Real sadness is such an all-encompassing intense thing that it takes you out of your humdrum existence. If you can still function, you want to show it while it’s peaking. So when people tell you to cheer up, it’s not always the best thing. ~ David Byrne, Billboard, 5/14/94

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains/ My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk. ~ John Keats, Ode to a Nightingale

Man could not live if he were entirely impervious to sadness. Many sorrows can be endured only by being embraced, and the pleasure taken in them naturally has a somewhat melancholy character. ~ Emile Durkheim, Suicide

For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: It might have been. ~ John Greenleaf Whittier

It seems to me that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension, which we feel as paralysis because we no longer hear our astonished emotions living. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

I know a cure for sadness: Let our hands touch something that makes your eyes smile. ~ Mirabai

The weight of sadness was in wonder lost. ~ William Wordsworth

A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ. ~ John Steinbeck

For all the sadness of closure, there is a new and joyful unfolding in the process of becoming. ~ Mary Casey, Each Day a New Beginning

There's such a thing as too much happiness and sadness. What I'm after is contentment. ~ Ray Charles

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens. ~ Kahlil Gibran

Activity and sadness are incompatible. ~ Christian Nevell Bovee

Anger is just a cowardly extension of sadness. It’s a lot easier to be angry at someone that it is to tell them you're hurt. ~ Alanis Morissette

A feeling of sadness and longing, /That is not akin to pain/ And resembles sorrow only/ As the mist resembles the rain. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, The Day Is Done

Do you not see that you and I are branches of the same tree? With you rejoicing comes my laughter, with your sadness comes my tears. ~ Tzu Yeh

Sadness takes up the pen more readily than joy. ~ Henri Frédéric Amiel

Tears are often a gift from God, and sadness is a healthy emotion. ~ Alan Loy McGinnis

What joy or sadness often springs from just the simple little things. ~ Willa Hoey