Melancholy

"To the pure soul by Fancy's fire refined, Ah, what is mirth but turbulence unholy, When with the charm compared of heavenly melancholy."

"Melancholy sees the worst of things,—things as they may be, and not as they are. It looks upon a beautiful face, and sees but a grinning skull."

"Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy."

"Avoid melancholy with all your might. It hurts the service of God more than sin. Satan takes less pleasure in sin than in a man's melancholy over having sinned again and so feeling that he is a slave to sin. Thus the Evil One has caught the poor soul in the net of despair."

"All my griefs to this are jolly, Naught so damn'd as melancholy."

"All my joys to this are folly, Naught so sweet as melancholy."

"As melancholy as an unbraced drum."

""Most musical, most melancholy" bird! A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought! In nature there is nothing melancholy. But some night-wandering man, whose heart was pierced With the remembrance of a grievous wrong, Or slow distemper, or neglected love, (And so, poor wretch! filled all things with himself, And made all gentle sounds tell back the tale Of his own sorrow) he, and such as he, First named these notes a melancholy strain."

"With eyes upraised, as one inspired, Pale Melancholy sate retired; And, from her wild, sequester'd seat, In notes by distance made more sweet, Pour'd through the mellow horn her pensive soul."

"Melancholy, I think, is a sort of default vagueness, a get-out clause, a smothering lack of focus."

"Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly! There's naught in this life sweet But only melancholy; O sweetest melancholy!"

"Tell us, pray, what devil This melancholy is, which can transform Men into monsters."

"Melancholy Is not, as you conceive, indisposition Of body, but the mind's disease."

"I shall speak of … how melancholy and utopia preclude one another. How they fertilize one another … Of the revulsion that follows one insight and precedes the next … Of superabundance and surfeit. Of stasis and progress. And of myself, for whom melancholy and utopia are heads and tails of the same coin."

"Here rests his head upon the lap of earth, A youth, to fortune and to fame unknown; Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth, And Melancholy marked him for her own."

"There's not a string attuned to mirth But has its chord in melancholy."

"Employment, sir, and hardships, prevent melancholy."

"Moping melancholy, And moon-struck madness."

"The melancholic errs by turning against his own ego all the critical energies that ought to be directed outward against the powers of the status quo. ... Encouraged to draw all of his aggressions inward, away from the true source of discontent, the compliant melancholic sets up a superegoic agency harboring the ego’s own former rage against the object. ... Introjection becomes a form of deflected critique. Meanwhile, the berated and debased ego, busy with its own internal insufficiencies and thoroughly discouraged from political activism, is not only fully censured but also is fashioned into a willing, productive—if ultimately impotent—participant in society. ... The ideal subject under capitalism is melancholic."

"Melancholic and lovable is the trick, right? You've got to be able to show that you have these feelings. In the game of life, you get these feelings and how you deal with those feelings. What you do when you are trying to deal with a melancholy. A melancholy can be sweet. It's not a mean thing, but it's something that happens in life — like autumn."

"Go—you may call it madness, folly, You shall not chase my gloom away. There's such a charm in melancholy, I would not, if I could, be gay!"

"I can suck melancholy out of a song."

"O melancholy! Who ever yet could sound thy bottom? find The ooze, to show what coast thy sluggish crare Might easiliest harbour in?"

"The greatest note of it is his melancholy."

"And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy."

"Never give way to melancholy; resist it steadily, for the habit will encroach."

"Hence, all you vain delights, As short as are the nights Wherein you spend your folly! There's nought in this life sweet, If man were wise to see 't, But only melancholy, Oh, sweetest melancholy!"

"All decent people are melancholy when evening comes. Not for any particular reason. Just on general grounds."