#melancholy

Youth is an intoxication without wine, someone says. Life is an intoxication. The only sober man is the melancholiac, who, disenchanted, looks at life, sees it as it really is, and cuts his throat. If this be so, I want to be very drunk. The great thing is to live, to clutch at our existence and race away with it in some great and enthralling pursuit. Above all, I must beware of all ultimate questions- they are too maddeningly unanswerable- let me eschew philosophy and burn Omar. ↗

— W.N.P. Barbellion

#melancholy #philosophy #youth #life

Melancholy and sadness are the start of doubt... doubt is the beginning of despair; despair is the cruel beginning of the differing degrees of wickedness. ↗

— Isidore Ducasse Lautreamont

#cruel #degrees #despair #differing #doubt

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations. ↗

— Charles Dickens

#great #great men #melancholy #men #poor

I know not why there is such a melancholy feeling attached to the remembrance of past happiness, except that we fear that the future can have nothing so bright as the past. ↗

— Julia Ward Howe

#bright #except #fear #feeling #future

I only wanted absolute quiet to think out why I had developed a sad attitude toward sadness, a melancholy attitude toward melancholy and a tragic attitude toward tragedy — why I had become identified with the objects of my horror or compassion. ↗

— F. Scott Fitzgerald

#sadness #tragedy #attitude

I began to understand that suffering and disappointments and melancholy are there not to vex us or cheapen us or deprive us of our dignity but to mature and transfigure us. ↗

— Hermann Hesse

#maturity #melancholy #suffering #life

Σίμωσε στο πιάνο και πήρε μερικά ακόρντα. Κείνη τη στιγμή΄έσπασε με κρότο μια χορδή κι έσβησε σ' ένα μακρόσυρτο και τρεμάμενο ήχο... -Ακούς Νιέτοτσκα, ακούς; ρώτησε, ξαφνικά με μια εμπνευσμένη φωνή, δείχνοντας το πιάνο. Τεντώσανε πολύ, πάρα πολύ τούτη τη χορδή· δεν μπόρεσε άλλο να βαστάξει και πέθανε. Ακούς, τι λυπητερά που πεθαίνουν οι ήχοι! ↗

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#melancholy #death

Cyrano: The leaves--- Roxane: What color---Perfect Venetian red! Look at them fall. Cyrano: Yes---they know how to die. A little way From the branch to the earth, a little fear Of mingling with the common dust---and yet They go down gracefully---a fall that seems Like flying! ↗

— Edmond Rostand

#grace #melancholy #reflection #death

He had done nothing on Christmas day, just wandered around outside in the frozen woods. Hard ground, chill winds and bare branches that looked like they'd been dipped in sugar. None of it seemed real, like walking around in a desolate dream, but one he didn't want to wake up from. ↗

— R.D. Ronald

#melancholy #reflection #dreams

If you close your eyes when you sing in Latin, and if you stand right at the back so you can keep one hand against the cold stone wall of the church, you can pretend you're in the Middle Ages. That's why I did it. That's what I was in it for. ↗

— Carol Rifka Brunt

#melancholy #music #age