The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Alfred Tennyson1 quote
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depth of some divine despair
Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,
In looking on the happy Autumn-fields,
And thinking of the days that are no more. — Alfred Tennyson · 1847Alfred de Musset1 quote
The most despairing songs are the loveliest of all,
I know immortal ones composed only of tears. — Alfred de Musset · 1835Graham Greene1 quote
He felt the loyalty we all feel to unhappiness—the sense that that is where we really belong. — Graham Greene · 1948Johnny Cash1 quote
It was a real slow walk in a real sad rain. — Johnny Cash · 1994Matthew Arnold1 quote
Listen! you hear the grating roar
Of pebbles which the waves suck back, and fling,
At their return, up the high strand,
Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
The eternal note of sadness in.
Sophocles long ago
Heard it on the Aegean. — Matthew Arnold · 1867Milan Kundera1 quote
Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost. — Milan Kundera · 1984Patti Smith1 quote
We headed home holding hands. For a moment I dropped back to watch him walk. His sailor's gait always touched me. I knew one day I would stop and he would keep on going, but until then nothing could tear us apart. — Patti Smith · 2010Percy Bysshe Shelley1 quote
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught;
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. — Percy Bysshe Shelley · 1820Robert Burton1 quote
All my joys to this are folly,
Naught so sweet as melancholy. — Robert Burton · 1621Robert Frost1 quote
I have been one acquainted with the night. — Robert Frost · 1928Thomas Hood1 quote
There's not a string attuned to mirth
But has its chord in melancholy. — Thomas Hood · 1827William Shakespeare1 quote
By heaven, I do love, and it hath taught me to rhyme, and to be melancholy. — William Shakespeare · 1597