Sadness is a universal emotion that everyone experiences at some point in their lives. It can be the result of loss, disappointment, or moments of deep reflection. Sometimes, the right words can help us better understand and process these feelings. In this collection, we’ve gathered 38 poignant sadness quotes that capture the complexity and depth of sorrow, offering comfort, insight, and a reminder that you are not alone.
1. “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
2. “And why had Deb's last boyfriend dumped her? I dumped him. Maybe you didn't French-kiss him enough. I promise you that wasn't it. Tell me how many times a day you kissed, and I'll say if it was enough. Four hundred. Not enough.” - Miranda July
3. “Don't take in no strangers while I'm gone.She sighed deeply. They ain't a soul in this world but what is a stranger to me, she said.” - Cormac McCarthy
4. “Let us not burthen our remembrance withA heaviness that's gone.” - William Shakespeare
5. “HOW ANGELS SLEEP. Unsoundly. They toss and turn, trying to understand the mystery of the living. They know so little about what it's like to fill a new prescription for glasses and suddenly see the world again, with a mixture of disappointment and gratitude ... Also, they don't dream. For this reason, they have one less thing to talk about. In a backward way, when they wake up they feel as if there is something they are forgetting to tell each other. There is disagreement among the angels as to whether this is a result of something vestigial, or whether it is the result of the empathy they feel for the Living, so powerful it sometimes makes them weep. In general, they fall into these two camps on the subject of dreams. Even among the angels, there is the sadness of division.” - Nicole Krauss
6. “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
7. “When by my solitary hearth I sit,When no fair dreams before my “mind’s eye” flit,And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;Sweet Hope, ethereal balm upon me shed,And wave thy silver pinions o’er my head.” - John Keats
8. “Away from the bright motion of the party, she carried her sadness like a dark stone clenched in her palm.” - Kim Edwards
9. “You don't know where you are or where your dreams end and the world begins.” - Rachel Klein
10. “Toward dawn we shared with youyour hour of desolation,the huge lingering passionof your unearthly out cry,as you swung your blind headtowards us and laboriously openeda bloodshot, glistening eye,in which we swam with terror and recognition.” - Stanley Kunitz
11. “I was the one with the open wound, and the river waters turned red when I bathed in them. My sadness is greater than the heavens.” - Laura Restrepo
12. “About time, what I really learned from studying English is: time is different with timing.I understand the difference of these two words so well. I understand falling in love with the right person in the wrong timing could be the greatest sadness in a person's entire life.” - Xiaolu Guo
13. “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
14. “It always is harder to be left behind than to be the one to go...” - Bodie Thoene; Brock Thoene
15. “The times that were most fun seemed always to be followed by sadness now, because it was when life started to feel like it did when she was with us that we realized how utterly gone she was.” - John Green
16. “A poet should be so crafty with words that he is envied even for his pains.” - Criss Jami
17. “He didn't understand how sadness came so easily to people. For him it was like a pile of rocks that had to be moved one at a time. Just thinking about it made him tired.” - Nell Freudenberger
18. “Man cries, his tears dry up and run out. So he becomes a devil, reduced to a monster.” - Kouta Hirano
19. “She thought of Henry and Diana on the stoop gazing at each other with the confusion and sadness of two puppies who have just stumbled into their first puddle and not yet come to understand what has happened to them and found that she wanted to lie extravagantly.” - Anna Godbersen
20. “What can we do?" Mom asked again.I shrugged.But she kept asking, as if there were something she could do, until I just kind of crawled across the couch into her lap and my dad came over and held my legs really tight and I wrapped my arms all the way around my mom's middle and they held on to me for hours while the tide rolled in.” - John Green
21. “The last thing we wanted was for the Machiguenga to be sad again. Sadness appeared to bring out their violence.” - Tahir Shah
22. “that was bad; i shouldn't have done thatto prevent you from entering a catatonic statei am going to maintain a calm facial expressionwith crinkly eyes and an overall friendly demeanori believe in a human being that is not upseti believe if you are working i should not be insaneor upset--why am i ever insane or upset and not working?i vacuumed the entire house this morningi cleaned the kitchen and the computer roomand i made you a meat helmet with computer paperthe opportunity for change exists in each moment, all moments are aloneand separate from other moments, and there are a limited number of momentsand the idea of change is a delusion of positive or negative thinkingyour hands are covering your faceand your body moves like a statuewhen i try to manipulate an appendageif i could just get you to cry tears of joy one more time” - Tao Lin
23. “I had never liked, even feared a little, this wild reach of marsh and mud flats where everything seemed turned away from the land, looking off desperately toward the horizon as if in mute search for a sign of rescue.” - John Banville
24. “What's the use of crying, and retching, and belching, all day long, like your lady downstairs? Life has its sad side, and we must take the rough with the smooth. Why, maids have died on their marriage eve, or, what's worse, bringing their first baby into the world, and the world's wagged on all the same. Life's sad enough, in all conscience, but there's nothing to be frightened about in it or to turn one's stomach. I was country-bred, and as my old granny used to say, "There's no clock like the sun and no calendar like the stars." And why? Because it gets one used to the look of Time. There's no bogey from over the hills that scares one like Time. But when one's been used all one's life to seeing him naked, as it were, instead of shut up in a clock, like he is in Lud, one learns that he is as quiet and peaceful as an old ox dragging the plough. And to watch Time teaches one to sing. They say the fruit from over the hills makes one sing. I've never tasted so much as a sherd of it, but for all that I can sing.” - Hope Mirrlees
25. “I'd like to have a good long talk with you once you've calmed down. Please call me soon. Happy Birthday.” - Haruki Murakami
26. “It is beautiful, it is endless, it is full and yet seems empty. It hurts us.” - Jackson Pearce
27. “- إذا رأيتـهــم ابتـعـدوا لا تحــزن لقد حــان دور تسطيــر كــتــاب نجاحك...لم يبعدهم سوي عجزهم ان يكونوا مثلك” - هبه محمد
28. “No truth can cure the sadness we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness, can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see that sadness through to the end andlearn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sadness that comes to us without warning.” - Haruki Murakami
29. “People do not belong to others, either. How can the huincas buy and sell people if they do not own them. Sometimes the boy went two or three days without speaking a word, surly, and not eating, and when asked what was the matter, the answer was always the same: "There are content days and there are sad days. Each person is a master of his silence.” - Isabel Allende
30. “It's quiet for a while, and then Rowan says; "We could talk now. We're alone out here. No walls.""There are always walls." I say.” - Lauren DeStefano
31. “She has been surprised by grief, its constancy, its immediacy, its unrelenting physical pain.” - Michelle Latiolais
32. “Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.” - Rohinton Mistry
33. “I would prefer to die than to be depressed for depression can hurt you everyday and it'll last for a lifetime while on dying, you can only feel pain the moment you'll die.” - Cedric Go
34. “There’s always been sadness hidden at the core of Hitch, but it’s never been big enough to taste. Occasionally, I’d get a whiff of it, salty on the wind, but it never pressed in between us like it does now, threatening to drown us both.” - Stacey Jay
35. “The process of living, for each of us, is pretty similar. For every gain there is a setback. For every success, a failure. For every moment of joy, a time of sadness. For every hope realized, one is dashed.” - sue atchley ebaugh
36. “Oh! To live alone, always alone, in the midst of the crowd that surrounds me, without a word of love ever coming to gladden my soul, without a friendly hand reaching out to me!” - Herculine Barbin
37. “A veces, el dolor es el único recuerdo de que lo que tuvimos fue real.” - Stephenie Meyer
38. “I Am!I am—yet what I am none cares or knows; My friends forsake me like a memory lost: I am the self-consumer of my woes— They rise and vanish in oblivious host, Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes And yet I am, and live—like vapours tossed Into the nothingness of scorn and noise, Into the living sea of waking dreams, Where there is neither sense of life or joys, But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems; Even the dearest that I loved the best Are strange—nay, rather, stranger than the rest. I long for scenes where man hath never trod A place where woman never smiled or wept There to abide with my Creator, God, And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie The grass below—above the vaulted sky.” - John Clare
