John Greenleaf Whittier

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.'"

John Greenleaf Whittier (Maud Muller - Pamphlet)

Anne Lamott

"And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn’t have to anymore."

Anne Lamott (Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year)

Ray Bradbury

"Some people turn sad awfully young. No special reason, it seems, but they seem almost to be born that way. They bruise easier, tire faster, cry quicker, remember longer and, as I say, get sadder younger than anyone else in the world. I know, for I'm one of them."

Ray Bradbury

Stephen Chbosky

"So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be."

Stephen Chbosky

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Every heart has its secret sorrows which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

John Greenleaf Whittier

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.'"

John Greenleaf Whittier

Jonathan Safran Foer

"He awoke each morning with the desire to do right, to be a good and meaningful person, to be, as simple as it sounded and as impossible as it actually was, happy. And during the course of each day his heart would descend from his chest into his stomach. By early afternoon he was overcome by the feeling that nothing was right, or nothing was right for him, and by the desire to be alone. By evening he was fulfilled: alone in the magnitude of his grief, alone in his aimless guilt, alone even in his loneliness. I am not sad, he would repeat to himself over and over, I am not sad. As if he might one day convince himself. Or fool himself. Or convince others--the only thing worse than being sad is for others to know that you are sad. I am not sad. I am not sad. Because his life had unlimited potential for happiness, insofar as it was an empty white room. He would fall asleep with his heart at the foot of his bed, like some domesticated animal that was no part of him at all. And each morning he would wake with it again in the cupboard of his rib cage, having become a little heavier, a little weaker, but still pumping. And by the mid afternoon he was again overcome with the desire to be somewhere else, someone else, someone else somewhere else. I am not sad."

Jonathan Safran Foer

Sylvia Plath

"I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between."

Sylvia Plath

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

aimgirl

" I said that I don't need you
But I'm a liar
I swear I do
I do

Strip away vanity
Just as you consume me
Broken smile, starless sky
Save it all,
Say goodbye ... "

aimgirl