Despondency (n.) makes a man strong again — in the defiance of despondency.
Despondency (n.) makes everything empty, transforms life into a monotonous, meaningless repetition: the fields turn green, the birds sing, and God seems withdrawn far away from these trivialities hardly worth living for.
Despondency (n.) is forbidden, as the high priest was forbidden to rend his garments in mourning: rending was too passionate, despondency too apathetic and weak.
Despondency (n.) is hardest on whoever keeps offering to help.
Sorrow (n.) has an expression only amid a far-reaching pattern of life, as an expression of pain needs normal life around it.
Sorrow (n.) is no more felt in the body than seeing is felt in the eyes.
Sorrow (n.) essentially shows in the face, yet one may be unable to describe that face except as sorrowful.
Sorrow (n.) like a lead-grey sky — how could that be found out? By looking at a sorrowing man and then at the sky?
Grief (n.) must be more than the truth when the law asks for it: 'I'd rather Mother hadn't died' — 'That's not enough.'
Grief (n.) is often the bill for reckoning on the uncertain: you counted on your friend to outlive you; blame yourself, not fate.
Grief (n.) must be ended at any cost only when it is your own; another's grief you ease as far as you can, since only your own is in your power.
Melancholy (n.) is the pleasure of being sad.
Melancholy (n.) is triumph's twin: two forms of mourning that escape each other only by turning into each other.
Melancholy (n.) over beauty's passing is a revolt against mourning: a foretaste of grieving its decease spoils the enjoyment in advance.
Melancholy (n.) was the one exception to his foolhardy faith that he could do anything he willed — all else unconditionally, but not throw it off.