Sadly Quotes (page 31)
Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind. The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.
Alain de Botton
He walked around all the useless things in the courtyard and touched them with his hands; for some reason, he wished that these would remember him, and love him. But he didn't believe they would. From childhood memories he knew how strange and sad it is after a long absence to see a familiar place again, for these unmoving objects have no memory and do not recognize the stirrings of a stranger's heart.
Andrei Platonov
Here I am in the garden laughingan old woman with heavy breastsand a nicely mapped facehow did this happenwell that's who I wanted to beat last a womanin the old style sittingstout thighs apart undera big skirt grandchild slidingon off my lap a pleasantsummer perspirationthat's my old man across the yardhe's talking to the meter readerhe's telling him the world's sad storyhow electricity is oil or uraniumand so forth I tell my grandsonrun over to your grandpa ask himto sit beside me for a...
Grace Paley
The measure of our mindfulness, the touchstone for sanity in this society, is our level of productivity, our attention to responsibility, our ability to plain and simple hold down a job. If you're still at the point when you're even just barely going through the motions--showing up at work, paying the bills--you are still okay or okay enough. A desire not to acknowledge sadness in ourselves or those close to us--better known these days as denial, is such a strong urge that plenty of people...
Elizabeth Wurtzel
Do not be sad. Or think Adieu. Never Adieu. We will watch the sun set again - many times, and perhaps we'll see the Emerald Drop, the green flash that brings good fortune. And you must laugh and chatter as you used to do - telling me about the battle off the Saints or the picnic at Marie Galante - that famous picnic that turned into a fight. Or the pirates and what they did between voyages. For every voage might be their last. Sun and sangoree's a heady mixture. Then - the earthquake. Oh...
Jean Rhys
Call upon me in the Day of Trouble, and I will deliver, and thou shalt glorify me...Wait on the Lord, and be of good Cheer, and he shall strengthen thy Heart; wait, I say, on the Lord:' It is impossible to express the Comfort this gave me. In Answer, I thankfully laid down the Book, and was no more sad, at least, not on that Occasion.
Daniel Defoe
Sunset and evening star. And one clear call for me! And may there be no moaning of the bar, When I put out to sea, But such a tide as moving seems asleep, Too full for sound and foam, When that which drew from out the boundless deep. Turns again home. Twilight and evening bell, And after that the dark! And may there be no sadness of farewell, When I embark; For though from out our bourne of Time and Place. The flood may bear me far, I hope to see my Pilot face to face. When I have crossed the...
Alfred Lord Tennyson
Children...wake up and find themselves here, discover themselves to have been here all along; is this sad? They wake like sleepwalkers, in full stride,; they wake like people brought back from cardiac arrest or from drowning: in medias res, surrounded by familiar people and objects, equipped with a hundred skills. They know the neighborhood, they can read and write English, they are old hands at the commonplace mysteries, and yet they feel themselves to have just stepped off the boat, just...
Annie Dillard