Gloomy Quotes - Page 7

• Through the sharp air a flaky torrent flies, Mocks the slow sight, and hides the gloomy skies; The fleecy clouds their chilly bosoms bare, And shed their substance on the floating air.

  George Crabbe

  Air, Sky, Clouds

  George Crabbe, Adolphus William Ward (2014). “Poems”, p.13, Cambridge University Press

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• In literature and in art, alike, this gloomy fashion of regarding Death has been characteristic of Christianity. Death has been painted as a skeleton grasping a scythe, a grinning skull, a threatening figure with terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony scarecrow shaking an hourglass - all that could alarm and repel has been gathered round this rightly-named King of Terrors.

  Annie Besant

  Fashion, Art, Kings

  Annie Besant (2012). “The Theosophical Writings of Annie Besant”, p.332, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Then grew a wrinkle on fair Venus' brow, The amber sweet of love is turn'd to gall! Gloomy was Heaven; bright Phoebus did avow He would be coy, and would not love at all; Swearing no greater mischief could be wrought, Than love united to a jealous thought.

  Robert Greene

  Jealousy, Sweet, Love Is

  Robert Greene, George Peele (1861). “The dramatic and poetical works of Robert Greene & George Peele: with memoirs of the authors and notes”, p.311

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• By the shores of Gitchee Gumee,
  By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
  Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
  Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis,
  Dark behind it rose the forest,
  Rose the black and gloomy pine-trees,
  Rose the firs with cones upon them;
  Bright before it beat the water,
  Beat the clear and sunny water,
  Beat the shining Big-Sea-Water.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Daughter, Dark, Moon

  'The Song of Hiawatha' (1855) 'Hiawatha's Childhood'

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• If I have managed to brighten up even one gloomy childhood – then I’m satisfied.

  Astrid Lindgren

  Childhood, Satisfied, Ifs

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• London has the advantage of one of the most gloomy atmospheres in the world.

  Bayard Taylor

  Atmosphere, World, London

  Bayard Taylor (1869). “Views Afoot; Or, Europe Seen with Knapsack and Staff”, p.306

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• With rushing winds and gloomy skies The dark and stubborn Winter dies: Far-off, unseen, Spring faintly cries, Bidding her earliest child arise; March!

  Bayard Taylor

  Children, Spring, Dark

  Bayard Taylor (1866). “The Poems”, p.408

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• And when night, guiding her bright train of stars, Throws o'er the sleeping world her gloomy veil, Lonely amidst the desert and the darkness, Musing upon the night's calm majesty; Wrapt up in quietness, with shade and silence, My soul more closely worshippeth Thy presence; With an internal day I feel enlighten'd, And hear a voice, which biddeth me to hope.

  Alphonse de Lamartine

  Lonely, Stars, Sleep

  Alphonse de Lamartine (1849). “A biographical sketch: the poetical meditations : and, poetical and religious harmonies”, p.18

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• I myself have not met a self‐confessed liberal since the late fifties (and even then it was a tacky thing to admit, like coming from the middle class or the Middle West, those two gloomy seedbeds of talent), yet hardly a day passes that I don't read another attack on the “typical liberal” — as it might be announcing a pest of dinosaurs or a plague of unicorns.

  Wilfrid Sheed

  Self, Class, Two

  "Spock Mugged" by Wilfrid Sheed, www.nytimes.com. January 7, 1973.

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• Private courts, Gloomy as coffins, and unsightly lanes Thrilled by some female vendor's scream, belike The very shrillest of all London cries, May then entangle our impatient steps; Conducted through those labyrinths, unawares, To privileged regions and inviolate, Where from their airy lodges studious lawyers Look out on waters, walks, and gardens green.

  William Wordsworth

  Garden, Water, Labyrinth

  William Wordsworth (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of William Wordsworth (Illustrated)”, p.1983, Delphi Classics

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• Everybody should do in their lifetime, sometime, two things. One is to consider death...to observe skulls and skeletons and to wonder what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up-never. That is a most gloomy thing for contemplation; it's like manure. Just as manure fertilizes the plants and so on, so the contemplation of death and the acceptance of death is very highly generative of creating life. You'll get wonderful things out of that.

  Alan Watts

  Sleep, Acceptance, Skeletons

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• In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms and kiss it. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark. Believe me, every heart has its secret sorrows, which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Depression, Believe, Heart

  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1849). “Hyperion: A Romance”, p.154

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• At last, the golden orientall gate Of greatest heaven gan to open fayre, And Phoebus, fresh as brydegrome to his mate, Came dauncing forth, shaking his dewie hayre; And hurls his glistring beams through gloomy ayre.

  Edmund Spenser

  Heaven, Aurora, Golden

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• We can sometimes find a person again, but we cannot abolish time. And so on until the unforeseen day, gloomy as a winter night, when one no longer seeks that girl, or any other, when to find her would actually scare one. For one no longer feels that one has attractions enough to please, or strength enough to love. Not, of course, that one is in the strict sense of the word impotent. And as for loving, one would love more than ever. But one feels that it is too big an undertaking for the little strength one has left.

  Marcel Proust

  Girl, Winter, Night

  Marcel Proust (2000). “In Search of Lost Time, Volume IV: Sodom and Gomorrah (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.348, Modern Library

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• There's one bright spot in the generally gloomy picture know as the Pacific Conflict Zone. According to my calculations, by the year 2500 or so we should have killed off every last member of our species who is stupid enough to take part in so futile a pastime as this war between "ideals," and with luck they won't have left their genes behind because they'll typically have been killed at an age when society thinks they're too young to assume the responsibility of childbearing. After that we may get some peace and quiet for a change.

  John Brunner

  War, Stupid, Responsibility

  "Stand on Zanzibar". Book by John Brunner, 1968.

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• In the middle of the sixteenth century, Spain was the incubus of Europe. Gloomy and portentous, she chilled the world with her baneful shadow.

  Francis Parkman

  Europe, Shadow, World

  Francis Parkman, David Levin (1983). “France and England in North America: Pioneers of France in the New World. The Jesuits of North America in the seventeenth century. La Salle and the discovery of the Great West. The old régime in Canada”, p.33, Library of America

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• In general, the nightmare quality of Marx's thought gives it, in this bedevilled age, an air of greater reality than the gentle complacency of the orthodox academics. Yet he, at the same time, is more encouraging than they, for he releases hope as well as terror from Pandora's box, while they preach only the gloomy doctrine that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

  Joan Robinson

  Reality, Air, Giving

  "An Essay on Marxian Economics". Book by Joan Robinson, Chapter I, Introduction, p. 4-5, 1966.

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• Well it's a gloomy, rainy old day to be here in London, but it could be worse; I could be in Saudi Arabia where men are men, and women are cattle.

  Pat Condell

  Men, Arabia, London

  YouTube Chanel "Pat Condell"/ "More Demands From Islam", www.youtube.com. October 9, 2007.

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• What a day. It's 53 and gloomy - like President Obama.

  David Letterman

  President, President Obama

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• It will be my birthday on Tuesday. Last year, I reached the painful conclusion that there wasn't enough time left to read every book ever written. This year, my gloomy realisation is even more painful - I will not be able to correct everyone's mistakes before I depart.

  Daniel Finkelstein

  Mistake, Book, Years

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• On Earth, Discord! A gloomy Heaven above, opening her jealous gates to the nineteen thousandth part of the tithe of mankind! And below, an inescapable & inexorable Hell, expanding its leviathan jaws for the vast residue of Mortals!

  Robert Burns

  Jealous, Heaven, Atheism

  Robert Burns (1848). “The Complete Works of Robert Burns: With an Account of His Life, and a Criticism on His Writings. To which are Prefixed, Some Observations on the Character and Condition of the Scottish Peasantry”, p.256

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• endurance of inescapable sorrow is something which has to be learned alone. And only to endure is not enough. Endurance can be a harsh and bitter root in one's life, bearing poisonous and gloomy fruit, destroying other lives. Endurance is only the beginning. There must be acceptance and the knowledge that sorrow fully accepted brings its own gifts. For 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

  Acceptance, Roots, Joy

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• Man little knows what calamities are beyond his patience to bear till he tries them; as in ascending the heights of ambition, which look bright from below, every step we rise shows us some new and gloomy prospect of hidden disappointment; so in our descent from the summits of pleasure, though the vale of misery below may appear, at first, dark and gloomy, yet the busy mind, still attentive to its own amusement, finds, as we descend, something to flatter and to please. Still as we approach, the darkest objects appear to brighten, and the mortal eye becomes adapted to its gloomy situation.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Disappointment, Ambition, Eye

  Oliver Goldsmith (1854). “The Works of Oliver Goldsmith: Poetical works. Dramas. The vicar of Wakefield”, p.376

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• There is yet a silent agony in which the mind appears to disdain all external help, and broods over its distresses with gloomy reserve. This is the most dangerous state of mind; accidents or friendships may lessen the louder kinds of grief, but all remedies for this must be had from within, and there despair too often finds the most deadly enemy.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Grief, Agony, Mind

  Oliver Goldsmith (1854). “The Works of Oliver Goldsmith”, p.342

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• Mountains are nature's testimonials of anguish. They are the sharp cry of a groaning and travailing creation. Nature's stern agony writes itself on these furrowed brows of gloomy stone. These reft and splintered crags stand, the dreary images of patient sorrow, existing verdureless and stern because exist they must.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe

  Writing, Agony, Sorrow

  Harriet Beecher Stowe (1854). “Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands”, p.300

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