Melancholy Quotes - Page 7

• One nation is to another what one individual is to another; with this melancholy distinction perhaps, that the former with fewer of the benevolent emotions than the latter, are under fewer restraints also from taking undue advantage of the indiscretions of each other.

  James Madison

  Emotion, Individual, Advantage

  Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, J.R. Pole (2005). “The Federalist”, p.335, Hackett Publishing

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• In saying no to progress, it is not the future which they condemn, but themselves. They give themselves a melancholy disease; they inoculate themselves with the past. There is but one way of refusing tomorrow, that is to die.

  Victor Hugo

  Past, Giving, Progress

  Victor Hugo (1862). “Saint Denis”, p.100

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• A lot of people say I wouldn't have a down day, but you look at the music and there's real melancholy.

  Stephan Jenkins

  Real, People, Looks

  "He can see clearly now / Third Eye Blind's Stephan Jenkins looks at success, love, creativity". Interview with Julian Guthrie, www.sfgate.com. April 20, 2003.

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• I who once wrote songs with keen delight am now by sorrow driven to take up melancholy measures. Wounded Muses tell me what I must write, and elegiac verses bathe my face with real tears. Not even terror could drive from me these faithful companions of my long journey. Poetry, which was once the glory of my happy and flourishing youth, is still my comfort in this misery of my old age.

  Boethius

  Music, Song, Real

  Boethius (2012). “The Consolation of Philosophy”, p.1, Courier Corporation

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• Melancholy had crept inside me. Small children made me cry, I got depressed eating meat, old book bindings awakened tenderness in me. Everything was disintegrating. Nothing stood the test of time, including me. Somewhere on the other shore were madness and God, sometimes both wearing a beard. Neither instilled much confidence.

  Mati Unt

  Depression, Children, Book

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• The melancholy thing in our public life is the insane desire to get higher.

  Rutherford B. Hayes

  Insane, Desire, Getting High

  Letter "to a leading editor" on April 10, 1875. "The Life Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes", edited by James Quay Howard, ch. X, p. 144, www.gutenberg.org. 2007.

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• There is a melancholy that stems from greatness

  Nicolas Chamfort

  Greatness, Stem

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• Romance is very pretty in novels, but the romance of a life is always a melancholy matter. They are most happy who have no story to tell.

  Anthony Trollope

  Romance, Stories, Matter

  Anthony Trollope (1869). “He Knew He was Right”, p.272

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• While they danced they came over them the weariness with the world, the melancholy, the pity one for the other, which is the exultation of love.

  William Butler Yeats

  Love, World, Pity

  William Butler Yeats (1925). “Early poems and stories”

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• Go! you may call it madness, folly; You shall not chase my gloom away! There 's such a charm in melancholy I would not if I could be gay.

  Samuel Rogers

  Gay, May, Madness

  'To - , 1814'

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• When happiness is actually in possession, the thought of evil can no more acquire the feeling of reality than the thought of good can gain reality when melancholy rules. To the man actively happy, from whatever cause, evil simply cannot then and there be believed in.

  William James

  Reality, Men, Evil

  Dr. William James (2013). “The William James Reader”, p.369, Simon and Schuster

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• To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is the cross and bitterness of life. It is the secret of that sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men which so few understand; it is the cruelest trial reserved for self-devotion; it is what must have oftenest wrung the heart of the Son of man; and if God could suffer, it would be the wound we should be forever inflicting upon Him. He also - He above all - is the great misunderstood, the least comprehended.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Heart, Son, Love Is

  Entry for May 27, 1849, "The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel", Book by Henri-Frédéric Amiel, translated by Mary Augusta Ward, 1882.

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• A melancholy air can never be the right thing; what you want is a bored air. If you are melancholy, it must be because you want something, there is something in which you have not succeeded.
  It is shewing your inferiority. If you are bored, on the other hand, it is the person who has tried in vain to please you who is inferior.

  Stendhal

  Air, Hands, Want Something

  Stendhal (2006). “The Red and the Black: Easyread Edition”, p.245, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• Strike the concertina's melancholy string!
  Blow the spirit-stirring harp like any thing!
  Let the piano's martial blast
  Rouse the Echoes of the Past

  W. S. Gilbert

  Blow, Past, Echoes

  William Schwenck Gilbert, “The Story Of Prince Agib”

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• Sing of the nature of women, and then the song shall be surely full of variety; old crotchets and most sweet closes. It shall be humorous, grave, fantastic, amorous, melancholy, sprightly, one in all, and all in one.

  John Marston

  Song, Sweet, Humorous

  John Marston (2014). “The Malcontent”, p.82, A&C Black

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• If Heaven a draught of heavenly pleasure spare,
  One cordial in this melancholy vale,
  'T is when a youthful, loving, modest pair
  In other's arms breathe out the tender tale

  Robert Burns

  Heaven, Arms, Pairs

  Robert Burns, Robert Chambers (1838). “The Poetical Works of Robert Burns. To which are Now Added, Notes Illustrating Historical, Personal, and Local Allusions. [The Editor's Preface Signed: R. C., I.e. Robert Chambers.]”, p.42

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• It is a curious truth - and yet a truth forced upon us by daily observation - that it is not the women who have suffered most who are the unhappy women. A state of permanent unhappiness - not the morbid, half-cherished melancholy of youth, which generally wears off with wiser years, but that settled, incurable discontent and dissatisfaction with all things and all people, which we see in some women, is, with very rare exceptions, at once the index and the exponent of a thoroughly selfish character.

  Dinah Maria Murlock Craik

  Selfish, Character, Years

  "A Woman's Thoughts About Women" by Dinah Maria Murlock Craik, (Ch. 10), 1858.

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• Original love never appears in pure form, but in manifold veils and shapes, such as confidence, humility, reverence, serenity, asfaithfulness and modesty, as gratefulness; but primarily as longing and wistful melancholy.

  Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel

  Humility, Serenity, Veils

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• A Strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me but now I am almost ashamed of it's complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else.

  Francoise Sagan

  Sad, Beautiful, Regret

  FRANCOISE SAGAN (1955). “BONOUR TRISTESSE”

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• To be misunderstood even by those whom one loves is the cross and bitterness of life. It is the secret of that sad and melancholy smile on the lips of great men which so few understand.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Love Is, Men, Misunderstood

  Entry for May 27, 1849, "The Journal Intime of Henri-Frédéric Amiel", Book by Henri-Frédéric Amiel, translated by Mary Augusta Ward, 1882.

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• I was not always free from melancholy; but even melancholy had its charms.

  Madame Roland

  Sadness, Charm

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• How melancholy a thing is success. Whilst failure inspirits a man, attainment reads the sad prosy lesson that all our glories "Are shadows, not substantial things." Truly said the sayer, "disappointment is the salt of life" a salutary bitter which strengthens the mind for fresh exertion, and gives a double value to the prize.

  Richard Francis Burton

  Disappointment, Giving, Mind

  Sir Richard Francis Burton, John Hanning Speke, William C. Barker (1856). “First Footsteps in East Africa: Or, An Exploration of Harar”, p.364

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• The melancholy ghosts of dead renown, Whispering faint echoes of the world's applause.

  Edward Young

  Echoes, Whispering, World

  Edward Young (1824). “The Complaint; Or, Night Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality”, p.227

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• Dr. Birdsell, my dramatic coach in school, always said that I was the most melancholy Dane that he had ever directed.

  Donald Freed

  School, Sadness, Acting

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• Here is the mistake of the cut-and-dried man of culture. He goes about with the secret of having learned to appreciate the "grandstyle." He has lived in Homer till he can recall the roll of that many-sounding sea. He has pored over the lofty and pictorial thought of Plato till he begins to pique himself upon its grandeur. His fancy has been fed on the quaint old-world genius of Herodotus, his judgment on the melancholy wisdom of Tacitus and the complacent cynicism of Gibbon--and of all this he is conscious and proud.

  Richard Holt Hutton

  Plato, Mistake, Cutting

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