The joy of love is too short, and the sorrow thereof, and what cometh thereof, dureth over long.
Quotations about:
heartbreak
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Sorrow is how we learn to love. Your heart isn’t breaking. It hurts because it’s getting larger. The larger it gets, the more love it holds.
Better to love amiss than nothing to have loved.
George Crabbe (1754-1832) English poet, writer, surgeon, clergyman
Tales in Verse, Tale 14 “The Struggles of Conscience” (1812)
See Tennyson (1849).
“The best moments in my life,” I said, “have come because I loved somebody.”
“Yeah,” he said.
“And the worst,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said.
The world either breaks or hardens the heart.
[En vivant et en voyant les hommes, il faut que le cœur se briese ou se bronze.]
Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) French writer, epigrammist (b. Nicolas-Sébastien Roch)
Products of Perfected Civilization [Produits de la Civilisation Perfectionnée], Part 2 “Characters and Anecdotes [Caractères et Anecdotes],” ch. 3 (frag. 771) (1795) [tr. Finod (1880)]
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Attributed by Chamfort as a statement in a philosophical debate, made by M. D---. Finod's translation is very much a paraphrase, as is:
Contact with the world either breaks or hardens the heart.
[ed. Ballou (1882)]
More literal translations:
Living among men and observing them, the heart must either break or turn to bronze.
[tr. Merwin (1969)]
In living and in seeing men, the heart must break or be bronzed.
[Source]
Though attributed by Chamfort to "M. D----," he also used the phrase himself, and it is usually attributed to him. Toward the end of his life, he wrote:
Je m'en vais enfin, de ce monde où il faut que le cœur se briese ou se bronze.
[I am leaving at last from this world where the heart must break or become bronze.]
MALCOLM: Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Macbeth, Act 4, sc. 3, l. 246ff (4.3.246-247) (1606)
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