45 sad quotes that will help you feel a little less alone (2024)

Tough times are just as much a part of our lives as happy moments.

While we'd all prefer smooth sailing over stormy seas, you can't have sunshine without a little bit of rain.

Sadness is a universal emotion that bonds all of us together. Though we may have different personal histories, we can all relate to the experiences of heartbreak, regret, and grief.

As difficult as it can be, sharing our sorrows with others can help us get through those low moments in life. Knowing that someone else understands the way you feel won't completely ease your pain, but it may help you feel a little less alone.

If talking about your sadness feels too difficult at the moment, you can also find comfort in art. Poets, musicians, artists, and writers have created some of the world’s most beautiful work out of their saddest experiences.

Take a cue from musician Frank Ocean, who said, “When you’re happy, you enjoy themusic,but when you’re sad, you understand the lyrics.”

Even if sharing your emotions doesn't remove the pain, there's a measure of comfort in knowing that others empathize with your feelings.

These 45 quotes about sadness will help you persevere and heal through life's toughest moments.

Sad quotes that express your pain

• “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” — Kahlil Gibran
• “Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.” — Henry David Thoreau
• “What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.” — John Irving, “The Cider House Rules”
• “Loneliness is a sign you are in desperate need of yourself.” — Rupi Kaur, “milk and honey”
• “Words are tears that have been written down.Tears are words that need to be shed.Without them, joy loses all its brilliance and sadness has no end.” — Paulo Coelho

• “There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but iI have a feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well. So I take the memories as they come, accepting them all, letting them guide me whenever I can.” — Nicholas Sparks, “Dear John”
• “When you’re happy, you enjoy themusicbut when you’re sad, you understand the lyrics.” — Frank Ocean
• “For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, ‘It might have been.’” — John Greenleaf Whittier
• “It’s sad, something coming to an end. It cracks you open, in a way — cracks you open to feeling. When you try to avoid the pain, it creates greater pain.” — Jennifer Aniston
• “Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of a little water.” — Christopher Morley

• “It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it.” — Fred Rogers, “The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember”
• “A wound that goes unacknowledged and unwept is a wound that cannot heal.” — John Eldredge
• “Crying is cleansing. There’s a reason for tears, happiness or sadness.” — Dionne Warwick
• “Those who do not weep, do not see.” — Victor Hugo, “Les Miserables”
• “It’s so devastating to come to terms with speaking of someone in past tense when you used to see them as your present and your future.” — Taylor Swift

• “Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart.” — José N. Harris, “MI VIDA: A Story of Faith, Hope and Love”
• “We all yearn for what we have lost. But sometimes, we forget what we have.” — Mitch Albom, “The Timekeeper”
• “I saw the world in black and white instead of the vibrant colors and shades I knew existed.” — Katie McGarry, “Pushing the Limits”
• “Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep.” — Clive Barker, “Abarat: Days of Magic, Nights of Winter”
• “Songs are as sad as the listener.” — Jonathan Safran Foer, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close”

• “Sorrow looks back. Worry looks around. Faith looks up.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “There’s a sorrow and pain in everyone’s life, but every now and then there’s a ray of light that melts the loneliness in your heart and brings comfort like hot soup and a soft bed.” — Hubert Selby Jr., “Requiem for a Dream”
• “I suppose a fire that burns that bright is not meant to last.” — Veronica Roth, “Allegiant”
• “It’s the heart, afraid of breaking / That never learns to dance.” — Bette Midler, “The Rose”
• “Chase away sorrow by living.” — Melissa Marr, “Darkest Mercy”

• “When she is happy, she can’t stop talking, when she is sad, she doesn’t say a word.” — Ann Brashares, “Girl in Pants: The Third Summer of Sisterhood”
• “And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly live on.” — Lord Byron
• “Hearts will never be practical until they are made unbreakable.” — L. Frank Baum, “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”
• “When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.” — Elizabeth Gilbert, “Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia”
• “My world is a million shattered pieces put together, glued by my tears, where each piece is nothing but a reflection of you.” — Sanhita Baruah

• Oh, I am very weary, / Though tears no longer flow; / My eyes are tired of weeping, / My heart is sick of woe. — Anne Brontë
• “Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.” — Charles Dickens, “Great Expectations”
• “Being in the depths of sadness is just as important an experience as being exuberantly happy.” — Marlene Dietrich
• “I can’t remember anything without a sadness so deep that it hardly becomes known to me, so deep that its tears leave me a spectator of my own stupidity.” — John Lennon
• “Sorrow makes us all children again — destroys all differences of intellect. The wisest know nothing.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

• “For a second I feel a rush of sadness: for the horizons that vanish behind us, for the people we leave behind, the tiny-doll selves that get stored away and ultimately buried.” — Lauren Oliver
• “From sorrow to sorrow love crosses its islands and establishes roots that are watered by weeping.” — Pablo Neruda
• “Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
• “You get used to sadness, growing up in the mountains, I guess.” — Loretta Lynn
• “Not a day passes over the earth but men and women of no note do great deeds, speak great words, and suffer noble sorrows. Of these obscure heroes, philosophers, and martyrs the greater part will never be known.” — Charles Reade

• “I release feelings inside me through my songs. I take some of the sadness, some of the heartache, and turn it out. I’m able to stave off the severity. By expressing myself in music, I can soften the blow. But those melodies and rhythms can only do so much.” — Ray Charles
• “The lessons we learn in sadness and from loss are those that abide.” — Theodore T. Munger
• “This genuine heart of sadness can teach us great compassion. It can humble us when we’re arrogant and soften us when we are unkind.” — Pema Chödrön
• “Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.” — Alphonse de Lamartine
• “Perhaps somewhere, someplace deep inside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad.” — Rainer Maria Rilke