Melancholic Quotes

1. "An unchangeable colour rules over the melancholic: his dwelling is a space the colour of mourning. Nothing happens in it. No one intrudes. It is a bare stage where the inert I is assisted by the I suffering from that inertia. The latter wishes to free the former, but all efforts fail, as Theseus would have failed had he been not only himself but also the Minotaur; to kill him then, he would have had to kill himself"
Author: Alejandra Pizarnik

2. "Melancholia is, I believe, a musical problem: a dissonance, a change in rhythm. While on the outside everything happens with the vertiginous rhythm of a cataract, on the inside is the exhausted adagio of drops of water falling from time to tired time. For this reason the outside, seen from the melancholic inside, appears absurd and unreal, and constitutes ‘the farce we all must play'. But for an instant – because of a wild music, or a drug, or the sexual act carried to its climax – the very slow rhythm of the melancholic soul does not only rise to that of the outside world: it overtakes it with an ineffably blissful exorbitance, and the soul then thrills animated by delirious new energies"
Author: Alejandra Pizarnik

3. "I have such a love of good music that I find even melancholic music uplifting. Maybe I'm a rare breed."
Author: Anton Corbijn

4. "Quietism, Buddhism, and other religions, everything which denies the flesh—is the great inferiority to God in ourselves, an escapism seeking sanctuary through fear of life and inability to accept 'this reality'. They were hurt? Or was the odalisque unsatisfactory or too expensive? They expected too much for too little, or were too mean to pay—therefore: "All is illusion". But the Stoic smilingly awaits the next shower of shit from heaven. Stoics are not Saviours, Saints or Heroes and are often confused and weary, yet they prefer to find their own way and to accept life as they find it. The schizophrenics, the melancholics and psychotics—they at least are secretive and inflict no religions on others. They prove the possibilities and utilities of 'as if' when totally accepted."
Author: Austin Osman Spare

5. "A light wind blew through here that carried with it scents of sadness and loss, not recognizable odors but smells that corresponded to nothing, chimerical fragrances able to evoke melancholic memories."
Author: Bentley Little

6. "Music is at its best when it is pleasingly melancholic."
Author: Charles H. Spurgeon

7. "Although according to certain philosophers it is quite difficult to distinguish the jester from the melancholic, life itself being a comic drama or a dramatic comedy."
Author: Comte De Lautréamont

8. "I enjoy melancholic music and art. They take me to places I don't normally get to go."
Author: Criss Jami

9. "...hanging out does not make one an artist. A secondhand wardrobe does not make one an artist. Neither do a hair-trigger temper, melancholic nature, propensity for tears, hating your parents, nor even HIV - I hate to say it - none of these make one an artist. They can help, but just as being gay does not make one witty (you can suck a mile of cock, as my friend Sarah Thyre puts it, it still won't make you Oscar Wilde, believe me), the only thing that makes one an artist is making art. And that requires the precise opposite of hanging out; a deeply lonely and unglamorous task of tolerating oneself long enough to push something out."
Author: David Rakoff

10. "As a confirmed melancholic, I can testify that the best and maybe only antidote for melancholia is action. However, like most melancholics, I suffer also from sloth."
Author: Edward Abbey

11. "When humor can be made to alternate with melancholy, one has a success, but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time, it's just wonderful."
Author: Francois Truffaut

12. "Coral, my love, you are too pure, too innocent, too alive for me," he said slowly, almost carefully. "My world is like a drawing in black and white on a gray canvas, without a single note of color to bring it to life. And now, on this pale and melancholic picture, a red flower has fallen, a warm and scented flower." He sighed. "It's a wonderful contrast, but too vivid…"
Author: Hannah Fielding

13. "Although of course I am aware that it changes colour in a jar. But we know why, surely? The heavier melancholic elements in the blood sink, making the top lighter and the bottom darker.""Not so," I said firmly. "Cover the jar, and the colour does not change. And I can find no explanation of how such separation could occur in the lungs. But when it emerges from the lungs - at least, this is the case in cats - it is very much lighter in colour than when it goes in, indicating that some darkness is withdrawn from it.""I must cut up a cat and see for myself. A live cat, was it?""It was for a while."
Author: Iain Pears

14. "Fritz was melancholic by nature, and could tolerate his own gloom. I do not think this is so with you, who are sanguine and impatient. In your case, remorse and despondency could be crippling."
Author: John Christopher

15. "Why is it that all men who have become outstanding in philosophy, statesmanship, poetry or the arts are melancholic,"
Author: Joshua Wolf Shenk

16. "I think I am pretty much melancholic."
Author: Juliette Binoche

17. "Whereas the melancholic exhibits a state of general inhibition, in the manic patient even normal inhibitions of the instincts are partly or wholly abolished."
Author: Karl Abraham

18. "The sanatorium itself was charming, a group of cabins in the woods, a place for overworked urbanites to feel pleasantly melancholic. A slackertorium."
Author: Keith Gessen

19. "The prospect Smiler was a manic farmer. Few men I think can have been as unfortunate as he; for on the one hand he was a melancholic with a loathing for mankind, on the other, some paralysis had twisted his mouth into a permanent and radiant smile. So everyone he met, being warmed by his smile, would shout him a happy greeting. And beaming upon them with his sunny face he would curse them all to hell."
Author: Laurie Lee

20. "Thousands and thousands of books are thrown on the market every yearpresenting some new variant of the personal romance, some tale of the vacillationsof the melancholic or the career of the ambitious. The heroine of Proust requiresseveral finely-wrought pages in order to feel that she does not feel anything. Itwould seem that one might, at least with equal justice, demand attention to aseries of collective historic dramas which lifted hundreds of millions of humanbeings out of nonexistence, transforming the character of nations and intrudingforever into the life of all mankind."
Author: Leon Trotsky

21. "I've always been melancholic. At a party, everyone would be looking at the glittering chandeliers and I'd be looking at the waitress's cracked shoes."
Author: Marian Keyes

22. "Depressions and melancholy are often a cover for tremendous greed. At the beginning of an analysis there is often a depressed state of resignation-life has no meaning, there is no feeling of being in life. An exaggerated state can develop into complete lameness. Quite young people give the impression of having the resignation of a bitter old man or woman. When you dig into such a black mood you find that behind it there is overwhelming greed-for being loved, for being very rich, for having the right partner, for being the top dog, etc. Behind such a melancholic resignation you will often discover in the darkness a recurring theme which makes things very difficult, namely if you give such people one bit of hope, the lion opens its mouth and you have to withdraw, and then they put the lid on again, and so it goes on, back and forth."
Author: Marie Louise Von Franz

23. "I have no other passion to keep me in breath. What avarice, ambition, quarrels, law suits do for others who, like me, have no particular vocation, love would much more commodiously do; it would restore to me vigilance, sobriety, grace, and the care of my person; it would reassure my countenance, so that the grimaces of old age, those deformed and dismal looks, might not come to disgrace it; would again put me upon sound and wise studies, by which I might render myself more loved and esteemed, clearing my mind of the despair of itself and of its use, and redintegrating it to itself; would divert me from a thousand troublesome thoughts, a thousand melancholic humours that idleness and the ill posture of our health loads us withal at such an age; would warm again, in dreams at least, the blood that nature is abandoning; would hold up the chin, and a little stretch out the nerves, the vigour and gaiety of life of that poor man who is going full drive towards his ruin."
Author: Michel De Montaigne

24. "Repent from life is either for the fools or for those who are melancholically fearless"
Author: Mohammed Abad Alrazak

25. "Scientists used to do an experiment whereby a dog's repeated reward for performing a task was unaccountably replaced by punishment. The dog, knowing it would be penalized for doing well or doing badly, would become melancholic and inactive. This and other unforeseeable results were funded by taxing up to sixty percent of people's earnings. People became strangely melancholic and inactive"
Author: Steve Aylett

26. "Dissimulation, secretiveness, appear a necessity to the melancholic. He has complex, often veiled relations with others. These feelings of superiority, of inadequacy, of baffled feeling, of not being able to get what one wants, or even name it properly (or consistently) to oneself — these can be, it is felt they ought to be, masked by friendliness, or the most scrupulous manipulation."
Author: Susan Sontag

Melancholic Quotes Pictures