The Quotes canon

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How often are we to die before we go quite off this stage? In every friend we lose a part of ourselves, and the best part. — Alexander Pope · 1732
David1 quote
O my son Absalom—my son, my son Absalom—if only I had died in your place! O Absalom my son, my son! — David · 722 BC
Don McLean1 quote
Something touched me deep inside The day the music died. — Don McLean · 1971
No man can lose what he never had. — Izaak Walton · 1653
Jesus1 quote
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. — Jesus · 60
We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all. — Joan Didion · 2005
The world is gradually becoming a place where I do not care to be any more. — John Berryman · 1968
Though I grieve, there is no help; Vainly I long to see her. Men tell me that my wife is In the mountains of Hagai- Thither I go, Toiling along the stony path; But it avails me not, For of my wife, as she lived in this world, I find not the faintest shadow. — Kakinomoto no Hitomaro · 759
The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss-an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.-is sure to be noticed. — Soren Kierkegaard · 1849
W.B. Yeats1 quote
I heard the old, old men say, "All that's beautiful drifts away Like the waters." — W.B. Yeats · 1903