Desolate Quotes

• It keeps eternal whisperings around desolate shores

  John Keats

  Whispering, Shore, Eternal

  'On the Sea' (1817)

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• Music I heard with you was more than music, and bread I broke with you was more than bread. Now that I am without you, all is desolate; all that was once so beautiful is dead.

  Conrad Aiken

  Music, Beautiful, Bread

  Conrad Aiken (1970). “Collected poems”, Oxford Univ Pr

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• No soul is desolate as long as there is a human being for whom it can feel trust and reverence.

  George Eliot

  Friendship, Trust, Character

  George Eliot (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated)”, p.1454, Delphi Classics

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• Memories begin to creep forward from hidden corners of your mind. Passing disappointments. Lost chances and lost causes. Heartbreaks and pain and desolate, horrible loneliness. Sorrows you thought long forgotten mingle with still-fresh wounds.

  Erin Morgenstern

  Pain, Memories, Disappointment

  FaceBook post by Erin Morgenstern from Nov 07, 2012

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• We are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams... Yet we are the movers and shakers of the world for ever, it seems.

  Arthur O'Shaughnessy

  Life, Dream, World

  'Ode" l. 7 (1874)

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• The sky was different, without color, taut and unforgiving. But the water was the most unforgiving thing, nearly black at times, cold enough, I knew, to kill me, violent enough to break me apart. The waves were immense, battering rocky beaches without sand. The farther I went, the more desolate it became, more than any place I'd been, but for this very reason the landscape drew me, claimed me as nothing had in a long time.

  Jhumpa Lahiri

  Beach, Color, Sky

  FaceBook post by Jhumpa Lahiri from Oct 29, 2012

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• We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.

  Arthur O'Shaughnessy

  Inspirational, Music, Dream

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• Come! Poor little heart! Be cheery and brave. We'll be a great deal to one another, if we are thrown off and left desolate.

  Elizabeth Gaskell

  Heart, Brave, Littles

  Elizabeth Gaskell (2010). “The Complete Works of Elizabeth Gaskell (20+ Books)”, p.1624, BookCaps Study Guides

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• We come to know who we really are in life during the dark and difficult and desolate days of our journey.

  Tavis Smiley

  Dark, Journey, Difficult

  Source: www.pittsburghurbanmedia.com

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• We are the music-makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea-breakers, And sitting by desolate streams. World-losers and world-forsakers, Upon whom the pale moon gleams; Yet we are the movers and shakers, Of the world forever, it seems.

  Arthur O'Shaughnessy

  Life, Music, Dream

  'Ode" l. 7 (1874)

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• When our forefathers put down roots in desolate places, the thing that allowed them to survive was that they had a faith to see them through the tough times.

  Lee Greenwood

  Roots, Tough Times, Forefathers

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• How many desolate creatures on the earth have learnt the simple dues of fellowship and social comfort, in a hospital.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Simple, Comfort, Earth

  'Aurora Leigh' (1857) bk. 3, l. 1121

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• Still let my tyrants know, I am not doomed to wear
  Year after year in gloom, and desolate despair;
  A messenger of Hope comes every night to me,
  And offers for short life, eternal liberty.

  Emily Bronte

  Hope, Short Life, Night

  Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, Anne Bronte (2014). “Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell”, p.109, The Floating Press

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• Envy is the coward side of Hate, And all her ways are bleak and desolate.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Hate, Envy, Coward

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• As long as there is one upright man, as long as there is one compassionate woman, the contagion may spread and the scene is not desolate. Hope is the thing that is left us in a bad time.

  E. B. White

  Hope, Time, Women

  E. B. White (2011). “In the Words of E.B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers”, p.126, Cornell University Press

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• it is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Hate, Love Is, Hatred

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (2010). “The Scarlet Letter”, p.225, Bibliolis Books

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• Women and men in the crowd meet and mingle, Yet with itself every soul standeth single.

  Alice Cary

  Men, Soul, Crowds

  Alice Cary, Phoebe Cary, Mary Clemmer (1876). “The Poetical Works of Alice and Phoebe Cary”, p.180

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• He was swept with a sadness, a sadness deep and penetrating, leaving him desolate like someone washed up on a beach, a lone survivor in a world full of strangers.

  Robert Cormier

  Beach, Sadness, Leaving

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• Sort of desolate, decayed, the smell of - I don't want to dramatise it - but death, you know. That is what it feels like, no-man's-land, and it is not a nice place to be.

  Anton Oliver

  Nice, Men, Land

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• THESE are the desolate, dark weeks when nature in its barrenness equals the stupidity of man. The year plunges into night and the heart plunges lower than night.

  William Carlos Williams

  Heart, Dark, Night

  Ian D. Copestake, William Carlos Williams (2004). “Rigor of Beauty: Essays in Commemoration of William Carlos Williams”, p.100, Peter Lang

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• Wisdom is sold in a desolate marketplace where none can come to buy.

  William Blake

  Marketplace

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• Those of faith who plant sacred thoughts in the uplands of time, the secret gardeners of the Lord in mankind's desolate hopes, may slacken and tarry but rarely betray their vocation.

  Abraham Joshua Heschel

  Secret, May, Sacred

  Abraham Joshua Heschel (1976). “Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion”, p.95, Macmillan

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• We live in an era where masses of people come and go across a hostile planet, desolate and violent. Refugees, emigrants, exiles, deportees. We are a tragic contingent.

  Isabel Allende

  Peace, People, Eras

  Isabel Allende, John Rodden (2004). “Conversations with Isabel Allende: Revised Edition”, p.58, University of Texas Press

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• Armstrong described the lunar surface as 'beautiful.' I thought to myself, 'It's not really beautiful. It's magnificent that we're here, but what a desolate place we are visiting.'

  Buzz Aldrin

  Beautiful, Visiting, Surface

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• I was twenty-one at the time, about to turn twenty-two. No prospect of graduating soon, and yet no reason to quit school. Caught in the most curiously depressing circumstances. For months I'd been stuck, unable to take one step in any new direction. The world kept moving on; I alone was at a standstill. In the autumn, everything took on a desolate cast, the colors swiftly fading before my eyes. The sunlight, the smell of the grass, the faintest patter of rain, everything got on my nerves.

  Haruki Murakami

  Depressing, Moving, Rain

  "A Wild Sheep Chase". Book by Haruki Murakami, 1982.

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