Sad Quotes: Saddest Quotes of All Time

1

Dr. Seuss

“Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” ― Dr. Seuss

2

Lauren Oliver

“I was going to tell you that you look beautiful with your hair down. That’s all I was going to say.” ― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall

3

“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

4

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” ― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

5

Jonathan Safran Foer

“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer

6

Ned Vizzini

“I didn’t want to wake up. I was having a much better time asleep. And that’s really sad. It was almost like a reverse nightmare, like when you wake up from a nightmare you’re so relieved. I woke up into a nightmare.” ― Ned Vizzini, It’s Kind of a Funny Story

7

Haruki Murakami

“Why do people have to be this lonely? What’s the point of it all? Millions of people in this world, all of them yearning, looking to others to satisfy them, yet isolating themselves. Why? Was the earth put here just to nourish human loneliness?”― Haruki Murakami, Sputnik Sweetheart

8

John Green

“What you must understand about me is that I’m a deeply unhappy person.” ― John Green, Looking for Alaska

9

Clive Barker

“Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.” ― Clive Barker, Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of War

10

Edna St. Vincent Millay

“They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same, but I don’t think it’s possible for you to miss me as much as I’m missing you right now” ― Edna St. Vincent Millay

11

Markus Zusak

“Imagine smiling after a slap in the face. Then think of doing it twenty-four hours a day.” ― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

12

Pablo Neruda

“Tonight I can write the saddest lines
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.” ― Pablo Neruda, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair

13

Nikolai V. Gogol

“The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes.” ― Nikolai V. Gogol

14

Paulo Coelho

“Tears are words that need to be written.” ― Paulo Coelho

15

Lauren Conrad

“Don’t cry over someone who wouldn’t cry over you.” ― Lauren Conrad

16

Nicole Krauss

“there are two types of people in the world: those who prefer to be sad among others, and those who prefer to be sad alone.” ― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

17

Jonathan Safran Foer

“Why do beautiful songs make you sad?’ ‘Because they aren’t true.’ ‘Never?’ ‘Nothing is beautiful and true.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

18

Ned Vizzini

“I can’t eat and I can’t sleep. I’m not doing well in terms of being a functional human, you know?” ― Ned Vizzini, It’s Kind of a Funny Story

19

Jonathan Safran Foer

“She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated

20

Katie McGarry

“The worst type of crying wasn’t the kind everyone could see–the wailing on street corners, the tearing at clothes. No, the worst kind happened when your soul wept and no matter what you did, there was no way to comfort it. A section withered and became a scar on the part of your soul that survived. For people like me and Echo, our souls contained more scar tissue than life.” ― Katie McGarry, Pushing the Limits

21

Barbara Kingsolver

“There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, ‘There now, hang on, you’ll get over it.’ Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.” ― Barbara Kingsolver, The Bean Trees

22

Augusten Burroughs

“I’m lonely. And I’m lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out of me to be this lonely because it seems catastrophic.” ― Augusten Burroughs, Dry

23

Brian Jacques

“Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.” ― Brian Jacques, Taggerung

24

J.R.R. Tolkien

“Ho! Ho! Ho! To the bottle I go
To heal my heart and drown my woe
Rain may fall, and wind may blow
And many miles be still to go
But under a tall tree will I lie
And let the clouds go sailing by” ― J.R.R. Tolkien

25

E.A. Bucchianeri

“So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.” ― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly,

26

C. JoyBell C.

“There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human- in not having to be just happy or just sad- in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time.” ― C. JoyBell C.

27

William Shakespeare

“Sigh no more, ladies, sigh no more,
Men were deceivers ever,-
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.” ― William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

28

Paulo Coelho

“Ester asked why people are sad.
“That’s simple,” says the old man. “They are the prisoners of their personal history. Everyone believes that the main aim in life is to follow a plan. They never ask if that plan is theirs or if it was created by another person. They accumulate experiences, memories, things, other people’s ideas, and it is more than they can possibly cope with. And that is why they forget their dreams.” ― Paulo Coelho, The Zahir

29

Friedrich Nietzsche

“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more’ … Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: ‘You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science

30

Ned Vizzini

“I waste at least an hour every day lying in bed. Then I waste time pacing. I waste time thinking. I waste time being quiet and not saying anything because I’m afraid I’ll stutter.” ― Ned Vizzini, It’s Kind of a Funny Story

31

Oscar Wilde

“Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

32

Salvador Plascencia

“I don’t know what they are called, the spaces between seconds– but I think of you always in those intervals.” ― Salvador Plascencia, The People of Paper

33

Jeffrey Eugenides

“Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.” I’ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I’ve entered my story, I need them more than ever. ” ― Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex

34

Rick Riordan

“Percy, let me go” she croaked. “You can’t pull me up.”
His face was white with effort. She could see in his eyes that he knew it was hopeless.
“Never,” he said. He looked up at Nico, fifteen feet above.
“The other side, Nico! We’ll see you there. Understand?”
Nico’s eyes widened. “But-“
“Lead them!” Percy shouted. “Promise me!”
“I-I will.”
Below them, the voice laughed in the darkness. Sacrifices. Beautiful sacrifices to wake the goddess.
Percy tightened his grip on Annabeth’s wrist. His face was gaunt, scraped and bloody, his hair dusted with cobwebs, but when he locked eyes with her, she thought he had never looked more handsome.
“We’re staying together,” he promised. “You’re not getting away from me. Never again.”
Only then did she understand what would happen. A one-way trip. A very hard fall.
“As long as we’re together,” she said.
She heard Nico and Hazel still screaming for help. She saw sunlight far, far above- maybe the last sunlight she would ever see.
Then Percy let go of his ledge, and together, holding hands, he and Annabeth fell into the endless darkness.” ― Rick Riordan, The Mark of Athena

35

Jandy Nelson

“My sister will die over and over again for the rest of my life. Grief is forever. It doesn’t go away; it becomes a part of you, step for step, breath for breath. I will never stop grieving Bailey because I will never stop loving her. That’s just how it is. Grief and love are conjoined, you don’t get one without the other. All I can do is love her, and love the world, emulate her by living with daring and spirit and joy.” ― Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere

36

Virginia Woolf

“Nothing thicker than a knife’s blade separates happiness from melancholy.” ― Virginia Woolf, Orlando

37

Osho Rajneesh

“Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That’s its balance.” ― Osho Rajneesh, Everyday Osho: 365 Daily Meditations for the Here and Now

38

Jennifer Salaiz

“Was I bitter? Absolutely. Hurt? You bet your sweet ass I was hurt. Who doesn’t feel a part of their heart break at rejection. You ask yourself every question you can think of, what, why, how come, and then your sadness turns to anger. That’s my favorite part. It drives me, feeds me, and makes one hell of a story.” ― Jennifer Salaiz

39

Yann Martel

“When you’ve suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.” ― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

40

Sylvia Plath

“I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of the throat and I’d cry for a week.” ― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

41

Gabrielle Zevin

“Someday, we’ll run into each other again, I know it.
Maybe I’ll be older and smarter and just plain better. If that happens,
that’s when I’ll deserve you. But now, at this moment, you can’t hook
your boat to mine, because I’m liable to sink us both.” ― Gabrielle Zevin, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

42

William Shakespeare

“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.” ― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

43

C.S. Lewis

“I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been – if you’ve been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you – you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing is ever going to happen again.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

44

Alfred Lord Tennyson

“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,
Tears from the depths of some devine 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 Lord Tennyson

45

Maggie Stiefvater

“I said uselessly, “Sam, don’t go.”

Sam cupped my face in his hands and looked me in the eyes. His eyes were yellow, sad, wolf, mine.

“These stay the same. Remember that when you look at me. Remember it’s me. Please.” ― Maggie Stiefvater, Shiver

46

Veronica Roth

“But when I do feel all the strength go out of me, and I fall to my knees beside the table and I think I cry, then, or at least I want to, and everything inside me screams for just one more kiss, one more word, one more glance, one more.” ― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

47

Vincent van Gogh

“The sadness will last forever.” ― Vincent van Gogh

48

Phoebe Stone

“Some people are just not meant to be in this world. It’s just too much for them.” ― Phoebe Stone, The Boy on Cinnamon Street

49

Mark Haddon

“Sometimes we get sad about things and we don’t like to tell other people that we are sad about them. We like to keep it a secret. Or sometimes, we are sad but we really don’t know why we are sad, so we say we aren’t sad but we really are.” ― Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

50

Nicholas Sparks

“There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well.” ― Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember

51

Matthew Quick

“Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly. Literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for us to endure nobly.” ― Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook

52

Ned Vizzini

“I’m fine. Well, I’m not fine – I’m here.”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“Absolutely.” ― Ned Vizzini, It’s Kind of a Funny Story

53

Lemony Snicket

“The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down.” ― Lemony Snicket, The Bad Beginning

54

Jasmine Warga

“Maybe we all have darkness inside of us and some of us are better at dealing with it than others.” ― Jasmine Warga, My Heart and Other Black Holes

55

John Keats

“I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.” ― John Keats

56

Criss Jami

“If a man cannot understand the beauty of life, it is probably because life never understood the beauty in him.” ― Criss Jami, Killosophy

57

John Green

“Issac:”I dislike living in a world without Augustus Waters.”
Computer: “I don’t understand-“
Issac: “Me neither. Pause” ― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

58

Ashly Lorenzana

“You know all that sympathy that you feel for an abused child who suffers without a good mom or dad to love and care for them? Well, they don’t stay children forever. No one magically becomes an adult the day they turn eighteen. Some people grow up sooner, many grow up later. Some never really do. But just remember that some people in this world are older versions of those same kids we cry for.” ― Ashly Lorenzana

59

L.M. Montgomery

“Oh, sometimes I think it is of no use to make friends. They only go out of your life after awhile and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came.” ― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Avonlea

60

Arundhati Roy

“But what was there to say?

Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honey-colored shoulder had a semicircle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief.

Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.” ― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

61

Albert Camus

“Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but ‘steal’ some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.” ― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959

62

Katie McGarry

“I saw the world in black and white instead of the vibrant colours and shades I knew existed.” ― Katie McGarry, Pushing the Limits

63

Sarah Addison Allen

“Sometimes you weren’t supposed to share pain. Sometimes it was best just to deal with it alone.” ― Sarah Addison Allen, The Sugar Queeni

64

Charles Bukowski

“Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can’t even cry.” ― Charles Bukowski, You Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

65

Bodie Thoene; Brock Thoene

“It always is harder to be left behind than to be the one to go…” ― Bodie Thoene; Brock Thoene, Shiloh Autumn

66

Emily Dickinson

“One need not be a chamber to be haunted.” ― Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

67

Vincent van Gogh

“La tristesse durera toujours.
[The sadness will last forever.]” ― Vincent van Gogh

68

Marian Keyes

“I couldn’t be with people and I didn’t want to be alone. Suddenly my perspective whooshed and I was far out in space, watching the world. I could see millions and millions of people, all slotted into their lives; then I could see me—I’d lost my place in the universe. It had closed up and there was nowhere for me to be. I was more lost than I had known it was possible for any human being to be.” ― Marian Keyes, Anybody Out There?

69

John Grogan

“. . . owning a dog always ended with this sadness because dogs just don’t live as long as people do.” ― John Grogan, Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World’s Worst Dog

70

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

“The sadness of the world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time.” ― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night

71

Sarah Dessen

“She knew I could tell with one glance, one look, one simple instant. It was her eyes. Despite the thick makeup, they were still dark-rimmed., haunted, and sad. Most of all though, they were familiar. The fact that we were in front of hundreds of strangers changed nothing at all. I’d spent a summer with those same eyes-scared, lost, confused-staring back at me. I would have known them anywhere.” ― Sarah Dessen, Just Listen

72

Nicole Krauss

“Because nothing makes me happier and nothing makes me sadder than you.” ― Nicole Krauss, The History of Love

73

Chief Seattle

“My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain…There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory.” ― Chief Seattle, The Chief Seattle’s Speech

74

F. Scott Fitzgerald

“And lastly from that period I remember riding in a taxi one afternoon between very tall buildings under a mauve and rosy sky; I began to bawl because I had everything I wanted and knew I would never be so happy again.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Crack-Up

75

Robin Williams

“I think the saddest people always try their hardest to make people happy because they know what it’s like to feel absolutely worthless and they don’t want anyone else to feel like that.” ― Robin Williams

76

K.L. Toth

“One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else.” ― K.L. Toth

77

Lang Leav

“Do you know what it is like,
to lie in bed awake;
with thoughts to haunt
you every night,
of all your past mistakes.

Knowing sleep will set it right –
if you were not to wake.” ― Lang Leav, Love & Misadventure

78

Kahlil Gibran

“Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.” ― Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam

79

E. Lockhart

“Then he pulled out a handgun and shot me in the chest. I was standing on the lawn and I fell. The bullet hole opened wide and my heart rolled out of my rib cage and down into a flower bed. Blood gushed rhythmically from my open wound,
then from my eyes,
my ears,
my mouth.
It tasted like salt and failure. The bright red shame of being unloved soaked the grass in front of our house, the bricks of the path, the steps of the porch. My heart spasmed among the peonies like a trout.” ― E. Lockhart, We Were Liars

80

Alan Lightman

“The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or of joy. The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.” ― Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams

81

Percy Bysshe Shelley

“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, The Complete Poems

82

Kim Stanley Robinson

“It was that sort of sleep in which you wake every hour and think to yourself that you have not been sleeping at all; you can remember dreams that are like reflections, daytime thinking slightly warped.” ― Kim Stanley Robinson, Icehenge

83

Tahereh Mafi

“That this girl would know exactly how to shatter me.” ― Tahereh Mafi, Destroy Me

84

Criss Jami

“A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.” ― Criss Jami, Killosophy

85

Billy Joel

“I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.” ― Billy Joel

86

Sanober Khan

“the saddest thing is to be
a minute to someone,
when you’ve made them your eternity.” ― Sanober Khan

87

Ursula K LeGuin

“I am living in a nightmare, from which from time to time I wake in sleep.” ― Ursula K LeGuin

88

Ned Vizzini

“(…) Since I was a kid.”
“Which you refer to as ‘back when you were happy.'”
“Right.” ― Ned Vizzini, It’s Kind of a Funny Story

89

Joseph Gordon-Levitt

“I think there is something beautiful in reveling in sadness. The proof is how beautiful sad songs can be. So I don’t think being sad is to be avoided. It’s apathy and boredom you want to avoid. But feeling anything is good, I think. Maybe that’s sadistic of me.” ― Joseph Gordon-Levitt

90

Rainer Maria Rilke

“So don’t be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don’t know what work they are accomplishing within you?” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

91

Alexander Lowen

“It is a grave injustice to a child or adult to insist that they stop crying. One can comfort a person who is crying which enables him to relax and makes further crying unnecessary; but to humiliate a crying child is to increase his pain, and augment his rigidity. We stop other people from crying because we cannot stand the sounds and movements of their bodies. It threatens our own rigidity. It induces similar feelings in ourselves which we dare not express and it evokes a resonance in our own bodies which we resist.” ― Alexander Lowen, The Voice of the Body

92

Elizabeth Scott

“I have been smashed and put back together so many times nothing works right. Nothing is where it should be, heavy thumping in my shoulder where my heart now beats.” ― Elizabeth Scott, Living Dead Girl

93

Sanober Khan

“a flower knows, when its butterfly will return,
and if the moon walks out, the sky will understand;
but now it hurts, to watch you leave so soon,
when I don’t know, if you will ever come back.” ― Sanober Khan

94

Jackson Pearce

“It is beautiful, it is endless, it is full and yet seems empty. It hurts us.” ― Jackson Pearce, Fathomless

95

Denice Envall

“I miss you in waves and tonight I’m drowning. You left me fending for my life and it feels like you’re the only one who can bring me back to the shore alive.” ― Denice Envall

96

L.M. Montgomery

“Anne was always glad in the happiness of her friends; but it is sometimes a little lonely to be surrounded everywhere by happiness that is not your own.” ― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

97

Nick Hornby

“Have you got any soul?” a woman asks the next afternoon. That depends, I feel like saying; some days yes, some days no. A few days ago I was right out; now I’ve got loads, too much, more than I can handle. I wish I could spread it a bit more evenly, I want to tell her, get a better balance, but I can’t seem to get it sorted. I can see she wouldn’t be interested in my internal stock control problems though, so I simply point to where I keep the soul I have, right by the exit, just next to the blues.” ― Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

98

Sad Quotes: Saddest Quotes of All Time

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