Woe Quotes - Page 17

• Trouble follows me wherever I go. Thing I'm in is just a sack o'woe.

  Jon Hendricks

  Jazz, Trouble, Follow Me

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• We prefer the shadows where we feel safe over the light which exposes us and causes us to say 'woe is me!'

  R. C. Sproul

  Light, Woe Is Me, Shadow

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• We only see clearly when we have reached the depths of woe.

  Ouida

  Depth, Affliction

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• Woe unto him that is never alone, and cannot bear to be alone.

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton

  Woe Unto, Solitude, Bears

  Philip Gilbert Hamerton (1875). “The Intellectual Life”, p.324

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• There is no more terrible woe upon earth than the woe of the stricken brain, which remembers the days of its strength, the living light of its reason, the sunrise of its proud intelligence, and knows that these have passed away like a tale that is told.

  Ouida

  Light, Sunrise, Brain

  Ouida (1874). “Folle-Farine”, p.196

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• Tis aye a solemn thing to me
  To look upon a babe that sleeps--
  Wearing in its spirit-deeps
  The unrevealed mystery
  Of its Adam's taint and woe,
  Which, when they revealed lie,
  Will not let it slumber so.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Lying, Sleep, Looks

  Robert Browning, Elizabeth Barrett Browning “The Brownings' Correspondence: January 1838-December 1840, letters 602-783”

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• Sing, seraph with the glory! heaven is high.
  Sing, poet with the sorrow! earth is low.
  The universe's inward voices cry
  "Amen" to either song of joy and woe.
  Sing, seraph, poet! sing on equally!

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Song, Voice, Joy

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1856). “Poems”, p.260

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• Woe to the man that first did teach the cursed steel to bite in his own flesh, and make way to the living spirit!

  Edmund Spenser

  War, Men, Flesh

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• What avails it that indulgent Heaven
  From mortal eyes has wrapt the woes to come,
  If we, ingenious to torment ourselves,
  Grow pale at hideous fictions of our own?
  Enjoy the present; nor which needless cares
  Of what may spring from blind misfortune's womb,
  Appal the surest hour that life bestows.
  Serence, and master of yourself, prepare
  For what may come; and leave the rest to Heaven.

  John Armstrong

  Spring, Eye, Heaven

  John Armstrong (2011). “John Armstrong's The Art of Preserving Health: Eighteenth-century Sensibility in Practice”, p.116, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

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• Woe to him, . . . who has no court of appeal against the world's judgment.

  Thomas Carlyle

  World, Judgment, Court

  Thomas Carlyle (1872). “Works”, p.274

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• Sin is dark and loves the dark, still hides from itself in gloom, and in the darkest hell is still itself the darkest hell and the severest woe.

  Robert Pollok

  Dark, And Love, Sin

  Robert Pollok, James Robert Boyd (1860). “Pollok's Course of Time”, p.288

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• O fleeting joys Of Paradise, dear bought with lasting woes!

  John Milton

  Joy, Fleeting, Paradise

  1665 Adam's lament. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.10, l.741-2.

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• A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, As one great furnace, flamed; yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Serv'd only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all; but torture without end.

  John Milton

  Flames, Light, Sight

  'Paradise Lost' (1667) bk. 1, l. 61

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• Oh! grief is fantastic; it weaves a web on which to trace the history of its woe from every form and change around; it incorporates itself with all living nature; it finds sustenance in every object; as light, it fills all things, and, like light, it gives its own colors to all.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Grief, Light, Color

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1826). “The last man, by the author of Frankenstein”, p.197

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• Life is richly worth living, with its continual revelations of mighty woe, yet infinite hope; and I take it to my breast.

  Margaret Fuller

  Infinite Hope, Life Is, Revelations

  Margaret Fuller, James Freeman Clarke, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Henry Channing (1852). “Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli”, p.306

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• Conversation augments pleasure and diminishes pain by our having shares in either; for silent woes are greatest, as silent satisfaction leas; since sometimes our pleasure would be none but for telling of it, and our grief insupportable but for participation.

  William Wycherley

  Sympathy, Pain, Grief

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• I knock unbidden once at every gate--
  If sleeping, wake--if feasting, rise before
  I turn away--it is the hour of fate,
  And they who follow me reach every state
  Mortals desire, and conquer every foe
  Save death, but those who doubt of hesitate,
  Condemned to failure, penury and woe,
  Seek me in vain and uselessly implore,
  I answer not, and I return no more.

  John James Ingalls

  Sleep, Fate, Opportunity

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• Surrounded as we are by the wants and woes of our fellow-men, and yet given to follow our own pleasures, regardless of their pains, are we not like people sitting up with a corpse, and making merry in the house of the dead?

  Herman Melville

  Pain, Men, People

  Herman Melville (2016). “Redburn.His First Voyage”, p.208, Herman Melville

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• Thou hast been called, O sleep, the friend of woe, But 'tis the happy that have called thee so.

  Robert Southey

  Friendship, Sleep, Thee

  "Common-place Book: Analytical readings".

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• Lost is our freedom
  When we submit to women so:
  Why do we need 'em
  When, in their best, they work our woe?

  Thomas Campion

  Freedom, Women, Needs

  Thomas Campion (1889). “The Works of Dr. Thomas Campion”

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• When the precipitancy of a man's wishes hurries on his ideas ninety times faster than the vehicle he rides in--woe be to truth!

  Laurence Sterne

  Patience, Men, Ideas

  Laurence Sterne (1849). “The Works of Laurence Sterne: Containing The Life and Opinions of Tristan Shandy ... [etc.] ; with a Life of the Author Written by Himself”, p.215

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• The state tends to expand in proportion to its means of existence and to live beyond its means, and these are, in the last analysis, nothing but the substance of the people. Woe to the people that cannot limit the sphere of action of the state! Freedom, private enterprise, wealth, happiness, independence, personal dignity, all vanish.

  Frederic Bastiat

  Mean, People, Voting

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• But woe awaits a country when She sees the tears of bearded men.

  Walter Scott

  Country, Men, Tears

  Walter Scott, Sir Walter Scott (1841). “The Poetical Works of Sir Walter Scott, Bart”, p.123

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• We have to make myths of our lives, the point being that if we do, then every grief or inexplicable seizure by weather, woe, or work can-if we discipline ourselves and think hard enough-be turned to account, be made to yield further insight into what it is to be alive, to be a human being.

  May Sarton

  Grief, Writing, Thinking

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• Happiness and depression cannot blossom on the same vine. Some people affirm their woes and beg for sympathy. Others, unfortunately, cast gloom wherever they go. These poor souls were born sick and tired.

  Louis Sullivan

  Depression, Tired, People

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