The quote database

a man should, at the first approaches, favour their grief and express some approbation of their sorrow

For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow.

Now the discourse that ought to come from friends and people disposed to be helpful should be consolation, and not mere assent with a man's sad feelings.

Otherwise, my dear wife, we shall seem discontented at the birth of our little daughter, if we consider our position before her birth as more perfect.

these things occurring daily and being importunate make the mind little, and narrow, and unsocial, and harsh, and timid, so that, being besieged and taken in hand by grief, it can no longer laugh, and shuns daylight, and avoids society

when people see their friends' houses on fire they put it out as quickly and energetically as they can, but when their souls are on fire they themselves bring fuel

much of grief is blunted and relaxed when the body is permeated by calm, like the sea in fine weather

Only, my dear wife, let us both be patient at this calamity.

Again, in taking away our friends, death does not take them away utterly, but leaves behind a mocking, tragical, and soon intolerable residue, which must be hurriedly concealed.

Before those who loved him, his memory shines like a reproach; they honour him for silent lessons; they cherish his example; and in what remains before them of their toil, fear to be unworthy of the dead.

The powers and the ground of friendship is a mystery; but, looking back, I can discern that, in part, we loved the thing he was, for some shadow of what he was to be.

The disturbers of our happiness, in this world, are our desires, our griefs, and our fears; and to all these, the consideration of mortality is a certain and adequate remedy.

Even grief, that passion to which the virtuous and tender mind is particularly subject, will be obviated or alleviated by the same thoughts.

Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away.

An habitual sadness seizes upon the soul, and the faculties are chained to a single object, which can never be contemplated but with hopeless uneasiness.

Native deformity cannot be rectified, a dead friend cannot return, and the hours of youth trifled away in folly, or lost in sickness, cannot be restored.

One temptation or sorrow passeth, and another cometh; and always we shall have somewhat to suffer

This it must be; and there is no means of escaping from tribulation and sorrow, except to bear them patiently.

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.

Why may I not rest me from this restlessness and sleep from this wide waking?

Well sped, my boy, before the world had dubbed your ambition insolence, had held your ideals unattainable, and taught you to cringe and bow.

Only in the chamber of death writhed the world's most piteous thing--a childless mother.

Better far this nameless void that stops my life than a sea of sorrow for you.

No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul.

We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.