133+ Sad Quotes to Help You Move Through Sadness

Remember that sadness is one of the four human emotions that everyone experiences at least once in their lives. The definition of sadness is the emotional pain associated with, or characterized by feelings of disadvantage, loss, despair, helplessness, disappointment, and sorrow.

Sometimes you just need to feel the feelings, embrace the sadness and just go with it. These meaningful sad quotes, which people often use to somehow survive their sadness and grief, will give you more insight. The best quotes are not about cheering you up but summarize the wisdom you need to hear.

If you’re searching for popular liar quotes that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of powerful cheating quotes, top divorce quotes and significant grief quotes.

Top 10 Sad Quotes

I seldom think about my limitations, and they never make me sad. Perhaps there is just a touch of yearning at times; but it is vague, like a breeze among flowers. – Helen Keller

A million words would not bring you back, I know because I tried, neither would a million tears, I know because I cried.

The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. – Lemony Snicket

Depression is like a heaviness that you can’t ever escape. It crushes down on you, making even the smallest things like tying your shoes or chewing on toast seem like a twenty-mile hike uphill. Depression is a part of you; it’s in your bones and your blood. – Jasmine Warga

What brings us to tears, will lead us to grace. Our pain is never wasted. – Bob Goff

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh. – Henry David Thoreau

Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn’t stop for anybody. – Stephen Chbosky

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. – Percy Bysshe Shelley

I wanted to kill someone, and I wanted to die, and I wanted to run as far and as fast as I could because she was never coming back. She had fallen off the face of the earth and she was never coming back. – Melissa Kantor

Tears come from the heart and not from the brain. – Leonardo da Vinci

Best Sad Quotes

The word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. – Carl Jung

A season of loneliness and isolation is when the caterpillar gets its wings. Remember that next time you feel alone. – Mandy Hale

Breathing is hard. When you cry so much, it makes you realize that breathing is hard. – David Levithan

The saddest thing about betrayal is that it never comes from your enemies.

Don’t allow yourself to be upset and disturbed. Hold your peace because without it you have no power. – Joyce Meyer

Sadness flies away on the wings of time. – Jean de La Fontaine

There’s death all around us. Everywhere we look. 1.8 people kill themselves every second. We just don’t pay attention. Until we do. – Cynthia Hand

Life is made of so many partings welded together. – Charles Dickens

A teardrop on earth summons the King of heaven. – Charles R. Swindoll

Sadness flies away on the wings of time. – Jean de La Fontaine

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness. – Jonathan Safran Foer

I pray to God to remove my enemies from my life, and before I know it, I started losing friends. Am just saying no one to be trusted. – Blaze Olamiday

Sadness is but a wall between two gardens. – Kahlil Gibran

As long as you are unable to access the power of the Now, every emotional pain that you experience leaves behind a residue of pain that lives on in you. – Eckhart Tolle

One must not let oneself be overwhelmed by sadness. – Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis

I guess that’s what saying good-bye is always like–like jumping off an edge. The worst part is making the choice to do it. Once you’re in the air, there’s nothing you can do but let go. – Lauren Oliver

Sometimes it takes sadness to know happiness, noise to appreciate silence and absence to value presence.

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy. – Leo Buscaglia

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keeps out the joy. Jim Rohn

There are many backstabbing friends who in your hard time will ignore you, without to ask something from them. You just are filled with sadness and they don’t confide in you anymore. The downside of your hard time is being considered rude, negative, boorish and insistent. – Camelia C.

We must understand that sadness is an ocean, and sometimes we drown, while other days we are forced to swim. – R.M. Drake

We must understand that sadness is an ocean, and sometimes we drown, while other days we are forced to swim.

R.M. Drake

Bitterness imprisons life; love releases it. Bitterness paralyzes life; love empowers it. Bitterness sours life; love sweetens it. Bitterness sickens life; love heals it. Bitterness blinds life; love anoints its eyes. – Harry Emerson Fosdick

This is what it felt like to have a broken heart. It felt less like a cracking down the middle and more like she had swallowed it whole and it sat bruised and bleeding in the pit of her stomach. – Wendy Wunder

When you’re happy you enjoy the music, but when you’re sad you understand the lyrics. – Frank Ocean

Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of a little water. – Christopher Morley

To have felt too much is to end in feeling nothing. – Dorothy Thompson

The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. – Lemony Snicke

There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well. – Nicholas Sparks

Losing a loved one is an amputation.

She had tricked him. She had made him leave his old self behind and come into her world, and then before he was really at home in it but too late to go back, she had left him stranded there–like an astronaut wandering about on the moon. Alone. – Katherine Paterson

Don’t let negative and toxic friends rent space in your head.

Sometimes you laugh because you’ve got no more room for crying. – Terry Pratchett

The sad truth is that opportunity doesn’t knock twice. – Gloria Estefan

People keep telling me that life goes on, but to me that’s the saddest part.

Experiencing sadness and anger can make you feel more creative, and by being creative you can get beyond your pain or negativity. – Yoko Ono

The sun kept on with its slipping away, and I thought how many small good things in the world might be resting on the shoulders of something terrible. – Carol Rifka Brunt

I learned how to be happy because I know what unhappiness felt like. – Lilly Singh

There is no sadder sight than a young pessimist. – Mark Twain

It’s sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew. – Henry Rollins

Some days are just bad days, that’s all. You have to experience sadness to know happiness, and I remind myself that not every day is going to be a good day, that’s just the way it is! – Dita Von Teese

As the light begins to intensify, so does my misery, and I wonder how it is possible to hurt so much when nothing is wrong. – Tabitha Suzuma

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses, we must plant more roses. – George Eliot

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul. – Oscar Wilde

There is no point treating a depressed person as though she were just feeling sad, saying, ‘There now, hang on, you’ll get over it.’ Sadness is more or less like a head cold- with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer. – Barbara Kingsolver

But grief makes a monster out of us sometimes . . . and sometimes you say and do things to the people you love that you can’t forgive yourself for. – Melina Marchetta

You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness. Jonathan Safran Foer

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Famous Sadness Quotes

If you didn’t remember something happening, was it because it never had happened? Or because you wished it hadn’t? – Jodi Picoult

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. – Khalil Gibran

The word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. – Carl Jung

Praising what is lost makes the remembrance dear. – William Shakespeare

There is no greater sorrow than to recall in misery the time when we were happy. – Dante Alighieri

The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite! – Tennessee Williams

Leaning against my father, the sadness finally broke open inside me, hollowing out my heart and leaving me bleeding. My feet felt rooted in the dirt. There were more than two bodies buried here. Pieces of me that I didn’t even know were under the ground. Pieces of dad, too. – Laurie Halse Anderson

The good life is not one immune to sadness but one in which suffering contributes to our development. – Alain de Botton

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to. – Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Don’t desire happiness because it creates only unhappiness and nothing else. – Osho

Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect. – Margaret Mitchell

Depression is the most unpleasant thing I have ever experienced… It is that absence of being able to envisage that you will ever be cheerful again. The absence of hope. That very deadened feeling, which is so very different from feeling sad. Sad hurts but it’s a healthy feeling. It is a necessary thing to feel. Depression is very different. – J.K. Rowling

If you’re being ignored, that’s a good time to concentrate on finding yourself and creating your own mystery. – Lykke Li

Have you ever wondered what a human life is worth? That morning, my brother’s was worth a pocket watch. – Ruta Sepetys

Tears are far more beautiful than anything that you have with you, because tears come from the overflow of your being. – Osho

It was a fine cry – loud and long – but it had no bottom and it had no top, just circles and circles of sorrow. – Toni Morrison

Sometimes you’ve got to be able to listen to yourself and be okay with no one else understanding.

My sister will die over and over again for the rest of my life. Grief is forever. It doesn’t go away; it becomes a part of you, step for step, breath for breath. I will never stop grieving Bailey because I will never stop loving her. That’s just how it is. Grief and love are conjoined, you don’t get one without the other. All I can do is love her, and love the world, emulate her by living with daring and spirit and joy. – Jandy Nelson

A bad relationship is like standing on broken glass, if you stay you will keep hurting…If you walk away, you will hurt but eventually you will heal. – Autumn Kohler

Crying is all right in its way while it lasts. But you have to stop sooner or later, and then you still have to decide what to do. – C.S. Lewis

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter. – Friedrich Nietzsche

How to be unhappy: stay inside all day, move as little as possible, spend more than you earn, take yourself (and life) too seriously, look for reasons why things won’t work, always consume, never contribute, resent the lucky and successful, never say hello first, be unreliable. – James Clear

The perfected future never arrives. Life is full of seemingly endless trouble, and then life ends. Find peace in the imperfect present. – The Stoic Emperor

Dealing with backstabbers, there was one thing I learned. They’re only powerful when you got your back turned. – Eminem

One thing you can’t hide is when you’re crippled inside. – John Lennon

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better. – Oscar Wilde

Sometimes we get sad about things and we don’t like to tell other people that we are sad about them. We like to keep it a secret. Or sometimes, we are sad, but we really don’t know why we are sad, so we say we aren’t sad, but we really are. – Mark Haddon

Sometimes pain is so unmanageable that the idea of spending another day with it seems impossible. Other times pain acts as a compass to help you through the messier tunnels of growing up. But pain can only help you find happiness if you remember it. – Adam Silvera

The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination. – Marion Zimmer Bradley

If you eat, invest, and think according to what the ‘news’ advocates, you’ll end up nutritionally, financially and morally bankrupt. – Naval Ravikant

Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying. – Arthur C. Clarke

Profound Sad Quotes That Capture Sadness

A lot of you cared, just not enough. – Jay Asher

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. – Norman Cousins

I don’t see divorce as a failure. I see it as the end to a story. In a story, everything has an end and a beginning. – Olga Kurylenko

Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings. – Jane Austen

There’s no tragedy in life like the death of a child. Things never get back to the way they were. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

The longer and more carefully we look at a funny story, the sadder it becomes. – Nikolai Gogol

Long time I been on my own, but now really I’m alone. I survive the killing, the starving, all the hate of the Khmer Rouge, but I think maybe now I will die of this, of broken heart. – Patricia McCormick

Love is not a victory march. It’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah. – Leonard Cohen

Never be afraid of tears. Tear-filled eyes are capable of seeing truth. Tear-filled eyes are capable of seeing the beauty of life. – Osho

There are two medicines for all ills: time and silence. – Alexander Dumas

Shame is an unhappy emotion invented by pietists in order to exploit the human race. – Blake Edward

There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human- in not having to be just happy or just sad- in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time. – C. Joybell

I don’t know if it’s possible to take hate away from people. Not even people like us, who’ve seen firsthand what hate can do. We’re all hurting. We’re all going to be hurting for a long time. And we, probably more than anyone else out there, will be searching for a new reality every day. A better one. – Jennifer Brown

Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason. – Alain de Botton

Its good to leave each day behind, like flowing water, free of sadness. Yesterday is gone and its tale told. Today new seeds are growing. – Rumi

Melancholy is sadness that has taken on lightness. – Italo Calvino

Blaming other people for things that are going wrong guarantees your continued misery. – Justin Kan

So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love. – E.A. Bucchianeri

It makes my heart sick when I remember all the good words and the broken promises. – Chief Joseph

The largest part of what we call ‘personality’ is determined by how we’ve opted to defend ourselves against anxiety and sadness. – Alain de Botton

Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you. – Veronica Roth

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better to take things as they come along with patience and equanimity. – Carl Jung

The opposite of love is indifference. – Shane Parrish

No one is really going to help you or give you direction. In fact, the odds are against you. – Robert Greene

Always believe in yourself. No matter who’s around you being negative or thrusting negative energy at you, totally block it off. Because whatever you believe, you become. – Michael Jackson

Usually when people are sad, they don’t do anything. They just cry over their condition. But when they get angry, they bring about a change. – Malcolm X

Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That’s how he finds that he can bear anything. – William Faulkner

Losing a mother is one of the deepest sorrows a heart can know.

The old know what they want; the young are sad and bewildered. – Logan Pearsall Smith

Rejection can disappoint you, depress you and may even stop you in your tracks… learn not to take rejection so personally… if you’re honest with yourself and believe in your work, others will too. – Bev Jozwiak

Let there be sunshine, let there be rain, let the broken-hearted love again. – Bruce Springsteen

If offering apologies and making promises fixed broken trust, there’d be no broken trust left to fix. – Tim Cole

There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle. – Robert Alden

In the end, one sided relationship tell us that we all just want someone who chooses us, over everyone else, under any circumstances.

You’re sad because you’re wasting your potential. You know it, your family knows it, everyone knows it. Do something useful. – Carlos Del Valle

I would prefer even to fail with honor than to win by cheating. – Sophocles

Nothing sadder than seeing a person settle for so much lower than their potential. – Ed Latimore

Children should be able to live a life free from bullying and harassment and it is time that we all took a stand against this. – Katherine Jenkins

That is my work, to transform your life from a sad affair into a celebration. – Osho

Give yourself a break to avoid a breakdown. – Karen Salmansohn

It’s sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew. – Henry Rollins

Most people think that if they move somewhere else and change their environment, everything will change. Usually they end up re-creating the same results they had elsewhere. If you want to change your world, change your beliefs. – Neil Strauss

The father death is a tragedy.

Whenever sorrow comes, be kind to it. For God has placed a pearl in sorrow’s hand. – Rumi

The best part about being alone is that you really don’t have to answer to anybody. You do what you want. – Justin Timberlake

Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form. – Rumi

Depressing is like a heaviness that you can’t ever escape. It crushes down on you, making even the smallest things like tying your shoes or chewing on toast seems like a twenty-mile hike uphill.

Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. – Rumi

One response to feeling abandoned is to abandon yourself. – Theodore Millon

If you are tired of being hurt, being used and tormented it’s time you turn to God and say it out loud.

Chasing happiness is guaranteed to make to you unhappy. – Ed Latimore

You might feel worthless to one person, but you are priceless to another.

Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That’s its balance. – Osho

Next to hurting my family, being cheated on is the worst thing someone could do.

Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us. – Brian Jacques

Good ideas can also be bad choices. – Carlos Wallace

Friends come and go, but true friends leave footprints in your heart. – Yashraj Suman

We never taste happiness in perfection, our most fortunate successes are mixed with sadness. – Pierre Corneille

Better by far you should forget and smile that you should remember and be sad. – Christina Rossetti

Tears are words the mouth can’t say nor can the heart bear. – Joshua Wisenbaker

Raisin cookies that look like chocolate chip cookies are the main reason I have trust issues.

Envy hurt exponentially more than heartbreak because your soul was torn in two, half soaring with happiness for another person, half mired in a well of selfpity and pain. – Diana Peterfreund

You were merely wishing for the end of pain, the monster said. Your own pain. An end to how it isolated you. It is the most human wish of all. – Patrick Ness

Sometimes, leaving friends make you think. They make you realize what you’ve had, what you’ve lost, and what you’ve taken for granted.

We’re taught to be ashamed of confusion, anger, fear and sadness, and to me they’re of equal value to happiness, excitement and inspiration. Alanis Morissette

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Surrounded by the flames of jealousy, the jealous one winds up, like the scorpion, turning the poisoned sting against himself. – Friedrich Nietzsche

All man’s miseries stem from his inability to sit quietly in a room and do nothing. – Blaise Pascal

Let’s not have a double standard. One standard will do just fine. – George Carlin

Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive. – Thich Nhat Hanh

Friends change and forget to tell each other.

They say it’s better to bury your sadness in a graveyard or garden that waits for the spring to wake from its sleep and burst into green. – Conor Oberst

But a part of me lies buried in lace and roses on a riverbank in France-a part of me is broken off forever. A part of me will be unflyable, stuck in the climb. – Elizabeth Wein

All writing is a form of manipulation, of course, but you realize that a plain sentence can actually do so much. – Colm Toibin

The funniest people are the saddest ones. – Confucius

If you’re sad, it’s okay to acknowledge your sadness. If you have pain that leaves you at a loss, it’s okay to talk about it. The reason we have difficulties is that we’re unable to accept the things that can’t be changed. Let them be and see what happens. – Haemin Sunim

Being taken for granted is an unpleasant but sincere form of praise. Ironically, the more reliable you are, and the less you complain, the more likely you are to be taken for granted. ― Gretchen Rubin

The good life is not one immune to sadness but one in which suffering contributes to our development. Alain de Botton

Clouds release their sadness by crying until they can cry no more. When they have no tears left, they feel a great weight has been lifted, as heavy as the tears they’ve shed. We can release our sadness into the sky within us. When we feel sad, it’s okay to cry like the clouds. – Haemin Sunim

Grief and pet loss are like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.

How do I say the words, ‘I’m sorry’ when I know that words are not enough? And how can I ask you to forgive me when I know I can’t forgive myself?

The sadness will last forever. – Vincent van Gogh

Real life is messy, and drama is a shaped version of real life. – Simon Beaufoy

I used to think the worst thing in life was to end up all alone, it’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel alone. – Robin Williams

Unless and until our society recognizes cyber bullying for what it is, the suffering of thousands of silent victims will continue. – Anna Maria Chavez

People cry, not because they’re weak. It’s because they’ve been strong for too long. – Johnny Depp

Sometimes we get sad about things and we don’t like to tell other people that we are sad about them. We like to keep it a secret. Or sometimes, we are sad but we really don’t know why we are sad, so we say we aren’t sad but we really are. – Mark Haddon

I want words at my funeral. But I guess that means you need life in your life. – Markus Zusak

Anti-bullying is about standing up for others.

Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight till it be morrow. – William Shakespeare

Many quotes that make you cry, actually will comfort you and help ease your pain by coming out of that emotionally sad and upset state of mind. Also, broken heart quotes and hurt sayings can help you forget the past and move on to future with better mood.