Et toi mon coeur pourquoi bats-tu Comme un guetteur me¤  lancolique J'observe la nuit et la mort. And you my heart why do you pound Like some melancholy watchman I watch the night and death.

-Kostrowitzki
  Le Guetteur me¤ l ancolique, pre¤  face.

   The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains; and it is sometimes base, and by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and theregressiseithera downfall, orat least an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing: Cum non sis qui fueris, non esse cur velis vivere.

-Bacon, Francis,Viscount St Albans
  Essays, no.11,'Of Great Place'. The Latin is taken from Cicero's Familiar Letters, and translates as:'When you are not what you were, there is no reason to live.'

All my joys to this are folly, Naught so sweet as melancholy.

-Burton, Robert pseudonym DemocritusJunior
Anatomy of Melancholy,'The  Author's  Abstract of Melancholy'.

Solitude and melancholy, that is a woman's life.

-Carter, Angela Olive
  The Passion of New Eve, ch.9.

With eyes up-raised, as one inspired, Pale Melancholy sate retired, And from her wild sequestered seat, In notes by distance made more sweet, Poured thro'the mellow horn her pensive soul.

-Collins,William
  'The Passions,  An Ode for Music', l.57^61.

It is a melancholy truth that even great men have their poor relations.

-Dickens, CharlesJohn Huffam
^3  Bleak House, ch.28.

I strongly wish for what I faintly hope: Like the day-dreams of melancholy men, I think and thinkon things impossible, Yet love to wander in that golden maze.

-Dryden,John
  The Rival Ladies, act 3, sc.1.

Virginite¤ ,  mysticisme, me¤  lancolie! Trois mots inconnus, trois maladies nouvelles apporte¤  es par le Christ. Virginity, mysticism, melancholy! Three unknown words, three new illnesses brought by Christ.

-Gautier,The¤  ophile
  Mademoiselle de Maupin.

Here rest his head upon the lap of earth Ayouth to fortune and to fame unknown. Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth, And Melancholy marked him for her own.

-Gray,Thomas
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, l.117^20,'The Epitaph'.

   I inherited a vile melancholy from my father, which has made me mad all my life, at least not sober.

-Johnson, Samuel known as Dr Johnson
  Remark,16 Sep. Quoted in  James Boswell The Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides (1785).

The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy, who can be dull in Fleet Street.

-Lamb, Charles
  Letter to Thomas Manning,15 Feb. Collected in E  W Marrs Letters of Charles and Mary Lamb, vol.2 (1975).

They talk about their Pilgrim blood, Their birthright high and holy! A mountain-stream that ends in mud Methinks is melancholy.

-Lowell,James Russell
  'An Interview with Miles Standish', stanza11.

Si tengo la fortuna de que con tu alma mi dolor se integre, te dire¤   entre melanco¤  lico y alegre las singulares cosas de la luna. If I am fortunate enough for your soul to mix with my sorrow, I will tell you, half with melancholy, half with gladness, Unique things about the moon.

-Lugones, Leopoldo
  Lunario sentimental,'Divagacio¤   n lunar' ('Lunar digression').

   Hence loathe'  d Melancholy, Of Cerberus and blackest midnight born, In Stygian cave forlorn 'Mongst horrid shapes, and shrieks, and sights unholy, Find out some uncouth cell, Where brooding Darkness spreads his jealous wings, And the night-raven sings.

-Milton,John
c.1631 L'Allegro, opening lines.

But hail thou Goddess sage and holy, 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
c.1631 Il Penseroso, l.11^16.

Sweet bird that shunn'st the noise of folly, Most musical, most melancholy!

-Milton,John
c.1631  Of the nightingale. Il Penseroso, l.61^2.

A pleasing fit of melancholy.

-Milton,John
  Comus,  A Mask, l.545.

Moping melancholy And moon-struck madness.

-Milton,John
Michael shows  Adam a vision of what will happen before the Flood. Paradise Lost (published1667), bk.11, l.485^6.

The feeling of Sunday is the same everywhere, heavy, melancholy, standing still.Like whentheysay 'Asit wasin the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end'.

-Rhys,Jean pseudonym of  Ellen Gwendolen Rees Williams
  Voyage in the Dark, ch.4, pt.1.

Nothing is so poor and melancholy as an art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.

-Sandys, George
Quoted inJohn Gassner and SidneyThomas (eds) The Nature of Art (1964).