E. A. Poe, em Berenice:

"Misery is manifold. The wretchedness of earth is multiform. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow, its hues are as various as the hues of that arch,—as distinct too, yet as intimately blended. Overreaching the wide horizon as the rainbow! How is it that from beauty I have derived a type of unloveliness?—from the covenant of peace a simile of sorrow? But as, in ethics, evil is a consequence of good, so, in fact, out of joy is sorrow born. Either the memory of past bliss is the anguish of to-day, or the agonies which are have their origin in the ecstasies which might have been."

Ricardo Reis, [Ouvi contar que outrora, quando a Pérsia]:

"O amor cansa, porque é a sério e busca,

A ciência nunca encontra,

E a vida passa e dói porque o conhece..."

Sylvia Plath, em Nick and the Candlestick:

"Remembering, even in sleep,
Your crossed position.
The blood blooms clean

In you, ruby.
The pain
You wake to is not yours."