James Russell Lowell Quotes

I wondered how long it could last. Maybe someday, years from now.If the pain would decrease to the point where I could bear it.I would be able to look back on those few short months that would always be the best of my life.

I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me.

You see, one loves the sunset when one is so sad.

All my life, Following Care along the dusty road, Have I looked back on loveliness and sighed.

What happiness is there in just the memory of happiness?

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought I summon up remembrance of things past, I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought.

It's nine o'clock on a Saturday, the regular crowd shuffles in / There's an old man sitting next to me making love to his tonic and gin / He says, 'Son, can you play me a memory?/ I'm not really sure how it goes / But it's sad and it's sweet, and I knew it complete when I wore a younger man's clothes.'

Ah, tell me not that memory sheds gladness o'er the past, what is recalled by faded flowers, save that they did not last?

I will never forget my beautiful days with you in Shanklin, they are certainly the most pleasant ones of my life. Look, I have tears in my eyes just to think about it. I am furious to be here, it is the end of happiness for a whole year.

We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

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

My songs have a layer of melancholy.

Ever since I was a kid, I've always been interested in the poetry of melancholy, if you like.

All the best songs have an element of sadness.

He paused again as a tear of longing rolled from cheek to lip with the sweet-salty taste of an old memory.

Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance.

Aberystwyth (n.) A nostalgic yearning which is in itself more pleasant than the thing being yearned for.

But what of life whose bitter hungry sea Flows at our heels, and gloom of sunless night Covers the days which never more return? Ambition, love and all the thoughts that burn We lose too soon, and only find delight In withered husks of some dead memory.

It becomes increasingly easy, as you get older, to drown in nostalgia.

There's an old poem by Neruda that I've always been captivated by, and one of the lines in it has stuck with me ever since the first time I read it. It says "love is so short, forgetting is so long." It's a line I've related to in my saddest moments, when I needed to know someone else had felt that exact same way. And when we're trying to move on, the moments we always go back to aren't the mundane ones. They are the moments you saw sparks that weren't really there, felt stars aligning without having any proof, saw your future before it happened, and then saw it slip away without any warning.

The memory of a particular image is but regret for a particular moment.

Of one thing alone I am very sure: it is a law of our nature that the memory of longing should survive the more fugitive memory of fulfillment.

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