Theme

Grief

Mourning that has not been tidied. These lines leave the loss in the sentence instead of hurrying toward a lesson.

1. There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.Maya AngelouI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
2. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.Chief JosephSurrender speech
3. April is the cruellest month.T. S. EliotThe Waste Land
4. So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.F. Scott FitzgeraldThe Great Gatsby
5. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.Ernest HemingwayA Farewell to Arms
6. Sing, goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilles, and its devastation.HomerThe Iliad
7. All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.Julian of NorwichRevelations of Divine Love
8. Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.Helen KellerOptimism
9. Listen to the reed, how it tells a tale, complaining of separations.Jalal al-Din RumiMasnavi
10. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time.William ShakespeareMacbeth
11. All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.Leo TolstoyAnna Karenina
12. There are tears for things, and mortal matters touch the mind.VirgilThe Aeneid

Back to the canon