#melancholy

Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach. ↗

— Sydney Smith

#habit #melancholy #never #resist #steadily

Depression is melancholy minus its charms - the animation, the fits. ↗

— Susan Sontag

#charms #depression #fits #melancholy #minus

Eco sees the intellectual as an organizer of culture, someone who can run a magazine or a museum. An administrator, in fact. I think this is a melancholy situation for an intellectual. ↗

— Antonio Tabucchi

#culture #fact #i #i think #in fact

To be bowed by grief is folly; Naught is gained by melancholy; Better than the pain of thinking, Is to steep the sense in drinking. ↗

— Alcaeus

#bowed #drinking #folly #gained #grief

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

Then you must reconcile yourself to the fact that something is always hurt by any change. If you do this, you will not be hurt yourself. ↗

— Roger Zelazny

#eternity #free-will #maturity #melancholy #pain

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

To be sane, he held, was either to be sedated by melancholy or activated by hysteria, two responses which were 'always and equally warranted for those of sound insight'. All others were irrational, merely symptoms of imaginations left idle, of memories out of work. And above these mundane responses, the only elevation allowable, the only valid transcendence, was a sardonic one: a bliss that annihilated the universe with jeers of dark joy, a mindful ecstasy. Anything else in the way of 'mysticism' was a sign of deviation or distraction, and a heresy to the obvious. (“The Medusa”) ↗

— Thomas Ligotti

#insanity #melancholy #mysticism #sanity #sardonic