143 quotes about sorrowing follow in order of popularity. Be sure to bookmark and share your favorites!

I have known sorrow and learned to aid the wretched.

Virgil

To revive sorrow is cruel.

Sophocles

The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities.

Sophocles

Arms are instruments of ill omen. . . . When one is compelled to use them, it is best to do so without relish. There is no glory in victory, and to glorify it despite this is to exult in the killing of men. . . . When great numbers of people are killed, one should weep over them with sorrow. When victorious in war, one should observe mourning rites.

Lao tzu

'Tis better to be lowly born, And range with humble livers in content, Than to be perked up in a glistering grief, And wear a golden sorrow.

William Shakespeare

Each present joy or sorrow seems the chief.

William Shakespeare

Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

William Shakespeare

But as in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born.

Edgar Allan Poe

To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of one half of nature.

Seneca

People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim.

Ann Landers

If you would know the value of money, go try to borrow some; for he that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing.

Benjamin Franklin

Partying is such sweet sorrow.

Robert Byrne

If a man takes no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.

Confucius

If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.

Chinese Proverb

It's a time of sorrow and sadness when we lose a loss of life.

George W. Bush

Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

There is the kiss of welcome and of parting, the long, lingering, loving, present one; the stolen, or the mutual one; the kiss of love, of joy, and of sorrow; the seal of promise and receipt of fulfillment.

Thomas C. Haliburton

In a restaurant one is both observed and unobserved. Joy and sorrow can be displayed and observed "unwittingly," the writer scowling naively and the diners wondering, What the hell is he doing?

David Mamet

Yet ah! why should they know their fate, Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies? Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.

Thomas Gray

There are people still in the Republican Party that I believe practice the communication of anger, of disappointment, of regret, of pain, of sorrow, of suffering. That's not what the American people want to hear.

Frank Luntz

Death is not evil, for it frees man from all ills and takes away his desires along with desire's rewards. Old age is the supreme evil, for it deprives man of all pleasures while allowing his appetites to remain, and it brings with it every possible sorrow. Yet men fear death and desire old age.

Giacomo Leopardi

I believe in the efficacy of prayer and I have a deep and sorrowful sympathy for one who is without faith. I believe our Father answers every prayer-all prayers-with His matchless, inscrutable wisdom, with infinite compassion and with love.

Loretta Young

Men decide far more problems by hate, love, lust, rage, sorrow, joy, hope, fear, illusion, or some other inward emotion, than by reality, authority, any legal standard, judicial precedent, or statute.

Cicero

Procrastination is my sin. It brings me naught but sorrow. I know that I should stop it. In fact, I will--tomorrow!

Gloria Pitzer

In middle age we are apt to reach the horrifying conclusion that all sorrow, all pain, all passionate regret and loss and bitter disillusionment are self-made.

Kathleen Norris

Who hath sorrow? Who hath woe?/ They who do not answer no;/ They whose feet to sin incline/ While they tarry at the wine.

Carry Nation

Shared sorrow is half sorrow.

Danish Proverb

Abbas expressed his sorrow that the cabinet ignored the principles Abbas stressed in his letter of commission.

Tayeb Abdel Rahim

I found more joy in sorrow than you could find in joy.

Sara Teasdale

Guilt is the very nerve of sorrow.

Horace Bushnell

Who goeth a borrowing/ Goeth a sorrowing./ Few lend (but fools)/ Their working tools.

Thomas Tusser

Childhood has no forebodings, but then, it is soothed by no memories of outlived sorrow.

George Eliot

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined for life - to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent, unspeakable memories.

George Eliot

Give not over thy soul to sorrow; and afflict not thyself in thy own counsel. Gladness of heart is the life of man and the joyfulness of man is length of days.

Ecclesiastes

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy, golden storm, yes many loved before us, I know we are not new, in city and in forest they smiled like me and you, but now it's come to distances and both of us must try, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

Leonard Cohen

It shall never be said that my sorrow has hardened me toward others.

Glenway Wescott

That first day was a devastating scene. People were crying; they couldn't find words [to express their sorrow]. And I felt almost like I couldn't breathe. I just wanted to put my face in my hands and cry and stare at the wall.

Jeff Fadness

There were certainly feelings of regret and a deep profound sense of sorrow and sadness, that I was possibly involved in the death of this individual.

Thomas O'brien

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

George Eliot

If we wait until our lives are free from sorrow or difficulty, then we wait forever. And miss the entire point.

Dirk Benedict

I've been on the air and broadcasting, but I had no idea what to say. How to respond to this meeting-there's gratitude, there's sorrow, every emotion you could think of.

Pat Summerall

She certainly is sorrowful that she let all these people down. She realizes the error of what she did, and she really knows that it will be difficult for them to forgive her.

Francis O'boy

How many young hearts have revealed the fact that what they had been trained to imagine, the highest earthly felicity, was but the beginning of care, disappointment, and sorrow, and often led to the extremity of mental and physical suffering.

Catharine Esther Beecher

The accused was evasive and during the trial he never showed he was sorry; and when the prosecutor read the recommendation of death, he didn't show any sorrow in his face.

Gusti Lanang Dauh

I believe there is a moment of sorrow in the country. We join with that sorrow from the presidency.

Tony Saca

The dark today leads into light tomorrow; There is no endless joy, ...and yet no endless sorrow.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

What reason then can we produce, that the life of a man whom we esteem, should be sorrow to himself, and his death be grief to us?

John Pearson

A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.

W. Winwood Reade

Sorrow happens, hardship happens, the hell with it, who never knew the price of happiness, will not be happy.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Suppose that we, to-morrow or the next day, / Came to an end - in storm the shafting broken, / Or a mistaken signal, the flange lifting - / Would that be premature, a text for sorrow?

C. Day Lewis

Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, great as each may be, their highest comfort given to the sorrowful is a cordial introduction into another's woe. Sorrow's the great community in which all men born of woman are members at one time or another.

Sean O'Casey

Many men are melancholy by hearing music, but it is a pleasing melancholy that it causeth; and therefore to such as are discontent, in woe, fear, sorrow, or dejected, it is a most present remedy.

Robert Burton

If Sally were here right now, she would be the calm-headed one. She could talk you through your sorrow and grief.

Holly Tachovsky

Tell her, if you wiil, that sorrow / Need not come in vain; / Tell her that the lesson taught her / Far outweighs the pain.

Adelaide Anne Procter

The deeper sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain.

Kahlil Gibran

What omniscience has music! So absolutely impersonal, yet every sufferer feels his secret sorrow soothed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not in sorrow freely is never to open the bosom to the sweets of the sunshine.

William Gilmore Simms

I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Oh, Misery, I have drunk thy cup of sorrow to its dregs, but I am still a rebel.

Lucy Parsons

[Other musicians expressed their sorrow.] He was an unassuming, quiet, great musician, ... Just a lovely man, he was.

Tom Jones

The proud, the cold untroubled heart of stone, / That never mused on sorrow but its own.

Thomas Campbell

Don't let your sorrow come higher than your knees.

Swedish Proverb

What does your sorrow do while you're sleeping? It is awaken and waiting. And, when it loses patience, it wakes me up.

Ivo Andric

Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, / No winter in thy year.

John Logan

There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.

Pearl S. Buck

Quiet and sincere sympathy is often the most welcome and efficient consolation to the afflicted. Said a wise man to one in deep sorrow, 'I did not come to comfort you; God only can do that; but I did come to say how deeply and tenderly I feel for you in your affliction'.

Tryon Edwards

There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.

Dante Alighieri

In the time of your life, live - so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite variety and mystery of it.

William Saroyan

Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee;/ When thou art old there's grief enough for thee. / Mother's wag, pretty boy, / Father's sorrow, father's joy.

Dr. Robert Greene

Go, forget me - why should sorrow, O'er that brow a shadow fling? Go, forget me - and to-morrow, brightly smile and sweetly sing. Smile - though I shall not be near thee; Sing - though I shall never hear thee.

Charles Wolfe

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

For he loved her, as you can only love someone who is an echo of yourself at your time of deepest sorrow.

Orson Scott Card

Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life.

Lord Byron

The ending of sorrow is the beginning of wisdom. Knowledge is always within the shadow of ignorance. Meditation is freedom from thought and a movement in the ecstasy of truth. Meditation is explosion of intelligence.

Krishnamurti

He that is thy friend indeed, he will help thee in thy need: if thou sorrow, he will weep; if you wake, he cannot sleep; thus of every grief in heart he with thee doth bear a part.

Richard Barnfield

Sorrow has produced more melody than mirth.

C. Fitzhugh

I feel a sense of sorrow that we have lost someone from the community, that innocent people in the area have been attacked and injured and that one of our colleagues was shot.

David Shaw

He who can suppress a moment's anger may prevent a day of sorrow.

Tryon Edwards

Sorrow is brief but joy is endless.

Friedrich von Schiller

Thou hast no sorrow in thy song, / No winter in thy year!

Michael Bruce

There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.

Fay Weldon

He was in sorrow with me. And just as with Lazarus, Shirley will arise on the last day. All this came to me on the flight back, up 36,000 miles in the sky. And I recalled that she'd read her Bible more on this trip than she had in a long time, and she was enjoying herself, so all of that helps my heart.

Johnny Nelson

In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all... Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You cannot now realize that you will ever feel better... And yet this is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again.

Abraham Lincoln

I cannot sleep - great joy is as restless as great sorrow.

Fanny Burney

Pain and fear and hunger are effects of causes which can be foreseen and known: but sorrow is a debt which someone else makes for us.

Freya Stark

There was no sadness or sorrow expressed at the cremation. We are actually happy because we will be spared of further international criticism because of Pol Pot.

Non Nou

No greater grief than to remember days of gladness when sorrow is at hand.

Friedrich von Schiller

They [the children] should be together. They've been through enough sorrow in their lives. She's been the only constant, stable force in their lives.

Anthony Randolph

A lost but happy dream may shed its light upon our waking hours, and the whole day may be infected with the gloom of a dreary or sorrowful one; yet of neither may we be able to recover a trace.

Walter De La Mare

I may have grown more attentive to the news and more alive to the world history and world-sorrow behind it.

Seamus Heaney

Instead of a clear call for repentance we have been offered warms words of sentimentality for those who have shown no godly sorrow for their actions.

Peter Akinola

I cannot begin to express my sorrow for my lost friends and my sympathy for those they left behind. I hope that my words will offer some solace to the miners' families and friends who have endured what no one should ever have to endure.

Randal Mccloy Jr

I think the barbarity of the English language currently used in the liturgy is cause enough for sorrow without further fiddling in terms of feminist inclusiveness.

Richard John Neuhaus

In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.

Edith Wharton

When sparrows build and the leaves break forth My old sorrow wakes and cries.

Jean Ingelow

Fear is a journey, a terrible journey, but sorrow is at least an arriving.

Alan Paton

I don't want to bring back memories of the genocide but rather to impart a feeling of sorrow along with the story.

Sarawut Wichiensarn

Life has never been easy. Nor is it meant to be. It is a matter of being joyous in the face of sorrow.

Dirk Benedict

The rose and the thorn, and sorrow and gladness are linked together.

Muslih uddin Sadi

You were a stranger to sorrow: therefore Fate has cursed you.

Euripides

There is something in sorrow more akin to the course of human affairs than joy.

C. Fitzhugh

Endless sorrow has fallen upon my heart. He was one of the truest and best men that ever lived, firm in his religious convictions, loyal to every right principle, strictly honest and upright in his life,... .with an absolute sincerity of character such as I have never seen in any other person.

Olympia Brown

God sends you joy, for sorrow will come fast enough.

John Clarke

Bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.

Bible

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

Agatha Christie

Waste brings woe, and sorrow hates despair.

Dr. Robert Greene

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.

Amelia Burr

I saw the light, I saw the lightNo more darkness, no more nightNow I'm so happy, no sorrow in sightPraise the Lord, I saw the light.

Hank Williams

Words cannot express the kind of sorrow we're in.

Keith Douglass

How does one know if she has forgiven? You tend to feel sorrow over the circumstance instead of rage, you tend to feel sorry for the person rather than angry with him. You tend to have nothing left to say about it all.

Clarissa Pinkola Estes

I am full of the sorrow that goes with changes in surroundings, those successive stages of annihilation that slowly lead to the great and final void.

Isabelle Eberhardt

I love you. I used to pity your sorrow. But now, were you sorrowless, without fear or any lack, still i would love you.

J. R. R. Tolkien

My mother is such a lousy cook that Thanksgiving at her house is a time of sorrow.

Rita Rudner

Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.

Joni Mitchell

The thousands of Americans, including Greens, who protested in the streets in early 2003 were right. We need to hold public officials who got us into the Iraq war accountable. Being right doesn't make us proud, it makes us angry and sorrowful for the needless deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, the more than 2,300 U.S. service members, and the hundreds of civilian contractors.

Michael Berg

I feel that if John Wilkes Booth hadn't shot Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln would have come through his pain and emerged like Livingston has. This album was made with the wisdom that comes from allowing yourself to be recklessly entwined with your agony and sorrow.

Carly Simon

No crying, no sorrow. This is just making us stronger.

Michelle Clark

Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow, and the triumphs that are aftermath of war.

Herbert Hoover

Roughian was the roughest, ... When something happens to a highly talented horse, the sorrow was intensified.

Jack Whitaker

This has been such a blow. My biggest sorrow is the loss of this really bright light – for a really stupid thing.

Nancy Miller

When we wipe away the tears of rage and sorrow, we will be proud to have had him.

Milorad Vucelic

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Kahlil Gibran

He didn't feel any regret or any sorrow. It was just like he was cutting the pig meat at a meat market. He's a butcher, a human beings butcher.

Harry Wu

They are in a very deep sorrow. But there are many warm tears there and many friends there who are taking care of them.

Jianfeng Guo

As you look at these powerful images, you see there is something very dignified about this woman. Warhol was very into the elegance rather than the tragedy of Jackie Kennedy. These images are about sorrow, loss and mourning.

Francesco Bonami

Sorrow was like the wind. It came in gusts.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Everything we call a trial, a sorrow or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there, the gift is there, and the wonder of an overshadowing presence. Our joys, too, be not content with them as joys. They, too, conceal diviner gifts.

Fra Giovanni Giocondo

In this world of sin and sorrow, there is always something to be thankful for; as for me, I rejoice that I am not a Republican.

H. L. Mencken

In light of the apology and his expression of sorrow over Sharon's health, we will reconsider our decision.

Ido Hartuv

The lives of happy people are dense with their own doings - crowded, active, thick. But the sorrowing are nomads, on a plain with few landmarks and no boundaries; sorrow's horizons are vague and its demands are few.

Larry McMurtry

Happiness is a Chinese meal; sorrow is a nourishment forever.

Carolyn Kizer

You can understand the measure, the impact of this man, when the people he arrested are calling to express their sorrow. He understood the difference between prostitution and prostituted women. I don't think there will be another like him.

Vednita Carter

I think it was pushed ahead by his sorrow.

Jim Larson

Our anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, but only empties today of its strength.

Charles H. Spurgeon

The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.

Eudora Welty

Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine.

St. Thomas Aquinas

What's more complicated is when you feel sorrowful for the things you have said and there's no room for amends. Now, we're moving past that.

Mark Stevens

Our mantra of service is built on a relationship. We wanted to introduce ourselves first, and join them in our sorrow over their loss.

Jackson Stewart

I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. . . . I do not weep at the world -- I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

Zora Neale Hurston

For the Fink and Alsheikh families there were pressures and pain and sorrow for many, many years. Today they've reached some comfort in that at least there will be a grave.

Ezer Weizman

Maybe I'm imagining it, but I sense a deep seam of sorrow in Galveston for the way things have turned out. It was such a glittering little city in 1900, with the promise of becoming another San Francisco or New Orleans.

Erik Larson

Then sing, young hearts that are full of cheer, with never a thought of sorrow; the old goes out, but the glad young year comes merrily in tomorrow.

Emily Miller

How small an selfish is sorrow. But it bangs one about until one is senseless. (letter to Edith Sitwell, shortly after the death of George VI).

Elizabeth, The Queen Mother