Woe Quotes - Page 9

• In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing--the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.

  May Sarton

  Mistake, Optimistic, Past

  May Sarton (2014). “At Seventy: A Journal”, p.2, Open Road Media

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• Woe to him who saw no more sense in his life, no aim, no purpose, and therefore no point in carrying on.

  Viktor E. Frankl

  Purpose, Carrying On, Saws

  Viktor E. Frankl (2015). “Man's Search For Meaning, Gift Edition”, p.63, Beacon Press

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• hate blows a bubble of despair into hugeness world system universe and bang -fear buries a tomorrow under woe and up comes yesterday most green and young

  e. e. cummings

  Hate, Blow, Yesterday

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• He had grieved for me, I'll give him that much. But then he is so good at grieving! He wears woe as others wear velvet; sorrow flatters him like the light of candles; tears become him like jewels.

  Anne Rice

  Grieving, Light, Jewels

  Anne Rice (2013). “The Complete Vampire Chronicles 12-Book Bundle”, p.2112, Ballantine Books

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• All you who are in love Aye and can not remove it I pity the pain that you endure. For experience lets me know That your hearts are filled with woe It's a woe that no mortal can cure. -"the Curragh of Kildare

  Maggie Stiefvater

  Pain, Heart, Pity

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• I've heard it said that children born to stressful times never shake the air of woe . . . .

  Kate Morton

  Children, Air, Stressful

  Kate Morton (2010). “The Kate Morton Collection: The House at Riverton and The Forgotten Garden”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

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• It is a strange world, a sad world, a world full of miseries, and woes, and troubles; and yet when King Laugh come he make them all dance to the tune he play. Bleeding hearts, and dry bones of the churchyard, and tears that burn as they fall -- all dance together to the music that he make with that smileless mouth of him.

  Bram Stoker

  Kings, Fall, Heart

  Bram Stoker (2016). “Dracula (Fidia Classics)”, p.171, Bram Stoker

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• I doubt if I have made the best use of all my calamities. Soft, amiable natures they would have refined to saintliness; of strong, evil spirits they would have made demons; as for me, I have only been a woe-struck and selfish woman.

  Charlotte Bronte

  Strong, Selfish, Evil

  Charlotte Bronte (2009). “Villette”, p.80, The Floating Press

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• The happiest folk are those that are busy, for their minds are starved of time to seek out woe.

  Kate Morton

  Mind, Busy, Folks

  Kate Morton (2009). “The Forgotten Garden: A Novel”, p.95, Simon and Schuster

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• Gradually, the night stumbled as if stunned and wandering aimlessly into an overcast day -- limped through the wilderland of transition as though there were no knowing where the waste of darkness ended and the ashes of light began. The low clouds seemed full of grief -- tense and uneasy with accumulated woe -- and yet affectless, unable to rain, as if the air clenched itself too hard for tears. And through the dawn, Atiaran and Covenant moved heavily, unevenly, like pieces of a broken lament.

  Stephen R. Donaldson

  Grief, Rain, Night

  Stephen R. Donaldson (2012). “Lord Foul's Bane”, p.97, Del Rey

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• Little Words When you are gone, there is nor bloom nor leaf, Nor singing sea at night, nor silver birds; And I can only stare, and shape my grief In little words. I cannot conjure loveliness, to drown The bitter woe that racks my cords apart. The weary pen that sets my sorrow down Feeds at my heart. There is no mercy in the shifting year, No beauty wraps me tenderly about. I turn to little words- so you, my dear, Can spell them out.

  Dorothy Parker

  Grief, Heart, Night

  Dorothy Parker (1936). “Not So Deep as a Well”, Macmillan Company of Canada

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• Woe, destruction, ruin, and decay; the worst is death and death will have his day.

  William Shakespeare

  Death, Decay, Ruins

  'Richard II' (1595) act 3, sc. 2, l. 103

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• Can I see another's woe, And not be in sorrow too? Can I see another's grief, And not seek for kind relief? Can I see a falling tear, And not feel my sorrow's share? Can a father see his child Weep, nor be with sorrow filled? Can a mother sit and hear An infant groan, an infant fear? No, no! never can it be! Never, never can it be!

  William Blake

  Mother, Children, Father

  'Songs of Innocence' (1789) 'On Another's Sorrow'

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• I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it — keep going, keep going come what may. But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Woe Is Me, Ideas, Goal

  Letter to Theo van Gogh from Cuesmes, www.webexhibits.org. July 1880.

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• Don't you worry about that, Mr. Adamsson. Why don't you head back to Reykjavik and spend some of that extortionate fee you charged me for a couple of hours' usage of your frankly third-rate restaurant and perhaps find a friendless tree stump to listen to your woes?

  Eoin Colfer

  Couple, Worry, Tree

  "Artemis Fowl The Atlantis Complex". Book by July 20, 2010, July 20, 2010.

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• …and there, in the background, the sky’s sediment had sunk to a place where all the woe of the words ‘I am’ dissolved into blue peace. He said it. ‘The ocean.

  David Mitchell

  Ocean, Blue, Sky

  David Mitchell (2008). “Cloud Atlas”, p.336, Hachette UK

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• The sun hides not the ocean, which is the dark side of this earth, and which is two thirds of this earth. So, therefore, that mortal man who hath more of joy than sorrow in him, that mortal man cannot be true-- not true, or undeveloped. With books the same. The truest of all men was the Man of Sorrows, and the truest of all books is Solomon’s, and Ecclesiastes is the fine hammered steel of woe.

  Herman Melville

  Ocean, Book, Dark

  Herman Melville (2016). “Moby Dick (World Classics, Unabridged)”, p.293, Vij Books India Pvt Ltd

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• Congratulations," he said, his voice dry. "You finally managed to find a woman as tragically noble as yourself. I didn't think one existed." "I'm not tragic." Kaldar held up his hand. "Spare me. Some children are born wearing a silk shirt; you were born wrapped in melancholy. When they slapped you to make you cry, you just sighed heavily and a single tear rolled from your eye." He dragged his finger from the corner of his left eye to his cheek. " Your first words were probably 'woe is me.'" "My first words were 'Kaldar, shut up!' because you talked too much. Still do.

  Ilona Andrews

  Children, Congratulations, Eye

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• He seemed a part of the mute melancholy landscape, an incarnation of it's frozen woe, with all that was warm and sentient in him fast bound below the surface; but there was nothing nothing unfriendly in his silence. I simply felt that he lived in a depth of moral isolation too remote for casual access, and I had the sense that his loneliness was not merely the result of his personal plight, tragic as I guessed that to be, but had in it, as Harmon Gow had hinted, the profound accumulated cold of many Starkfield winters.

  Edith Wharton

  Loneliness, Winter, Profound

  Ethan Frome preface (1911)

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• Enlarge my life with multitude of days, In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays; Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know, That life protracted is protracted woe. Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the passages of joy.

  Samuel Johnson

  Time, Joy, Praying

  'The Vanity of Human Wishes' (1749) l. 255

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• Let the world slide, let the world go;
  A fig for care, and a fig for woe!
  If I can't pay, why I can owe,
  And death makes equal the high and low.

  John Heywood

  Death, World, Care

  "Be Merry Friends". "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations", 10th edition, 1919.

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• We have created a mindset in our society where everyone wants what they want when they want it. And if we don't get what we want when we want it, we feel ripped off. To make matters worse, we intensify our problems by continuously rehashing our woe-is-me story to the entire world. Whatever it is that has the potential to keep you from enjoying the day, understand that it's not the situation itself that is causing you to be unhappy. It's your thoughts and how you allow them to control you. It's what you choose to focus on that fuels your emotions and defines your reality.

  Steve Rizzo

  Reality, Woe Is Me, Focus

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• Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.

  Victor Hugo

  Men, Rome, Tyrants

  Victor Hugo, Charles Edwin Wilbour (1987). “Les misérables”, Dutton Adult

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• Woe to him who seeks to please rather than appall.

  Herman Melville

  Castaway, Please

  Herman Melville (2012). “Moby Dick (Illustrated & Annotated Edition)”, p.60, Jazzybee Verlag

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• Ah, woe is me! Winter is come and gone. But grief returns with the revolving year.

  Percy Bysshe Shelley

  Grief, Winter, Woe Is Me

  'Adonais' (1821) st. 18

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