Gloom Quotes

I was stunned. The steppe seemed to burst into bloom, heaving a sigh and drawing aside the veil of darkness, and I saw two lovers in its vast expanse. They did not seem to notice me, it was as if I was not there. I was walking along and watching as they, oblivious to the world, swayed together in tune with the song. And I did not recognize them. It was the same old Daniyar in his shabby army shirt unbuttoned at the throat, but his eyes seemed to gleam in the gloom. it was my Jamilia clinging to him, yet so quiet and timid, with teardrops sparkling upon her eyelashes. They were newly born, uniquely happy people. Was this not true happiness? Was not Daniyar giving this inspired music utterly to her, was he not singing for her, singing about her? ~ Chingiz Aitmatov

Bright lamplight bounced off golden varnished wood. The suddenly vivid colors of scarves, hats, hair and faces after the gray-green gloom they'd been immersed in all morning dazzled them. The solid warmth of the coal-fired range, dry and hot, pressed against them from the front as the lingering damp embedded in their backs brought forth a final, convulsive shiver. The sights and smells of rich food and aromatic coffee hit them, no longer just a hope in their hollow stomachs. This made them all as if drunk with good fortune and delighted them with sheer, physical pleasure. ~ Antonio Dias

There will always be dissident voices heard in the land, expressing opposition without alternatives, finding fault but never favor, perceiving gloom on every side and seeking influence without responsibility. ~ John F. Kennedy

That smile forced back the gloom, made the aches and soreness fade. Kaladin's father had described that kind of smile. Those smiles weren't why Lirin had become a surgeon, but they were why he'd remained one. ~ Brandon Sanderson

One is always ready for war." Uthil gently twisted the pommel of his sword so the naked blade flashed in the gloom. "Or never. ~ Joe Abercrombie

He looked at her an instant, for the effect of the graceful girlish figure with pale, passionate face and dark eyes full of sorrow, pride and resolution was wonderfully enhanced by the gloom of the great room, and glimpses of a gathering storm in the red autumn sky. ~ Louisa May Alcott

To ward off alienation and gloom, it is only necessary to remember the unremembered heroes of the past, and to look around us for the unnoticed heroes of the present. ~ Howard Zinn

I'm not a doom-and-gloom person. But I think there is a difference between transcendence and denial, and much of the Western world is in major denial today. ~ Marianne Williamson

Now the standard cure for one who is sunk is to consider those in actual destitution or physical suffering - this is an all-weather beatitude for gloom in general and fairly salutary day-time advice for everyone. But at three o'clock in the morning, a forgotten package has the same tragic importance as a death sentence, and the cure doesn't work - and in a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

Not for the first time in my life, and certainly not for the last, a self-righteous gloom had edged out all semblance of logic. ~ Nick Hornby

I am not trying to say that a passport photo of himself can cure a gloomy man of a gloom for which there is no ground; for true gloom is by nature groundless; such gloom, ours at least, can be traced to no identifiable cause, and with its almost riotous gratuitousness this gloom of ours attained a pitch of intensity that would yield to nothing. If there was any way of making friends with our gloom, it was through the photos, because in these serial snapshots we found an image of ourselves which, though not exactly clear, was - and that was the essential - passive and neutralized. They gave us a kind of freedom in our dealings with ourselves; we could drink beer, torture our blood sausages, make merry and play. We bent and folded the pictures, and cut them up with little scissors we carried about with us for this precise purpose. We juxtaposed old and new pictures, made ourselves one-eyed or three-eyed, put noses on our ears, made our exposed right ears into organs of speech or silence, combined chins and foreheads. And it was not only each with his own likeness that we made these montages; Klepp borrowed features from me and I from him: thus we succeeded in making new, and we hoped, happier creatures. ~ Gunter Grass

All around were horror, and thick gloom, and a black sweltering desert of ebony. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Now this is a most satisfactory and important thing to think about, for brutality will not, - cannot, - accomplish what a kindly disposition will; and, if folks could only know how quickly a "balky" child will, through loving and cuddling, grow into a charming, happy youth, much childish gloom and sorrow would vanish; for a man or woman who is ugly to a child is too low to rank as highly as a wild animal; for no animal will stand, for an instant, anything approaching an attack, or any form of harm to its young. But what a lot of tots find slaps, yanks and hard words for conditions which do not call for such harsh tactics! No child is naturally ugly or "cranky." And big, gulping sobs, or sad, unhappy young minds, in a tiny body should not occur in any community of civilization. Adulthood holds many an opportunity for such conditions. Childhood should not. ~ Ernest Vincent Wright

Ants - the pious insect, Randolph called them: they fill me with oh so much admiration and ah oh so much gloom: such puritan spirit in their mindless march of Godly industry, but can so anti-individual a government admit the poetry of what is past understanding? Certainly the man who refused to carry his crumb would find assassins on his trail, and doom in every smile. As for me, I prefer the solitary mole: he is no rose dependent upon thorn and root, nor ant whose time of being is organized by the analterable herd: sightless, he goes his separate way, knowing truth and freedom are attitudes of the spirit. ~ Truman Capote

Why should I not love her? Harry, I do love her. She is everything to me in life. Night after night I go to see her play. One evening she is Rosalind, and the next evening she is Imogen. I have seen her die in the gloom of an Italian Tomb, sucking the poison from her lover's lips. I have watched her wandering through the forest of Arden, disguised as a pretty boy in hose and doublet and dainty cap. She has been mad, and has come into the presence of a guilty king, and given him rue to wear, and bitter herbs to taste of. She has been innocent, and the black hands of jealousy have crushed her reed-like throat. I have seen her in every age and in every costume. Ordinary women never appeal to one's imagination. They are limited to their century. No glamour ever transfigures them. One knows their minds as easily as one knows their bonnets. One can always find them. There is no mystery in one of them. ~ Oscar Wilde

On game day, until five o'clock or so, the white desert light held off the essential Sunday gloom - autumn sinking into winter, loneliness of October dusk with school the next day - but there was always a long still moment toward the end of those football afternoons where the mood of the crowd turned and everything grew desolate and uncertain, onscreen and off, the sheet-metal glare off the patio glass fading to gold and then gray, long shadows and night falling into desert stillness, a sadness I couldn't shake off, a sense of silent people filing toward the stadium exits and cold rain falling in college towns back east. ~ Donna Tartt

In short, the wily old Jew had the boy in his toils. Having prepared his mind, by solitude and gloom, to prefer any society to the companionship of his own sad thoughts in such a dreary place, he was now slowly instilling into his soul the poison which he hoped would blacken it, and change its hue for ever. ~ Charles Dickens

She was so clever, Dennis thought, and so kind, and he found the familiar gloom descend upon him. ~ Nick Hornby

May the day of my birth perish. May it turn to darkness. May God above not care about it. May no light shine on it. May gloom and utter darkness claim it once more. May a cloud settle over it. May blackness overwhelm it. May thick darkness seize it. May it not be included among the days of the year nor be entered in any of the months. May that night be barren. May no shout of joy be heard in it. May those who curse days curse that day. May its morning stars become dark. May it wait for daylight in vain and not see the first rays of dawn, for it did not shut the doors of the womb on me to hide trouble from my eyes.
Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb? Why were there knees to receive me and breasts that I might be nursed? For now I would be lying down in peace; I would be asleep and at rest.
Why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul,
to those who long for death that does not come, who search for it more than for hidden treasure, who are filled with gladness and rejoice when they reach the grave?
For sighing has become my daily food; my groans pour out like water.What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me.I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil. ~ Anonymous

They were like the man with the dungeon stone and gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining. ~ Jack Kerouac

All those invisible presences ... began to transform themselves into companions that were more or less volatile, more or less intense, companions that I'd have to learn to live with. They invaded my mind when I was alone, in the silent evenings toiling away in the workshop between patterns and bastings, when I went to bed or in the gloom of the living room ... ~ Maria Duenas

When any anxiety or gloom of the mind takes hold of you, make it a rule not to publish it by complaining; but exert yourselves to hide it, and by endeavoring to hide it you drive it away. ~ Samuel Johnson

Gloom and despondency have never defeated adversity. Trying times need courage and resilience. Our strength as a people is not tested during the best of times, ~ Thabo Mbeki

What can one do with levels of gloom and guilt, fear and disbelief, of bewilderment above one's capacity to register? ~ Darin Strauss

Stop being so ... optimistic, its getting on my nerves."
"No problem. Do you want me to be all gloom and doom or just shut up?"
"Just shut up."
"Can do."
"Really? Doesn't seem like it."
-Jacob and seth ~ Stephenie Meyer

14He brought them out of their gloom and darkness and broke their chains. 15Let them give thanks to the LORD for his love and for the miracles he does ~ Max Lucado

God opposes the proud but shows favor to the humble.c 7Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. ~ Anonymous

Alice was standing in the gloom, with just the toes of her pointy shoes poking out into the sunlight. ~ Joseph Delaney

Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom, lead thou me on. ~ John Henry Newman

The fish in the water is racked by thirst: I hear about it and burst out laughing. What you are looking for is right at home and yet you roam from forest to forest, full of gloom . . . ~ Kabir

It is so often true that whether a person carries with him an atmosphere of gloom and depression or one of confidence and courage depends on his individual outlook. ~ James Keller

The friend in my adversity I shall always cherish most. I can better trust those who have helped to relieve the gloom of my dark hours than those who are so ready to enjoy with me the sunshine of my prosperity. ~ Ulysses S. Grant

Self will come to life even in the slaying of self; but there is ever something deeper and stronger than it, which will emerge at last from the unknown abysses of the soul: will it be as a solemn gloom, burning with eyes? or a clear morning after the rain? or a smiling child, that finds itself nowhere, and everywhere? ~ George MacDonald

Twas the night before Christmas - well, the late afternoon, in fact, but who could tell at the North Pole in the middle of winter - and Matthias the werewolf was knee-deep in reindeer guts. Really, it was the deer's own fault for having that glowing red nose that had made it ever so easy to pick him out in the gloom. There it had been, like a neon sign saying FAST FOOD and Matt being like Yellow Dog Dingo - always hungry - had taken the opportunity for a quick snack. ~ Kat Richardson

A condemned man who, at the hour of death, says or thinks that if the alternative were offered him of existing somewhere, on a height of rock or some narrow elevation, where only his two feet could stand, and round about him the ocean, perpetual gloom, perpetual solitude, perpetual storm, to remain there standing on a yard of surface for a lifetime, a thousand years, eternity! - rather would he live thus than die at once? Only live, live, live! - no matter how, only live! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

When people fear for their futures, they like to gather in a dark room and stare at a screen, holding hands against the gloom. ~ David Carr

Winter descended on Erl and gripped the forest, holding the small twigs stiff and still: in the valley it silenced the stream; and in the fields of the oxen the grass was brittle as earthenware, and the breath of the beasts went up like the smoke of encampments. And Orion still went to the woods whenever Oth would take him, and sometimes he went with Threl. When he went with Oth the wood was full of the glamour of the beasts that Oth hunted, and the splendour of the great stags seemed to haunt the gloom of far hollows; but when he went with Threl a mystery haunted the wood, so that one could not say what creature might not appear, nor what haunted and hid by every enormous bole. What beasts there were in the wood even Threl did not know: many kinds fell to his subtlety, but who knew if these were all? ~ Lord Dunsany

And so Gollum found them hours later, when he returned, crawling and creeping down the path out of the gloom ahead. Sam sat propped against the stone, his head dropping sideways and his breathing heavy. In his lap lay Frodo's head, drowned in sleep; upon his white forehead lay one of Sam's brown hands, and the other lay softly upon his master's breast. Peace was in both their faces.
Gollum looked at them. A strange expression passed over his lean hungry face. The gleam faded from his eyes, and they went dim and grey, old and tired. A spasm of pain seemed to twist him, and he turned away, peering back up towards the pass, shaking his head, as if engaged in some interior debate. Then he came back, and slowly putting out a trembling hand, very cautiously he touched Frodo's knee--but almost the touch was a caress. For a fleeting moment, could one of the sleepers have seen him, they would have thought that they beheld an old weary hobbit, shrunken by the years that had carried him far beyond his time, beyond friends and kin, and the fields and streams of youth, an old starved pitiable thing. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

We are swimming upstream against a great torrent of disorganization ... In this, our main obligation is to establish arbitrary enclaves of order and system ... It is the greatest possible victory to be, to continue to be, and to have been. No defeat can deprive us of the success of having existed for some moment of time in a universe that seems indifferent to us.
This is no defeatism ... The declaration of our own nature and the attempt to build up an enclave of organization in the face of nature's overwhelming tendency to disorder is an insolence against the gods and the iron necessity that they impose. Here lies tragedy, but here lies glory too ...
All this represents the manner in which I believe I have been able to add something positive to the pessimism of ... the existensialists. I have not replaced the gloom of existence by a philosophy which is optimistic in any Pollyanna sense, but ... with a positive attitude toward the universe and toward our life in it. ~ Norbert Wiener

Conversation opens our views, and gives our faculties a more vigorous play; it puts us upon turning our notions on every side, and holds them up to a light that discovers those latent flaws which would probably have lain concealed in the gloom of unagitated abstraction. ~ William Melmoth

In the darkest corner of a darkened room, all Sherlock Homes stories begin. In the pregnant dim of gaslight and smoke, Holmes would sit, digesting the day's papers, puffing on his long pipe, injecting himself with cocaine. He would pop smoke rings into the gloom, waiting for something, anything, to pierce into the belly of his study and release the promise of adventure; of clues to interpret; of, at last he would plead, a puzzle he could not solve. And after each story he would return here, into the dark room, and die day by day of boredom. The darkness of his study was his cage, but also the womb of his genius. ~ Graham Moore

Moments of splendor and moments of gloom – they help maintain life's balance. One thought is key: they all pass... ~ Joan Marques

Gloom we have always with us, a rank and sturdy weed, but joy requires tending. ~ Barbara Holland

Well, you're to stay here and be my little boy till we find out where father is. We shall let the police know. They're sure to find him." "The pleece!" Dickie cried in horror. "Why, father, 'e ain't done nothing." "No, no, of course not," said the lady in a hurry; "but the police know all sorts of things - about where people are, I know, and what they're doing - even when they haven't done anything." "The pleece knows a jolly sight too much," said Dickie, in gloom. ~ E. Nesbit

To the matter at hand: though English has traditionally been a largish department, you will find there are very few viable candidates capable of assuming the mantle of DGS. In fact, if I were a betting man, I'd wager that only 10 percent of the English instruction list will answer your call for nominations. Why? First, because more than a third of our faculty now consists of temporary (adjunct) instructors who creep into the building under cover of darkness to teach their graveyard shifts of freshman comp; they are not eligible to vote or to serve. Second, because the remaining two-thirds of the faculty, bearing the scars of disenfranchisement and long-term abuse, are busy tending to personal grudges like scraps of carrion on which they gnaw in the gloom of their offices. Long story short: your options aren't pretty. ~ Julie Schumacher

A cigarette is a roll of paper, tobacco, and drugs, with a small fire on one end and a large fool at the other. Some of its chief benefits are cancer of the lips and stomach, softening of the brain, funeral procesions, and families shrouded in gloom and grief. Although a great many people know this, they still smoke in order to appear sophisticated. ~ Ann Landers

But at the bottom of all the gloom, there is a sense that we are responsible for each other
if not for each other's happiness. There is empathy, admiration, respect for the other's intelligence and honesty. ~ Erica Jong

And even now we labor in our residual gloom, until in your only Son we become your righteousness; for that righteousness is like God's high and holy mountains, while your judgments, which were all the being we then had, are like the deep. ~ Augustine Of Hippo

Is that you, Sergeant Angua?" said a voice in the gloom. A lantern was open, and lit the approaching face of Constable Visit. As he drew near, she could just make out the thick wad of pamphlets under his other arm.
"Hello, Washpot," she said. "What's up?"
" ... looks like a twist of lemon ... " said a damp voice from the shadows.
"Mister Vimes sent me to search the bars of iniquity and low places of sin for you," said Visit.
"And the literature?" said Angua. "By the way, the words "nothing personal" could have so easily been added to that last sentence. ~ Terry Pratchett

In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth. ~ Joseph Conrad

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. "Now they are all on their knees," An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearth-side ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then. So fair a fancy few would weave In these years! yet, I feel If someone said on Christmas Eve, "Come; see the oxen kneel, In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know," I should go with him in the gloom, Hoping it might be so. ~ Thomas Hardy

We tarot lovers tend to be the sensual sort. We trade in shadow and gloom because we are willing to brave the literal and figurative darkness. ~ Sasha Graham

There's a bar like it in every town. It's dimly-lit and the drinkers, although they talk, don't address their words to one another and they don't listen, either. They just talk the hurt inside. It's a bar for the derelict and the unlucky and all of those people who have been temporarily flagged off the racetrack of life and into the pits.
It always does a brisk trade.
On this dawn the mourners sat ranged along the counter, each in his cloud of gloom, each certain that he was the most unfortunate individual in the whole world. ~ Terry Pratchett

Let us doom and gloom not creep into our day and lust for life not wither away. With the future as brother-in-arms, steps in the unknown should not frighten. ("Steps in the unknown" ) ~ Erik Pevernagie

The advent of truth, like the dawn of day, agitates the elements, while it disperses the gloom. ~ Elias Lyman Magoon

Even so, my spirits heightened whenever I felt in my pocket the key to this apartment; with all its gloom, it still was a place of my own, the first, and my books were there, and jars of pencils to sharpen, everything I needed, so I felt, to become the writer I wanted to be. ~ Truman Capote

I've seen a lot of doom and gloom and depressing things, and it's [the] youth that give me hope. ~ Philippe Cousteau, Jr.

They stood together in the gloom of the spruces, an empty world glimmering about them wide and gray under the stars ~ Edith Wharton

The world is a palace without bedsheets ~ Suchet Chaturvedi

Flowers bloomed without glimpsing your smile in spring, leaves have fallen in autumn chiming in with the gloom, the chill of winter has gone and now is the first light of summer without you near but in our hearts will forever hold you dear ... Elizabeth's Shorter Poems ~ Elizabeth E. Castillo

Shadows celebrate sunshine
Lift the gloom of those who pine.
Leave a message to emulate
Alter and adapt willingly. ~ Balroop Singh

Laughter, while it lasts, slackens and unbraces the mind, weakens the faculties and causes a kind of remissness and dissolution in all the powers of the soul; and thus it may be looked on as weakness in the composition of human nature. But if we consider the frequent relieves we receive from it and how often it breaks the gloom which is apt to depress the mind and damp our spirits, with transient, unexpected gleams of joy, one would take care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life. ~ Malcolm De Chazal

New Haven cultivates ... an open gloom that seems happy to acknowledge disrepair and the superfluity of appearance ... I realized that what cramped the town was the weight of unwritten volumes: they scored lines of unfinished writing on every second face that walked the streets ... ~ Sara Suleri

If the kingdom of God is within us and that is a kingdom of justice, of peace, and of joy then whoever remains with these virtues is certainly in the kingdom of God. By contrast, all who deal in unrighteousness, in discord, and in death-bearing gloom have taken their stand in the kingdom of the devil, in hell and in lifelessness. It is by these tokens that the kingdom of God or of the devil is recognized. ~ John Cassian

No man is quite so much a hero in the dark as in broad daylight, in solitude as in society, in the gloom of the churchyard as in the blaze of the drawing-room. The season and the place may be such as to oppress the stoutest heart with a mysterious awe, which, if not fear, is near akin to it. ~ William H. Prescott

The greatest injustice you can do yourself is 'shapeshifting' to please others. It's tiring and debilitating, even to be around someone as fake as this, but basically, it's ridiculous. Why would anyone, even a Rag Tag, try and pretend to be what they're not?
I'll tell you. Because they're trying to hide their darker side behind a veneer of respectability. And they hate you because you don't do the same. Their psyche leaves them feeling bare and barren inside. And they look at you and they have that hollow feeling of being lost and alone. They live in the gloom of other empty people.
They watch how you are, and they understand that the battle they're fighting isn't against you at all, it's against themselves. And for that they hate you.
But remember, it's their choice ~ Karl Wiggins

Our minds must meditate on some object. According to what he thinks, a man can create an atmosphere of radiance, exuberance, buoyancy; and this brings joy. Or he can carry gloom with him. It is a matter of the habit of thought. We must build up our own life by our thoughts. There are many ways by which we can do this. Art, music, even manual work, all can bring ripening to the soul. ~ Swami Paramananda

City of Percepliquis

Ever sought, forever missed

Pick and shovel, dig and haul

Search forever, fall the wall.



Gala halted, city's doom

Spring warmth chilled with dust and gloom

Darkness sealed, blankets all

Death upon them, fall the wall.



Ancient stones upon the Lee

Dusts of memories gone we see

Once the center, once the all

Lost forever, fall the wall ~ Michael J. Sullivan

For rigorous teachers seized my youth,
And purged its faith, and trimm'd its fire,
Show'd me the high, white star of Truth,
There bade me gaze, and there aspire.
Even now their whispers pierce the gloom:
What dost thou in this living tomb? ~ Matthew Arnold

Rainy, gloomy, drab, sunless day. There are times when hope seems entirely clouded over, when looking for the blessings in your circumstances feels like trying to catch a ray of sunshine from six feet under. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

God forbid you be an ugly girl, 'course too pretty is also your doom, 'cause everyone harbors a secret hatred for the prettiest girl in the room ~ Ani DiFranco

We come, we come with roll of drum: ta-runda runda runda rom!

We come, we come with horn and drum: ta-rūna rūna rūna rom!

To Isengard! Though Isengard be ringed and barred with doors of stone;
Though Isengard be strong and hard, as cold as stone and bare as bone,
We go, we go, we go to war, to hew the stone and break the door;
For bole and bough are burning now, the furnace roars-we go to war!
To land of gloom with tramp of doom, with roll of drum, we come, we come;
To Isengard with doom we come!
With doom we come, with doom we come! ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

One thing I have learned in my painful career as a gambler is that bragging when you get lucky and win a few games will plunge you into gloom and unacceptable beatings very soon. It happens every time. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

We were quite naturally unhappy; feeling a definite need, unbearably keen at moments, which was never to be satisfied. But that was recognizable pain, and the sharp pang grew to be almost welcome in the midst of the sultry and opaque life which was not felt, had nothing real in it, and yet swam about us, and choked us and blinded us. All these tears and groans, reproaches and protestations of affection, high talk of duty and work and living for others, were doubtless what we should feel if we felt properly, and yet we had but a dull sense of gloom which could not honestly be referred to the dead; unfortunately it did not quicken our feeling for the living; but hideous as it was, obscured both living and dead; and for long did unpardonable mischief by substituting for the shape of a true and most vivid mother, nothing better than an unlovable phantom. ~ Virginia Woolf

The music began, passages of immense technical complexity fluidly bridging Caravaggio's chiaroscuro with Renoir's impressionism. The gloom and shadows of claustrophobic chambers contrasting with the vibrant radiance of a wide-open landscape. The realism of humanity down to its dirty nails and rotten wounds combined with the fleeting sanguinity of the moment. ~ Ella Leya

Nonstop sunny days would be boring. We need the gloom to highlight the highs. ~ Jarod Kintz

One writes not to be read but to breathe ... one writes to think, to pray, to analyze. One writes to clear one's mind, to dissipate one's fears, to face one's doubts, to look at one's mistakes
in order to retrieve them. One writes to capture and crystallize one's joy, but also to disperse one's gloom. Like prayer
you go to it in sorrow more than joy, for help, a road back to 'grace'. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

A long hallway, hung profusely with dark, water-stained sporting prints, served as a lobby, in which centuries of sacrificed kippers had left the smell of their smoky souls clinging to the wallpaper. Only the patch of sunshine visible through the open front door relieved the gloom ~ Alan Bradley

Life, believe, is not a dream
So dark as sages say;
Oft a little morning rain
Foretells a pleasant day.

Sometimes there are clouds of gloom,
But these are transient all;
If the shower will make the roses bloom,
O why lament its fall ?

Rapidly, merrily,
Life's sunny hours flit by,
Gratefully, cheerily,
Enjoy them as they fly !

What though Death at times steps in
And calls our Best away ?
What though sorrow seems to win,
O'er hope, a heavy sway ?

Yet hope again elastic springs,
Unconquered, though she fell;
Still buoyant are her golden wings,
Still strong to bear us well.

Manfully, fearlessly,
The day of trial bear,
For gloriously, victoriously,
Can courage quell despair ! ~ Charlotte Bronte

In all history the only bright rays cutting the gloom of oppression have come from men who would rather get hurt than give in. ~ Jeff Cooper

The sun sinks to rise again; the day is swallowed up in the gloom of night, to be born out of it, as fresh as if it had never been quenched. ~ William Peter Blatty

Get the heat and emotion out worry, and put cold, ruthless scrutiny onto the problem, and worry loses its power. When we are worried and filled with apprehension, we become panicky and are likely to see only gloom and failure. There isn't any situation so bad that it won't become a lot better when you think rationally - and spiritually - about it. God gives you the ability to think rationally about things by filling you with peace and faith. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

We call those poets who are first to mark, Through earth's dull mist the coming of the dawn, Who see in twilight's gloom the first pale spark, While others only note that day is gone. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

YOU'RE NO ANGEL, you know how this stuff comes to happen: Friday is payday and it's been a gray day sogged by a slow ugly rain and you seek company in your gloom, and since you're fresh to West Table, Mo., and a new hand at the dog-food factory, your choices for company are narrow but you find some finally in a trailer court on East Main, and the coed circle of bums gathered there spot you a beer, then a jug of tequila starts to rotate and the rain keeps comin' down with a miserable bluesy beat and there's two girls millin' about that probably can be had but they seem to like certain things and crank is one of those certain things, and a fistful of party straws tumble from a woven handbag somebody brung, the crank gets cut into lines, and the next time you notice the time it's three or four Sunday mornin' and you ain't slept since Thursday night and one of the girl voices, the one you want most and ain't had yet though her teeth are the size of shoe-peg corn and look like maybe they'd taste sort of sour, suggests something to do, 'cause with crank you want something, anything, to do, and this cajoling voice suggests we all rob this certain house on this certain street in that rich area where folks can afford to wallow in their vices and likely have a bunch of recreational dope stashed around the mansion and goin' to waste since an article in The Scroll said the rich people whisked off to France or some such on a noteworthy vacation.

That's how it happens.

Daniel Woodrell

Genius! thou gift of Heav'n! thou Light divine!
Amid what dangers art thou doom'd to shine!
Oft will the body's weakness check thy force,
Oft damp thy Vigour, and impede thy course;
And trembling nerves compel thee to restrain
Thy noble efforts, to contend with pain;
Or Want (sad guest!) will in thy presence come,
And breathe around her melancholy gloom:
To Life's low cares will thy proud thought confine,
And make her sufferings, her impatience, thine. ~ George Crabbe

Long have I dwelt forgotten here
In pining woe and dull despair;
This place of solitude and gloom
Must be my dungeon and my tomb. ~ Anne Bronte

Though it may feel otherwise, enjoying life is no more dangerous than apprehending it with continuous anxiety and gloom. ~ Alain De Botton

Oh superior divine,
Take me from fictitious to the factual,
Take me from the gloom of ignorance to
The illumination of wisdom,
And take me from iniquity to integrity. ~ Jyoti Patel

Even every ray of hope destroyed and not a wish to gild the gloom. ~ Robert Burns

One needs some really good food and drink after all the magnificent blood and gloom of Macbeth. Shakespeare always makes me ravenous ~ Agatha Christie

In the description of night in Macbeth, the beetle and the bat detract from the general idea of darkness - inspissated gloom. ~ Samuel Johnson

He went into the kitchen. It was eight in the evening. He tried to shut the bright spring evening out with the curtains, but it forced its way past them in places, dust-filled sunbeams that lit up the gloom in his flat. Spring and summer were not Erlendur's seasons. Too bright. Too frivolous. He wanted heavy, dark winters. Finding nothing edible in the kitchen, he sat down at the table with his chin resting in his hand. ~ Arnaldur Indridason

When God created us, he founded
His living nature for our home;
But you sit in this gloom, surrounded
By mildred skull and arid bone. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Spending time with you is like watching paint dry." Lassiter's voice echoed up to the stalactites hanging from the Tomb's high ceiling. "Except without the home improvement - which is a tragedy, given how this place looks. Do you guys always go for the gloom and doom? You never hear of Pottery Barn?"

-Lassiter to Tohr ~ J.R. Ward

People do support themselves as artists and writers, so there's no need to be all doom and gloom about it. You just have to push forward. You have to follow your vision and hope for the best. You have to write for love. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Peaches and Cheese:
The vagabond sun winks down through the trees,
While lilacs, like memories, waft on the breeze,
My friend, I was born for days such as these,
To inhale perfume,
And cut through the gloom,
And feast like a king upon peaches and cheese!
I'll travel this wide world and go where I please,
Can't stop my wand'ring, it's like a disease.
My only regret as I cross the high seas:
What I leave behind,
Though I hope to find,
My own golden city of peaches and cheese! ~ Rachel Hartman

The Blues
The Blahs
The Weary Dismals
Lost in Gloom
Woesome Me's
The Eternal 3 AM of the Soul. ~ Vivian Swift

Not only do we cheat ourselves and those around us if we are only glum or always wary when it comes time to respond to divine stirrings. No, we are then also being simply unfaithful to the surrounding reality. The one who purges gloom has given occasions and reasons, in the midst of life's sadness, to be joyful. ~ Martin E. Marty

And don't forget the presents," said the Chair of Indefinite Studies, as if reading off some internal list of gloom. "How ... how full of potential they seem in all that paper, how pregnant with possibilities ... and then you open them and basically the wrapping paper was more interesting and you have to say 'How thoughtful, that will come in handy.' It's not better to give than to receive, in my opinion, it's just less embarrassing. ~ Terry Pratchett

Fantasy, an unflagging optimism is necessary for a writer at all stages of this rough game. A kind of madness is therefore necessary, when there is every logical reason for a state of depression and discouragement. Perhaps the fact that I can react with utter gloom to this is what keeps me from being psychotic and keeps me merely neurotic. I am doing quite a good day's work today. But I am also aware of the madness that actually sustains me, and I am not made more comfortable or happy by it. ~ Patricia Highsmith