jefferson, Henry Augustine Washington (1854). “The Writings of Thomas Jefferson: Correspondence, contin”, p.92

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• Sometimes the impact of Mozart's music is so immediate that the vision in the mind remains blurred and incomplete, while the soul seems to be directly invaded, drenched in wave upon wave of melancholy.

  Stendhal

  Impact, Soul, Mind

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• Mozart combines serenity, melancholy, and tragic intensity into one great lyric improvisation. Over it all hovers the greater spirit that is Mozart's - the spirit of compassion, of universal love, even of suffering - a spirit that knows no age, that belongs to all ages.

  Leonard Bernstein

  Compassion, Serenity, Suffering

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• Sweet recreation barred, what doth ensue but moody and dull melancholy, kinsman to grim and comfortless despair.

  William Shakespeare

  Sweet, Worry, Despair

  William Shakespeare (1773). “The Plays of William Shakespeare. In Ten Volumes. With the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators; to which are Added Notes by Samuel Johnson and George Steevens. With an Appendix..”, p.208

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• Melancholy betrays the world for the sake of knowledge. But in its tenacious self-absorption it embraces dead objects in its contemplation, in order to redeem them

  Walter Benjamin

  Self, Order, World

  Walter Benjamin (1977). “The origin of German tragic drama”, New Left Books

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