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Link Quote Stars Tags Author
42e4ae1 I don't know what's worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you've always wanted to be, and feel alone. loneliness philosophy melancholy psychology Daniel Keyes
b5a3f7e I go to sleep alone, and wake up alone. I take walks. I work until I'm tired. I watch the wind play with the trash that's been under the snow all winter. Everything seems simple until you think about it. Why is love intensified by abscence? melancholy Audrey Niffenegger
eef17a2 A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life's gas-pipe with a lighted candle. humor melancholy wit P.G. Wodehouse
d394f37 I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us. suffering maturity melancholy Hermann Hesse
d40fb6a It's how I fill the time when nothing's happening. Thinking too much, flirting with melancholy. time loneliness sadness melancholy Tim Winton
a397595 So many of the loveliest things in England are melancholy. melancholy Dodie Smith
1119833 I think it takes an amazing amount of energy to convince oneself that the Forever Person isn't just around the corner. In the end I believe we never do convince ourselves. I know that I found it increasingly hard to maintain the pose of emotional self-sufficiency lying on my bed and sitting at my desk, watching the gulls cartwheeling in the clouds over the bridges, cradling myself in my own arms, breathing warm chocolate-and-vodka breath on a rose I had found on a street corner, trying to force it to bloom. loneliness love melancholy Douglas Coupland
1523b74 The lost glove is happy. loss melancholy Vladimir Nabokov
f46de37 There's little of the melancholy element in her, my lord: she is never sad but when she sleeps; and not ever sad then; for I have heard my daughter say, she hath often dreamt of unhappiness, and waked herself with laughing. sleep woman women sadness happiness waking melancholy William Shakespeare
076d0f8 The eye turned to the fire gave back no light and he closed it with his thumb and sat by her and put his hand upon her bloodied forehead and closed his own eyes that he could see her running in the mountains, running in the starlight where the grass was wet and the sun's coming as yet had not undone the rich matrix of creatures passed in the night before her. Deer and hare and dove and groundvole all richly empaneled on the air for her delight, all nations of the possible world ordained by God of which she was one among and not separate from. Where she ran the cries of the coyotes clapped shut as if a door had closed upon them and all was fear and marvel. He took up her stiff head out of the leaves and held it or he reached to hold what cannot be held, what already ran among the mountains at once terrible and of great beauty, like flowers that feed on flesh. What blood and bone are made of but can themselves not make on any altar nor by any wound of war. What we may well believe has power to cut and shape and hollow out the dark form of the world surely if wind can, if rain can. But which cannot be held never be held and is no flower but is swift and a huntress and the wind itself is in terror of it and the world cannot lose it. earth-shattering melancholy Cormac McCarthy
b13b73b The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour. progress philosophical philosophy dressing innovation melancholy thinking thought introspection Ray Bradbury
328966d He was a Frenchman, a melancholy-looking man. His aspect was that of one who has been looking for the leak in a gas pipe with a lighted candle. life melancholy misfortune P.G. Wodehouse
78d04f8 In any case, there was only one tunnel, dark and lonely, mine, the tunnel in which I had spent my childhood, my youth, my whole life. And in one of those transparent lengths of the stone wall I had seen this girl and had gullibly believed that she was traveling another tunnel parallel to mine, when in reality she belonged to the broad world, to the world without confines of those who do not live in tunnels; and perhaps she had peeped into one of my strange windows out of curiosity and had caught a glimpse of my doomed loneliness, or her fancy had been intrigued by the mute language, the clue of my painting. And then, while I advanced always along my corridor, she lived her normal life outside, the exciting life of those people who live outside, that strange, absurd life in which there are dances and parties and gaiety and frivolity. And it happened at times that when I walked by one of my windows she was waiting for me, silent and longing (why was she waiting for me? why silent and longing?); but other times she did not get there on time, or she forgot about this poor creature hemmed in, and then I, with my face pressed against the glass wall, could see her in the distance, smiling or dancing carefree, or, what was worse, I could not see her at all and I imagined her in inaccessible or vile places. And then I felt my destiny a far lonelier one than I had imagined. loneliness melancholy Ernesto Sabato
e292378 Then you must reconcile yourself to the fact that something is always hurt by any change. If you do this, you will not be hurt yourself. time pain free-will the-keys-to-december reconciliation maturity melancholy eternity Roger Zelazny
a18ee20 Melancholy held me hostage, and the bees built a hive of sadness in my soul. sadness melancholy Laurie Halse Anderson
b3a500d Que hare ahora con mis labios sin su boca para llenarlos? ?Que hare de mis adoloridos labios? melancholy Juan Rulfo
b889bef Everything tender and melancholy - as life is sometimes, just for one moment. melancholy tenderness Jean Rhys
6ef7ccf He was persuaded he could know no happiness but in the society of one with whom he could for ever indulge the melancholy that had taken possession of his soul. marriage melancholy Horace Walpole
986f2f7 I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano! melancholy William Shakespeare
d46fa26 Gwynn, she was always talking about wanting to be drunk and honestly I did want to encourage that, I wanted to go to a bar with her and let all the stuff sobriety pushed down be released so I could catch it in my palms and finally kiss her. She was just so sad. Melancholy was a fleshy wave permanently cresting on her face, she had to speak through it when she talked. sobriety emotion love melancholy longing Michelle Tea
8dcbf84 I often wish I'd got on better with your father,' he said. But he never liked anyone who--our friends,' said Clarissa; and could have bitten her tongue for thus reminding Peter that he had wanted to marry her. Of course I did, thought Peter; it almost broke my heart too, he thought; and was overcome with his own grief, which rose like a moon looked at from a terrace, ghastly beautiful with light from the sunken day. I was more unhappy than I've ever been since, he thought. And as if in truth he were sitting there on the terrace he edged a little towards Clarissa; put his hand out; raised it; let it fall. There above them it hung, that moon. She too seemed to be sitting with him on the terrace, in the moonlight. marriage romance sadness love moon imagery melancholy Virginia Woolf
099112c Sympathy from strangers can be ruinous. sadness the-blind-assassin melancholy strangers Margaret Atwood
0f336d7 Our sadness won't be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind. The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain. sadness happiness life art melancholy Alain de Botton
4624b45 I sometimes think about old tombs and weeds That interwreathe among the bones of kings With cold and poisonous berry and black flower: Or ruminate upon the skulls of steeds Frailer than shells and on those luminous wings - The shoulder blades of Princes of fled power, Which now the unrecorded sandstorms grind Into so wraith-like a translucency Of tissue-thin and aqueous bone - skeleton transience melancholy remembrance Mervyn Peake
d54daac I want to hold onto this funny thing. God, it's gotten big on me. I don't know what it is. I'm so damned unhappy, I'm so mad, and I don't know why. I feel like I'm putting on weight. I feel fat. I feel like I'm saving a lot of things, and I don't know what. I might even start reading books. melancholy Ray Bradbury
abf017e The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true-- not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon's, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe. sorrow moby-dick melancholy Herman Melville
8970ea8 Men who read a lot have a more sensitive disposition, added Fowler. [...] I did not know what to say to this. Maybe reading is a sort of curse is all I mean, concluded Fowler. Maybe it's better for a man to stay inside his own mind. Amen, I felt like saying, although I do not know why. men reading inner-world melancholy Dan Simmons
1f3e358 The words sounded like a mournful incantation. words magic melancholy language Dan Simmons
99e1f0f She smiles, and her eyes look as if they can see back into her memory, into all the things that have gone into making a person what they are. memories past melancholy oblivion remembering memory Lois Lowry
79e4f3e Still, somewhere in the depths of ourselves we all harbor an ashamed, unsatisfied melancholy that quietly awaits a funeral. sadness existential melancholy funeral sartre existentialism Jean-Paul Sartre
50d2211 Perhaps she would have liked to confide all these things to someone. But how tell an undefinable uneasiness, variable as the clouds, unstable as the winds? Words failed her--the opportunity, the courage. melancholy Gustave Flaubert
229b937 "The cloudless day is richer at its close; A golden glory settles on the lea; Soft, stealing shadows hint of cool repose To mellowing landscape, and to calming sea. And in that nobler, gentler, lovelier light, The soul to sweeter, loftier bliss inclines; Freed form the noonday glare, the favour'd sight Increasing grace in earth and sky divines. But ere the purest radiance crowns the green, Or fairest lustre fills th' expectant grove, nature romance sadness love love-lost lustre pantheism forest melancholy sky twilight reminiscence memory H. P. Lovecraft
91ce2c6 Unlike depression, melancholy does not have a specific cause. It is an aspect of temperament, perhaps genetically based. One may emerge from the hypo, as Lincoln did, but melancholy is an indelible part of one's nature. melancholy Doris Kearns Goodwin
f8a91e2 She said once that time is nothing to me but a series of bookmarks that I use to jump back and forth through the text of my life, returning again and again to the events that mark me in the eyes of my more astute colleagues, as bearing all the characteristics of the classic melancholic. mourning grief depression family friendship professional the-past melancholy reflection regret remember dead sad lost mental-illness Dennis Lehane
1fc3a2b Where does your soul go when you die in Hell? melancholy Ursula K. Le Guin
9c3138d "Years have passed, I suppose. I'm not really counting them anymore. But I think of this thing often: Perhaps there is a Golden Age someplace, a Renaissance for me sometime, a special time somewhere, somewhere but a ticket, a visa, a diary-page away. I don't know where or when. Who does? Where are all the rains of yesterday? In the invisible city? Inside me? poetry life melancholy Roger Zelazny
65fb8e8 Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy. melancholy knowledge Ray Bradbury
a43ec7d This night is not calm; the equinox still struggles in its storms. The wild rains of the day are abated; the great single cloud disparts and rolls away from heaven, not passing and leaving a sea all sapphire, but tossed buoyant before a continued, long-sounding, high-rushing moonlight tempest. The Moon reigns glorious, glad of the gale, as glad as if she gave herself to his fierce caress with love. No Endymion will watch for his goddess tonight. there are no flocks out on the mountains; and it is well, for to-night she welcomes Aeolus. nature romance shirley melancholy charlotte-bronte Charlotte Brontë
785fb5c "You're going back?" asked Bod. Things that had been immutable were changing. "You're really leaving? But. You're my guardian." "I was you're guardian. But you are old enough to guard yourself. I have other things to protect." melancholy sad Neil Gaiman
320ac14 There's no comfort, it seems, in the world of objects. life alienation melancholy Michael Cunningham
ff016cf Was I prone to sadness and melancholy? How could anyone like that? It wasn't that I wanted it; it was that I was so used to hard rains, I couldn't help expecting a cloudburst every time something nice happened and sunshine beamed down over me. thoughts rain sadness cloudburst landry pearl-in-the-mist v-c-andrews sunshine melancholy V.C. Andrews
9eb28fb Where is the happiness, the sunshine, where are those thick skittles of wood which crashed and bounced so nicely, where is my bicycle with the low handlebars and the big gear? It seems there's a law which says that nothing ever vanishes, that matter is indestructible; therefore the chips from my skittles and the spokes of my bicycle still exist somewhere to this day. The pity of it is that I'll never find them again - never. nostalgic growing-up melancholy remembering Vladimir Nabokov
012b253 ...another comber of far pleasure followed the first, for his books came suddenly before his eyes, row upon row of volumes, row upon priceless row of calf-bound Thought, of philosophy and fiction, of travel and fantasy; the stern and the ornate, the moods of gold or green, of sepia, rose, or black; the picaresque, the arabesque, the scientific - the essays, the poetry and the drama. All this, he felt, he would now re-enter. He could inhabit the world of words, with, at the back of his melancholy, a solace he had not known before. melancholy Mervyn Peake
a967a46 He cries behind his wall, I think, and no one knows, not even he. And no one will ever know, and in the end he'll always be alone in smiling pain. sadness melancholy George R.R. Martin
32af080 "Anonymous > Quotes > Quotable Quote "I see life as a roadside inn where I have to stay until the coach from the abyss pulls up. I don't know where it will take me, because I don't know anything. I could see this inn as a prison, for I'm compelled to wait in it; I could see it as a social centre, for it's here that I meet others. But I'm neither impatient nor common. I leave who will to stay shut up in their rooms, sprawled out on beds where they sleeplessly wait, and I leave who will to chat in the parlours, from where their songs and voices conveniently drift out here to me. I'm sitting at the door, feasting my eyes and ears on the colours and sounds of the landscape, and I softly sing - for myself alone - wispy songs I compose while waiting." metaphor melancholy Fernando Pessoa
f1b178a No one was irritable; we have never known anyone to remain unhappy while digesting a good meal. We enjoy lingering in a becalmed state, a kind of midpoint between the reverie of a thinker and the contentment of a cud-chewing animal, a state that should be termed the physical melancholy of gastronomy. gastronomy red-inn satiation melancholy Honoré de Balzac
bc7ecd5 The author says that when an angry impulse is not immediately expressed, it turns to melancholy. depression bitterness melancholy resentment Patrick O'Brian
bdbdf53 She had never looked as well. She had entered her room as just an impossibly lovely girl. The woman who emerged was a trifle thinner, a great deal wiser, an ocean sadder. This one understood the nature of pain, and beneath the glory of her features, there was character, and a sure knowledge of suffering. pain loss suffering sorrow heartbreak love melancholy William Goldman
fe9da9a "Did you know that ninety percent of your average household dust is composed of human epidermal matter? That's skin, to you." Perhaps this explains your sense of Amanda's omnipresence. She has left her skin behind." melancholy Jay McInerney
610b5ea Tom began screaming, and I wondered if the baby's soft brain was, in this moment, changing shape in response to the violent stimuli. I tried to intellectualize the noise to protect the baby's psyche. I whispered: Isn't that interesting to hear a man scream? Doesn't that challenge our stereotypes of what men can do? And then I tried, Shhhhhhhhh. men melancholy Miranda July
c7741a3 "It's my letter," she began. "I cannot make it right." "Come in, come in," the Prince said gently. "Maybe we can help you." She sat down in the same chair as before. "All right, I'll close my eyes and listen; read to me." " 'Westley, my passion, my sweet, my only, my own. Come back, come back. I shall kill myself otherwise. Yours in torment, Buttercup.' " She looked at Humperdinck. "Well? Do you think I'm throwing myself at him?" "It does seem a bit forward," the Prince admitted. "It doesn't leave him a great deal of room to maneuver." humor love melancholy letters William Goldman
68395e6 "I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streets returning home carrying plastic bags. Of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, pail in hand and one eye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch from one khnancial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear; of the barbers who complain that men don't shave as much after an economic crisis; of the children who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets; of the covered women who stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speak to no one as they wait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men; of the patient pimps striding up and down the city's greatest square on summer evenings in search of one last drunken tourist; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ship horns booming through the fog; of the wooden buildings whose every board creaked even when they were pashas' mansions, all the more now that they have become municipal headquarters; of the women peeking through their curtains as they wait for husbands who never manage to come home in the evening; of the old men selling thin religious treatises, prayer beads, and pilgrimage oils in the courtyards of mosques; of the tens of thousands of identical apartment house entrances, their facades discolored by dirt, rust, soot, and dust; of the crowds rushing to catch ferries on winter evenings; of the city walls, ruins since the end of the Byzantine Empire; of the markets that empty in the evenings; of the dervish lodges, the tekkes, that have crumbled; of the seagulls perched on rusty barges caked with moss and mussels, unhinching under the pelting rain; of the tiny ribbons of smoke rising from the single chimney of a hundred-yearold mansion on the coldest day of the year; of the crowds of men khshing from the sides of the Galata Bridge; of the cold reading rooms of libraries; of the street photographers; of the smell of exhaled breath in the movie theaters, once glittering arairs with gilded ceilings, now porn cinemas frequented by shamefaced men; of the avenues where you never see a woman alone after sunset; of the crowds gathering around the doors of the state-controlled brothels on one of those hot blustery days when the wind is coming from the south; of the young girls who queue at the doors of establishments selling cut-rate meat; of the holy messages spelled out in lights between the minarets of mosques on holidays that are missing letters where the bulbs have burned out; of the walls covered with frayed and blackened posters; of the tired old dolmuses, khfties Chevrolets that would be museum pieces in any western city but serve here as shared taxis, hugng and pugng up the city's narrow alleys and dirty thoroughfares; of the buses packed with passengers; of the mosques whose lead plates and rain gutters are forever being stolen; of the city cemeteries, which seem like gateways to a second world, and of their cypress trees; of the dim lights that you see of an evening on the boats crossing from Kadikoy to Karakoy; of the little children in the streets who try to sell the same packet of tissues to every passerby; of the clock towers no one ever notices; of the history books in which children read about the victories of the Ottoman Empire and of the beatings these same children receive at home; of the days when everyone has to stay home so the electoral roll can be compiled or the census can be taken; of the days when a sudden curfew is announced to facilitate the search for terrorists and everyone sits at home fearfully awaiting "the ogcials"; CONTINUED IN SECOND PART OF THE QUOTE" history feelings istanbul melancholy long nostalgia Orhan Pamuk
2abc8e4 The sound of the tumblers in the locks of your apartment door puts you in mind of dungeons. The place is haunted. Just this morning you found a makeup brush beside the toilet. Memories lurk like dustballs at the backs of drawers. The stereo is a special model that plays only music fraught with poignant associations. melancholy Jay McInerney
b0fedf0 When you get abandoned by someone, that's the moment when you've truly lost faith in them. melancholy sad Nicholas Murray
bb0df5f Maybe all Americans who suffer from melancholy act as if they have gone mad. But I truly thought he might throw himself in the river, and I don't want his ghost visiting to keep telling me he's sorry. sorry melancholy Amy Tan
bd2a2ac Out on the lawn, Bunny had just knocked Henry's ball about seventy feet outside the court. There was a ragged burst of laughter; faint, but clear, it floated back across the evening air. That laughter haunts me still. laughter donna-tartt the-secret-history haunting melancholy sad Donna Tartt
ff0ba15 I thundered hot water into the big tub, setting up McGee's Handy Home Treatment for Melancholy. A deep hot bath, and a strong cold drink, and a book on the tub rack. Who needs the Megrims? Surely not McGee, not that big brown loose-jointed, wirehaired beach rambler, that lazy fishcatching, girlwatching, grey-eyed iconoclastic hustler. Stay happy, McGee, while you use up the stockpiled cash. Borrow a Junior from Meyer for the sake of coziness. Or get dressed and go over to the next doc, over to the big Wheeler where the Alabama Tiger maintains his permanent floating house party and join the festive pack. Do anything, but stop remembering the way Sam Taggart looks with all the wandering burned out of him. Stop remembering the sly shy way Nicki would walk toward you, across a room. Stop remembering the way Lois died. Get in there and have fun, fella. While there's fun to have. While there's some left. Before they deal you out. mcgee melancholy John D. MacDonald
ad52276 On each piece of paper I found addresses, telephone numbers, memos of various rendezvous made and kept--or perhaps not kept--people met and remembered, or perhaps not remembered, hopes probably not fulfilled: certainly not fulfilled, or I would not have been standing on that street corner. unfulfilled james-baldwin melancholy regret sad James Baldwin
c3e5af9 He remembered being here with Clark at three or four sometimes five in the morning, during what seemed at the time like adulthood and seemed in retrospect like a dream. adulthood-growing-up-philosophy melancholy Emily St. John Mandel
3b780db A los idolos es mejor no tocarlos porque algo de la pintura dorada que los recubria se nos queda siempre entre las manos human love idol melancholy Flaubert Gustave
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