Lamentation Quotes

Alexander wept when he heard from Anaxarchus that there was an infinite number of worlds; and his friends asking him if any accident had befallen him, he returns this answer: "Do you not think it a matter worthy of lamentation that when there is such a vast multitude of them, we have not yet conquered one?" (Plutarch)

Jerusalem is a festival and a lamentation. Its song is a sigh across the ages, a delicate, robust, mournful psalm at the great junction of spiritual cultures.

David K. Shipler

Bury the Great Duke With an empire's lamentation; Let us bury the Great Duke To the noise of the mourning of a mighty nation; Mourning when their leaders fall, Warriors carry the warrior's pall, And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

We must all die! All leave ourselves, it matters not where, when, Nor how, so we die well; and can that man that does so Need lamentation for him?

John Fletcher

There is no harm in patience, and no profit in lamentation. Death is easier to bear (than) that which precedes it, and more severe than that which comes after it. Remember the death of the Apostle of God, and your sorrow will be lessened.

Abu Bakr

What is that sound high in the air Murmur of maternal lamentation Who are those hooded hordes swarming Over endless plains, stumbling in cracked earth Ringed by the flat horizon only What is the city over the mountains Cracks and reforms and bursts in the violet air Falling towers Jerusalem Athens Alexandria Vienna London Unreal.

T. S. Eliot

Truly we are passing through disastrous times, when we may well make our own the lamentation of the Prophet: "There is no truth, and there is no mercy, and there is no knowledge of God in the land" (Hosea 4:1). Yet in the midst of this tide of evil, the Virgin Most Merciful rises before our eyes like a rainbow, as the arbiter of peace between God and man.

Pope Pius X

Desolate-Life is so dreary and desolate- Women and men in the crowd meet and mingle, Yet with itself every soul standeth single, Deep out of sympathy moaning its moan- Holding and having its brief exultation- Making its lonesome and low lamentation- Fighting its terrible conflicts alone.

Alice Cary

Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead excessive grief the enemy of the living.

William Shakespeare

If any man could have discovered the utmost powers of the cannon, in all its various forms and have given such a secret to the Romans, with what rapidity would they have conquered every country and have vanquished every army, and what reward could have been great enough for such a service! Archimedes indeed, although he had greatly damaged the Romans in the siege of Syracuse, nevertheless did not fail of being offered great rewards from these very Romans; and when Syracuse was taken, diligent search was made for Archimedes; and he being found dead greater lamentation was made for him by the Senate and people of Rome than if they had lost all their army; and they did not fail to honour him with burial and with a statue.

Leonardo da Vinci

Every man may be observed to have a certain strain of lamentation, some peculiar theme of complaint on which he dwells in his moments of dejection. (Samuel Johnson)

Tis true, those glorious first ministeriall gifts are ceased, and that's or should be the lamentation of all Saints... Yet I humbly conceive that without those gifts, it is no ground of imitation, and of going forth to Teach and Baptise the Nations, for, the Apostles themselves did not attempt that mighty enterprise, but waited at Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit descended on them, and inabled them for that mighty work.

Roger Williams (theologian)

Whoever in a noble noose is caught, Although his lady may but ill receive His ardour and thus render him distraught, And no reward for his devotion give, Whence all his time and labour come to naught, Yet, if his heart be worthily bestowed, No lamentation to his grief is owed.

Ludovico Ariosto

Others had been a little wild, which was not to be wondered at, and not very blamable but, he had made a lamentation and uproar which it was dangerous for the people to hear, as there is always contagion in weakness and selfishness.

Charles Dickens

If it were possible to cure evils by lamentation and to raise the dead with tears, then gold would be a less valuable thing than weeping.

Sophocles

The whole history of lamentation, and mourning, and woe, from the beginning of the world-the funeral ceremonies in which the living symbolize the intensity of their grief-the monuments they rear to tell the world for centuries to come of the calamity they have suffered from the stroke of death-are enduring attestations that it is not so much in the removal of one sentient and living being off the earth, as in the change-the calamitous change to the survivors-that death is truly the King of Terrors.

Robert Chambers (publisher born 1802)