quotations about grief
It is better to drink of deep griefs than to taste shallow pleasures.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief, as if grief could be lessened by baldness.
CICERO
Tusculan Disputations
It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening.
SUE MONK KIDD
The Secret Life of Bees
Patch grief with proverbs; make misfortune drunk
With candle-wafters; bring him yet to me,
And I of him will gather patience.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Much Ado About Nothing
To me, and to the state of my great grief,
Let kings assemble; for my grief's so great
That no supporter but the huge firm earth
Can hold it up: here I and sorrow sit;
Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
King John
We postpone the finality of heartbreak by clinging to hope. Though this might be acceptable during early or transitional stages of grief, ultimately it is no way to live. We need both hands free to embrace life and accept love, and that's impossible if one hand has a death grip on the past.
KRISTIN ARMSTRONG
O Magazine, Feb. 2007
We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.
C. S. LEWIS
A Grief Observed
Grief and guilt. A powerful combination. Guilt like a liquid, a thin liquor, seeping everywhere, informing everything, saturating the whole--corrosive, like seawater, scented with the rich stench of ordure and corruption, and carrying with it hard, abrasive shards of grief.
SIMON MAWER
The Gospel of Judas
Grief does not change you.... It reveals you.
JOHN GREEN
The Fault in Our Stars
Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.
SOPHOCLES
Antigone
I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Return of the King
It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Brothers Karamazov
Oh, what grief not to have
grief, and to spend your life
on the colorless grass
of the undecided path!
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Crossroads"
Perhaps there is a limit to the grieving that the human heart can do. As when one adds salt to a tumbler of water, there comes a point where simply no more will be absorbed.
SARAH WATERS
The Little Stranger
All the joys of earth will not assuage our thirst for happiness, while a single grief suffices to shroud life in a sombre veil, and smite it with nothingness at all points.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles,", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
Self carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags,
being careful between the trees to leave extra room.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Burlap Sack"
Whatever sorrow thy young heart have found,
Open it well, this ever-sacred wound
Dealt by dark angels--give thy soul relief.
Naught makes us nobler than a noble grief.
EMMA LAZARUS
"Muse"
Ye, O ye
Shall grieve, and ye shall grieve, and ye shall grieve.
Your Life shall bend and o'er his shuttle toil,
A weaver weaving at the loom of grief.
SIDNEY LANIER
"The Jacquerie: A Fragment"
grief is a house
where the chairs
have forgotten how to hold us
the mirrors how to reflect us
the walls how to contain us
JANDY NELSON
The Sky Is Everywhere
Love is an engraved invitation to grief.
SUNSHINE O'DONNELL
Open Me