Grief Quotes

To spare oneself from grief at all costs can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness.

- Erich Fromm

- C. S. Lewis

- Viktor Frankel

For each thorn - there’s a rosebud …

for each twilight - a dawn…

for each trial – the strength to carry on,

for each stormcloud – a rainbow …

for each shadow – the sun …

for each parting – sweet memories

when sorrow is done.

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

People in mourning have to come to grips with death before they can live again.

Mourning can go on for years and years.

It doesn’t end after a year, that’s a false fantasy.

It usually ends when people realize that they can live again,

that they can concentrate their energies on their lives as a whole,

and not on their hurt, and guilt and pain.

- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Do not stand at my grave and weep.

I am not there. I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow.

I am the diamond glints on snow.

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush,

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circling flight.

I am the soft star that shines at night.

Do not stand at my grave and weep.

I am not there. I do not sleep.

- Northwest Indian Memorial on Death

These things I know;

How the living go on living.

And how the dead go on living with them

so that in a forest

even a dead tree casts a shadow

and the leaves fall one by one

and the branches break in the wind

and the bark peels off slowly

and the trunk cracks

and the rain seeps in through the cracks

and the trunk falls to the ground

and the moss covers it

and in the spring the rabbits find it

and build their nest

inside the dead tree

so that nothing is wasted in nature

or in love.

- Laura Gilpin

A new wound makes all the old ones ache again.

- Mignon McLaughlin

Grief makes one hour ten.

- William Shakespeare

Tears are the silent language of grief

- Voltaire

If you suppress grief too much, it can well redouble.

- Moliere

To find a safe journey through grief to growth does not mean one should forget the past. It means that on the journey we will need safe pathways so that remembrance, which may be painful, is possible.

- Donna O’Toole

All I know from my experience is that the more loss we feel, the more grateful we should be for whatever it was we had to lose. It means that we had something worth grieving for. The ones I’m sorry for are the ones that go through life not knowing what grief is.

- Frank O’Connor

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

Sometime, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated.

- Lamartine

The healthy and strong individual is the one who asks for help when he needs it. Whether he has an abscess on his knee or in his soul.

- Rona Barrett

Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

- O. Henry

Tears have a wisdom all their own. They come when a person has relaxed enough to let go and to work through his sorrow. They are the natural bleeding of an emotional wound, carrying the poison out of the system. Here lies the road to recovery.

- F. Alexander Magoun

I still miss those I loved who are no longer with me but I find I am grateful for having loved them. The gratitude has finally conquered the loss.

- Rita Mae Brown

Loss is a byproduct of living.

- Kirsti A. Dyer, MD, MS, FT

(Not a pithy quote as much as a story...)

My old friend, grief, is back. He comes to visit me once in a while just to remind me that I am still a broken person. Surely there has been much healing since my son died six years ago, and surely I have adjusted to a world without him by now. But the truth is, we never completely heal, we never totally adjust to the loss of a major love. We will be all right, but we will never be the same.

And so my old friend Grief drops in to say hello. Sometimes he enters through the door of my memory. Sometimes he sneaks up on me. I’ll hear a certain song, smell a certain fragrance, or look at a certain picture, and I’ll remember how it used to be. Sometimes it brings a smile to my face, sometimes a tear.

Some may say that such remembering is not healthy, that we ought not to dwell on thoughts that make us sad. Yet, the opposite is true. Grief revisited is grief acknowledged, and grief confronted is grief resolved.

But if grief is resolved, why do we still feel a deep sense of loss at anniversaries and holidays, and even when we least expect it? Why do we feel a lump in the throat, even six years after the loss? It is because healing does not mean forgetting, and because moving on with life does not mean that we don’t take part of the deceased with us.

My old friend Grief doesn’t get in the way of my living. He just wants to drop by and chat sometimes. In fact, Grief has taught me, over the years, that if I try to deny the reality of a major loss in my life, I end up having to deny life altogether. He has taught me that although the pain of loss is great, I must confront it and experience it fully or else risk emotional paralysis.

Old Grief has also taught me that I can survive even great losses and that although my world is very different after a major loss, it is still my world and life is worth living. He has taught me that when I am willing to be pruned by the losses that come, I can flourish again in season, not in spite of loss, but because of it.

My old friend, Grief, has taught me that the loss of a loved one does not mean the loss of love, for love is stronger that separation and longer than the permanence of death.

-Adolfo Quezada, from the Tucson Arizona Daily Star