O. Henry Quotes

It cuts one sadly to see the grief of old people; they've no way o' working it off; and the new spring brings no new shoots out on the withered tree.

You get to an age when you lose people close to you.

The three touchstones that woke Buddha up - sickness, old age, and death - are a pretty good place to start when crafting a tragic tale. And if we need to get more specific: heartbreak, destruction, miscomprehension, natural disasters, betrayal, and the waste of human potential.

Old age: I fall asleep during the funerals of my friends.

What is the worst of woes that wait on age? What stamps the wrinkle deeper on the brow? To view each loved one blotted from life's page, And be alone on earth, as I am now.

There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.

The years that remain are clearly limited. When you're 80, you attend a lot more funerals. A lot more people are having a hard time and are ill.

In youth, grief comes with a rush and overflow, but it dries up, too, like the torrent. In the winter of life it remains a miserable pool, resisting all evaporation.

Probably Providence has implanted peevishness and ill-temper in sick and old persons, in compassion to the friends or relations who are to survive; as it must naturally lessen the concern they might otherwise feel for their loss.

No one can keep his griefs in their prime; they use themselves up.

Why is the measure of love loss?

Youth holds no society with grief.

When I'm with him, there is someone with me in my house of grief, someone who knows its architecture as I do, who can walk with me, from room to sorrowful room, making the whole rambling structure of wind and emptiness not quite as scary, as lonely as it was before.

If grief is to be mitigated, it must either wear itself out or be shared.

It's a blessing not to be alone in your grief but it's also painful to see your parents and siblings in pain.

For me, I say no, but then I am old, and life, with his sunshine, his fair places, his song of birds, his music and his love, lie far behind. You others are young. Some have seen sorrow, but there are fair days yet in store. What say you?

The weight of this sad time we must obey, Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

At one hundred, surely you learn to overcome loss and grief—or do they hound you till the bitter end?

Sorrow's child grieves not what has passed, but all the past still yet to come.

It is a terrible thing for an old woman to outlive her dogs.

It's an awful thing to grow old by yourself. My wife hasn't had a birthday in seven years.

There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.

Losing a son, losing a daughter, a brother, a sister, losing a close friend - it can go beyond grief to isolation and feeling despair.

In life there is not time to grieve long.

To grieve for evils is often wrong; but it is much more wrong to grieve without them. All sorrow that lasts longer than its cause is morbid, and should be shaken off as an attack of melancholy, as the forerunner of a greater evil than poverty or pain.