Charles Best

DonorsChoose was conceived at a Bronx public high school where I taught social studies for five years. In the teachers' lunch room, my colleagues and I often lamented a problem that drained learning from students and creativity from teachers: a lack of funding for essential materials and for the activities that bring subject matter to life.

American Businessman

Edward Burtynsky

I can go into the wilderness and not see anyone for days and experience a kind of space that hasn't changed for tens of thousands of years. Having that experience was necessary to my perception of how photography can look at the changes humanity has brought about in the landscape. My work does become a kind of lament.

Canadian Photographer

George A. Moore

Isn't it strange that religious prejudices - beliefs none possess, not even the saints, so they have lamented - divide brothers and sons from their fathers. You see, I except mothers and sisters; the female is not a religious animal. If she were, the world would have ceased long ago.

Irish Novelist

Elizabeth Montagu

She kindly laments that I am not of the party, and to be sure I honour great ladies, and I admire great wits, but I am of the same opinion in regard to assemblies that is held concerning oysters, that they are never good in a month that has not the letter R in it.

British Writer

Alice Oswald

One of the rules of Greek lament poetry is that it mustn't mention the dead by name in case of invoking a ghost. Maybe the 'Iliad,' crowded with names, is more than a poem. Maybe it's a dangerous piece of the brightness of both this world and the next.

British Poet

Poppy Z. Brite

This is the point being missed by readers who lament Liquor's lack of hot sex scenes, probably because they aren't old enough to understand that a passionate relationship could be about anything other than sex.

American Author

Craig Kielburger

People in the business world lament economic resources wasted on unsustainable development projects and what they see as activists' naive failure to grasp the importance of building strong economies.

Canadian Activist

Neil deGrasse Tyson

One of my great laments is that education today seems to have... be less about passion and more about process, more about tactic or technique.

American Scientist

Sophocles

If it were possible to cure evils by lamentation and to raise the dead with tears, then gold would be a less valuable thing than weeping.

Greek Poet

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

Roman Statesman

Used mainly in literary contexts such as poetry or music to evoke strong emotions.

Literary Use

'Lament' can be part of cultural mourning rituals, often with historical roots.

Cultural Rituals

Emphasizes communal sharing of grief, not just individual sadness.

Expressing Sorrow

To 'lament' is to feel or express a profound level of sadness, beyond mere disappointment.

Deep Sadness

Using 'lament' can make an expression of sadness sound more formal or serious.

Formal Language

Carries a heavier emotional weight compared to simply 'being sad' about something.

Emotional Weight

Captures a sense of missed opportunities or wrong decisions, often with a personal tone.

Regret and Disappointment

Can imply a reflective or thoughtful mood, looking back at past events with regret.

Reflective Tone

 of how it had all gone wrong for us individually and collectively. It has been inspiring to watch how the best comes from the worst. How people are waking up in this time of global reckoning to the realization that our connections with each other are some of the most important things we have. But stepping back. For all we've had to lament,

An ode to living on...

 Now, the answer began to come when a friend of mine lamented to me that her young daughter was a big scaredy-cat, and so I began to notice, and yes, the daughter was anxious, but more than that, the parents were anxious. Most of what they said to her when she was outside began with,

To raise brave girls,...

 which is that lamenting things that occurred in the past is an absolute waste of time, that we should always look forward and not backward, and that one of the noblest and best things we can do is strive to live a life free of regrets. This idea is nicely captured by this

Kathryn Schulz: Don't...

 He lamented his underage drinking charge. As he stood before me reading his essay, his voice cracking and his hands trembling, he said that he worried that he had become an alcoholic like his mom, who had died a couple of months prior due to alcohol-related liver disease.

How judges can show...

 finding out those terrible things before anybody else knows about them, and sending our response to them, so that next year, instead of us meeting here, lamenting how many terrible things there are in the world, we will have pulled together,

Larry Brilliant: TED...

 there are a lot of things to lament particularly in the last 15 years about five and a half million people have died who otherwise would not have from from conflict and conflict related causes mostly starvation and present a

Hope for the Congo PIPE ...

 This gets reported in the media with great lament. "Strangers communicate better than spouses!" It's a good headline, right? I think it entirely misses the point. The important thing about these studies

Why you should talk to...

 a lot of Obama's and people who still are practicing in the region they really lamented the fact more than anyone else just because people are moving away from the old religious ways of life and they

Everest Tourism Changed...

 I wasn't allowed. They said her family did not find it fit for her children, who are all girls, to attend her burial, simply because we were girls. They would lament to me and say,

Why I fight for the...

 and the futility of life. "Out, out, brief candle!" he laments. "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage

Lament

A poem, piece of music, or song expressing grief or sorrow.

Often appears as...

Usage tips

To express deep sadness or regret about something.

Often appears as...

An expression of regret or disappointment.

Often appears as...

Literary Use

Cultural Rituals

Expressing Sorrow

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