Grieving Quotes

Sorrow is the great idealizer.

James Russell Lowell

It is extraordinary how the house and the simplest possessions of someone who has been left become so quickly sordid. Even the stain on the coffee cup seems not coffee but the physical manifestation of one's inner stain, the fatal blot that from the beginning had marked one for ultimate aloneness.

Coleman Dowell

When we suffer anguish we return to early childhood because that is the period in which we first learnt to suffer the experience of total loss. It was more than that. It was the period in which we suffered more total losses than in all the rest of our life put together.

John Berger

Grief is the agony of an instant, the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

Benjamin Disraeli

Dear Friend,Please be patient with me; I need to grieve in my own way and in my own time.Please don't take away my grief or try to fix my pain. The best thing you can do is listen to me and let me cry on your shoulder. Don't be afraid to cry with me. Your tears will tell me how much you care.Please forgive me if I seem insensitive to your problems. I feel depleted and drained, like an empty vessel, with nothing left to give.Please let me express my feelings and talk about my memories. Feel free to share your own stories of my loved one with me. I need to hear them.Please understand why I must turn a deaf ear to criticism or tired clichhttp://www.grievinggodsway.com/

Margaret Brownley

Grief is hard on friendships, but it doesn't have to be. Sometimes, all it takes is a little honesty between friends. If we gently and lovingly explain what we need from the relationship during our time of grief, and what we are willing to do in return, we can turn even a lukewarm friendship into something special.

Margaret Brownley

But there are other things than dissipation that thicken the features. Tears, for example.

Rebecca West

If we could know which of us, darling, would be the first to go, who would be first to breast the swelling tide and step alone upon the other side -- if we could know!

Julia Harris May

The death of a dear friend, wife, brother, lover, which seemed nothing but privation, somewhat later assumes the aspect of a guide or genius; for it commonly operates revolutions in our way of life, terminates an epoch of infancy or of youth which was waiting to be closed, breaks up a wonted occupation, or a household, or style of living, and allows the formation of new ones more friendly to the growth of character.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pain hardens, and great pain hardens greatly, whatever the comforters say, and suffering does not ennoble, though it may occasionally lend a certain rigid dignity of manner to the suffering frame.

Antonia S. Byatt

We feel at first as if some opportunities of kindness and sympathy were lost, but learn afterward that any pure grief is ample recompense for all. That is, if we are faithful; -- for a spent grief is but sympathy with the soul that disposes events, and is as natural as the resin of Arabian trees. -- Only nature has a right to grieve perpetually, for she only is innocent. Soon the ice will melt, and the blackbirds sing along the river which he frequented, as pleasantly as ever. The same everlasting serenity will appear in this face of God, and we will not be sorrowful, if he is not.

Henry David Thoreau

Grief that is dazed and speechless is out of fashion: the modern woman mourns her husband loudly and tells you the whole story of his death, which distresses her so much that she forgets not the slightest detail about it.

Jean de la Bruyere

Grief at the absence of a loved one is happiness compared to life with a person one hates.

Jean de la Bruyere

In private grief with careless scorn. In public seem to triumph and not to mourn.

John C. Granville

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson, P

What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder?

Henry David Thoreau

Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back -- to be sucked back -- into it?

C.S. Lewis

We all want to do something to mitigate the pain of loss or to turn grief into something positive, to find a silver lining in the clouds. But I believe there is real value in just standing there, being still, being sad.

John Green

There is immunity in reading, immunity in formal society, in office routine, in the company of old friends and in the giving of officious help to strangers, but there is no sanctuary in one bed from the memory of another. The past with its anguish will break through every defense-line of custom and habit; we must sleep and therefore we must dream.

Cyril Connolly

Don't order any black things. Rejoice in his memory; and be radiant: leave grief to the children. Wear violet and purple. Be patient with the poor people who will snivel: they don't know; and they think they will live for ever, which makes death a division instead of a bond.

George Bernard Shaw