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Word Gems exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Sorrow, Sadness
"Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth." Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment
Editor's 1-Minute Essay: Sorrow, Sadness
Vincent van Gogh, "Old Man in Sorrow" (On the Threshold of Eternity), 1890
Eckhart Tolle: Guilt, regret, resentment, sadness and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past and not enough presence. William Shakespeare: Affliction may one day smile again; and till then, sit thee down, sorrow! Jiddu Krishnamurti: Live with it. You live with pleasure, don't you? Why don't you live with suffering completely? Can you live with it in the sense of not escaping from it? What takes place? Watch. The mind is very clear, sharp. It is faced with the fact. The very suffering transformed into passion is enormous. From that arises a mind that can never be hurt. Full stop. That is the secret. Eckhart Tolle: Loss is very painful, because any kind of loss leaves a hole in the fabric of one's existence. Emily Dickinson: After great pain, a formal feeling comes– Emily Dickinson: It might be lonelier Emily Dickinson: I felt a Funeral, in my Brain Emily Dickinson: No Man can compass a Despair — Emily Dickinson: There Is A Pain--So Utter Emily Dickinson: I was the slightest in the House, I could not bear to live aloud Edgar Allan Poe: The Raven: midnight dreary, weak and weary William Wordsworth: I wandered lonely as a cloud Marcia Lee Anderson: Diagnosis: we make inward bedlam and will not come out Oscar Wilde: Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground. Rita Mae Brown: Sorrow is how we learn to love. Your heart isn't breaking. It hurts because it's getting larger. The larger it gets, the more love it holds. Aeschylus: There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief. John Keats: To Sorrow I bade good-morrow, And thought to leave her far away behind; But cheerly, cheerly, She loves me dearly: She is so constant to me, and so kind. Samuel Johnson: Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul, which every new idea contributes in its passage to scour away. It is the putrefaction of stagnant life, and is remedied by exercise and motion. Henry Ward Beecher: Sorrow makes men sincere.
Lawrence Durrell: Sorrow is implicit in love as gravitation is implicit in mass. Homer: Sinks my sad soul with sorrow to the grave. Washington Irving: There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love. Jean Paul: Sorrows are like thunder-clouds, in the distance they look black, over our heads scarcely gray. Moliere: If you suppress grief too much, it can well redouble. Jean Ingelow: When sparrows build and the leaves break forth My old sorrow wakes and cries. Robert Browning: I walked a mile with Pleasure; She chattered all the way. But left me none the wiser For all she had to say. I walked a mile with Sorrow And ne'er a word said she; But oh, the things I learned from her When Sorrow walked with me! Eckhart Tolle: There have been many people for whom limitations, failure, loss, or pain in whatever form turned out to be their greatest teacher. It taught them to let go of false self-images and superficial ego-dictated goals and desires. It gave them depth, humility and compassion. It made them more real. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Sorrow and silence are strong, and patient endurance is godlike. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Look not mournfully to the past ... it comes not again; wisely improve the present - it is thine; go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear; and with a manly heart. Fyodor Dostoevsky: Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
Lao-Tzu: Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. Khalil Gibran: When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. George Eliot: There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope. Edwin Hubbel Chapin: It is those who make the least display of their sorrow who mourn the deepest. Chanakya: He who is overly attached to his family members experiences fear and sorrow, for the root of all grief is attachment. Jiddu Krishnamurti: How do you listen? Do you listen with your projections, through your projection, through your ambitions, desire, fears, anxieties, through hearing only what you want to hear, only what will be satisfactory, what will gratify, what will give comfort, what will for the moment alleviate your suffering? If you listen through the screen of your desires, then you obviously listen to your own voice. Agatha Christie: I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing. Samuel Johnson: Sorrow is the mere rust of the soul. Activity will cleanse and brighten it. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings: Sorrow was like the wind. It came in gusts. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Rash combat oft immortalizes man; if he should fall, he is renowned in song; but after-ages reckon not the ceaseless tears which the forsaken woman sheds. Poets tell us not of the many nights consumed in weeping, or of the dreary days wherein her anguished soul vainly yearns to call her loved one back. Thomas Moore: Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal. Lord Byron: Sorrow is knowledge, those that know the most must mourn the deepest, the tree of knowledge is not the tree of life. Tarun J. Tejpal: Sorrow must not be cultivated: it is a poor lifestyle choice. Susanna Kaysen: When you’re sad you need to hear your sorrow structured into sound. Giovanni Giocondo: Everything we call a trial, a sorrow, or a duty, believe me, that angel's hand is there. Eckhart Tolle: Sometimes people need to experience great loss to really be driven deeper. Rumi: Sorrows are the rags of old clothes and jackets that serve to cover, and then are taken off. That undressing, and the beautiful naked body underneath, is the sweetness that comes after grief. Khalil Gibran: The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Washington Irving: The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Confucius: We should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression. Samuel Johnson: There is no wisdom in useless and hopeless sorrow, but there is something in it so like virtue, that he who is wholly without it cannot be loved. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Every man has his secret sorrows. William Blake: Joys impregnate. Sorrows bring forth. Eckhart Tolle: It is precisely through the onset of old age, through loss or personal tragedy, that the spiritual dimension would traditionally come into people's lives. This is to say, their inner purpose would emerge only as their outer purpose collapsed and the shell of the ego would begin to crack open. The emphasis shifts from doing to Being, and our civilization, which is lost in doing, knows nothing of Being. It asks: being? What do you do with it? Eckhart Tolle: Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego's fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the corner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life. William Shakespeare: Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break. Khalil Gibran: When you are joyous look deep into your heart and you will find that it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. Henry Ward Beecher: Sorrow is Mount Sinai. If one will, one may go up and talk with God, face to face. Dante Alighieri: There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery. Miguel de Cervantes: It seldom happens that any felicity comes so pure as not to be tempered and allayed by some mixture of sorrow. O. Henry: There is this difference between the grief of youth and that of old age; youth's burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares; old age may give and give, but the sorrow remains the same. William Shakespeare: For sorrow ends not, when it seemeth done. Edith Wharton: There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow. George Eliot: Trouble comes to us all in this life: we set our hearts on things which it isn't God's will for us to have, and then we go sorrowing. Eckhart Tolle: One could say that everybody in this world has a spiritual teacher. For most people, their losses and disasters represent the teacher; their suffering is the teacher. Ivan Panin: Our comforts come from God; our sorrows, from ourselves. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: A great sorrow, like a mariner's quadrant, brings the sun at noon down to the horizon, and we learn where we are on the sea of life. Marcus Tullius Cicero: There is pleasure in calm remembrance of a past sorrow. Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu: There is no dealing with great sorrow as if it were under the control of our wills. It is a terrible phenomenon, whose laws we must study, and to whose conditions we must submit, if we would mitigate it. Honore de Balzac: Genuine sorrows are very tranquil in appearance in the deep bed they have dug for themselves. But, seeming to slumber, they corrode the soul like that frightful acid which penetrates crystal. C. S. Lewis: No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. Alphonse de Lamartine: Thou makest the man, O Sorrow!--yes, the whole man,--as the crucible gold. Henry Ward Beecher: Sorrows, as storms, bring down the clouds close to the earth; sorrows bring heaven down close; and they are instruments of cleansing and purifying. Leigh Hunt: Part of our good consists in the endeavor to do sorrows away, and in the power to sustain them when the endeavor fails,--to bear them nobly, and thus help others to bear them as well. Robert Browning: Sorrow, the heart must bear, Sits in the home of each, conspicuous there. Many a circumstance, at least, Touches the very breast. For those Whom any sent away,--he knows: And in the live man's stead, Armor and ashes reach The house of each.
Thomas Binney: The dark in soul see in the universe their own shadow; the shattered spirit can only reflect external beauty in form as untrue and broken as itself. Khalil Gibran: When you are sorrowful, look again. Alfred Lord Tennyson: A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier times. Henry James: Sorrow comes in great waves...but rolls over us, and though it may almost smother us, it leaves us. And we know that if it is strong, we are stronger, inasmuch as it passes and we remain. Meister Eckhart: Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us. Alfred de Musset: There is no worse sorrow than remembering happiness in the day of sorrow. Thomas Aquinas: Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine. Steven Tyler: Every life has a measure of sorrow, and sometimes this is what awakens us. Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Earth may embitter, not remove, The love divinely given; And e'en that mortal grief shall prove The immortality of love, And lead us nearer heaven. Lord Byron: The busy have no time for tears. William Cowper: The path of sorrow, and that path alone, leads to the land where sorrow is unknown. Percy Bysshe Shelley: Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. Orson F. Whitney: No pain that we suffer, no trial that we experience is wasted. It ministers to our education, to the development of such qualities as patience, faith, fortitude and humility. All that we suffer and all that we endure, especially when we endure it patiently, builds up our characters, purifies our hearts, expands our souls, and makes us more tender and charitable, more worthy to be called the children of God . . . and it is through sorrow and suffering, toil and tribulation, that we gain the education that we come here to acquire and which will make us more like our Father and Mother in heaven. Percy Bysshe Shelley: The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself. Jean Paul: Sorrows gather around great souls as storms do around mountains; but, like them, they break the storm and purify the air of the plain beneath them. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad. Ralph Waldo Emerson: Sorrow makes us all children again - destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing. Jim Rohn: The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy. Marcus Tullius Cicero: It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness. Khalil Gibran: Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the same well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives? Khalil Gibran: Joy and sorrow are inseparable … together they come and when one sits alone with you … remember that the other is asleep upon your bed. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Who never ate his bread in sorrow, Who never spent the darksome hours Weeping, and watching for the morrow,- He knows you not, ye heavenly Powers. Philip James Bailey: Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths. Ovid: Bear and endure: This sorrow will one day prove to be for your good. Samuel Johnson: The poor and the busy have no leisure for sentimental sorrow. Rumi: Whenever sorrow comes, be kind to it. For God has placed a pearl in sorrow’s hand. Maurice Maeterlinck: What man is there that does not laboriously, though all unconsciously, himself fashion the sorrow that is to be the pivot of his life.
Sara Teasdale: I shall not let a sorrow die Until I find the heart of it, Nor let a wordless joy go by Until it talks to me a bit. Christian Nestell Bovee: We may learn from children how large a part of our grievances is imaginary. But the pain is just as real. Eckhart Tolle: On all levels, evolution occurs in response to a crisis situation, not infrequently a life-threatening one, when the old structures, inner or outer, are breaking down or are not working anymore. On a personal level, this often means the experience of loss of one kind or another: the death of a loved one, the end of a close relationship, loss of possessions, your home, status, or a breakdown of the external structures of your life that provided a sense of security. Eckhart Tolle: For many people, illness - loss of health - represents the crisis situation that triggers an awakening. With serious illness comes awareness of your own mortality, the greatest loss of all. Eckhart Tolle: Loss of meaning is often part of the suffering that comes with physical loss, but it can also happen to people who have gained everything the world has to offer - who have made it in the eyes of the world - and suddenly find that their success or possessions are empty and unfulfilling. George MacDonald: Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths. Cometh white-robed Sorrow, stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the door she must not enter. Oscar Wilde: It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them. Maimonides: Those who grieve find comfort in weeping and in arousing their sorrow until the body is too tired to bear the inner emotions. Thomas Moore: Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish; Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal. Epictetus: The origin of sorrow is this: to wish for something that does not come to pass. Ralph Waldo Emerson: What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.[What is a sorrow? A feeling whose benefits have not yet been discovered.] Khalil Gibran: He who has not looked on Sorrow will never see Joy. [For without sorrow how would you know what joy is? Contrast provides perceptive clarity.] Ellen G. White: All who in this world render true service to God or man receive a preparatory training in the school of sorrow. The weightier the trust and the higher the service, the closer is the test and the more severe the discipline. Carlos H. Amado: Those who suffer great adversity and sorrow and go on to serve their fellowmen develop a great capacity to understand others. Like the prophets, they have acquired a higher understanding of the mind and will of Christ. William Shakespeare: Laughing faces do not mean that there is absence of sorrow! But it means that they have the ability to deal with it. Daniel Pennac: I have never experienced a sorrow that was not relieved by an hour of reading. Edgar Allan Poe: Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December; And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly, I wished the morrow; - vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow - sorrow for the lost Lenore - For the rare and radiant maiden who the angels name Lenore - Nameless here for evermore.
Samuel Johnson: Sir, sorrow is inherent in humanity. As you cannot judge two and two to be either five, or three, but certainly four, so, when comparing a worse present state with a better which is past, you cannot but feel sorrow. It is not cured by reason, but by the incursion of present objects, which bear out the past. Samuel Johnson: For sorrow there is no remedy provided by nature; it is often occasioned by accidents irreparable, and dwells upon objects that have lost or changed their existence; it requires what it cannot hope, that the laws of the universe should be repealed; that the dead should return, or the past should be recalled. Khalil Gibran: In the autumn I gathered all my sorrows and buried them in my garden. And when April returned and spring came to wed the earth, there grew in my garden beautiful flowers unlike all other flowers. And my neighbors came to behold them, and they all said to me, "When autumn comes again, at seeding time, will you not give us of the seeds of these flowers that we may have them in our gardens?" Tara Brach: If our hearts are ready for anything, we can open to our inevitable losses, and to the depths of our sorrow. We can grieve our lost loves, our lost youth, our lost health, our lost capacities. This is part of our humanness, part of the expression of our love for life.
Rumi: I said: what about my heart? God said: Tell me what you hold inside it. I said: pain and sorrow. He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place where the Light enters you. Daisaku Ikeda Hardships make us strong. Problems give birth to wisdom. Sorrows cultivate compassion. Those who have suffered the most will become the happiest. Jiddu Krishnamurti: The demand to be safe in a relationship inevitably breeds sorrow and fear. Gary Zukav: When you feel yourself in the grip of an emotion such as jealousy or anger or sorrow, detach yourself from it. Take a step back. When you do that, you can allow the emotion to run through you without causing negative thoughts or actions. Eckhart Tolle: Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not 'yours,' not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you. Samuel Johnson: Sorrow is properly that state of the mind in which our desires are fixed upon the past without looking forward to the future. Eckhart Tolle: When great loss happens - deaths close to you or your own approaching death - this is an opportunity for stepping completely out of identification with form and realizing the essence of who you are, or that the essence of anyone who is suffering or dying is beyond death. Eckhart Tolle: You must have failed deeply on some level or experienced some deep loss or pain to be drawn to the spiritual dimension. Or perhaps your very success became empty and meaningless and so turned out to be a failure. Jiddu Krishnamurti: There is the personal sorrow and the sorrow of the world. There is the sorrow of ignorance and the sorrow of time. This ignorance is the lack of knowing oneself, and the sorrow of time is the deception that time can cure, heal and change. Most people are caught in that deception and either worship sorrow or explain it away. But in either case it continues, and one never asks oneself if it can come to an end. Jiddu Krishnamurti: Self-pity is one of the elements of sorrow. Another element is being attached to someone and encouraging or fostering his attachment to you. Sorrow is not only there when attachment fails you but its seed is in the very beginning of that attachment. In all this the trouble is the utter lack of knowing oneself. Knowing oneself is the ending of sorrow. We are afraid to know ourselves because we have divided ourselves into the good and the bad, the evil and the noble, the pure and the impure. The good is always judging the bad, and these fragments are at war with each other.
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