Melancholy Quotes

Here rests his head upon the lap of earthA youth to fortune and to fame unknown.Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,And Melancholy marked him for her own.

Thomas Gray

To muse for long unwearied hours with my attention riveted to some frivolous device upon the margin, or in the typography of a book — to become absorbed for the better part of a summer's day in a quaint shadow falling aslant upon the tapestry, or upon the floor — to lose myself for an entire night in watching the steady flame of a lamp, or the embers of a fire — to dream away whole days over the perfume of a flower — to repeat monotonously some common word, until the sound, by dint of frequent repetition, ceased to convey any idea whatever to the mind — to lose all sense of motion or physical existence in a state of absolute bodily quiescence long and obstinately persevered in — Such were a few of the most common and least pernicious vagaries induced by a condition of the mental faculties, not, indeed, altogether unparalleled, but certainly bidding defiance to any thing like analysis or explanation.

Edgar Allan Poe

It might be high summer all about but inside me everything is fall. The lonesomeness of a sad, slow closing of days, knowing frost is nigh and wind needling through the cabin chinks is just around the bend. That's me, right now.

Guy Vanderhaeghe

Such days of autumnal decline hold a strange mystery which adds to the gravity of all our moods.

Charles Nodier

Autumn is as joyful and sweet as an untimely end.

Rémy de Gourmont

Writing is a defence against boredom, but it's also a cure for melancholy.

Bohumil Hrabal

Sentimental outbreaks are like liquorice; when first you suck it, it's not bad, but afterwards it leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth.

Ivan Turgenev

His day, usually a jelly-like creature, a shapeless, spineless thing, had attained Mesozoic structure. It was marching along surely, even jauntily, toward a climax, as a play should, as a day should. He dreaded the moment when the backbone of the day should be broken, when he should have met the girl at last, talked to her, and then bowed her laughter out the door, returning only to the melancholy dregs in the teacups and the gathering staleness of the uneaten sandwiches.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Only, it’s not an it. It’s a her. A zombie. A woman. A zombie woman. She’s older than Janine, closer to my age, maybe early thirties, missing a little bit of her face, but otherwise sort of pretty in a melancholy way.

Charles Yu

Melancholy: an appetite no misery satisfies.

Emil M. Cioran

Sweet Echo, sweetest nymph that liv'st unseenWithin thy airy shellBy slow Meander's margent green,And in the violet-imbroider'd valeWhere the love-lorn nightingaleNightly to thee her sad song mourneth well:Canst thou not tell me of a gentle pairThat likest thy Narcissus are?

John Milton

I thought once how Theocritus had sungOf the sweet years, the dear and wished-for years,Who each one in a gracious hand appearsTo bear a gift for mortals, old or young;And, as I mused it in his antique tongue,I saw, in gradual vision through my tears,The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years,Those of my own life, who by turns had flungA shadow across me. Straightaway I was 'ware,So weeping, how a mystic Shape did moveBehind me, and drew me backward by the hair;And a voice said in mastery, while I strove,--Guess now who holds thee?--Death, I said, But, there,The silver answer rang,--Not Death, but Love.

Elizabeth Barrett-Browning

Let’s call my mood melancholy; let’s call it remembrance. Or maybe let’s call it longing. Yes, let’s call it longing instead.

Shannon Celebi

(Episode 9. Hijikata finds Gintoki on a rooftop and challenges him to a duel to avenge Kondo's defeat earlier. Gintoki doesn't want to fight him, so breaks Hijikata's sword easily, and leaves. It's then revealed that Okita and Kondo had been watching them clash, from another rooftop.)Okita Sougou: "He's an interesting man. I'd like to cross swords with him, myself."Kondo:"Don't bother. He'll kick your ass, Sougou.""He's the kind of guy fighting another battle far away, even as a sword swings at his throat.""Fair or unfair, it doesn't matter to him."(Not knowing that Kondo & Okita were watching his duel from a high vantage point, Hijikata lights a cigarette and sits back.)Hijikata (watching the blue sky above him):"Sorry, Kondo-san. I lost to him, as well ...

Kondo Gintama

To be sane, he held, was either to be sedated by melancholy or activated by hysteria, two responses which were 'always and equally warranted for those of sound insight'. All others were irrational, merely symptoms of imaginations left idle, of memories out of work. And above these mundane responses, the only elevation allowable, the only valid transcendence, was a sardonic one: a bliss that annihilated the universe with jeers of dark joy, a mindful ecstasy. Anything else in the way of 'mysticism' was a sign of deviation or distraction, and a heresy to the obvious. (“The Medusa”)

Thomas Ligotti

The staying awake was a great self-sacrificaing gesture of friendship, and wonderfully in keeping with our current mood of intense friendship and religious fervour. We were all in a state of shock. We engaged in a long Dostojevskyan conversations and drank one black coffee after another. It was sort of night typical of youth, the sort you only can look back on with shame and embarassment once you've grown up. But God knows, I must have grown up already by then, because I don't feel the slightest embarassment when I think back to it, just a terrible nostalgia.

Antal Szerb

For youth, the moon is a promise of all those tremendous things which await it, for older people a memento that the promise was never kept, a reminder of all that broke and went to pieces...And what is moonshine? Secondhand sunshine. Diluted, counterfeit.

Hjalmar Söderberg

Dogs were generally incompatible with melancholy.

John Connolly

When the rain is on my lipsAnd I shiver from the coldThinking about lifeIts ups and downsAnd being a melancholicI take a noteOf the nature's crying its tearsMaking the day seem gray And unexcited But how much life the rain bringsTo what is hidden beneath the surfaceSo whenever I cry And the cold of people's wordsOr actionsCausing me shiverI vision myself standing in the rainBringing my roots to lifeI am not afraid anymoreOf getting soaking wetI stand my ground! But please natureDon't let me drown, make me beautiful!

Veronika Jensen

Sorrow, terror, anguish, despair itself are often the chosen expressions of an approximation to the highest good. Our sympathy in tragic fiction depends on this principle; tragedy delights by affording a shadow of the pleasure which exists in pain. This is the source also of the melancholy which is inseparable from the sweetest melody. The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Mistrust of good success hath done this deed.O hateful error, Melancholy's child,Why dost thou show to the apt thoughts of menThe things that are not? O Error, soon concieved,Thou never com'st unto a happy birth,But kill'st the mother that engendered thee.

William Shakespeare

Maybe all Americans who suffer from melancholy act as if they have gone mad. But I truly thought he might throw himself in the river, and I don't want his ghost visiting to keep telling me he's sorry.

Amy Tan

Concha would cry when she found out I was dead, she should have no taste for life for months afterward. But I was still the one who was going to die. I thought of her soft, beautiful eyes. when she looked at me something passed her to me. But I knew it was over: if she looked at me now the look would stay in her eyes, it wouldn't reach me. I was alone

Jean-Paul Sartre

After much effort to live up to a glorious standard there came fatigue, wan hope, and boredom. I experienced extreme boredom. I saw others experiencing it too, many denying, by the way, that any such thing existed. And finally I decided that I would make boredom my subject matter. That I'd study it. That I'd become the world's leading authority on it. March, that was a red-letter day for humanity. What a field! What a domain! Titanic! Promethean! I trembled before it. I was inspired. I couldn't sleep. Ideas came in the night and I wrote them down, volumes of them. Strange that no one had gone after this systematically.Oh, melancholy, yes, but not modern boredom.

Saul Bellow

Gwynn, she was always talking about wanting to be drunk and honestly I did want to encourage that, I wanted to go to a bar with her and let all the stuff sobriety pushed down be released so I could catch it in my palms and finally kiss her. She was just so sad. Melancholy was a fleshy wave permanently cresting on her face, she had to speak through it when she talked.

Michelle Tea

I loved him the way some people are to be loved - from a distance.

Sanhita Baruah

This was a characteroloical prelude, but it wasn’t chemical or somatic. It was the anatomy of melancholy, not the anatomy of his brain.

Jeffrey Eugenides

He really had experienced every tiniest increment of time in the four decades since then, and yet here he was surprised to be suddenly old and crippled. Turned out the rope didn't care if you noticed every daisy on the path to the gallows.

Chris Cleave

And you? What brings you here? I shrugged my shoulders. No idea? Hm, you’re still young. Eighteen? I froze. Nineteen? Twenty? Incredible, so young. You have everything before you. No past. He sighed. Incredible, to have been so young once myself. Although what does that mean? There is only one age for anyone. I was and am, will always be fifty-eight. But you. Be careful what age you end up. It sticks to you. It seals you shut. The age you choose is like glue, it sets around you. This wisdom is not mine, you know. I got it from a book. A movie. I’m not sure. You notice things. It’s incredible. Your whole life you notice things.

Milena Michiko Flašar

Je pensais de meme que notre jeunesse etait finie et le bonheur manqué. I thought too that our youth was over and we had failed to find happiness.

Alain-Fournier

In the park which surrounded our house were the ruins of the former mansion of Brentwood, a much smaller and less important house than the solid Georgian edifice which we inhabited. The ruins were picturesque, however, and gave importance to the place. Even we, who were but temporary tenants, felt a vague pride in them, as if they somehow reflected a certain consequence upon ourselves. The old building had the remains of a tower, an indistinguishable mass of mason-work, overgrown with ivy, and the shells of walls attached to this were half filled up with soil. I had never examined it closely, I am ashamed to say. There was a large room, or what had been a large room, with the lower part of the windows still existing, on the principal floor, and underneath other windows, which were perfect, though half filled up with fallen soil, and waving with a wild growth of brambles and chance growths of all kinds. This was the oldest part of all. At a little distance were some very commonplace and disjointed fragments of the building, one of them suggesting a certain pathos by its very commonness and the complete wreck which it showed. This was the end of a low gable, a bit of grey wall, all encrusted with lichens, in which was a common doorway. Probably it had been a servants' entrance, a backdoor, or opening into what are called "the offices" in Scotland. No offices remained to be entered-pantry and kitchen had all been swept out of being; but there stood the doorway open and vacant, free to all the winds, to the rabbits, and every wild creature. It struck my eye, the first time I went to Brentwood, like a melancholy comment upon a life that was over. A door that led to nothing - closed once perhaps with anxious care, bolted and guarded, now void of any meaning. It impressed me, I remember, from the first; so perhaps it may be said that my mind was prepared to attach to it an importance, which nothing justified. ("The Open Door")

Mrs. Oliphant

It's my letter," she began. "I cannot make it right.""Come in, come in," the Prince said gently. "Maybe we can help you." She sat down in the same chair as before. "All right, I'll close my eyes and listen; read to me."" 'Westley, my passion, my sweet, my only, my own. Come back, come back. I shall kill myself otherwise. Yours in torment, Buttercup.' " She looked at Humperdinck. "Well? Do you think I'm throwing myself at him?""It does seem a bit forward," the Prince admitted. "It doesn't leave him a great deal of room to maneuver.

William Goldman

I feel as if I had been born dead underAmerican bombardment.

Ştefan Bolea

Well, here I am, just come home; a fellow gone to the bad; though I had the best intentions in the world at one time. Now I am melancholy mad, what with drinking and one thing and another.

Thomas Hardy

No one explains this to you, he thought. That there are so many things without solution.

Jesse Ball

Name me no names for my disease,With uninforming breath;I tell you I am none of these,But homesick unto death —Homesick for hills that I had known,For brooks that I had crossed,...Before I met this flesh and boneAnd followed and was lost… .And though they break my heart at last,Yet name no name of ills.Say only, "Here is where he passed,Seeking again those hills.

Witter Bynner

He had done nothing on Christmas day, just wandered around outside in the frozen woods. Hard ground, chill winds and bare branches that looked like they'd been dipped in sugar. None of it seemed real, like walking around in a desolate dream, but one he didn't want to wake up from.

R.D. Ronald

The old summer's-end melancholy nips at my heels. There's no school to go back to; no detail of my life will change come the onset of September; yet still, I feel the old trepidation.

Sara Baume

, And you, ye stars,Who slowly begin to marshal,As of old, the fields of heaven,Your distant, melancholy lines!Have you, too, survived yourselves?Are you, too, what I fear to become?You, too, once lived;You, too, moved joyfullyAmong august companions,In an older world, peopled by Gods,In a mightier order,The radiant, rejoicing, intelligent Sons of Heaven.But now, ye kindleYour lonely, cold-shining lights,Unwilling lingerersIn the heavenly wilderness,For a younger, ignoble world;And renew, by necessity,Night after night your courses,In echoing, unneared silence,Above a race you know not—Uncaring and undelighted,Without friend and without home;Weary like us, though notWeary with our weariness.

Matthew Arnold

Solitude appeared to me as the only fit state of man.

Walter Benjamin

She dried her tears, and they did smileTo see her cheeks’ returning glow;Nor did discern how all the whileThat full heart throbbed to overflow.With that sweet look and lively tone,And bright eye shining all the day,They could not guess, at midnight loneHow she would weep the time away.

Emily Brontë

There was something melancholic about that symbol of their nation's promise of freedom, a bell with a chipped mouth and cleft body.

E.A. Bucchianeri

You hung around the tattered edges of my soul, that's where you preferred to be...

Jaeda DeWalt

Pale, with dark hair, the one who is coming is melancholy, romantic. And I am arch and fluent and capricious; for he is melancholy, he is romantic. He is here.

Virginia Woolf

Spanish rain,A maiden’s dress,Apothecary pillsAnd ancient thrills;Melancholy killsA girl’s caress.(—Roman Payne; Valencia, Spain, November 2nd 2012)

Roman Payne

Men dream more about coming home than about leaving.

Paulo Coelho

No one was irritable; we have never known anyone to remain unhappy while digesting a good meal. We enjoy lingering in a becalmed state, a kind of midpoint between the reverie of a thinker and the contentment of a cud-chewing animal, a state that should be termed the physical melancholy of gastronomy.

Honoré de Balzac

Cram them full of noncombustible data, chock them so full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.

Ray Bradbury

Had it been possible for me to fix the plane permanently in the sky, to defy the winds and clouds and all the forces pushing it upward and pulling it earthward, I would have willingly done so. I would have stayed in my seat with my eyes closed, all strength and passion gone, my mind as quiescent as a coat rack under a forgotten hat, and I would have remained there, timeless, unmeasured, unjudged, bothering no one, suspended forever between my past and my future.

Jerzy Kosiński

Memories come back, pressing in on you, like ghost faces in the darkness pushing up the glass, trying to get into the lit room.

Julia Green

Ah God! to see the branches stirtAcross the moon at Grantchester!tTo smell the thrilling-sweet and rottentUnforgettable, unforgottentRiver-smell, and hear the breezet Sobbing in the little trees.tSay, do the elm-clumps greatly standtStill guardians of that holy land?tThe chestnuts shade, in reverend dream,tThe yet unacademic streamIs dawn a secret shy and coldtAnadyomene, silver-gold?tAnd sunset still a golden seatFrom Haslingfield to Madingley?tAnd after, ere the night is born,Do hares come out about the corn?tOh, is the water sweet and cool,tGentle and brown, above the pool?tAnd laughs the immortal river stilltUnder the mill, under the mill?Say, is there Beauty yet to find?tAnd Certainty? and Quiet kind?tDeep meadows yet, for to forgettThe lies, and truths, and pain?… oh! yettStands the Church clock at ten to three?tAnd is there honey still for tea?

Rupert Brooke

We are inside soft, sweet and pure white despair.

Eiji Mikage

When you get abandoned by someone, that's the moment when you've truly lost faith in them.

Nicholas Murray

Out on the lawn, Bunny had just knocked Henry's ball about seventy feet outside the court. There was a ragged burst of laughter; faint, but clear, it floated back across the evening air. That laughter haunts me still.

Donna Tartt

I am metaphysical being, mystical and emotional, skeptical and cynical, happy and boisterous, loud and bawdy, quiet and melancholy, tender and cruel, full of mirth and despair. Inherent inconsistences mark me as part of nature, which is neither cruel nor fair, or reliable or predictable.

Kilroy J. Oldster

You felt a deep sorrow, the kind of melancholy you feel when you're in a beautiful place and the sun is going down

Thrity Umrigar

Melancholy were the sounds on a winter's night.

Virginia Woolf

Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.

Victor Hugo

The most romantic creation to have come out of regret is time-travel

Preeti Bhonsle

Poor little place,' he murmured with a sigh.She heard him. He said the most melancholy things, but she noticed that directly he had said them he always seemed more cheerful than usual. All this phrase-making was a game, she thought, for if she had said half what he said, she would have blown her brains out by now.

Virginia Woolf

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Melancholy Quotes

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