Lamentation Quotes - Page 2

• There is not any advantage to be won from grim lamentation.

  Homer

  Sorrow, Advantage, Grim

  Homer (2011). “The Iliad of Homer”, p.517, University of Chicago Press

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• Some communities don't permit open, honest inquiry about the things that matter most. Lots of people have voiced a concern, expressed a doubt, or raised a question, only to be told by their family, church, friends, or tribe: "We don't discuss those things here." I believe the discussion itself is divine. Abraham does his best to bargain with God, most of the book of Job consists of arguments by Job and his friends about the deepest questions of human suffering, God is practically on trial in the book of Lamentations, and Jesus responds to almost every question he's asked with...a question.

  Rob Bell

  Jesus, Jobs, Believe

  Rob Bell (2011). “Love Wins: At the Heart of Life’s Big Questions”, p.4, HarperCollins UK

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• Try the Lamentations of Jeremiah. They always pick me up.

  Peter De Vries

  Pick Me Up, Despair, Trying

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• Not by lamentations and mournful chants ought we to celebrate the funeral of a good man, but by hymns, for in ceasing to be numbered with mortals he enters upon the heritage of a diviner life.

  Plutarch

  Death, Men, Hymns

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• We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they live decorously instead of going out and getting firsthand information about life. The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot. The writer's business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged in it.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Taken, College, Childhood

  Flannery O'Connor (1969). “Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose”, p.84, Macmillan

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• From nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations

  Hippocrates

  Sports, Laughter, Grief

  Hippocrates (1979). “Writings”

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• Man alone at the very moment of his birth, cast naked upon the naked earth, does she abandon to cries and lamentations.

  Pliny the Elder

  Men, Doe, Naked

  Pliny (the Elder.) (1957). “Natural History: An Account by a Roman of what Romans Knew and Did and Valued”

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• Of four infernal rivers that disgorge/ Into the burning Lake their baleful streams;/Abhorred Styx the flood of deadly hate,/Sad Acheron of sorrow, black and deep;/Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud/ Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon/ Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage./ Far off from these a slow and silent stream,/ Lethe the River of Oblivion rolls/ Her wat'ry Labyrinth whereof who drinks,/ Forthwith his former state and being forgets,/ Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.

  John Milton

  Pain, Hate, Grief

  John Milton, “Paradise Lost: Book 02”

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• The gods at will can shape a gladder strain, and from the lamentations at the graveside, a song of triumph may arise.

  Aeschylus

  Song, Triumph, Shapes

  Aeschylus (1964). “The Libation Bearers: And The Eumenides: The Oresteia, Parts II and III.”

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• Not by lamentations and mournful chants ought we to celebrate the funeral of a good man, but by hymns; for, ion ceasing to be numbered with mortals, he enters upon the heritage of a diviner life. Since he is gone where he feels no pain, let us not indulge in too much grief. The soul is incapable of death. And he, like a bird not long enough in his cage to become attached to it, is free to fly away to a purer air. . . . Since we cherish a trust like this, let our outward actions be in accord with it, and let us keep our hearts pure and our minds calm.

  Plutarch

  Life, Pain, Grief

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• Do not underestimate the human being, who sometimes appears so simple. Even with sight as sharp as an eagle, a mind as sharp as a razor, senses more powerful than gods, hearing that can catch the music and the lamentations of life, your knowledge of humanity will never be total.

  Pramoedya Ananta Toer

  Powerful, Simple, Sight

  Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1991). “This Earth of Mankind”, William Morrow

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• Let no one honour me with tears, or bury me with lamentation. Why? Because I fly hither and thither, living in the mouths of me.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Tears, Mouths, Reputation

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• The measure of woman's distaste for any part of her life lies not in the loudness of her lamentations (these are only an attempt to buy a martyr's crown at a reduced price) but in her persistent pursuit of that occupation of which she never ceases to complain.

  Quentin Crisp

  Lying, Complaining, Crowns

  "The Naked Civil Servant". Book by Quentin Crisp, Chapter 15, 1968.

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• Like all her friends, I miss her greatly...But...I am sure there is no case for lamentation...Virginia Woolf got through an immense amount of work, she gave acute pleasure in new ways, she pushed the light of the English language a little further against darkness. Those are facts.

  E. M. Forster

  Virginia, Light, Missing

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• Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds; and his friends asking him if any accident had befallen him, he returns this answer: "Do you not think it a matter worthy of lamentation that when there is such a vast multitude of them, we have not yet conquered one?

  Plutarch

  Thinking, Numbers, Asking

  Plutarch (1871). “Plutarch's Morals”, p.140

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• Let no one honour me with tears, or bury me with lamentation. Why? Because I fly hither and thither, living in the mouths of me.
  [Lat., Nemo me lacrymis decoret, nec funera fletu.
  Faxit cur? Volito vivu' per ora virum.]

  Quintus Ennius

  Tears, Mouths, Nemo

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• In all their jollity in this world, the wicked are but as a book fairly bound, which when it is opened is full of nothing but tragedies. So when the book of their consciences shall be once opened, there is nothing to be read but lamentations and woes.

  Richard Sibbes

  Book, Wicked, Tragedy

  Richard Sibbes (2015). “Complete Works of Richard Sibbes: (7 Volume Set)”, p.186, Titus Books

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• Others had been a little wild, which was not to be wondered at, and not very blamable; but, he had made a lamentation and uproar which it was dangerous for the people to hear, as there is always contagion in weakness and selfishness.

  Charles Dickens

  People, Words Of Wisdom, Selfishness

  Charles Dickens (1868). “Christmas Stories from "Household Words" and "All the Year Round"”, p.127

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• Time is never more misspent than while we declaim against the want of it; all our actions are then tinctured with peevishness. The yoke of life is certainly the least oppressive when we carry it with good-humor; and in the shades of rural retirement, when we have once acquired a resolution to pass our hours with economy, sorrowful lamentations on the subject of time misspent and business neglected never torture the mind.

  Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

  Time, Retirement, Mind

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• I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting — its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers ... it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated ... that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.

  William Tecumseh Sherman

  Husband, Father, Tired

  Letter to James E. Yeatman on May 21, 1865. "Sherman: Merchant of Terror, Advocate of Peace". Book by Charles Edmund Vetter, p. 289, 1992.

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• It's a great wonder to me, the Irish attachment to our history. What is it but a series of lamentations?

  Dorothy Salisbury Davis

  Attachment, Wonder, Ireland

  Dorothy Salisbury Davis (2014). “The Habit of Fear”, p.212, Open Road Media

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• The safe and general antidote against sorrow is employment. It is commonly observed, that among soldiers and seamen, though there is much kindness, there is little grief; they see their friend fall without any of that lamentation which is indulged in security and idleness, because they have no leisure to spare from the care of themselves; and whoever shall keep his thoughts equally busy will find himself equally unaffected with irretrievable losses.

  Samuel Johnson

  Kindness, Grief, Fall

  Samuel Johnson (1810). “The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D.: With An Essay on His Life and Genius”, p.306

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• Desolate--Life is so dreary and desolate--
  Women and men in the crowd meet and mingle,
  Yet with itself every soul standeth single,
  Deep out of sympathy moaning its moan--
  Holding and having its brief exultation--
  Making its lonesome and low lamentation--
  Fighting its terrible conflicts alone.

  Alice Cary

  Fighting, Men, Soul

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

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• Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain come joys, delights, laughter and sports, and sorrows, griefs, despondency, and lamentations. And by this, in an especial manner, we acquire wisdom and knowledge, and see and hear and know what are foul and what are fair, what are bad and what are good, what are sweet and what are unsavory…. And by the same organ we become mad and delirious, and fears and terrors assail us….All these things we endure from the brain when it is not healthy….In these ways I am of the opinion that the brain exercises the greatest power in the man.

  Hippocrates

  Sports, Sweet, Laughter

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• Refraining from all evil, not clinging to birth and death, working in deep compassion for all sentient beings, respecting those over you and pitying those below you, without any detesting or desiring, worrying or lamentation - this is what is called Buddha. Do not search beyond it.

  Dogen

  Compassion, Evil, Worry

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