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Theirs is an American tragedy in which we all have played a part. It could go on and on and on, or someone must write the end to it.

My heart rebelled against God, who had taken from me mother, father, mistress, and friend.

When I saw them embracing each other, and heard their joyous laughter, I turned sadly away from the lovely sight.

Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows.

A man must understand evil and be acquainted with sorrow before he can write himself an optimist and expect others to believe that he has reason for the faith that is in him.

It lets us into the soul of things and teaches us that although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.

The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.

My saddest and most genuine sorrows are apt to be but transient regrets.

The place of sorrow is supplied, perchance, by a certain hard and proportionately barren indifference.

At death our friends and relations either draw nearer to us and are found out, or depart further from us and are forgotten.

Friends are as often brought nearer together as separated by death.

Surely civilization is old enough, surely mankind is mature enough so that we ought in our own lifetime to find a way to permanent peace.

Sorrow purifies and deepens the soul, and the extremity of sorrow is the prelude to Truth.

Let heart-sickness pass beyond a certain bitter point, and the heart loses its life for ever.

For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way

To mourn without measure is folly, and not to mourn at all is insensibility.

To lament the death of a friend is both natural and just; a sigh or a tear I would allow to his memory: but no profuse or obstinate sorrow.

A wise man gives way to tears in some cases, and cannot avoid them in others.

The ostentation of grief is many times more than the grief itself.

In time, the most stubborn grief will leave us, if in prudence we do not leave that first.

A false and a childish sorrow is appeased with as false and as childish a revenge.

The present moment is the same for all men, and their loss, therefore, is equal, for it is clear that what they lose in death is but a fleeting instant of time.

To the man who is penetrated with true principles, the shortest, the most common hint is a sufficient memorial to keep him free of sorrow and fear.

For death also is one piece of the business of life, and, here as elsewhere, it is enough to do well what comes to our hand.