“I am so full of sadness, so endlessly weary.”

Original: Ich bin so voll von Traurigkeit, so unendlich müde. — Reveals the melancholic exhaustion that often paralyzed his creative energy · Letter to Erhard Buschbeck, 1912 (German)

• Melancholy
• Sadness
• Suffering

“Could I mark this day I should put a black ring around it as one of the saddest days I have ever spent.”

Recording an intense moment of loneliness and homesickness in Paris · Diary, France

• Home
• Sadness
• Solitude

“There was very little wind — no fog. The sea even was sad and silent.”

A quiet, melancholy seaside description · Letter to Anna Harte, Boston, September 6, 1871

• Nature
• Sadness

“I am profoundly in the D's – discouraged, depressed, disheartened, disgusted.”

A frank expression of deep emotional weariness · Diary (commonly attributed)

• Despair
• Emotion
• Sadness

“All their lives they will love, and expect love—and be sad, wondering helplessly when they do not get it.”

Reflecting on openness to love and the vulnerability that accompanies it · Essay, Wings and the Child, Chapter I: Of Understanding

• Hope
• Love
• Sadness

“Better by far you should forget and smile than that you should remember me and be sad.”

This wording is widely circulated as a Rossetti quotation but is also associated with her poem Remember · Letter, commonly attributed

• Love
• Memory
• Sadness

“My birthdays are the most melancholy days I know.”

Reflecting her youthful tendency to greet the passage of time with introspection rather than celebration · Letter to an Oberlin friend, 1874

• Age
• Sadness
• Time

“If I only could sleep!”

A stark recurring expression of exhaustion during the final illness of his life · Late letters quoted by Louise Chandler Moulton in her biographical sketch

• Rest
• Sadness
• Suffering

“My pen has become unsteady; I am sad, but what can one do.”

Original: Pióro rozkołysało się, smutno mi, ale co robić!.. — A spontaneous glimpse of emotion breaking through the act of writing. · Letter to his mother concerning Ludwika, 1830s (Polish)

• Emotion
• Sadness
• Writing

“Blue. My God! I'm so blue that if I were a dog, I'd sit on my haunches and howl and howl and howl.”

A vivid, almost comic, expression of overwhelming sadness · Diary or letter (commonly attributed)

• Despair
• Emotion
• Sadness

“The best moments of love are those of a quiet, gentle melancholy, when you weep without knowing why.”

Original: I migliori momenti dell’amore sono quelli di una quieta e dolce malinconia, dove tu piangi e non sai di che. — Love reaches its deepest intensity for Leopardi where happiness and inexplicable sadness become inseparable. · Zibaldone, entry 142, 27 June 1820 (Italian)

• Emotion
• Love
• Sadness