Paul Laurence Dunbar Quotes

Sadness of love without release.

Every man that ever lived craved perfect happiness, the detective poignantly reflected. But how can we have it when we know we’re going to die? Each joy was clouded by the knowledge it would end. And so nature had implanted in us a desire for something unattainable? No. It couldn’t be. It makes no sense. Every other striving implanted by nature had a corresponding object that wasn’t a phantom. Why this exception? the detective reasoned. It was nature making hunger when there wasn’t any food. We continue. We go on. Thus death proved life.

How much better my life has been for knowing him. For loving him, even if it's only in the limited way that I can manage. But I never get the chance.

I'm sorry for the anguished hearts that break with passion's strain, But I'm sorrier for the poor starved souls that never knew love's pain, Who hunger on through barren years not tasting joys they crave, For sadder far is such a lot than weeping o'er a grave.

'T is sweeter for thee despairing Than aught in the world beside,-Jessy!

I can't imagine a sweeter agony, having him so close.

In reality, in love there is a permanent suffering which joy neutralizes, renders virtual delays, but which can at any moment become what it would have become long earlier if one had not obtained what one wanted -- atrocious.

Knowing they were in the same city again made the missing him flare up inside her. In her stomach. Why were people always going on and on about the heart? Almost everything Levi happened in Cath’s stomach.

Of love that never found his earthly close, What sequel? Streaming eyes and breaking hearts; Or all the same as if he had not been?

You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever.

It hurts every day, the absence of someone who was once there.

She talks with a broken heart - Her voice lutes brokenly like a heart lost, musically too, like in a lost grove, it's almost too much to bear sometimes like some fantastic futuristic Jerry Southern singer in a nightclub who steps up to the mike in the spotlight in Las Vegas but doesn't even have to sing, just talk, to make men sigh and women wonder I guess.

I bow in reverence before the emotions of every melted heart....The more intense the delight in their presence, the more poignant the impression of their absence....When the tears of bereavement have had their natural flow, they lead us again to life and love's generous joy.

The pain we feel When someone leaves our life is in direct proportion to the joy they bring while a part of our life for a few moments. In my life you made me feel as if I truly meant something to someone

Letting go of someone we love is the hardest thing we will ever do. Some people never surrender to love for the fear of being hurt. But to not have loved, to not have felt the immense joy it brings, would have been a far worse kind of death.

I am a lover and have not found my thing to love. That is a big point if you know enough to realize what I mean. It makes my destruction inevitable, you see. There are few who understand that.

I guess this was what it felt like to love someone and feel like you had lost them. Even when you were still holding them in your arms.

I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried. For a year I have called every black tree Marya Morevna; I have looked for your face in the patterns of the ice. In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold.

It's the sorrow you feel that allows you to crave love. Without the suffering, there would be no true pleasure. Without tears, no joy. Without deficiency, no longing. This is the secret of the human heart, Rom.

What is a disease is wishing with an equal intensity what is needed and what is desirable, and suffer for not being perfect as you would suffer for not having bread. The romantic error is this wanting the moon as if there was a way to get it.

But now the joy is gone and the sadness is back, the sadness feels like something deserved, the price of some not-quite-forgotten betrayal.

That old feeling is still in my leaking heart.

I know what my heart is like Since your love died: It is like a hollow ledge Holding a little pool Left there by the tide, A little tepid pool, Drying inward from the edge.

The scars of your love remind me of us they keep me thinking that we almost had it all the scars of your love they leave me breathless I can't help feeling we could have had it all