Melancholy Quotes - Page 3

• I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Children, Would Be, World

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge (2008). “Samuel Taylor Coleridge - The Major Works”, Oxford Paperbacks

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• Sweet bird, that shun the noise of folly, most musical, most melancholy!

  John Milton

  Music, Sweet, Bird

  John Milton (1761). “L'allegro, Ed Il Penseroso: Set to Musick by Mr. Handel”, p.7

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• As a remedy against all ills - poverty, sickness, and melancholy - only one thing is absolutely necessary: a liking for work

  Charles Baudelaire

  Poverty, Sickness, Remedy

  Charles Baudelaire (1956). “The Essence of Laughter: And Other Essays, Journals, and Letters”

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• I was walking along the road with two friends. The sun set. I felt a tinge of melancholy. Suddenly the sky became a bloody red... I stood there, trembling with fright. And I felt a loud, unending scream piercing nature.

  Edvard Munch

  Fear, Sky, Two Friends

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• The first thing about a song is that it has to be real, be lived; it has to be emotional, and melancholic. I don't mean sad. Melancholy is sort of a comfort. Melancholy has a sort of beauty to it. This attracts me to every other form of art.

  Keren Ann

  Song, Art, Real

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• A strangely reflective, even melancholy day. Is that because, unlike our cousins in the northern hemisphere, Easter is not associated with the energy and vitality of spring but with the more subdued spirit of autumn.

  Hugh Mackay

  Easter, Cousin, Spring

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• Tell us, pray, what devil This melancholy is, which can transform Men into monsters.

  John Ford

  Men, Evil, Monsters

  'The Lady's Trial' (1639) act 3, sc. 1

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• The company of fools may first make us smile, but in the end we always feel melancholy.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Happiness, Smile, Laughter

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• But whate'er you are That in this desert inaccessible, Under the shade of melancholy boughs, Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time; If you have ever looked on better days, If ever been where bells knoll'd to church, If ever sat at any good man's feast, If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear, And know what 'tis to pity and be pitied, Let gentleness my strong enforcement be. . . .

  William Shakespeare

  Time, Strong, Men

  William Shakespeare, Thomas Bowdler (1861). “The Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare: Adapted for Family Reading”, p.185

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• The more melancholy side of my literary personality is much in tune with BS Johnson's.

  Jonathan Coe

  Personality, Sides, Tunes

  "Likely lads' return" by Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. August 21, 2004.

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• Countries like ours are full of people who have all of the material comforts they desire, yet lead lives of quiet (and at times noisy) desperation, understanding nothing but the fact that there is a hole inside them and that however much food and drink they pour into it, however many motorcars and television sets they stuff it with, however many well-balanced children and loyal friends they parade around the edges of it. . . it aches!

  Bernard Levin

  Country, Children, Food

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• There were moments of despondency when Shakespeare thought himself no poet, and Raphael no painter; when the greatest wits have doubted the excellence of their happiest efforts.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Effort, Excellence, Moments

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• Men are much oftener thrown on their knees by the melancholy than by the agreeable passions.

  David Hume

  Passion, Men, Knees

  David Hume, Tom L. Beauchamp (2007). “A Dissertation on the Passions: The Natural History of Religion : a Critical Edition”, p.42, Oxford University Press

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• This melancholy London - I sometimes imagine that the souls of the lost are compelled to walk through its streets perpetually. One feels them passing like a whiff of air.

  William Butler Yeats

  Air, Soul, London

  William Butler Yeats, Richard J. Finneran (1969). “John Sherman & Dhoya”

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• I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind, a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state, with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.

  George Will

  Space, Work Out, Mind

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• The cello is such a melancholy instrument, such an isolated, miserable instrument.

  Ritchie Blackmore

  Miserable, Instruments, Isolated

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• They talk about their Pilgrim blood, their birthright high and holy! a mountain-stream that ends in mud thinks is melancholy.

  James Russell Lowell

  Thinking, Blood, Mountain

  James Russell Lowell (1896). “The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell”

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• I was a slightly melancholy child and I think films were a way of escaping for me.

  Charlie Hunnam

  Children, Thinking, Escaping

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• I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.

  Samuel Johnson

  Father, Mad, Sober

  In James Boswell 'Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides' (1785) 16 September 1773

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• There is not a string attuned to mirth but has its chord of melancholy.

  Thomas Hood

  Mirth, Chords, Strings

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• Melancholy is not one of my emotions. Quite seriously, I don't do melancholy. It's a miserable way to be.

  Walter Mischel

  Way, Emotion, Miserable

  "Learning How to Exert Self-Control" by Pamela Druckerman, www.nytimes.com. September 12, 2014.

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• Indolence and melancholy: Each generates the other. If one can speak of such feeble passions as generating anything.

  Edward Abbey

  Passion, Speak, Indolence

  Edward Abbey (2015). “A Voice Crying in the Wilderness”, p.26, RosettaBooks

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• Tell me, sweet eyes, from what divinest star did ye drink in your liquid melancholy?

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Sweet, Stars, Eye

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• Employment and hardships prevent melancholy.

  Samuel Johnson

  Employment, Hardship

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• I think every human being has a level of melancholy in life and in general.

  Sandra Bullock

  Thinking, Levels, Humans

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