Quotes about loss
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Cassandra Clare photo
Elie Wiesel photo

“They are committing the greatest indignity human beings can inflict on one another: telling people who have suffered excruciating pain and loss that their pain and loss were illusions.”

Misattributed
Source: Robert McAfee Brown https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_McAfee_Brown. Preface for the 25th anniversary edition of Night https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_%28book%29. Page v, Bantam Books paperback; 1982 reissue edition.

Tori Amos photo
Debbie Macomber photo
Cormac McCarthy photo
Noam Chomsky photo
Sylvia Plath photo
Suzanne Collins photo
Rebecca Solnit photo

“The art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.”

Rebecca Solnit (1961) Author and essayist from United States

Source: A Field Guide to Getting Lost

Cassandra Clare photo
Rebecca Solnit photo
James Patterson photo

“Even across the dark, even across the loss, even across the emptiness, soul will speak to soul”

Catherine Fisher (1957) Welsh children's writer

Source: The Dark City

Ray Kurzweil photo
Mitch Albom photo

“With no loss or sacrifice, we can't appreciate what we have.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Variant: With endless time, nothing is special. With no loss or sacrifice, we can’t appreciate what we have
Source: The Time Keeper

Jack Kerouac photo

“Accept loss forever”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

"Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" in a letter to Arabelle Porter (28 May 1955); published in Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1940-1956 (1995) and in a letter to Don Allen (1958); published in Heaven & Other Poems (1977)
Variant: Accept loss forever

Robin Hobb photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Charlie Kaufman photo
Kathy Reichs photo
Christina Baker Kline photo
Charlie Huston photo
Robert Jordan photo

“Take what you can have. Rejoice in what you can save, and do not mourn your losses too long.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Lews Therin Telamon
(15 October 1993)

Charles Darwin photo

“The loss of these tastes [for poetry and music] is a loss of happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and more probably to the moral character, by enfeebling the emotional part of our nature.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Source: The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–82

Jeanette Winterson photo

“Why is the measure of love… loss? pg.9”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

Written on the Body (1992)
Source: Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Lionel Shriver photo
Winston S. Churchill photo

“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Attribution debunked in Langworth's Churchill by Himself. The earliest close match located by the Quote Investigator is from the 1953 book How to Say a Few Words by David Guy Powers.
Misattributed
Variant: Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.
Source: 1953, How to Say a Few Words by David Guy Powers, Quote p. 109, Doubleday & Company, Garden City, New York. Referenced by Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/28/success

Augusten Burroughs photo
Pat Conroy photo

“There is no teacher more discriminating or transforming than loss.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Source: My Losing Season: A Memoir

Helen Fielding photo
Megan Whalen Turner photo
Rick Riordan photo
Kathleen Norris photo
Robin McKinley photo
James Baldwin photo

“Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.”

Source: "Faulkner and Desegregation" in Partisan Review (Fall 1956); republished in Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (1961)
Context: Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed that he is set free — he has set himself free — for higher dreams, for greater privileges.

Jodi Picoult photo
Jane Austen photo
Deb Caletti photo
Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo
Cassandra Clare photo

“As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.”

Variant: As long as there is love and memory, there is no true death,” he said. He
Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Cynthia Leitich Smith photo
Daniel Kahneman photo
Laura Ingalls Wilder photo

“There's no great loss without some small gain.”

Source: Little House on the Prairie (1935), Ch. 25; said by Ma, after Pa lost the corn crop to blackbirds but brought home some of the birds for dinner.

Cassandra Clare photo
Elizabeth Bishop photo
James Baldwin photo
Robert A. Heinlein photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Stephen Fry photo
Joel Osteen photo
Salman Rushdie photo

“It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity.”

Salman Rushdie (1947) British Indian novelist and essayist

"Imaginary Homelands (1992)
Source: Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991
Context: It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity. Which seems to be self-evidently true; but I suggest that the writer who is out-of-country and even out-of-language may experience this loss in an intensified form. It is made more concrete for him by the physical fact of discontinuity, of his present being in a different place from his past, of his being "elsewhere"… human beings do not perceive things whole; we are not gods but wounded creatures, cracked lenses, capably only of fractured perceptions. Partial beings, in all the senses of that phrase. Meaning is a shaky edifice we build out of scraps, dogmas, childhood injuries, newspaper articles, chance remarks, old films, small victories, people hated, people loved; perhaps it is because of our sense of what is the case is constructed from such inadequate materials that we defend it so fiercely, even to the death.

Bell Hooks photo
Neal Shusterman photo
Sören Kierkegaard photo

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Source: The Sickness Unto Death: A Christian Psychological Exposition for Upbuilding and Awakening

Jean Vanier photo
Robert Southey photo
Alyson Nöel photo
Suzanne Collins photo

“What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again.”

Katniss and Peeta (p. 388; closing words of the main text)
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)
Context: I know this would have happened anyway. That what I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.
So after, when he whispers, "You love me. Real or not real?"
I tell him, "Real."

William Blake photo

“Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another’s loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven’s despite.”

William Blake (1757–1827) English Romantic poet and artist

The Clod and the Pebble, st. 3
1790s, Songs of Experience (1794)
Source: Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience

Augusten Burroughs photo

“And I hope she does not live in a dark world. Because even the most terrible loss doesn't have to make you darker; it can make you deeper.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

Isaiah Berlin photo

“We are doomed to choose and every choice may entail irreparable loss.”

Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997) Russo-British Jewish social and political theorist, philosopher and historian of ideas
James Frey photo
Jim Morrison photo

“Listen to this, and I'll tell you 'bout the heartache
I'll tell you 'bout the heartache and the loss of God.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

"The Wasp (Texas Radio And The Big Beat)" on the albums L. A. Woman (1971) and An American Prayer (1978)

Sebouh Chouldjian photo

“The loss of historical memory is restored in the very place where one has lost it.”

Sebouh Chouldjian (1959) Archbishop Sebouh Chouldjian is the primate of the Diocese of Gougark of the Armenian Apostolic Church

[Chouldjian, Bishop Sebouh, w:Sebouh Chouldjian, A bishops' pilgrimage to Western Armenia, The Armenian Reporter, 2009-12-12, http://www.reporter.am/go/article/2009-12-12-a-bishops--pilgrimage-to-western-armenia, 2010-06-16]
Other

Ernesto Che Guevara photo
William Wordsworth photo

“We take no note of time but from its loss.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Actually Night I, lines 55-56 of Young's Night Thoughts.
Misattributed

Henry Hazlitt photo

“Suppose a clothing manufacturer learns of a machine that will make men’s and women's overcoats for half as much labor as previously. He installs the machines and drops half his labor force.This looks at first glance like a clear loss of employment. But the machine itself required labor to make it; so here, as one offset, are jobs that would not otherwise have existed. The manufacturer, how ever, would have adopted the machine only if it had either made better suits for half as much labor, or had made the same kind of suits at a smaller cost. If we assume the latter, we cannot assume that the amount of labor to make the machines was as great in terms of pay rolls as the amount of labor that the clothing manufacturer hopes to save in the long run by adopting the machine; otherwise there would have been no economy, and he would not have adopted it.So there is still a net loss of employment to be accounted for. But we should at least keep in mind the real possibility that even the first effect of the introduction of labor-saving machinery may be to increase employment on net balance; because it is usually only in the long run that the clothing manufacturer expects to save money by adopting the machine: it may take several years for the machine to "pay for itself."After the machine has produced economies sufficient to offset its cost, the clothing manufacturer has more profits than before. (We shall assume that he merely sells his coats for the same price as his competitors, and makes no effort to undersell them.) At this point, it may seem, labor has suffered a net loss of employment, while it is only the manufacturer, the capitalist, who has gained. But it is precisely out of these extra profits that the subsequent social gains must come. The manufacturer must use these extra profits in at least one of three ways, and possibly he will use part of them in all three: (1) he will use the extra profits to expand his operations by buying more machines to make more coats; or (2) he will invest the extra profits in some other industry; or (3) he will spend the extra profits on increasing his own consumption. Whichever of these three courses he takes, he will increase employment.”

Economics in One Lesson (1946), The Curse of Machinery (ch. 7)

Rudyard Kipling photo
Maxwell D. Taylor photo
Adam Smith photo
Daniel Abraham photo
Alexander H. Stephens photo
Benjamin Graham photo

“It is worth pointing out that assuredly not more than one person out of a hundred who stayed in the market after after 1925 emerged from it with a net profit and that the speculative losses taken were appalling.”

Benjamin Graham (1894–1976) American investor

Source: The Intelligent Investor: The Classic Text on Value Investing (1949), Chapter II, The Investor and Stock-Market Fluctuations, p. 34

Northrop Frye photo

“Even the biggest book is fragmentary: to finish anything, you have to cut your losses. Nobody every writes his dream book.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

33.54
"Quotes", Notebooks

Statius photo

“And now it was your purpose to weep Vesuvius' flames in pious melody and spend your tears on the losses of your native place, what time the Father took the mountain from earth and lifted it to the stars only to plunge it down upon the hapless cities far and wide.”
Jamque et flere pio Vesuvina incendia cantu mens erat et gemitum patriis impendere damnis, cum pater exemptum terris ad sidera montem sustulit et late miseras deiecit in urbes.

iii, line 205
Silvae, Book V

Mihira Bhoja I photo
Bruce Palmer Jr. photo
Rutherford B. Hayes photo

“We now talk of our killed and wounded. There is however a very happy feeling. Those who escape regret of course the loss of comrades and friends, but their own escape and safety to some extent modifies their feelings.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Letter to Lucy Webb Hayes (25 October 1864)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

“My story is very boring. Mostly about hair loss.”

Mike Murphy (political consultant) (1962) American political consultant

As quoted in "Debriefing Mike Murphy" https://www.weeklystandard.com/matt-labash/debriefing-mike-murphy (18 March 2016), by Matt Labash, The Weekly Standard
2010s

Annette Lu photo
Immanuel Kant photo

“The Palestinians living among us have, for the most part, earned a not unfounded reputation for being cheaters, because of their spirit of usury since their exile. Certainly, it seems strange to conceive of a nation of cheaters; but it is just as odd to think of a nation of merchants, the great majority of whom, bound by an ancient superstition that is recognized by the State they live in, seek no civil dignity and try to make up for this loss by the advantage of duping the people among whom they find refuge, and even one another. The situation could not be otherwise, given a whole nation of merchants, as non-productive members of society”

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) German philosopher

for example, the Jews in Poland

page 77 of 6 December 2012 publication by Springer Science & Business Media https://books.google.ca/books?id=nRArBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA77, translation by Mary J. Gregor (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974)

page 238 of "Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation" https://books.google.ca/books?id=4EmqLCWUFvEC&pg=PA238 in 1998, page 221 of "Acts of Religion" https://books.google.ca/books?id=c_kgAmFbvP0C&pg=PA221 in 2002, page 235 of "Spinoza's Modernity: Mendelssohn, Lessing, and Heine" https://books.google.ca/books?id=CYcOfkrduWYC&pg=PA235 in 2004, page 44 of "Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism" https://books.google.ca/books?id=IYVDMuOFN20C&pg=PA44 in 2005, page 8 of "The Jewish Odyssey of George Eliot" https://books.google.ca/books?id=juCYcPWdqccC&pg=PA8 in 2010, page 155 of "Inhumanities: Nazi Interpretations of Western Culture" https://books.google.ca/books?id=YMIsYMw0ES0C&pg=PA155 in 2012, page 75 of "Romanticism/Judaica: A Convergence of Cultures" https://books.google.ca/books?id=4svsCwAAQBAJ&pg=PT75 in 2016 and page 39 of "Cosmopolitanisms and the Jews" https://books.google.ca/books?id=6kk_DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA39 in 2017 also quote this.
Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798)