Saying Goodbye (Literary Quotations about Brexit?)

The United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union, but there are many questions and concerns about what happens next.  Signature (@SignatureReads) featured a list of quotes on parting entitled “All We Need of Hell:  9 Quotes on Parting in the Wake of Brexit” (http://www.signature-reads.com/2016/06/all-we-need-of-hell-9-quotes-on-parting-in-the-wake-of-brexit/?ref=BEBF7DBE6741).  That inspired me to brainstorm my favourite quotes on saying farewell; here are 15 statements by authors that might apply as withdrawal negotiations are begun:

“Parting is such sweet sorrow.” – William Shakespeare

“To say goodbye is to die a little.” ― Raymond Chandler

“Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” ― Kahlil Gibran

“Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.” ― George Eliot

“They parted at last with mutual civility, and possibly a mutual desire of never meeting again.” ― Jane Austen

“I have more care to stay than will to go.” ― William Shakespeare

“It was one of those ridiculous arrangements that couples make when they are separating, but before they are divorced – when they still imagine that children and property can be shared with more magnanimity than recrimination.” – John Irving

“He loved her; in some ways he was devoted to her. But he couldn’t reach her, and it was the same on her side. It was as if they’d drunk some fatal potion that would keep them forever apart, even though they lived in the same house, ate at the same table, slept in the same bed.” – Margaret Atwood

 “This is all. It’s been very rare to have known you, very strange and wonderful. But this wouldn’t do — and wouldn’t last.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

“They who go feel not the pain of parting; it is they who stay behind that suffer.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected.” - Nicholas Sparks

“Taking leave of our friends resembles taking leave of the world, of which it has been said, that it is not death, but dying, which is terrible.”  - Henry Fielding

“Thou hast but taken up thy lamp and gone to bed; I stay a little longer, as one stays to cover up the embers that still burn.” - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Such parting breaks the heart they fondly hope to heal.” - Lord Byron

“Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens.” - J. R. R. Tolkien