Troostends van Engelstalige schrijvende grootheden

Grief should be the instructor of the wise: sorrow is knowledge:
they who know the must mourn the deepest.

George Gordon Lord Byron (1788-1824)


Faith alone can interpret life,
And the hearts that aches and bleeds with the stigma
Of pain, alone bears the likeness of Christ,
And can comprehend its dark enigma.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)


Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to clear,
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of the weal and woe:
But God has a few of us whom he whispers in the ear:
The rest may reason and welcome: 'tis we musicians know.

Robert Browning (1812-1889)


There is a tendency in things to right themselves.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)


In the first sharp pangs there is no comfort: whatever goodness may surround us, darkness and silence will still hand about our pain. But, slowly, the clinging companionship with the dead is linked with our living to feel our sorrow as a solemn initiative.

George Eliot (1819-1880)


There are in this world blessed souls whose sorrows spring up into joys for others: whose earthly hopes, laid in the grace with many tears, form the seed whence spring lasting flowers
and halm for the desolate and afflicted.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)


My lighter moods are like to these,
That out of words a comfort win;
But there are others griefs within
And tears that at their fountain freeze:

For by the hearth the children sit
Cold in that atmosphere of Death,
And scarce endure to draw the breath,
Or like to noiseless phantoms flit.

But open converse is there none,
So much the vital spirits sink
To see the vacant chair, and thin.
"How good! how kind! and he is gone."

Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)


Well to suffer is divine:
Pass the watchword down the line,
Pass the countersign "Endure,"
Not to hi who rashly dares,
But to him wo nobly bears
Is the victor's garland sure.

John Greenleaf Whittier (1807-1892)


Yet I argue not
Against Heaven 's hand or will,
Not bate a jot
Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer
Right onward.

John Milton (1608-1674)


There are nettles everywhere,
But smooth green grasses are more common still—
The lue of heaven is larger than the cloud.

Elisabeth Barret Browning (1806-1861)
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Afbeeldingen
1. De Amerikaanse dichter Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
2. De Engelse dichteres George Eliot (eig.: Mary Ann Evans).
3. De Engelse poet laureate Alfred (Lord) Tennyson.
4. De Engelse dichter John Milton.