Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the ho...use of mourning: but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Melancholy is at the bottom of everything, just as at the end of all rivers is the sea. Can it be otherwise in a world where nothi...ng lasts, where all that we have loved or shall love must die? Is death, then, the secret of life? The gloom of an eternal mourning enwraps, more or less closely, every serious and thoughtful soul, as night enwraps the universe.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I asked her if she wanted to go to the movies that night. She laughed again and told me that she felt like seeing a Fernandel movi...e. When we got dressed, she seemed very surprised to see me wearing a black tie and asked me if I was in mourning. I told her that my mother was dead. Since she asked me since when, I answered, "Since yesterday".LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When Mabelle Webb died, Clifton began the mourning that lasted until his own death. Noel Coward noted in a letter, . . . "Poor Cli...fton . . . is still, after two months, wailing and sobbing over Mabelle's death. As she was well over ninety, gaga, and driving him mad for years, this seems excessive and over indulgent. . . ." The most famous remark to go the rounds of Clifton Webb's friends was Noel Coward's final, acerbic one to him: "It must be tough to be orphaned at seventy-one!"LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
After decades of unappreciated drudgery, American women just don't do housework any more--that is, beyond the minimum that is requ...ired in order to clear a path from the bedroom to the front door so they can get off to work in the mourning.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Nature is a setting that fits equally well a comic or a mourning piece. In good health, the air is a cordial of incredible virtue.... Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration. I am glad to the brink of fear.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »