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C.N. Douglas, comp. Forty Thousand Quotations: Prose and Poetical. 1917.

Parting

In every parting there is an image of death.

George Eliot.

We only part to meet again.

Gay.

Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again.

Shakespeare.

  • My eyes won’t lose the sight of thee,
  • But languish after thine, and ache with gazing.
  • Otway.

  • To know, to esteem, to love—and then to part
  • Makes up life’s tale to many a feeling heart!
  • Coleridge.

  • The joys of meeting pay the pangs of absence;
  • Else who could bear it?
  • Rowe.

  • Stand not upon the order of your going,
  • But go at once.
  • Shakespeare.

    And by and by, will there come a time, when souls congenial will no more say adieu?

    Mme. Dufresnoy.

    One last long sigh to love and thee, then back to busy life again.

    Byron.

    Such partings break the heart they fondly hope to heal.

    Byron.

  • Portia, adieu! I have too griev’d a heart
  • To take a tedious leave.
  • Shakespeare.

    To die and part is a less evil; but to part and live, there, there is the torment.

    Lord Lansdowne.

  • God give us leisure for these sights of love!
  • Once more, adieu!
  • Shakespeare.

  • Good-night, good-night! parting is such sweet sorrow,
  • That I shall say good-night till it be to-morrow.
  • Shakespeare.

  • Have not all past human beings parted,
  • And must not all the present, one day part?
  • Byron.

    Hereafter, in a better world than this, I shall desire more love and knowledge of you.

    Shakespeare.

    Parting is worse than death; it is death of love!

    Dryden.

  • I have no parting sigh to give,
  • So take my parting smile.
  • L. E. Landon.

    Every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a type of heaven.

    T. Edwards.

  • Fare thee well! and if for ever,
  • Still for ever, fare thee well.
  • Byron.

    The air is full of farewells to the dying and mournings for the dead.

    Longfellow.

    So sweetly she bade me adieu, I thought that she bade me return.

    Shenstone.

  • Well—peace to thy heart, though another’s it be,
  • And health to thy cheek, though it blooms not for me.
  • Moore.

    But fate ordains that dearest friends must part.

    Young.

    That farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last glance of love which becomes the sharpest pang of sorrow.

    George Eliot.

    If we must part forever, give me but one kind word to think upon and please myself with, while my heart is breaking.

    Otway.

    There is such sweet pain in parting that I could hang forever on thine arms, and look away my life into thine eyes.

    Otway.

    The man who leaves a woman best pleased with herself is the one whom she will soonest wish to see.

    La Rochefoucauld.

    The parting of a husband and wife is like the cleaving of a heart; one half will flutter here, one there.

    Tennyson.

    But still her lips refused to say, farewell; for in that word, that fatal word, howe’er we promise, hope, believe, there breathes despair.

    Byron.

    Will our souls, hurrying on in diverse paths, unite once more, as if the interval had been a dream?

    Bulwer-Lytton.

    Abruptness is an eloquence in parting, when spinning out the time is but the weaving of new sorrow.

    Sir John Suckling.

    Farewell! God knows when we shall meet again. I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins, that almost freezes up the heat of life.

    Shakespeare.

  • They who go
  • Feel not the pain of parting; it is they
  • Who stay behind that suffer.
  • Longfellow.

  • One kind kiss before we part,
  • Drop a tear, and bid adieu;
  • Though we sever, my fond heart
  • Till we meet shall pant for you.
  • Dodsley.

  • We two parted
  • In silence and tears,
  • Half broken-hearted
  • To sever for years.
  • Byron.

    Oh! wherefore doth thou soothe me with thy softness? why doth thou wind thyself about my heart, and make this separation painful to us?

    Rowe.

  • Let’s not unman each other—part at once;
  • All farewells should be sudden, when forever,
  • Else they make an eternity of moments,
  • And clog the last sad sands of life with tears.
  • Byron.

  • His eye being big with tears,
  • Turning his face, he put his hand behind him,
  • And with affection wondrous sensible,
  • He wrung Bassanio’s hand; and so they parted.
  • Shakespeare.

  • Enough, that we are parted—that there rolls
  • A flood of headlong fate between our souls,
  • Whose darkness severs me as wide from thee
  • As hell from heaven, to all eternity!
  • Moore.

    Beware of parting! The true sadness is not in the pain of the parting; it is in the when and the how you are to meet again with the face about to vanish from your view.

    Bulwer-Lytton.

    Time, which deadens hatred, secretly strengthens love; and in the hour of threatened separation its growth is manifested at once in radiant brightness.

    Richter.

  • With all my soul, then let us part,
  • Since both are anxious to be free;
  • And I will send you home your heart,
  • If you will send back mine to me!
  • Moore.

  • Think’st thou that I could bear to part
  • With thee, and learn to halve my heart?
  • *****
  • Years have not seen, time shall not see
  • The hour that tears my soul from thee.
  • Byron.

    The consciousness of being loved softens the keenest pangs, even at the moment of parting; yea, even the eternal farewell is robbed of half its bitterness when uttered in accepts that breathe love to the last sigh.

    Addison.

  • If I depart from thee, I cannot live;
  • And in thy sight to die, what were it else
  • But like a pleasant slumber in thy lap?
  • *****
  • To die by thee were but to die in jest;
  • From thee to die were torture more than death.
  • Shakespeare.

  • In taking leave,
  • Thro’ the dark lashes of her darting eyes,
  • Methought she shot her soul at ev’ry glance,
  • Still looking back, as if she had a mind
  • That you should know she left her soul behind her.
  • Lee.

    We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our angels go. We do not see that they only go out that archangels may come in. We are idolators of the old. We do not believe in the richness of the soul, in its proper eternity and omnipresence.

    Emerson.

    Parting and forgetting? What faithful heart can do these? Our great thoughts, our great affections, the truths of our life, never leave us. Surely they cannot separate from our consciousness; shall follow it whithersoever that shall go; and are of their nature divine and immortal.

    Thackeray.

  • Good-night! good-night! as we so oft have said
  • Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days
  • That are no more, and shall no more return.
  • Thou hast but taken up thy lamp and gone to bed;
  • I stay a little longer, as one stays
  • To cover up the embers that still burn.
  • Longfellow.

    A chord, stronger or weaker, is snapped asunder in every parting, and Time’s busy fingers are not practised in re-splicing broken ties. Meet again you may; will it be in the same way? with the same sympathies? with the same sentiments? Will the souls, hurrying on in diverse paths, unite once more, as if the interval had been a dream? Rarely, rarely.

    Bulwer-Lytton.

  • ’Tis the pang alone to part
  • From those we love, that rends the heart;
  • That agony to save,
  • Some nameless power in nature strives,
  • Our fading hope in death revives,
  • And blossoms in the grave.
  • Mrs. John Hunter.

  • Two lives that once part, are as ships that divide
  • When, moment on moment, there rushes between
  • The one and the other, a sea;—
  • Ah, never can fall from the days that have been
  • A gleam on the years that shall be!
  • Bulwer-Lytton.