Dante Alighieri Quotes

There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.

Past happiness augments present wretchedness.

There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.

... Nessun maggior dolore Che ricordarsi del tempo felice Nella miseria. (There is no greater pain than to remember a happy time when one is in misery.)

In every kind of adversity, the bitterest part of a man's affliction is to remember that he once was happy.

For years afterwards when Amory thought of Eleanor he seemed still to hear the wind sobbing around him and sending little chills into the places beside his heart. The night when they rode up the slope and watched the cold moon float through the clouds, he lost a further part of him that nothing could restore; and when he lost it he lost also the power of regretting it.

Be again, be again. (Pause.) All that old misery. (Pause.) Once wasn't enough for you.

No sadness is greater than in misery to rehearse memories of joy.

And when he died, I suddenly realized I wasn't crying for him at all, but for the things he did. I cried because he would never do them again.

Of all our sorrows, memory is the worst.

Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.

There is no greater sorrow Than to be mindful of the happy time In misery

He was at his own request and through his own complicity driven out of all his happinesses one after the other; and he had this sorrow, that after having lost Cosette wholly in one day, he was afterwards obliged to lose her again in detail.

Present unhappiness is selfish; past sorrow is compassionate.

One of the saddest things in life, is the things one remembers.

Night is the time to weep,To wet with unseen tearsThose graves of memory where sleepThe joys of other years.

Memory is the sense of loss, and loss pulls us after it.

With you a part of me hath passed away; For in the peopled forest of my mind A tree made leafless by this wintry wind Shall never don again its green array. Chapel and fireside, country road and bay, Have something of their friendliness resigned; Another, if I would, I could not find, And I am grown much older in a day. But yet I treasure in my memory Your gift of charity, and young hearts ease, And the dear honour of your amity; For these once mine, my life is rich with these. And I scarce know which part may greater be,-- What I keep of you, or you rob from me.

But were there ever any Writhed not at passed joy?

Every mile was redolent of associations, which she would not have missed for the world, but each of which made her cry upon 'the days that are no more' with ineffable longing.

I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.

The worst moment of one's life could be seared into the memory, brighter than any joy.

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.

It takes a moment to make memories and a lifetime to forget them.

Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day; or the agonies which are have their origins in ecstasies which might have been.