Sad but Inspirational Quotes: Finding Light in Darkness

"It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it."

- Fred Rogers

"Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart."

- José N. Harris

"This genuine heart of sadness can teach us great compassion. It can humble us when we’re arrogant and soften us when we are unkind."

- Pema Chödrön

"For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’"

- John Greenleaf Whittier

"Words are tears that have been written down. Tears are words that need to be shed. Without them, joy loses all its brilliance and sadness has no end."

- Paulo Coelho

"When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."

- Kahlil Gibran

"A wound that goes unacknowledged and unwept is a wound that cannot heal."

- John Eldredge

"The lessons we learn in sadness and from loss are those that abide."

- Theodore T. Munger

"We must understand that sadness is an ocean, and sometimes we drown, while other days we are forced to swim."

- R.M. Drake

"It’s so devastating to come to terms with speaking of someone in past tense when you used to see them as your present and your future."

- Taylor Swift

"There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but I have a feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well. So I take the memories as they come, accepting them all, letting them guide me whenever I can."

- Nicholas Sparks

"If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?"

- Jodi Picoult

"Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep."

- Clive Barker

"Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh."

- Henry David Thoreau

"There’s a sorrow and pain in everyone’s life, but every now and then there’s a ray of light that melts the loneliness in your heart and brings comfort like hot soup and a soft bed."

- Hubert Selby Jr.

"To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever."

- J.K. Rowling

"I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it’s just too much. The current’s too strong. They’ve got to let go, drift apart. That’s how it is with us."

- Kazuo Ishiguro

"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone."

- Harriet Beecher Stowe

"So it's true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love."

- E.A. Bucchianeri

"And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on."

- Lord Byron

"My world is a million shattered pieces put together, glued by my tears, where each piece is nothing but a reflection of you."

- Sanhita Baruah

"It’s sad, something coming to an end. It cracks you open, in a way — cracks you open to feeling. When you try to avoid the pain, it creates greater pain."

- Jennifer Aniston

"Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts."

- Charles Dickens

"The good times of today are the sad thoughts of tomorrow."

- Bob Marley

"Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys."

- Alphonse de Lamartine

"From sorrow to sorrow love crosses its islands and establishes roots that are watered by weeping."

- Pablo Neruda

"Our greatest joy and our greatest pain come in our relationships with others."

- Stephen R. Covey

"What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses."

- John Irving

"When you’re happy, you enjoy the music but when you’re sad, you understand the lyrics."

- Frank Ocean

"Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of a little water."

- Christopher Morley

"Crying is cleansing. There’s a reason for tears, happiness or sadness."

- Dionne Warwick

"We all yearn for what we have lost. But sometimes, we forget what we have."

- Mitch Albom

"Sorrow looks back. Worry looks around. Faith looks up."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"It’s the heart, afraid of breaking / That never learns to dance."

- Bette Midler

"Oh, I am very weary, / Though tears no longer flow; / My eyes are tired of weeping, / My heart is sick of woe."

- Anne Brontë

"Being in the depths of sadness is just as important an experience as being exuberantly happy."

- Marlene Dietrich

"Sorrow makes us all children again — destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"I release feelings inside me through my songs. I take some of the sadness, some of the heartache, and turn it out. I’m able to stave off the severity. By expressing myself in music, I can soften the blow. But those melodies and rhythms can only do so much."

- Ray Charles

"Perhaps somewhere, someplace deep inside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"I’m not crying because of you; you’re not worth it. I’m crying because my delusion of who you were was shattered by the truth of who you are."

- Steve Maraboli

"It's sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew."

- Henry Rollins

"It's amazing how someone can break your heart, and you can still love them with all the little pieces."

- Ella Harper

"There is a distinct, awful pain that comes with loving someone more than they love you."

- Steve Maraboli

"There is no greater sorrow than to recall, in misery, the time when we were happy."

- Dante Alighieri

"Tears are words the mouth can't say nor can the heart bear."

- Joshua Wisenbaker

"It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Every human walks around with a certain kind of sadness. They may not wear it on their sleeves, but it’s there if you look deep."

- Bob Marley

"Tears come from the heart and not from the brain."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"Our dead are never dead to us until we have forgotten them."

- George Eliot

"I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last."

- Veronica Roth

"Songs are as sad as the listener."

- Jonathan Safran Foer

"Love is so short, forgetting is so long."

- Pablo Neruda

"I saw the world in black and white instead of the vibrant colors and shades I knew existed."

- Katie McGarry

"You make me feel like a firefly. Trapped in a belljar; starved for love."

- Ayushee Ghoshal

"The worst feeling isn't being lonely, it's being forgotten by someone you'd never forget."

- Helen Hywater

"Nobody has ever measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold."

- Zelda Fitzgerald

"Not a day passes over the earth but men and women of no note do great deeds, speak great words, and suffer noble sorrows. Of these obscure heroes, philosophers, and martyrs the greater part will never be known."

- Charles Reade

"Stab the body and it heals, but injure the heart and the wound lasts a lifetime."

- Mineko Iwasaki

"For a second I feel a rush of sadness: for the horizons that vanish behind us, for the people we leave behind, the tiny-doll selves that get stored away and ultimately buried."

- Lauren Oliver

"I can’t remember anything without a sadness so deep that it hardly becomes known to me, so deep that its tears leave me a spectator of my own stupidity."

- John Lennon

"Loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself."

- Rupi Kaur

"Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, 'It might have been.'"

- Kurt Vonnegut

"To live in a hallucination of being loved is more painful than rejection."

- Vinaya Panicker

"Hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable."

- The Wizard of Oz

"Those who do not weep, do not see."

- Victor Hugo

"Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you."

- Veronica Roth

"You know, a heart can be broken, but it keeps on beating, just the same."

- Fannie Flagg

"You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness."

- Jonathan Safran Foer

"Chase away sorrow by living."

- Melissa Marr

"Some stories don’t have happy endings. Even love stories. Maybe especially love stories."

- Kristin Hannah

"I always like walking in the rain, so no one can see me crying."

- Charlie Chaplin

"One thing you can't hide is when you're crippled inside."

- John Lennon

"I wish I could go back to the day I met you and just walk away."

- J.D. Salinger

"To have felt too much is to end in feeling nothing."

- Dorothy Thompson

"It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more."

- J.K. Rowling

"Broken relationships are a source of heavy heartbreak that seem to affect every family."

- Jerry B. Jenkins

"Death is a great revealer of what is in a man, and in its solemn shadow appear the naked lineaments of the soul."

- E.H. Chapin

"You get used to sadness, growing up in the mountains, I guess."

- Loretta Lynn

"To fall in love is awfully simple, but to fall out of love is simply awful."

- Bess Myerson

"You meet everyone twice in this life, when they come and when they go."

- C.C Aurel

"When she is happy, she can’t stop talking, when she is sad, she doesn’t say a word."

- Ann Brashares

"You're like a song that I heard when I was a little kid but forgot I knew until I heard it again."

- Maggie Stiefvater

"Sometimes you got to hurt something to help something. Sometimes you have to plow under one thing in order for something else to grow."

- Ernest J. Gaines

"There is a time for departure, even when there's no certain place to go."

- Tennessee Williams

"Death is the dropping of the flower that the fruit may swell."

- Henry Ward Beecher

"Who has not sat before his own heart’s curtain? It lifts: and the scenery is falling apart."

- Rainer Maria Rilke

"I never got to fall out of love. I just had to move on."

"Now, you are just a stranger with all my secrets."