Edmund de Waal Quotes
Quotes to Explore
Over all crowds there seems to float a vague distress, an atmosphere of pervasive melancholy, as if any large gathering of people creates an aura of terror and pity.
Emile Zola
My curiosity to see the melancholy spectacle of the executions was so strong that I could not resist it, although I was sensible that I would suffer much from it.... I got upon a scaffold near the fatal tree so that I could clearly see all the dismal scene.... I was most terribly shocked, and thrown into a very deep melancholy.
James Boswell
Melancholy men of all others are most witty, which causeth many times a divine ravishment, and a kinde of Enthusiasmus, which stirreth them up to bee excellent Philosophers, Poets, Prophets, etc.
Aristotle
For me work is an absolute necessity, indeed I can't really drag it out, I take no more pleasure in anything than in work, that's to say, pleasure in other things stops immediately and I become melancholy if I can't get on with the work.
Vincent Van Gogh
Who does not see that we are likely to ascertain the distinctive significance of religious melancholy and happiness, or of religious trances, far better by comparing them as conscientiously as we can with other varieties of melancholy, happiness, and trance, than by refusing to consider their place in any more general series, and treating them as if they were outside of nature's order altogether?
William James
Whoever commits to paper what he suffers becomes a melancholy author: but he becomes a serious author when he tells us what he suffered and why he now reposes in joy.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Now the melancholy God protect thee, and the tailor make thy garments of changeable taffeta, for thy mind is opal.
William Shakespeare
Shame and guilt are noble emotions essential in the maintenance of civilized society, and vital for the development of some of the most refined and elegant qualities of human potential.
Willard Gaylin
The first cuckoo's melancholy cry.
William Wordsworth
But hail thou Goddess sage and holy, Hail, divinest Melancholy, Whose saintly visage is too bright To hit the sense of human sight, And therefore to our weaker view O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue.
John Milton
The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, 'Let me in - let me in!' 'Who are you?' I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. 'Catherine Linton,' it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of LINTON? I had read EARNSHAW twenty times for Linton) - 'I'm come home: I'd lost my way on the moor!' As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window.
Emily Bronte
With eyes up-rais'd, as one inspir'd, Pale Melancholy sate retir'd, And from her wild sequester'd seat, In notes by distance made more sweet, Pour'd thro' the mellow horn her pensive soul.
William Collins
