William Blake Quotes

My greatest affliction... is perhaps the major theme of my writings, the affliction of loneliness that follows me like a shadow, a very ponderous shadow too heavy to drag after me all of my days and nights.

You cried for night - it falls. Now cry in darkness.

It had ceased raining in the night and he walked out on the road and called for the dog. He called and called. Standing in that inexplicable darkness. Where there was no sound anywhere save only the wind. After a while he sat in the road. He took off his hat and placed it on the tarmac before him and he bowed his head and held his face in his hands and wept. He sat there for a long time and after a while the east did gray and after a while the right and godmade sun did rise, once again, for all and without distinction.

Disease, insanity, and death were the angels that attended my cradle, and since then have followed me throughout my life.

Man is born in a day, and he dies in a day, and the thing is easily over; but to have a sick heart for three-fourths of one's lifetime is simply to have death renewed every morning; and life at that price is not worth living.

Grief, for me, is a moment-to-moment experience.

A dungeon horrible, on all sides round, As one great furnace, flamed; yet from those flames No light, but rather darkness visible Serv'd only to discover sights of woe, Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace And rest can never dwell, hope never comes That comes to all; but torture without end.

The best time to cry is at night, when the lights are out and someone is being beaten up and screaming for help.

There is a wisdom that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. What hours, O what black hours we have spent This night!

My soul is a dark ploughed field In the cold rain; My soul is a broken field Ploughed by pain.

In misery's darkest cavern known, His useful care was ever nigh Where hopeless anguish pour'd his groan, And lonely want retir'd to die.

I could tell you it's the heart, but what is really killing him is loneliness. Memories are worse than bullets.

Nothing is as heady as the wine of misfortune.

When I realize that she is gone, perhaps gone forever, a great void opens up and I feel that I am falling, falling, falling into deep, black space. And this is worse than tears, deeper than regret or pain or sorrow, it is the abyss into which Satan was plunged. There is no climbing back, no ray of light, no sound of human voice or human touch of hand.

It is pointless to say that this or that night was the worst of my life. I have so many bad nights to choose from that I've made none the champion.

The dull pain of truth weights my soul, pulling it under. I am left hopelessly awake.

Sometimes I don't know what to say; the pain never stops. The cloud never goes away, the rain never drops

There are moments of despair that come sometimes, when night sets in and a white fog presses against the windows. Then our house changes its shape, rears up and becomes a place of despair. Then fear and rage run simply--and the thought of Death as a friend. This is the simplest of thoughts, that Death must come when we call, although he is a god.

The owl flies, in the moonlight, over a field where the wounded cry out. Like the owl, I fly in the night over my own misfortune.

I'm rightly tired of the pain I hear and feel, boss. I'm tired of bein on the road, lonely as a robin in the rain. Not never havin no buddy to go on with or tell me where we's comin from or goin to or why. I'm tired of people bein ugly to each other. It feels like pieces of glass in my head. I'm tired of all the times I've wanted to help and couldn't. I'm tired of bein in the dark. Mostly it's the pain. There's too much. If I could end it, I would. But I can't.

In the country of pain we are each alone.

Grief jumps out at you when you're least expecting it.