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Quotes about Anguish

The anguish of my life here - its rages - is hardly mentioned...There is violence there and anger never resolved.  I live alone, perhaps for no good reason, for the reason that I am an impossible creature, set apart by a temperament I have never learned to use as it could be used, thrown off by a word,a glance, a rainy day, or one drink too many.  My need to be alone is balanced against my fear of what will happen when suddenly I enter the huge empty silence if I cannot find support there.  I go up to Heaven and down to Hell in an hour, and keep alive only by imposing upon myself inexorable routines...It may be outwardly silent here but in the back of my mind is a clamor of human voices, too many needs, hopes and fear.  I hardly ever sit still without being haunted by the "undone"...

May Sarton
Source: Journal of a Solitude
Contributed by: Kimberly Ann Possible. More quotes added by Kimpossible from this | all sources
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One fire burns out another's burning, One pain is lessen'd by another's anguish.

William Shakespeare : English poet, the greatest poet ever
William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616)
Source: Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 2
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It's hard to look pleasant when anguish is present, and yet it is strictly worth while; Not all of your scowling and fussing and growling can show off your grit like a smile.

Walt Mason
Source: Albert W. Daw Collection
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The beauty of the world has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.

Virginia Woolf (1882 - 1941)
Source: A Room of One's Own, 1929
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He knew the anguish of the marrow The ague of the skeleton; No contact possible to flesh Allayed the fever of the bone.

Thomas Stearns Eliot : British-American poet & critic
T.S. Eliot (1888 - 1965)
Source: Whispers of Immortality, 1920
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What is a poet? An unhappy person who conceals profound anguish in his heart but whose lips are so formed that as sighs and cries pass over them they sound like beautiful music.

Søren Aabye Kierkegaard : Danish philosopher
Soren Kierkegaard (1813 - 1855)
Source: EITHER/OR VOL. 1 1843
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O woman! in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy, and hard to please, And variable as the shade By the light quivering aspen made; When pain and anguish wring the brow, A ministering angel thou!

Sir Walter Scott : Scottish poet & novelist
Sir Walter Scott (1771 - 1832)
 
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Our quaint metaphysical opinions, in an hour of anguish, are like playthings by the bedside of a child deathly sick.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge : English romantic poet & critic
Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772 - 1834)
 
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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.

Dr. Samuel Johnson : English poet, critic, lexicographer, creator of first English dictionary
Samuel Johnson (1709 - 1784)
Source: Verses on the Death of Mr. Robert Levet. Stanza ?.
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A Song of Anselm Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you: you are gentle with us as a mother with her children; Often you weep over our sins and our pride: tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgement. You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds: in sickness you nurse us, and with pure milk you feed us. Jesus, by your dying we are born to new life: by your anguish and labour we come forth in joy. Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness: through your gentleness we find comfort in fear. Your warmth gives life to the dead: your touch makes sinners righteous. Lord Jesus, in your mercy heal us: in your love and tenderness remake us. In your compassion bring grace and forgiveness: for the beauty of heaven may your love prepare us.

Saint Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033 - 1109)
Source: Preface to the Proslogion
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There are only three sins - causing pain, causing fear, causing anguish. The rest is window dressing.

Roger Caras
 
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Don't let the workings of adversity totally absorb your life. Try to understand what you can. Act where you are able; then let the matter rest with the Lord for a period while you give to others in worthy ways before you take on appropriate concern again. Please learn that as you wrestle with a challenge and feel sadness because of it, you can simultaneously have peace and rejoicing. Yes, pain, disappointment, frustration, and anguish can be temporary scenes played out on the stage of life. Behind them can be a background of peace and the positive assurance that a loving Father will keep His promises.

Richard G. Scott (1924 - )
Source: Ensign, November 1995, © by Intellectual Reserve, Inc.Used by permission.
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Art thou in misery, brother? Then I pray Be comforted. Thy grief shall pass away. Art thou elated? Ah, be not too gay; Temper thy joy: this, too, shall pass away. Art thou in danger? Still let reason sway, And cling to hope: this, too, shall pass away. Tempted art thou? In all thine anguish lay One truth to heart: this, too, shall pass away. Do rays of loftier glory round thee play? Kinglike art thou? This, too, shall pass away! Whate'er thou art, wher'er thy footsteps stray, Heed these wise words: This, too, shall pass away.

Paul Hamilton Hayne
Source: This, Too, Shall Pass Away
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So great was the extremity of his pain and anguish that he did not only sigh but roar.

Matthew Henry (1662 - 1714)
Source: Commentaries. Job iii.
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All art is a kind of confession, more or less oblique. All artists, if they are to survive, are forced, at last, to tell the whole story; to vomit the anguish up.

James Baldwin : American writer & civil rights leader
James Baldwin (1924 - 1987)
 
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The Names . . . have existed from all eternity: these Names are designated as "Lords" (Arbab), who often have all the appearance of hypostases though they cannot strictly be defined as such. We know them only by our knowledge of ourselves (that is the basic maxim). God describes Himself to us through ourselves. Which means that the divine Names are essentially relative to the beings who name them, since these beings discover and experience them in their own mode of being. . . . Thus the divine Names have meaning and full reality only through and for beings . . . in which they are manifested. Likewise from all eternity, these forms, substrate of the divine Names, have existed in the divine Essence (A 'yan thabita). And it is these latent individualities who from all eternity have aspired to concrete being in actu. Their aspiration is itself nothing other than the nostalgia of the divine Names yearning to be revealed. And this nostalgia of the divine Names is nothing other than the sadness of the unrevealed God, the anguish He experiences in His unknownness and occultation.

Ibn al-'Arabi (1165 - 1240)
Source: Corbin, Henry. Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn `Arabi, 1969. p. 114-115
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Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.

Eugene Ionesco (1912 - 1994)
 
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Where, when my aching grows, Where, when I languish, Where, in my need to know, where can I run? Where is the quiet hand to calm my anguish? Who, who can understand? He, only One.

Emma Lou Thayne
 
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For each ecstatic instant We must an anguish pay In keen and quivering ratio To the ecstasy.

Emily Dickinson : American poet
Emily Dickinson (1830 - 1886)
Source: a collection of quotations found on the Internet.
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There is a marvelous story of a man who once stood before God, his heart breaking from the pain and injustice in the world. "Dear God." he cried out, "look at all the suffering, the anguish and distress in your world. Why don't you send help?" God responded,"I did send help. I sent you." When we tell our children that story, we must tell them that each one of them was sent to help repair the broken world-and that it is not the task of an instant or of a year, but of a lifetime.

David J. Wolpe
Source: Teaching Your Children About God (Henry Holt)
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Friendship needs no words -- it is solitude, delivered from the anguish of loneliness.

Dag Hammarskjold (1905 - 1961)
 
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Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish; Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal.

Charles Lamb : British writer, poet, essayist & critic
Charles Lamb (1775 - 1834)
Source: Come, Ye Disconsolate.
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He who speaks from the lips chatters. He who speaks from an empty mind adds confusion to discord. He who speaks from a full mind feeds the minds of men. He who speaks from his heart wins the confidence of mankind. But he who speaks from his soul heals the heartbreaks of a world and feeds the hungry, starving souls of men. He can dry the tears of anguish and pain. He can bring light, for he will carry light.

Analee Skarin
Source: Ye Are Gods
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The ambitious will always be first in the crowd; he presseth forward, he looketh not behind him. More anguish is it to his mind to see one before him, than joy to leave thousands at a distance.

Akhnaton (c.1375 - c.1353 BC)
Source: title taken by Amenhotep IV
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But if you ever come to a road where danger; Or guilt or anguish or shame's to share. Be good to the lad who loves you true, And the soul that was born to die for you; And whistle and I'll be there.

Alfred Edward Housman : English classical scholar & poet
A.E. Housman (1859 - 1936)
 
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Dear Madam,-I have been shown in the files of the War Department a Statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts, that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom. Yours, very sincerely and respectfully, President Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln : American statesman (16th President: 1861-65), assassinated following Civil War
Abraham Lincoln (1809 - 1865)
Source: Letter to Mrs. Lydia Bixby, Nov. 21, 1864. Records later corrected: only two sons died.
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