The quote database

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way

The ostentation of grief is many times more than the grief itself.

A wise man gives way to tears in some cases, and cannot avoid them in others.

To mourn without measure is folly, and not to mourn at all is insensibility.

A false and a childish sorrow is appeased with as false and as childish a revenge.

In time, the most stubborn grief will leave us, if in prudence we do not leave that first.

To lament the death of a friend is both natural and just; a sigh or a tear I would allow to his memory: but no profuse or obstinate sorrow.

Tell over next all those you have known, one after the other: think how one buried his fellow, then lay dead himself, to be buried by a third.

To the man who is penetrated with true principles, the shortest, the most common hint is a sufficient memorial to keep him free of sorrow and fear.

The present moment is the same for all men, and their loss, therefore, is equal, for it is clear that what they lose in death is but a fleeting instant of time.

The third is, that it is folly to wear one's self out with grief which can avail nothing.

Supposing, then, each separate misfortune to occasion a separate additional grief, the whole would be too great to be supportable.

Fear proceeds from the same things when absent which occasion grief when present.

it was the virtue of the man that I loved, and that has not suffered death

Affected of course I am by the loss of a friend as I think there will never be again, such as I can fearlessly say there never was before.

Our first object, then, should be to prevent a breach; our second, to secure that, if it does occur, our friendship should seem to have died a natural rather than a violent death.

In such cases friendships should be allowed to die out gradually by an intermission of intercourse.

Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.

Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change

A man should diffuse joy, but, as much as he can, smother grief.

If a man should importune me to give a reason why I loved him, I find it could no otherwise be expressed, than by making answer: because it was he, because it was I.

Your heart is wounded with compassion to hear the mourning of friends, and, perhaps with anger, to hear the counterfeit condolings of pretenders.

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

True magnanimity consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

For this reason there is no truth comparable to sorrow.