Wailing Quotes

• Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and numbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me - I am happy.

  Hamlin Garland

  Nature, Fall, Cities

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• The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year, Of wailing winds, and naked woods and meadows brown and sear.

  William C. Bryant

  Fall, Sadness, Autumn

  William Cullen Bryant, “The Death Of The Flowers”

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• She marking them begins a wailing note And sings extemporally a woeful ditty How love makes young men thrall and old men dote How love is wise in folly, foolish-witty Her heavy anthem still concludes in woe, And still the choir of echoes answer so.

  William Shakespeare

  Wise, Witty, Love Is

  William Shakespeare, Katherine Duncan-Jones, H. R. Woudhuysen (2007). “Poems: Third Series”, p.203, Cengage Learning EMEA

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• A savage place! As holy and enchanted/As e'er beneath the waning moon was haunted/By woman wailing for her Demon Lover!

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Love, Moon, Age

  "Kubla Khan" l. 12 (1816)

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• The wailing of broken hearts
  is the doorway to God.

  Rumi

  Heart, Broken, Doorways

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• Then a dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the road, a long, agonized wailing, as if from fear. The sound was taken up by another dog, and then another and another, till, borne on the wind which now sighed softly through the Pass, a wild howling began, which seemed to come from all over the country, as far as the imagination could grasp it through the gloom of the night.

  Bram Stoker

  Country, Dog, Taken

  Bram Stoker (2013). “Vampire Novels”, p.133, eBookIt.com

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• The wailing owl screams solitary to the mournful moon.

  David Mallet

  Moon, Owl, Scream

  David Mallet (1759). “Miscellaneous poems”, p.79

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• So much time weeping and wailing and shaking our fists, creating enemies that really don't exist.

  Don Henley

  Philosophy, Creating, Enemy

  Song: Lilah, Album: I Can't Stand Still

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• None can cure their harms by wailing them.

  William Shakespeare

  Grief, Harm, Cures

  William Shakespeare, Thomas Dolby (1832). “The Shakespearian Dictionary, Forming a General Index to All the Popular Expressions, and Most Striking Passages in the Works of Shakespeare, from a Few Words to Fifty Or More Lines ... By T. Dolby”, p.131

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• The trigger has been squeezed, the deathly mechanism has been enabled, the fatal course of a bullet has been set. No amount of bleating or praying or wailing of cajoling can halt it or stall it or call it back.

  Nicola Barker

  Bullets, Praying, Halt

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• Everyone knows that quote because of the Doors." Jace looked at her blankly. "The Doors. They were a band." "If you say so," he said. "I suppose you don't have much time for enjoying music," Clary said, thinking of Simon, for whom music was his entire life, "in your line of work." He shrugged. "Maybe the occasional wailing chorus of the damned.

  Cassandra Clare

  Thinking, Doors, Band

  Cassandra Clare (2011). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (4 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels”, p.161, Simon and Schuster

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• She was perfect. I knew this the moment she emerged from my body, white and wet and wailing. Beyond the requisite ten fingers and ten toes, the beating heart, the lungs inhaling and exhaling oxygen, my daughter knew how to scream. She knew how to make herself heard. She knew how to reach out and latch on. She knew what she needed to do to survive. I didn’t know how it was possible that such perfection could have developed within a body as flawed as my own, but when I looked into her face, I saw that it clearly was.

  Vanessa Diffenbaugh

  Daughter, Heart, Oxygen

  Vanessa Diffenbaugh (2011). “The Language of Flowers”, p.173, Pan Macmillan

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• Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Life, Two, Looks

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1952). “Life and Letters”

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• Hungry wailing standeth not aloof.

  Aeschylus

  Hungry, Aloof

  Aeschylus (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated)”, p.395, Delphi Classics

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• In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Sad, Sympathy, Stars

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.2414, Library of Alexandria

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• So I'm at the wailing wall, standing there like a moron, with my harpoon.

  Emo Philips

  Funny, Wall, Humor

  "The Best God Joke Ever - and It's Mine!". www.theguardian.com. September 29, 2005.

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• You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.

  Charlie Parker

  Music, Faith, Practice

  "Acting Is a Job: Real-life Lessons About the Acting Business". Book by Jason Pugatch, p. 73, 2006.

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• Years ago I went to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and did what all tourists there do: wrote some words on a scrap of paper that I tucked into a crevice in the wall. When I closed my eyes and touched my head to the warm stone, it came to me: "All language is prayer." This must be so. Who is it we are speaking to when we speak to anyone? To that person, and also past him or her to Out There. If there is language, it means there is the possibility of being heard, being met, being loved. And reaching out to be heard, met, or loved is a holy act. Language is holy.

  Zoketsu Norman Fischer

  Prayer, Wall, Mean

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• Scratch a Jew and you'll find a Wailing Wall.

  Eve Merriam

  Wall, Scratches, Jew

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• I often wonder what would have happened to me if I hadn't made that decision. I suppose I would have sunk. I suppose I would have found some kind of hole and tried to hide or pass. After all, we make ourselves according to the ideas we have of our possibilities. I would have hidden in my hole and been crippled by my sentimentality, doing what I was doing, and doing it well, but always looking for the wailing wall. And I would never have seen the world as the rich place that it is. You wouldn't have seen me here in Africa, doing what I do.

  V. S. Naipaul

  Wall, Ideas, Decision

  V. S. Naipaul (2012). “A Bend in the River”, p.94, Pan Macmillan

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• Life is a narrow vale between the cold and barren peaks of two eternities. We strive in vain to look beyond the heights. We cry aloud-and the only answer is the echo of our wailing cry. From the voiceless lips of the unreplying dead there comes no word. But in the night of Death Hope sees a star and listening Love can hear the rustling of a wing.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Stars, Night, Echoes

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1911). “The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll”

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• You yourself are to blame. This weeping and wailing and knocking your heads into corners [against brick walls, as it were] will not do you the least good.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Wall, Bricks, Blame

  Swami Vivekananda (2015). “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”, p.4493, Manonmani Publishers

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• And in all of Babylonia there was wailing and gnashing of teeth, 'til the prophets bade the multitudes get a grip on themselves and shape up.

  Woody Allen

  Teeth, Shapes, Prophet

  Woody Allen (2007). “The Insanity Defense: The Complete Prose”, Random House Incorporated

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• One guy can ruin an instrument. Jimi Hendrix, bless his heart - how I wish he was still around - almost inadvertently ruined guitar. Because he was the only cat who could do it like that. Everybody else just screwed it up, and thought wailing away (on the guitar) is the answer. But it ain't; you've got to be a Jimi to do that, you've got to be one of the special cats.

  Keith Richards

  Heart, Cat, Guitar

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• The wailing of the newborn infant is mingled with the dirge for the dead.

  Lucretius

  Newborn, Infant

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