Where there is sorrow
there is holy ground.

De Profundis

sadness 2

How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples,
the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons
of our lives are princesses, who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.
Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.
    So you must not be frightened, dear Mr. Kappus, if a sadness rises up before you larger than
any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands
and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life
has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. . . .

Rainer Maria Rilke

 
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

Charles Dickens

 

Give sorrow words:  the grief that does not speak Whispers the o'er-fraught heart, and bids it break.

William Shakespeare

  
  
Bernie Siegel

Just as you cannot escape life's problems, you cannot avoid
painful feelings and emotions. What can you do with sorrow and grief?
You can accept them into your life the way water is accepted into the ground
and taken up by the tree. Let these emotions become a part of your life
without asking why. Accept life and death, experience the rituals
of grief and sorrow, and free yourself to live. Grief and sorrow bring forth
the tears that are the water the soul needs to survive. If you feel no sorrow
and no grief, you will dry up and wither away as the tree does in a time of drought.

  

If we are willing, the experience of grief
can deepen and widen 
our ability to participate in life.

John Claypool

  
  

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside,
somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature, and God.
Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes
to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As long as this exists,
and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort
for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be.

Anne Frank

  

Margaret
Chase
Smith

And this I do believe above all, especially in times of greater discouragement,
that I must believe--that I must believe in my fellow people--that I must believe
in myself--that I must believe in God--if life is to have any meaning.

  
Barbara Johnson

God can heal your heart. God can rescue you from despair and give you
something to rejoice about again. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen.
All you have to do is be willing to give every piece of your broken heart to God.

  

  

The weariest night, the longest day,
sooner or later must perforce come to an end.

Baroness Emmuska Orczy

  
Suffering accepted and vanquished. . . . will give you a serenity
which may well prove the most exquisite fruit of your life.

Cardinal Mercier

  

George Eliot

It is not ignoble to feel that the fuller life which a sad experience
has brought us is worth our personal share of pain. The growth of higher feeling
within us is like the growth of faculty, bringing with it a sense of added strength.
We can no more wish to return to a narrower sympathy than painters or musicians
can wish to return to their cruder manner, or philosophers to their less complete formulas.

  
Those who have suffered much are like those who know many languages; they have learned to understand and to be understood by all.

Mme. Swetchine

Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can, and common suffering is a far stronger link than common joy.

Alphonse de Lamartine

 

The Rainy Day

The day is cold and dark and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
The vine still clings to the moldering wall,
But at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.

My life is cold and dark and dreary;
It rains, and the wind is never weary;
My thoughts still cling to the moldering past,
But the hopes of youth fall thick in the blast,
And the days are dark and dreary.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;
Behind the clouds is the sun still shining:
Thy fate is the common fate of all:
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.

Henry W. Longfellow

  

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Sadness is related to the opening of your heart.
If you allow yourself to feel sad, especially if you can cry,
you will find that your heart opens wider
and you can feel more love and more joy.

Shakti Gawain

 
The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called
days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection
and despair you feel rise in you a challenge of life,
and then the promise of future accomplishments.

Gustave Flaubert

  
 

If it weren't for the dark days,
we wouldn't know what it is to walk in the light.

Earl Campbell

 
 

So much pleasure, and so little joy; so much
learning, and so little wisdom. . .
the one divine thing left to us is sadness. . . .
Without sadness, where were brotherliness? . . .
She is the Spartan sauce which gives gusto
to the remainder-viands of life,
the broken meats of love. . . . All things
take on beauty which pass through the
hueless flame of her aureole.

Francis Thompson

   

  

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