“Man could not live if he were entirely impervious to sadness. Many sorrows can be endured only by being embraced, and the pleasure taken in them naturally has a somewhat melancholy character.”

To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness.

A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden-beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.

Melancholy suicide. – This is connected with a general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract.

The first and most basic rule is to consider social facts as things.

A monomaniac is a sick person whose mentality is perfectly healthy in all respects but one; he has a single flaw, clearly localized. At times, for example, he has an unreasonable and absurd desire to drink or steal or use abusive language; but all his other acts and all his other thoughts are strictly correct.

By definition, sacred beings are separated beings. That which characterizes them is that there is a break of continuity between them and the profane beings.

The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or creative consciousness.

Each victim of suicide gives his act a personal stamp which expresses his temperament, the special conditions in which he is involved, and which, consequently, cannot be explained by the social and general causes of the phenomenon.

That men have an interest in knowing the world which surrounds them, and consequently that their reflection should have been applied to it at an early date, is something that everyone will readily admit.

Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities.

It is too great comfort which turns a man against himself. Life is most readily renounced at the time and among the classes where it is least harsh.

Social life comes from a double source, the likeness of consciences and the division of social labour.

Our excessive tolerance with regard to suicide is due to the fact that, since the state of mind from which it springs is a general one, we cannot condemn it without condemning ourselves; we are too saturated with it not partly to excuse it.

An act cannot be defined by the end sought by the actor, for an identical system of behaviour may be adjustable to too many different ends without altering its nature.

There is no sociology worthy of the name which does not possess a historical character.

Man is a moral being, only because he lives in society. Let all social life disappear and morality will disappear with it.

I became your melancholy your unfinished symphony its better to leave undone rather than knowing I did my best yet wasn’t enough.

This melancholy heart longs for a fresh start, where darkness will lift sands of time, kindly sift without a sound for i am found.

It covers me like the embrace of the sky. Like a closed one bidding goodbye. Like those smeared memories and lyrics of a melancholy song, Home, Home is what I long for.

She wore courage to cover her melancholy, Dear Heart, What is this tragedy?

And so being young and dipped in folly I fell in love with melancholy.

The melancholy joys of evils pass’d, For he who much has suffer’d, much will know.

The diseases that we civilized people labor under most are melancholy and pessimism.

Melancholy is the happiness of being sad.