Top 100 Sad Quotes of All Time

A short, finished list rather than an endless feed: 100 of the best sad quotes ever written, picked out of the full sad archive on QuoteForever. You will find Peter Steele, Sylvia Plath, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Paulo Coelho among them.

Read the list top to bottom, or use it as a starting point - every author name links to everything else they said, and every quote has its own page you can share or turn into an image.

1

I talk to God but the sky is empty.

2

If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.

3

Tears are words that need to be written.

4

When you do something noble and beautiful and nobody noticed, do not be sad. For the sun every morning is a beautiful spectacle and yet most of the audience still sleeps.

5

Courage and cheerfulness will not only carry you over the rough places in life, but will enable you to bring comfort and help to the weak-hearted and will console you in the sad hours.

6

We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.

7

When the heart grows weary, all things seem dreary; When the burden grows heavy, the way seems long. Thank God for sending kind death as an ending, Like a grand Amen to a minor song.

8

When you're going through a breakup, you should just let yourself feel everything so you can get over it as opposed to pretending everything's okay and dragging it out.

9

So now I have confessed that he is thine, And I my self am mortgaged to thy will, My self I'll forfeit, so that other mine, Thou wilt restore to be my comfort still.

10

It's funny, how one can look back on a sorrow one thought one might well die of at the time, and know that one had not yet reckoned the tenth part of true grief.

11

Nothing is more seductive for a man than his freedom of conscience, but nothing is a greater cause of suffering.

12

Even when a river of tears courses through this body, the flame of love cannot be quenched.

13

It's really a sad story, and I liked that. The songs on this album talk about relationships in every aspect.

14

That's what so sad about a lot of modern music, in my opinion, so many young bands never stay around long enough to fulfill their ultimate promise. They only get halfway there or a quarter of the way there.

15

It's a sad man my friend who's livin' in his own skin and can't stand the company.

16

I enjoyed in every way my 12 years of playing Archie, and I wasn't personally sad about finishing a long job.

17

I would not know how I am supposed to feel about many stories if not for the fact that the TV news personalities make sad faces for sad stories and happy faces for happy stories.

18

I get mad. I get sad. I have all those emotions. But I just like to keep them to myself. I don't think my fans need to be bothered with if I'm mad or sad about something. I should just be concerned that they are keeping up with my music or I'm making them happy with my show.

19

It's really sad looking at people like Lindsay Lohan. She's an amazing actress, but you see what happens when people know too much about your personal life. They start not being able to look at you the same way professionally. I don't want that to happen to me.

20

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

21

Next to a lost battle, nothing is so sad as a battle that has been won.

22

But I'm not like sad, depressed miserable person. I guess sometimes I give off that impression.

23

If you don't know about pain and trouble, you're in sad shape. They make you appreciate life.

24

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.

25

My father was an urchin that lived in Hell's Kitchen. He was part of a family of nine. I mean, there were times that were better and worse, but mostly, by the time we got to L.A., they'd lost whatever they had. And it was a sad time. And both he and I became truck drivers for different companies.

26

I would never have become music director of the Chicago Symphony, which would have been an extremely sad loss.

27

Football is a sad game.

28

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.

29

Country fans need to support country music by buying albums and concert tickets for traditional artists or the music will just fade away. And that would be really sad.

30

I have been to several wars to draw. I went to Vietnam. And made drawings in Vietnam during that period of the war there, and found that to be a very very sad situation.

31

That is sad until one recalls how many bad books the world may yet be spared because of the busyness of writers.

32

I'm not sad at all about turning 40.

33

There are more than 300,000 families in the Gulf region that lost their homes and are waiting for peace of mind. The hurricane exposed the sad reality of poverty in America. We saw, in all its horrific detail, the vulnerabilities of living in inadequate housing and the heartbreak of losing one's home.

34

In LA, I mean, here's this place full of desperate and sad people who take their only pleasure from destroying others for the purposes of their own self-aggrandizement.

35

The Indian Summer of life should be a little sunny and a little sad, like the season, and infinite in wealth and depth of tone, but never hustled.

36

The sad truth is that without complex business partnerships between African elites and European traders and commercial agents, the slave trade to the New World would have been impossible, at least on the scale it occurred.

37

War is very sad and small life is pathetically fragile at times.

38

You know what I have noticed? And this is really sad. Flying first class is less scary than flying coach. They speak to you and they're so nice to you and they want to help you and they know you want a drink before the plane takes off. And they bring it to you without asking. If you're sitting in coach and hoping for a drink, good luck.

39

The whole 1950s notion was find the right girl, get married, move to the suburbs and then hang out with the guys while she stayed home with the babies. I felt that was sort of sad.

40

Informed by our sad experience of history, we require nothing short of a foundation for lasting democracy.

41

There's all this stuff that is happening in Edinburgh now, it's a sad attempt to create an Edinburgh society, similar to a London society, a highbrow literature celebrity society.

42

There's a rule of writing: if everything is funny, nothing is funny; if everything is sad, nothing is sad. You want that contrast.

43

I wrote the song For A Dancer for a friend of mine who died in a fire. He was in the sauna in a house that burned down, so he had no idea anything was going on. It was very sad.

44

But you see, that's the gilded prison of fashion. We're riding in private jets, and meantime I was so incredibly, painfully sad and lonely.

45

Because the sad fact is that the Enron Corporation and others manipulated with unfortunately great effect the energy market in the West Coast starting in 2000.

46

My parents' divorce left me with a lot of sadness and pain and acting, and especially humour, was my way of dealing with all that.

47

It can make you sad to look at pictures from your youth. So there's a trick to it. The trick is not to look at the later pictures.

48

I was a very good girl for a long time, that's what really drew me to acting. The stage was the perfect place to be outrageous, to be sad, to be angry, to be all these different things.

49

If you don't physically age gracefully, it's a bit sad. I think Steven Tyler can get away anything, because he still looks like he did in '73. Especially from row Z backwards in an arena. As long as the Stones keep their hair and don't get fat they'll get away with the wrinkles.

50

I so desperately hate to end these movies that the first thing I do when I'm done is write another one. Then I don't feel sad about having to leave and everybody going away.

51

If I can procure three hundred good substantial names of persons, or bodies, or institutions, I cannot fail to do well for my family, although I must abandon my life to its success, and undergo many sad perplexities and perhaps never see again my own beloved America.

52

I was sad Jon Ronson, who wrote in the Guardian and has made a TV show for Channel 4, took against me.

53

It's a sad day when a cartoon is doing more and cares more and pays more attention to the environment than our president.

54

The question I love to get asked is: 'What's the hardest part of your job?' And literally, the answer is probably real sad, but it's to just to be me. Like, it's really hard, because I think people, you know, have a set idea of what a pop star should be.

55

It's sad when girls think they don't have anything going on except being pretty.

56

Ladies and gentlemen, it is with great sadness that I announce that I will resign as Australia's Minister for Foreign Affairs. I am sad because I love this job. I'm totally dedicated to the work that we are doing in Australia's name around the world, and I believe that we have achieved many good results for Australia, and I'm proud of them.

57

You can never control who you fall in love with, even when you're in the most sad, confused time of your life. You don't fall in love with people because they're fun. It just happens.

58

Fashion is that thing that saved me from being sad.

59

You have to keep hobbies in L.A. Otherwise, it's sad.

60

It always made me sad that there were kids who didn't have homes.

61

I'm sad and blue, about nobody but you. I told you that I loved you right from the start, you told me the same and now you try to break my little heart.

62

I was so sad from losing two of my dogs and my mother. I had this vision of all these animals sitting behind bars. They had no control and were scared. That's why I got into fostering and adopting animals out.

63

I didn't want to be on the losing side. I was fed up with Jewish weakness, timidity and fear. I didn't want any more Jewish sentimentality and Jewish suffering. I was sickened by our sad songs.

64

It's important to get well-rounded right off the bat. A lot of experienced dancers can get pigeonholed into one thing. I've been hired for a lot of different gigs simply because I can do a lot of different things with different levels of dancers. And it's sad to me that some dancers don't do more.

65

I'm sad to see the passing of the great drug warriors. I certainly did my part in that battle and I don't regret any of it.

66

One of the sad truths about leadership is that, the higher up the ladder you travel, the less you know.

67

I'm sad to report that in the past few years, ever since uncertainty became our insistent 21st century companion, leadership has taken a great leap backwards to the familiar territory of command and control.

68

It is sad to see a woman sacrificing the ties of the affections even to do good.

69

I can't say I'm happy to be talking about John Ritter and his passing. In my 21 years of Entertainment Tonight, this really was one of the most shocking and sad things to have happened.

70

Poetry is a beautiful way of expressing feelings - happy, sad, angry, caring. It's also a way that we share with other people, to help them with those feelings.

71

I mean, I was just one of the ones who got exposed, and because of the position I was in, where I was in my life, it went mainstream. A lot of people got out of it after my situation, not because I went to prison but because it was sad for them to see me go through something that was so pointless, that could have been avoided.

72

Sadness is a super important thing not to be ashamed about but to include in our lives. One of the bigger problems with sadness or depression is there's so much shame around it. If you have it you're a failure. You are felt as being very unattractive.

73

I'm proud of my invention, but I'm sad that it is used by terrorists.

74

Falling in love is awesome, but I'm never drawn to happy songs per se, so whenever you sit down to write a heartbreak song and you're happily in love, it's like, 'OK, now I have to go back to a sad place to get something good.'

75

Keep it simple, keep it sexy, keep it sad.

76

When I design and wonder what the point is, I think of someone having a bad time in their life. Maybe they are sad and they wake up and put on something I have made and it makes them feel just a bit better. So, in that sense, fashion is a little help in the life of a person. But only a little.

77

When I was growing up, albums were my closest friends, as sad as that may sound - Joy Division's 'Closer,' or Echo and the Bunnymen's 'Heaven Up Here'... I had a more intimate relationship with those records than I did with most of the people in my life.

78

I think I have a dark view of the world. I have to make everything funny, otherwise it all seems so sad.

79

I do believe that if you haven't learnt about sadness, you cannot appreciate happiness.

80

We're sad about some of the losses of members of great seniority and distinction in the Congress, and some very new members, who will no longer be serving with us.

81

It's much easier to write when you're sad. But you can end up isolated and depressed because you almost need to put yourself in that situation to have that angst to write from.

82

As a songwriter I hate this whole, 'If it's a sad song, it has to sound like a sad song thing.' And that goes all the way back to my days with the Format. I'm an insane narcissist, so if I have to get something off my chest, I'll get something off my chest.

83

I am not a sad clown. I am not a sad clown.

84

The sad part about our past is that religions, ironically enough, are responsible for creating the most destructive idea that has ever been visited upon the human race: the idea that there is such a thing as 'better.'

85

It's sad that we have become so accustomed to bad service that we're shocked when we get good service.

86

It's a sad state when more people retweet than buy records.

87

It is a very sad thing that nowadays there is so little useless information.

88

I'm so grounded, it's sad.

89

But now Americans, they felt a sense of peace and protection because they've been separated by so many thousands of miles of ocean. And you know, the fact that it's come to the U.S. like this is so sad, and yet you know, what can you do? It's here.

90

Even modern English people are imperious, superior, ridden by class. All of the hypocrisy and the difficulties that are endemic in being British also make it an incredibly fertile place culturally. A brilliant place to live. Sad but true.

91

I don't know what to say to that, but I have to agree with Johnny that, yeah, we do touch upon things that most men would rather not admit: That we feel pain, we cry, get sad and sometimes don't deal well with disappointment.

92

Well, darkness with humor... I'm not an extremely suicidal or sad person.

93

I am an optimist, unrepentant and militant. After all, in order not to be a fool an optimist must know how sad a place the world can be. It is only the pessimist who finds this out anew every day.

94

We never taste a perfect joy; our happiest successes are mixed with sadness.

95

It makes me sad when I find sisters who aren't joyful. They might smile, but with just a smile they could be flight attendants!

96

Dwight is a sad clown. You've seen those paintings of sad clown.

97

It makes me so desperately sad to witness just how unforgivably wretched our world has become.

98

Everybody has a right to like or dislike anything or anyone. From a flower to a flavor to a book or a composition but it is very sad that in our country we actually fight over such things in an unseemly manner.

99

The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.

100

What I am sad about is that there is now, in America, no equivalent to the art circuit.

More Sad quotes

This is the short list. The full sad quotes collection holds every quote on the subject in the archive, and the picture quotes are ready to share as images.

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