Melancholy

Melancholy is the pleasure of being sad.
- Victor Hugo

Melancholy sees the worst of things,--things as they may be, and not as they are. It looks upon a beautiful face, and sees but a grinning skull.
- Christian Nestell Bovee

Here rests his head upon the lap of earth,
A youth, to fortune and to fame unknown;
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.
- Thomas Gray,
Elegy in a Country Churchyard--The Epitaph

Hence, all you vain delights,
As short as are the nights
Wherein you spend your folly!
There's nought in this life sweet,
If man were wise to see 't,
But only melancholy,
Oh, sweetest melancholy!
- Dr. William Strode, Song in Praise of Melancholy,
as given in Malone's Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, manuscript no. 21

Quotes related to books, reading

Anyone who has a book collection wants for nothing.

--Cicero

Books are carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculations at a standstill.

--Barbara Tuchman

It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.

--S.I. Hiyakawa

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

--Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996)

The book must of necessity be put into a bookcase. And the bookcase must be housed. And the house must be kept. And the library must be dusted, must be arranged, must be catalogued. What a vista of toil, yet not unhappy toil!

--William Gladstone

Read in order to Live.

--Gustave Flaubert

Life

I laugh and I cry, and I’m haunted by
Things I never meant or wished to say.

Bob Dylan

20 Things You Didn't Know About... Death

Newsflash: we're all going to die. But here are 20 things you didn't know about kicking the bucket...more here