Quotes about grief

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“Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later on, it is ominous.”

“Good grief, Molly. He doesn't scare you?"
"Of course not."
"But he's…"
"He's sweet," Molly insisted.
Dare snorted. "He's still listening.”

“Give me a land of boughs in leaf
A land of trees that stand;
Where trees are fallen there is grief;
I love no leafless land.”

“Then there were those famous wings. Was Daedalus really stricken with grief when Icarus fell into the sea? Or just disappointed by the design failure?”

“He'd lived long enough to know that everyone handled grief in different ways, and little by little, they all seemed to accept their new lives.”

“There's no way around grief and loss: you can dodge all you want, but sooner or later you just have to go into it, through it, and, hopefully, come out the other side. The world you find there will never be the same as the world you left.”

“I hoped that grief was similar to the other emotions. That it would end, the way happiness did. Or laughter.”

“My grief was cold. It was nothing to share. It was nothing to speak about, nothing to feel.”

“Youth offers the promise of happiness, but life offers the realities of grief.”

“There's a moment when love makes you believe in death for the first time. You recognize the one whose loss, even contemplated, you'll carry forever, like a sleeping child. All grief, anyone's grief… is the weight of a sleeping child.”

“Grief does not expire like a candle or the beacon on a lighthouse. It simply changes temperature.”

“After all the dangerous adventures I'd had, I couldn't die like this. Sadie would be devastated. Then, once she got over her grief, she'd track down my soul in the Egyptian afterlife and tease me mercilessly for how stupid I'd been.”

“Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.”

“The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley.
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!”

“That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted them to say.”

“Grief and disappointment are like hate: they make men ugly with self-pity and bitterness. And how selfish they make us too.”

“Sometimes my grief is overwhelming, and even though I understand that we will never see each other again, there is a part of me that wants to hold on to you forever.”

“I loathe a friend whose gratitude grows old, a friend who takes his friend's prosperity but will not voyage with him in his grief”

“There's a fine edge to new grief, it severs nerves, disconnects reality--there's mercy in a sharp blade. Only with time, as the edge wears, does the real ache begin.”

“In the sea of grief, there were islands of grace, moments in time when one could remember what was left rather than all that had been lost.”

“These days grief seems like walking on a frozen river; most of the time he feels safe enough, but there is always that danger that he will plunge through.”

“Grief is like a drunken house guest, always coming back for one more goodbye hug.”

“For now is my grief heavier than the sands of the seas, she thought. This world has emptied me of all but the oldest purpose: tomorrow's life.”

“Grief is when you feel so helpless and stupid that you think nothing will ever be right again, and your macaroni and cheese tastes like sawdust, and you can't even jerk off because it seems like too much trouble.”

“A young woman in love always looks like Patience on a monument Smiling at Grief.”

“But grief makes a monster out of us sometimes… and sometimes you say and do things to the people you love that you can't forgive yourself for.”

“Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance.”

“be a good listener, don't judge and don't put boundaries on someone else's grief.”

“The sorry truth is you can walk your feet to blisters, walk till kingdom-com, and you never will outpace your grief.”

“Even extreme grief may ultimately vent
itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy”

“I can wade Grief --
Whole Pools of it --
I'm used to that --
But the least push of Joy
Breaks up my feet --
And I tip -- drunken --
Let no Pebble -- smile --
'Twas the New Liquor --
That was all!”

“She knew what it was to wait for someone who would never come home. She knew that grief, like a scar, faded but never really went away.”

“… and motioned me toward a spot next to a middle-aged Moroi in a very formal and very designer black suit. The suit screamed, I'm sorry the queen is dead, and I'm going to look fashionable while showing my grief”

“Every day has its great grief or its small anxiety…. One cloud is dispelled, another forms. There is hardly one day in a hundred of real joy and bright sunshine.”

“Monsters are born of pain, and grief, and loss, and anger. Your heart is full of them.-
-"And?"
And it makes you vulnerable.”

“I was on the verge of crying with grief at still being alive.”

“Call me a sinner,
Mock me maliciously:
I was your insomnia,
I was your grief.”

“In every heart there should be one grief that is like a well in the desert.”

“He smiled despite the grief he felt at the deaths of his men; he smiled because that was what he did. That was how he proved to the Lord Ruler-and to himself-that he wasn't beaten.”

“I knew a girl, once, immortal like me-"

"And she was with someone mortal?" said Alec. "What happened?"

"He died," Magnus said. There was a finality to the way he said it that spoke of a deeper grief than words could paint.”

“Both she and I have grief enough and trouble enough, but as for regrets – neither of us have any.”

“So much grief, so much anger. So unlike the usual Adrian.”

“The first rose on my rose-tree
Budded, bloomed, and shattered,
During sad days when to me
Nothing mattered.

Grief of grief has drained me clean;
Still it seems a pity
No one saw,—it must have been
Very pretty.”

“Envy comes from wanting something that isn't yours, but grief comes from losing something you've already had.”

“And I don’t want his body touching something I wear. He’ll contaminate it. (Sasha)
Oh, good grief, Sasha. Grow up. You’re four hundred years old and you’re acting like a whelp. It’s not like he has cooties or anything. (Astrid)
Yes he does! (Sasha)”

“Grief, as I read somewhere once, is a lazy Susan. One day it is heavy and underwater, and the next day it spins and stops at loud and rageful, and the next day at wounded keening, and the next day numbness, silence.”

“The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow.”

“Why have you come to me here, dear heart, with all these instructions? I promise you I will do everything just as you ask. But come closer. Let us give in to grief, however briefly, in each other's arms.”

“YOU don’t choose your life; it chooses you. There’s no point asking why life has reserved certain joys or griefs, you just accept them and carry on.”

“His absence seemed a solid thing, a burden I must carry in addition to my grief… Yet I knew I would continue to live. Sometimes that knowledge seemed the worst part of my loss.”

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”

“Grief makes you feel alone, but you're not. I know you don't believe in-in religion-the same way I do, but you can believe you're surrounded by people who love you, can't you?”

“They always prided themselves on looking youthful. “Forty’s the new thirty,” they’d joke.
Until heartbreak and grief enter your life, and then forty’s the new one hundred.”

“Some of your hurts you have cured,
And the sharpest you still have survived,
But what torments of grief you endured
From evils which never arrived!”

“It's like when someone dies, the initial stages of grief seem to be the worst. But in some ways, it's sadder as time goes by and you consider how much they've missed in your life. In the world.”

“Human beings suffer agonies, and their sad fates become legends; poets write verses about them and playwrights compose dramas, and the remembrance of past grief becomes a source of present pleasure - such is the strange alchemy of the spirit.”

“Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”

“It was like Percy had faced death before, like he knew about grief. What mattered was listening. You didn’t need to say you were sorry. The only thing that helped was moving on—moving forward.”

“Grief was like a newborn, and the first three months were hard as hell, but by six months you'd recognized defeat, shifted your life around, and made room for it.”

“And no matter what anybody says about grief and about time healing all wounds, the truth is, there are certain sorrows that never fade away until the heart stops beating and the last breath is taken.”

“There is no such thing as was—only is. If was existed, there would be no grief or sorrow.”

“… you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder, you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help… And then finally, the way through grief is grieving.”

“That life isn't fair?" Yeah, that, of course. But I also learned that it's possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief… lessens.”

“Grief reconfigures time, its length, its texture, its function: one day means no more than the next, so why have they been picked out and given separate names?”

“Love is a debt, she thought. When the bill comes, you pay in grief.”

“I know how to be the witness to her grief. I don't know how to be this kind of villain.”

“There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.”

“Grief wraps around people, takes them to a place they would not go otherwise.”

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.”

“Every love story is a potential grief story.”

“The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.”

“Stunned and still not suffering. Swollen with care and anxiety and still not suffering. Useless, old and full of grief, but still not suffering.”

“We ourselve are the authors of almost all our woes and griefs, of which we so unreasonably complain.”

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge —
That myth is more potent than history.
I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts —
That hope always triumphs over experience —
That laughter is the only cure for grief.
And I believe that love is stronger than death.”

“Grief, she reminded herself, is almost always for the mourner's loss.”

“If you've got to my age, you've probably had your heart broken many times. So it's not that difficult to unpack a bit of grief from some little corner of your heart and cry over it.”

“I lived my grief; I slept mourning and ate sorrow and drank tears. I ignored all else.”

“Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same.”

“…I learned that it's possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief…lessens. It may not ever go away completely, but after a while it's not overwhelming.”

“Only mundanes say they're sorry when what they mean is "I share your grief,"' Jace observed.”

“If you love someone, truly love them, you should never cause them pain. Never fill their eyes with something so close to grief.”

“Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.”

“It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.”

“A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,
A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet or relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear.”

“… Time does not heal,
It makes a half-stitched scar
That can be broken and again you feel
Grief as total as in its first hour.
-Elizabeth Jennings”

“A ring of gold with the sun in it?
Lies. Lies and a grief.”

“Marius was of the temperament that sinks into grief and remains there; Cosette was of the sort that plunges in and comes out again.”

“Everything about her was warm and soft and scented; even the stains of her grief became her as raindrops do the beaten rose.”

“If they tell you that she died of sleeping pills you must know that she died of a wasting grief, of a slow bleeding at the soul.”

“Her own grief grieved her. His devastated her.”

“We are not strong enough to stand up against endless grief, And yet pain is the constant drone of life. So if we are to have any happiness at all, it is only in the passing instant.”

“words are like nets - we hope they'll cover what we mean, but we know they can't possibly hold that much joy, or grief, or wonder.”

“Grief was like that. It gradually faded into a dull ache, until some simple sight or sound or scent hit him like a hammer blow.”

“He who doth not smoke hath either known no great griefs, or refuseth himself the softest consolation, next to that which comes from heaven.”

“Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.”

“After a while, though the grief did not go away from us, it grew quiet. What had seemed a storm wailing through the entire darkness seemed to come in at last and lie down.”

“We don't go to the ocean for anything as simple as happiness, do we? We
go there to feel alive. Like life, the ocean holds chance and change, grief and terror and beauty. It promises mortality, not peace.”

“This is what those who haven’t crossed the tropic of grief often fail to understand: the fact that someone is dead may mean that they are not alive, but doesn’t mean that they do not exist.”

“While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till grief be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.”