Loss

Loss is the hurtful condition of having lost something or someone, for which grief is a common response.

Quotes

• Losers must have leave to speak.
  • Colley Cibber, The Rival Fools (1709), Act I, line 17.

• Our wasted oil unprofitably burns,
  Like hidden lamps in old sepulchral urns.
  • William Cowper, Conversation (1782), line 357. Referring to the story told by Pancirollus and others, of the lamp which burned for fifteen hundred years in the tomb of Tullia, daughter of Cicero.

• Beaten paths are for beaten men.
  • Eric Johnston, Braude's Second Encyclopedia of Stories, Quotes, and Anecdotes.

• Like the dew on the mountain,
  Like the foam on the river,
  Like the bubble on the fountain,
  Thou art gone, and forever!
  • Walter Scott, Lady of the Lake (1810), Canto III, Stanza 16.

• Wise men ne'er sit and wail their loss,
  But cheerly seek how to redress their harms.
  • William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part III (c. 1591), Act V, scene 4, line 1.

• That loss is common would not make
  My own less bitter, rather more:
  Too common! Never morning wore
  To evening, but some heart did break.
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Part VI, Stanza 2.

• But over all things brooding slept
  The quiet sense of something lost.
  • Alfred Tennyson, In Memoriam A.H.H. (1849), Part LXXVIII, Stanza 2.

• No man can lose what he never had.
  • Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler (1653-1655), Part I, Chapter V.

Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations

Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 462-63.

• For 'tis a truth well known to most,
  That whatsoever thing is lost,
  We seek it, ere it comes to light,
  In every cranny but the right.
  • William Cowper, The Retired Cat, line 95.

• Gli huomini dimenticano più teste la morte del padre, che la perdita del patrimonie.
  • A son could bear with great complacency, the death of his father, while the loss of his inheritance might drive him to despair.
  • Machiavelli, Del. Prin, Chapter XVII. Same idea in Taylor, Philip Van Artevelde.

• Things that are not at all, are never lost.
  • Christopher Marlowe, Hero and Leander, First Sestiad, line 276.

• What's saved affords
  No indication of what's lost.
  • Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), The Scroll.

• A wise man loses nothing, if he but save himself.
  • Michel de Montaigne, Essays, Of Solitude.

• When wealth is lost, nothing is lost;
  When health is lost, something is lost;
  When character is lost, all is lost!
  • Motto Over the Walls of a School in Germany.

• That puts it not unto the touch
  To win or lose it all.
  • William Francis Patrick Napier, Montrose and the Covenanters, Montrose's Poems, No. 1, Volume II, p. 566.

• Si quis mutuum quid dederit, sit pro proprio perditum;
  Cum repetas, inimicum amicum beneficio invenis tuo.
  Si mage exigere cupias, duarum rerum exoritur optio;
  Vel illud, quod credideris perdas, vel illum amicum, amiseris.
  • What you lend is lost; when you ask for it back, you may find a friend made an enemy by your kindness. If you begin to press him further, you have the choice of two things—either to lose your loan or lose your friend.
  • Plautus, Trinummus, IV. 3. 43.

• Periere mores, jus, decus, pietas, fides,
  Et qui redire nescit, cum perit, pudor.
  • We have lost morals, justice, honor, piety and faith, and that sense of shame which, once lost, can never be restored.
  • Seneca, Agamemnon, CXII.