Hoyt & Roberts, comps. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. 1922.
Melancholy
All my griefs to this are jolly,
Naught so damn’d as melancholy.
Burton—Abstract to Anatomy of Melancholy.
All my joys to this are folly,
Naught so sweet as melancholy.
Burton—Abstract to Anatomy of Melancholy.
As melancholy as an unbraced drum.
Centlivre—Wonder. Act II. Sc. 1.
With eyes upraised, as one inspired,
Pale Melancholy sate retired;
And, from her wild, sequester’d seat,
In notes by distance made more sweet,
Pour’d through the mellow horn her pensive soul.
Collins—The Passions. L. 57.
Tell us, pray, what devil
This melancholy is, which can transform
Men into monsters.
John Ford—The Lover’s Melancholy. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 107.
Melancholy
Is not, as you conceive, indisposition
Of body, but the mind’s disease.
John Ford—The Lover’s Melancholy. Act III. Sc. 1. L. 111.
Here rests his head upon the lap of earth,
A youth, to fortune and to fame unknown;
Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth,
And Melancholy marked him for her own.
Gray—Elegy in a Country Churchyard. The Epitaph.
There’s not a string attuned to mirth
But has its chord in melancholy.
Hood—Ode to Melancholy.
Employment, sir, and hardships, prevent melancholy.
Samuel Johnson—Boswell’s Life of Johnson. (1777).
Moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness.
Milton—Paradise Lost. Bk. XI. L. 485.
Go—you may call it madness, folly,
You shall not chase my gloom away.
There’s such a charm in melancholy,
I would not, if I could, be gay!
Samuel Rogers—To——. St. 1.
I can suck melancholy out of a song.
As You Like It. Act II. Sc. 5. L. 12.
O melancholy!
Who ever yet could sound thy bottom? find
The ooze, to show what coast thy sluggish crare
Might easiliest harbour in?
Cymbeline. Act IV. Sc. 2. L. 205.
The greatest note of it is his melancholy.
Much Ado About Nothing. Act III. Sc. 2. L. 53.
And melancholy is the nurse of frenzy.
Taming of the Shrew. Induction. Sc. 2. L. 135.
Hence, all you vain delights,
As short as are the nights
Wherein you spend your folly!
There’s nought in this life sweet,
If man were wise to see ’t,
But only melancholy,
Oh, sweetest melancholy!
Dr. Strode—Song in Praise of Melancholy. As given in Malone’s MSS. in the Bodleian Library. MS. No. 21. It appears in Dr. Strode’s play, The Floating Island. Attributed to Fletcher, who inserted it in The Nice Valour. Act III. Sc. 3.