The lives of happy people are dense with their own doings -- crowded, active, thick. But the sorrowing are nomads, on a plain with few landmarks and no boundaries; sorrow's horizons are vague and its demands are few.
But a mermaid has no tears, and therefore she suffers so much more.
Life, the river of the Spirit, consenting to anguish and sorrow.
But there have been human hearts, constituted just like ours, for six thousand years. The same stars rise and set upon this globe that rose upon the plains of Shinar or along the Egyptian Nile and the same sorrows rise and set in every age.
I take no joy in mead nor meat, and song and laughter have become suspicious strangers to me. I am a creature of grief and dust and bitter longings. There is an empty place within me where my heart was once.
There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad humanity must assume the aspect of Hell.
My life will be sour grapes and ashes without you.
The life of woman is full of woe, Toiling on and on and on, With breaking heart, and tearful eyes, The secret longings that arise, Which this world never satisfies! Some more, some less, but of the whole Not one quite happy, no, not one!
