Melancholy men are of all others the most witty.
Burton Robert 1577-1640
The Anatomy of Melancholy
All my joys to this are folly,
Naught so sweet as Melancholy.
Byron Lord 1788-1824
Don Juan
´Tis melancholy, and a fearful sign
Of human frailty, folly, also crime,
That love anb marriage rarely can combine,
Although they both are born in the same clime;
Marriage from love, like vinegar from wine -
A sad, sour, sober beverage - by time
Is sharpened from its high celestial flavour,
Down to a very homely household savour.
Gray Thomas 1716-1771
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
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.
Keats John 1795-1821
‘Ode on Melancholy'
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose.
Lamb Charles 1775-1834
Letter to Thomas Manning
The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.
Milton John 1608-1674
‘Il Penseroso'
Hail, divinest Melancholy,
Whose saintly visage is too bright
To hit the sense of human sight;
And therefore to our weaker view,
O'erlaid with black staid wisdom's hue.
Milton John 1608-1674
‘L'Allegro'
Hence, loathed Melancholy,
Of Cerberus, and blackest Midnight born,
In Stygian cave forlorn
‘Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy.
Milton John 1608-1674
Paradise Lost
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy
And moon-struck madness.
Nerval Gérard de 1808-1855
Les Chimères ‘El Desdichado'
I am the darkly shaded, the bereaved, the inconsolate, the prince of Aquitaine, with the blasted tower. My only star is dead, and my star-strewn lute carries on it the black sun of melancholy.
Rogers Samuel 1763-1855
‘To - , 1814'
There's such a charm in melancholy,
I would not, if I could, be gay.
Shakespeare William 1564-1616
Twelfth Night
She never told her love,
But let concealment, like a worm I' the bud,
Freed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought;
And with a green and yellow melancholy,
She sat like patience on a monument,
Smiling at grief.