Melancholy Quotes - Page 8

• Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.

  Victor Hugo

  Being Sad, Pleasure And Happiness

  Victor Hugo (1888). “Toilers of the sea”

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• A Strange melancholy pervades me to which I hesitate to give the grave and beautiful name of sorrow. The idea of sorrow has always appealed to me but now I am almost ashamed of it's complete egoism. I have known boredom, regret, and occasionally remorse, but never sorrow. Today it envelops me like a silken web, enervating and soft, and sets me apart from everybody else.

  Francoise Sagan

  Sad, Beautiful, Regret

  FRANCOISE SAGAN (1955). “BONOUR TRISTESSE”

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• Aristoteles quidem ait: 'Omnes ingeniosos melancholicos esse.' Aristotle says that all men of genius are melancholy.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Science, Men, Genius

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• 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.

  Ray Bradbury

  Philosophical, Thinking, Men

  FaceBook post by Ray Bradbury from Dec 13, 2015

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• Temptation is a fearful word. It indicates the beginning of a possible series of infinite evils. It is the ringing of an alarm bell, whose melancholy sounds may reverberate through eternity. Like the sudden, sharp cry of "Fire!" under our windows by night, it should rouse us to instantaneous action, and brace every muscle to its highest tension.

  Horace Mann

  Night, Fire, Evil

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• It is my melancholy fate to like so many people I profoundly disagree with and often heartily dislike people who agree with me.

  Mary Kingsley

  Fate, People, Opinion

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• To the seeker after the new, or the sensational, to those who expect a sinister frisson from modern music, it is my melancholy duty to point out that all the bomb throwing and guillotining has already taken place.

  Constant Lambert

  Taken, Bombs, Modern

  "Music, Ho!". Book by Constant Lambert , "The Revolutionary Situation", p. 32, 1934.

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• Why has no one written a November rhapsody with plenty of lilt and swing? The poets who are moved at all by this month seem only stirred to lamentation, giving us year end and 'melancholy days' remarks, thereby showing that theory is stronger than observation among the rhyming brotherhood, or else that they have chronic indigestion and no gardens to stimulate them.

  Mabel Osgood Wright

  Garden, Swings, Years

  Mabel Osgood Wright (1901). “The garden of a commuter's wife”

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• Have you ever been so melancholy, that you wanted to fit in the palm of your beloved's hand? And lie there, for fortnights, or decades, or the length of time between stars? In complete silence?

  Sarah Ruhl

  Stars, Lying, Sadness

  Sarah Ruhl (2006). “The Clean House and Other Plays”

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• I am no longer a divine biped. I am no longer the freest German after Goethe, as Ruge named me in healthier days. I am no longer the great hero No. 2, who was compared with the grape-crowned Dionysius, whilst my colleague No. 1 enjoyed the title of a Grand Ducal Weimarian Jupiter. I am no longer a joyous, somewhat corpulent Hellenist, laughing cheerfully down upon the melancholy Nazarenes. I am now a poor fatally-ill Jew, an emaciated picture of woe, an unhappy man.

  Heinrich Heine

  Hero, Men, Laughing

  Heinrich Heine (2016). “Poems and Ballads of Heinrich Heine”, p.12, The Floating Press

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• There comes a moment during which almost every girl or boy falls into melancholy; they are tormented by a vague inquietude which rests on everything and finds nothing to calm it. They seek solitude; they weep; the silence to be found in cloister attracts them: the image of peace that seems to reign in religious houses seduces them. They mistake the first manifestations of a developing sexual nature for the voice of God calling them to Himself; and it is precisely when nature is inciting them that they embrace a fashion of life contrary to nature's wish.

  Denis Diderot

  Girl, Fashion, Religious

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• It is better, however, for his own reputation that the story-teller should risk a few actions for libel on account of these unfortunate coincidences than that he should adopt the melancholy device of using blanks or asterisks.

  James Payn

  Risk, Stories, Action

  James Payn (1882). “Sammlung”

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• Every moment instructs, and every object; for wisdom is infused into every form. It has been poured into us as blood; it convulsed us as pain; it slid into us as pleasure; it enveloped us in dull, melancholy days, or in days of cheerful labor; we did not guess its essence until after long time.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Wisdom, Pain, Essence

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2016). “Essays”, p.142, Open Road Media

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• My heart is broken by the terrible loss I have sustained in my old friends and companions and my poor soldiers. Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.

  Duke of Wellington

  Believe, Heart, Loss

  Letter from the field of Waterloo in June 1815. "The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World: From Marathon to Waterloo" by Edward Shepherd Creasy, 1851.

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• As a child I made a pact with my mother. I agreed that we were doomed, that she and I abided together in a cocoon of melancholy.

  Darcey Steinke

  Mother, Children, Together

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• Art schools are partly the villain here. (Never mind that I teach in them.) This generation of artists is the first to have been so widely credentialed, and its young members so fetishize the work beloved by their teachers that their work ceases to talk about anything else. Instead of enlarging our view of being human, it contains safe rehashing of received ideas about received ideas. This is a melancholy romance with artistic ruins, homesickness for a bygone era. This yearning may be earnest, but it stunts their work, and by turn the broader culture.

  Jerry Saltz

  Teacher, Art, School

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• There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy and its charm.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  History, Presidential, Environmental

  Theodore Roosevelt, H. W. Brands (2001). “African Game Trails: An Account of the African Wanderings of an American Hunter-naturalist”, p.21, Rowman & Littlefield

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• Once more their weird laughter of the loons comes to my ear, the distance lends it a musical, melancholy sound. For a dangerous ledge off the lighthouse island floats in on the still air the gentle trolling of a warning bell as it swings on the rocking buoy; it might be tolling for the passing of summer and sweet weather with that persistent, pensive chime.

  Celia Thaxter

  Summer, Sweet, Laughter

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• Sex endows the individual with a dumb and powerful instinct, which carries his body and soul continually towards another, makes it one of the dearest employments of his life to select and pursue a companion, and joins to possession the keenest pleasure, to rivalry the fiercest rage, and to solicitude an eternal melancholy. What more could be needed to suffuse the world with the deepest meaning and beauty?

  George Santayana

  Love, Sex, Powerful

  George Santayana (2012). “The Sense of Beauty”, p.39, Courier Corporation

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• Sometimes when you write something on the page, it can seem very funny, but when you act it out - and this happens to me a lot, actually - the melancholy of the situation becomes more front and center.

  Mike White

  Writing, Pages, Sometimes

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• I have a taste for a kind of melancholy and for being an absolute victim of love.

  Arielle Dombasle

  Taste, Kind, Victim

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow, Or by the lazy Scheld or wandering Po.

  Oliver Goldsmith

  Lazy, Laziness, Wander

  Oliver Goldsmith (1825). “A History of the Earth: And Animated Nature”, p.843

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• I long for the bulbs to arrive, for the early autumn chores are melancholy, but the planting of bulbs is the work of hope and is always thrilling.

  May Sarton

  Autumn, Long, October

  May Sarton (2014). “Journal of a Solitude”, p.18, Open Road Media

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• Wherever we direct our view, we discover the melancholy proofs of our depravity; whether we look to ancient or modern times, to barbarous or civilized nations, to the conduct of the world around us, or to the monitor within the breast; whether we read, or hear, or act, or think, or feel, the same humiliating lesson is forced upon us.

  William Wilberforce

  Thinking, Views, Looks

  William Wilberforce (2005). “A Practical View of Preferred Christians”, p.26, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I am sometimes accused by my peers of printing my pictures too dark. All I can say is that it goes with the mood of melancholy that is induced by witnessing at close quarters such intractable situations of conflict and joylessness.

  Don McCullin

  Dark, Peers, Sometimes

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