Once to die is better than length of days in sorrow without end.

-Aeschylus
Prometheus Vinctus, l.750^1.

'Yestreen I dreamed a dolefu'dream; I ken'd here wad be sorrow! I dreamed I pu'd the heather green, On the dowie banks o' Yarrow.' She gaed up yon high, high hillö I wat she gaed wi'sorrowö An' in the den spied nine dead men, On the dowie houms o' Yarrow.

-Ballads
'The Dowie Houms o' Yarrow'.

Honouring itself the clay rears up To praise its pottering purposes, But, oh, much sorrow shall it sup Before fulfilment is.

-Barker, George Granville
  'Goodman  Jacksin and the  Angel'.

Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be for thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Genesis 3:16.

And unto Adam he said,Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which Icommandedthee, saying,Thoushalt noteatof it: cursed istheground for thysake; insorrowshaltthoueat of it all the days of thy life.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Genesis 3:17.

   And he said, My son shall not go down with you; for his brother isdead, and heisleft alone: if mischief befall him by the way in the which ye go, then shall ye bring down my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Genesis 42:38.

The days of our years arethreescore years and ten; and if by reasonof strengththey be fourscore years, yet istheir strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Psalms 90:10.

For inmuchwisdomismuchgrief: and hethat increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Ecclesiastes1:18.

Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass by? behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow.

-Bible (Old Testament)
Lamentations1:12.

Then were the entrances of this world made narrow, full of sorrow and travail: they are but fewand evil, full of perils, and very painful. For the entrances of the elder world were wide and sure, and brought immortal fruit. If then they that live labour not to enter these strait and vain things, they can never receive those that are laid up for them.

-Bible (Apocrypha)
Esdras 7:12^14.

He kissed the hand and by the hand led And to his mother brought, Who in sorrow pale, through the lonely dale, Her little boy weeping sought.

-Blake,William
  Songs of Innocence,'The Little Boy Found'.

Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most Must mourn the deepest o'er the fatal truth, The tree of knowledge is not that of Life.

-Rochdale
  Manfred, act1, sc.1.

As her lute doth live or die, Led by her passion, so must I: For when of pleasure she doth sing, My thoughts enjoy a sudden spring, But if she doth of sorrow speak, Ev'n from my heart the strings do break.

-Campion,Thomas
A Book of  Airs, no.6,'When to Her Lute Corinna Sings'.

Sorrow comes as in a circle And cannot be rolled up like a map.

-Child,Julia McWilliams
c.150  BC  'To My Wife 2', collected in  A Book of Chinese Verse (translated by N L Smith and R H Kotewall).

It will be a beautiful family talk, mean and worried and full of sorrow and spite and excitement. I cannot be asked to miss it in my weak state. I should only fret.

-Compton-Burnett, Dame Ivy
  A Family and a Fortune, ch.10.

   Dichoso el a¤  rbol que es apenas sensitivo, y ma¤  s la piedra dura porque e¤  sa ya no siente, pues no hay dolor ma¤  s grande que el dolor de ser vivo, ni mayor pesadumbre que la vida consciente. Blessed is the almost insensitive tree, more blessed is the hard stone that doesn't feel, for no pain isgreater than the pain of being alive, and no sorrow more intense than conscious life.

-Dar|¤  o, Rube¤  n pseudonym of Fe¤  lixRube¤  nGarc|¤a Sarmiento
Cantos de vida y esperanza,'Lo fatal' ('Fatalism').

A face peered. All the grey night In chaos of vacancy shone; Nought but vast Sorrow was thereö The sweet cheat gone.

-de la Mare,Walter
  'The Ghost'.

Moderate sorrow Fits vulgar love, and for a vulgar man: But I have lov'd with such transcendent passion, I soar'd, at first, quite out of reason's view, And now am lost above it.

-Dryden,John
  All for Love, or The World Well Lost, act 2.

   He that may be but sturt or stryfe,

-Dunbar,William
including Charles Olsen and Robert Creeley.

To each his suff'rings, all are men, Condemned alike to groan; The tender for another's pain, Th'unfeeling for his own. Yet ah! why should they know their fate? Since sorrow never comes too late, And happiness too swiftly flies. Thought would destroy their paradise. No more; where ignorance is bliss, 'Tis folly to be wise.

-Gray,Thomas
  Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College (published1747), l.91^100.