This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Joy cannot unfold the deepest truths. Cometh white-robed Sorrow stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the door she must not enter." - George MacDonald
"Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good." - Harriet Beecher Stowe
"If we could read the secret history of our enemies we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"The little I have seen of the world, teaches me to look upon the errors of others in sorrow, not in anger. When I take the history of one poor heart that has sinned and suffered, and represent to myself the struggles and temptations it has passed through, the brief pulsations of joy, the feverish inquietude of hope and fear, the pressure of want, the desertion of friends, I would fain leave the erring soul of my fellowman with Him from whose hand it came." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Submission is the footprint of faith in the pathway to sorrow." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"The first pressure of sorrow crushes out from our hearts the best wine; afterwards the constant weight of it brings forth bitterness - the taste and strain from the lees of the vat." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Tell me not in mournful numbers, life is but an empty dream! For the soul is dead that slumbers, and things are not what they seem. Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal; dust thou art, to dust returneth, was not spoken of the soul. Not enjoyment, and not sorrow is our destined end or way; but to act, that each to-morrow find us farther than today... Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant! Let the dead Past bury its dead! Act - act in the living Present! Hear within, and God o’erhead. Lives of great men all remind us we can make our lives sublime, and, departing, leave behind us footprints in the sands of time... Let us then, be up and doing, with a heart for any fate; still achieving, still pursuing, learn to labor and to wait." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"The little I have seen of the world… teaches me to look upon the errors of others with sorrow, not in anger." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we would find in each man's life a sorrow and a suffering enough to disarm all hostility." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Sorrow and silence are strong and patient, endurance is God-like." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"Sorrow makes men sincere." - Henry Ward Beecher
"God washes the eyes by tears until they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more. O love! O affliction! ye are the guides that show us the way through the great airy space where our loved ones walked; and, as hounds easily follow the scent before the dew be risen, so God teaches us, while yet our sorrow is wet, to follow on and find our dear ones in heaven." - Henry Ward Beecher
"If God but cares for our inward and eternal life, if by all the experiences of this life He is reducing it and preparing for its disclosure, nothing can befall us but prosperity. Every sorrow shall be but the setting of some luminous jewel of joy. Our very morning shall be but the enamel around the diamond; our very hardships but the metallic rim that holds the opal, glancing with strange interior fires." - Henry Ward Beecher
"A certain glorious sorrow must ever mingle with out life; all our actual is transcended by our possible; our visionary faculty is an overmatch for our experience; like the caged bird, we break ourselves against the bars of the finite, with a wing that quivers for the infinite." - James Martineau
"Sorrow is wisdom." - John Keats
"He who has once stood beside the grave, to look back upon the companionship which has been forever closed, feeling how impotent there are the wild love, or the keen sorrow, to give one instant’s pleasure to the measure to the departed spirit for the hour of unkindness, will scarcely for the future incur that debt to the heart which can only be discharged to the dust." - John Ruskin
"When I look upon the tombs of the great, every motion of envy dies... I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the frivolous competitions, factions, and debates of mankind." - Joseph Addison
"Present unhappiness is selfish; past sorrow is compassionate." - Joseph Roux
"Life is that which we see and experience through the spirit; but the world around us we come to know through our understanding and reason. And such knowledge brings us great joy or sorrow." - Kahlil Gibran
"Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow. Solitude is the ally of sorrow as well as a companion of spiritual exaltation." - Kahlil Gibran
"Sorrow and poverty purify man’s heart; though our weak minds see nothing worthy in the universe save ease and happiness." - Kahlil Gibran
"The secret of the heart is encased in sorrow, and only in sorrow is found our joy, while happiness serves but to conceal the deep mystery of life." - Kahlil Gibran
"Beauty is that which attracts your soul, and that which loves to give and not to receive. When you meet Beauty, you feel that the hands deep within your inner self are stretched forth to bring her into the domain of your heart. It is a magnificence combined of sorrow and joy; it is the Unseen which you see, and the Vague which you understand, and the Mute which you hear - it is the Holy of Holies that begins in yourself and ends vastly beyond your earthly imagination." - Kahlil Gibran
"Vain are the beliefs and teachings that make man miserable, and false is the good ness that leads him into sorrow and despair, for it is man's purpose to be happy on this earth and lead the way to felicity and preach its gospel wherever he goes. He who does not see the kingdom of heaven in this life will never see it in the coming life. We came not into this life by exile, but we came as innocent creatures of God, to learn how to worship the holy and eternal spirit and seek the hidden secrets within ourselves from the beauty of life." - Kahlil Gibran
"When either your joy or your sorrow become great the world becomes small." - Kahlil Gibran
"Happiness is salutary for the body, but it is sorrow that develops spiritual strength." - Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
"To know the needs of men and to bear the burden of their sorrow - is the true love of men." - Martin Buber
"There is a burden of care in getting riches, fear in keeping them, temptation in using them, guilt in abusing them, sorrow in losing them, and a burden of account at last to be given up concerning them." - Matthew Henry
"Goodness makes greatness truly valuable, and greatness make goodness much more serviceable." - Matthew Henry
"Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
"If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway. If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies; succeed anyway. If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway. If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; be happy anyway. The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway… You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway." - Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL
"There is something more awful in happiness than in sorrow - the alter being earthly and finite, the former composed of the substance and texture of eternity, so that spirits still embodied may well tremble at it." - Nathaniel Hawthorne
"If the world has indeed been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. Pleasure for the beautiful body, but pain for the beautiful soul." - Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills
"Indulgence in constant thoughts of fear, anger, melancholy, remorse, envy, sorrow, hatred, discontent, or worry; and lack of the necessities for normal and happy living, such as right food, proper exercise, fresh air, sunshine, agreeable work and a purpose in life, all are causes of nervous disease." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"We would not be human if we did not miss loved ones; but in feeling lonesome for them we don’t want selfish attachment to be the cause of keeping them earthbound. Extreme sorrow prevents a departed soul from going ahead toward greater peace and freedom." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"He who has most of heart, knows most of sorrow." - Philip James Bailey
"Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths." - Philip James Bailey
"Sorrow is a stone that crushes a single bearer to the ground, while two are able to carry it with ease." - Philip James Bailey
"He that causeth strife cometh himself to sorrow." - Ptah-hotep, aka Ptahhotpe or Ptah-Hotep NULL
"Sorrow makes us all children again - destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"You don't know what things are real in art until you come to them in pain. Sorrow is the touchstone." - Romain Rolland
"The keenest sorrow is to recognize ourselves as the sole cause of all our adversities." - Sophocles NULL
"In joy and sorrow, in pleasure and pain, one should act towards others as one would have them act toward oneself." - Mahabharata or The Mahabharata NULL