Quotes about grief
page 5

“286. Goe not for every griefe to the physitian, nor for every quarrell to the lawyer, nor for every thirst to the pot.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“There is little difference between expecting misfortune and undergoing it; except that grief has limits, whereas apprehension has none. For we grieve only for what we know has happened; but we fear all that possibly may happen.”
Parvolum differt, patiaris adversa an exspectes; nisi quod tamen est dolendi modus, non est timendi. Doleas enim quantum scias accidisse, timeas quantum possit accidere.

Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer

Letter 17, 6.
Letters, Book VIII

Fear

“Oh, who would have dared believe that half-crazed I,
I, sick with grief for the buried past,
I, smoldering on a slow fire,
having lost everything and forgotten all,
would be fated to commemorate a man
so full of strength and will and bright inventions,
who only yesterday it seems, chatted with me,
hiding the tremor of his mortal pain.”

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966) Russian modernist poet

In Memory of M. B.

Pain, Fate, Past

“The right hon. Gentleman is the first of the new party who has expressed his great grief by his actions—who has retired into what may be called his political Cave of Adullam—and he has called about him every one that was in distress and every one that was discontented.”

John Bright (1811–1889) British Radical and Liberal statesman

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1866/mar/13/adjourned-debate-second-night in the House of Commons (13 March 1866). 1860s

“Yes mam. I'm sorry you've had such troubles.
Mm-hmm. Sorry. Don’t need sorry. Not in this house. Sorry laid the hearth here. Sorry ways and sorry people and heavensent grief and heartache to make you pine for your death.”

Cormac McCarthy book Outer Dark

Outer Dark (1968)

Death, People, Way, Housing

“In all the silent manliness of grief.”

Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village

Source: The Deserted Village (1770), Line 384.

“The World in which we live and move
Outlasts aversion, outlasts love:
Outlasts each effort, interest, hope,
Remorse, grief, joy.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

Source: Resignation (1849), l. 215-218

Love, World, Hope, Effort

“It is an old belief
That on some solemn shore
Beyond the sphere of grief
Dear friends shall meet once more.”

John Gibson Lockhart (1794–1854) Scottish writer and editor

Letter to Thomas Carlyle, April 1, 1842; cited from Andrew Lang The Life and Letters of John Gibson Lockhart (London: John C. Nimmo, 1897) vol. 2, p. 235.

“People complain about their griefs and sorrows and how they pray to God but find no relief from pain. But grief itself is a gift from God. It is the symbol of His compassion.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

[In the Company of the Holy Mother, 220-221]

God, Pain, People

“Who overrefines his argument brings himself to grief.”

Francesco Petrarca Il Canzoniere

"Canzone 11 [c. 1327]", as reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1968), p. 163
Il Canzoniere (c. 1351–1353), To Laura in Life

“Why should Ossian sing of battles? For never more shall my steel shine in war. I remember the days of my youth with grief; when I feel the weakness of my arm. Happy are they who fell in their youth, in the midst of their renown! They have not beheld the tombs of their friends, or failed to bend the bow of their strength.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"The War of Caros"
The Poems of Ossian

War, Happiness, Youth, Feeling

“I expect this to be my last venture in this field; 'tain't worth the grief”

Robert A. Heinlein book Grumbles from the Grave

Response to efforts to censor his first novel, Red Planet
Grumbles from the Grave (1989)

“I stared down at the cemetery and the sight felt rich, rewarding, physically so, in the actual eyes. The very eyeball itself felt good. I became the most recent person on earth to see that everyone in every single or double plot had known life in all its extremes. They had all known extreme pain and stress; all been overjoyed. All had been enchanted; and they'd all known extreme grief so bad they thought it must be meant for another species.”

Robert Newman (1964) British comedian, born 1964

Dependence Day (1994).

Life, Pain, Personality

“!-- Recipe for greatness — --> To bear up under loss — to fight the bitterness of defeat and the weakness of grief — to be victor over anger — to smile when tears are close — to resist evil men and base instincts — to hate hate and to love love — to go on when it would seem good to die — to seek ever after the glory and the dream — to look up with unquenchable faith in something evermore about to be — that is what any man can do, and so be great.”

Zane Grey (1872–1939) American novelist

As quoted in The North American Almanac (1931), p. 54, this sometimes published with a prefix "Recipe for greatness —" but this does not appear in the earliest versions of it yet located.

Love, Men, Hate, Faith

“A minister says to me that I am going to hell—that I am bound to be punished forever and ever—and thereupon I say to him: “There is no hell you are mistaken; your Bible is not inspired; no human being is to suffer agony forever;” and thereupon, with an injured look, he asks me this question: “Why do you hurt my feelings?” It does not occur to him that I have the slightest right to object to his sentence of eternal grief.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

A Christmas Sermon (1890)

Feeling, Hell, Question, Suffering

“Yet, some explorers do not return. And the loss settles unfairly on a few. The families here today shared in the courage of those they loved. But now they must face life and grief without them. The sorrow is lonely; but you are not alone. In time, you will find comfort and the grace to see you through. And in God's own time, we can pray that the day of your reunion will come.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

2000s, 2003, Columbia space shuttle disaster (February 2003)

Love, Life, God, Family

“Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears:
Yet, slower, yet; O faintly, gentle springs:
List to the heavy part the music bears,
Woe weeps out her division, when she sings.
Droop herbs, and flowers,
Fall grief in showers,
Our beauties are not ours;
O, I could still,
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since nature's pride is now, a withered daffodil.”

Ben Jonson Cynthia's Revels

Cynthia's Revels (1600), Act I, scene i

Beauty, Music, Spring, Flowers

“I am certain that I speak on behalf of my entire nation when I say: Today we are all Americans — in grief, as in defiance.”

Benjamín Netanyahu (1949) Israeli prime minister

Statement on the September 11th terrorist attacks (20 September 2001), as quoted at the official site of Israeli embassy http://www.israelemb.org/US-Israel-Relations/US-Israel-Relations_famous.htm 2000s, 2001, September

“I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

Grief http://www.webterrace.com/browning/Grief.htm, l. 1 (1844).

“Lux forced grief from his mind, thinking grimly of revenge.”

Lin Carter (1930–1988) American fantasy writer, editor, critic

Source: Time War (1974), Chapter 3, “The Silver Men” (p. 41)

Revenge, Thinking

“Alone I go with my grief
Alone my curse goes
Running is my destiny
To get around the law
Lost in the heart
Of the big Babylon
They call me the clandestine
For not carrying papers

To a northern city
I went to work
I left my life
Between Ceuta and Gibraltar
I am a line in the sea
A ghost in the city
My life is forbidden
Says the authority”

Manu Chao (1961) French Spanish singer, guitarist and record producer

Solo voy con mi pena
Sola va mi condena
Correr es mi destino
Para burlar la ley
Perdido en el corazón
De la grande Babylon
Me dicen el clandestino
Por no llevar papel

Pa' una ciudad del norte
Yo me fui a trabajar
Mi vida la dejé
Entre Ceuta y Gibraltar
Soy una raya en el mar
Fantasma en la ciudad
Mi vida va prohibida
Dice la autoridad
Clandestino, song about the undocumented migrants.
Clandestino (1998)

Life, Law, Heart, Sea

“There is no suffering for him who has finished his journey, and abandoned grief, who has freed him self on all sides, and thrown off all fetters.”

Annie Besant (1847–1933) British socialist, theosophist, women's rights activist, writer and orator

p. 162

Suffering

“After a death, you eat and drink and remember the good things and try to laugh again. Grief profits no one, least of all the departed, who are quit of it for ever.”

Morris West (1916–1999) Australian writer

Niccoló Tolentino in Ch. 1
Masterclass (1988)

Death, Drink

“I think, ofttimes, that lives of men may be
Likened to wandering winds that come and go
Not knowing whence they rise, whither they blow
O’er the vast globe, voiceful of grief or glee.”

Paul Hamilton Hayne (1830–1886) American editor and poet

A Comparison.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Men, Thinking

“She didn't feel anything, no grief or remorse, though her heart was racing and her breath came in gasps. A shocky combat-high, that immortal rush that made men charge machine guns. So this was what the war-addicts came for.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Vorkosigan Saga

Vorkosigan Saga, Barrayar (1991)

Men, War, Feeling, Heart

“She was a soprano of the kind often used for augmenting grief at a funeral.”

George Ade (1866–1944) American writer, newspaper columnist and playwright

Fables

“Come: there shall be such islanding from grief,
And small communion with the master shore.
Twang they. And I incline this ear to tin,
Consult a dual dilemma. Whether to dry
In humming pallor or to leap and die.”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

A Sunset of the City

“He was magnificent, and I will never forget that in that moment, I first loved him. And I never stopped loving him. I do now and always will. No one ever brought me more sorrow or pain or joy than he did. No, nothing, not even my sons, has ever outweighed the love I feel and still feel for him. And I believe – had I known what the future held for us: all the trouble, torment, battle, and grief of our lives – I still believe that I would have yielded my heart into his keeping as I did then”

Alice Borchardt book The Dragon Queen

The Dragon Queen

Love, Pain, Feeling, Future

“When Zeus' son Sarpedon meets his fate, Zeus expresses grief for his dead son by causing blood to rain (Iliad 16: 459-461). In Egypt, the function of rain is replaced by the Nile which fructifies the soil. Accordingly, the Biblical Plague of Blood (Exodus 7: 19-25) is the Egyptian equivalent of the bloody rainfall in the Iliad.”

Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist

Source: The Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations (1965 [1962]), Ch.VII Further Observations on Homer

Fate, Dead

“My mother whom I adored, secretly wasted away and died of grief…; her death…marked me for life.”

Christian Dior (1905–1957) French fashion designer

Source: Marie France Pochna "Christian Dior: The Man who Made the World Look New", p. 48

Life, Death

“That sad and joyful dawn,
light full of pity and grief,
while the world wakes in loneliness
I'll praise it and remember it.”

Luís de Camões (1524–1580) Portuguese poet

Aquela triste e leda madrugada,
Cheia toda de mágoa e de piedade,
Enquanto houver no mundo saudade,
Quero que seja sempre celebrada.
tr. David Wevill
Lyric poetry, Não pode tirar-me as esperanças, Aquela triste e leda madrugada

World, Sadness, Light, Loneliness

“Empathy for women is an attribute of masculinity. When men play the protector role they are trying to save a woman from grief or pain. If they had no glimpse of her grief or pain, they wouldn’t know when to protect.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say (2000), p. 33.

Women, Men, Pain

“A year ago on this day around 9:45 a. m. you came downstairs dressed in an orange Korean dress and we left together for the ceremonies. You were leaving the Blue House for the last time in your life. This day a year ago was the longest of my life, the most painful and sad. My mind went blank with grief and despair. I felt as though I had lost everything in the world. All things became a burden and I lost my courage and will. A year has passed since then. And during that year I have cried alone in secret too many times to count.”

Park Chung-hee (1917–1979) Korean Army general and the leader of South Korea from 1961 to 1979

Diary entry (15 August 1975), as quoted in The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History Revised and Updated http://books.google.com/books?id=yJZKpYXh2SAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+Two+Koreas:+A+Contemporary+History+revised+updated&hl=en&sa=X&ei=X-xvU5TRFPOisQSa34CIBA&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=already%20into%20the%20last%20week&f=false (2001), by Don Oberdorfer, p. 56. 1970s

Life, Pain, Secret, World

“He could find no cure for his grief; but he did know that continued occupation would relieve him, and therefore he occupied himself continually.”

Anthony Trollope (1815–1882) English novelist (1815-1882)

The Life of Cicero (1880)

“How long can this situation last and be tolerated? When Imam Ali, Commander of the Faithful, heard that an anklet was forcefully removed from the feet of a Jewish woman by the invaders in one of the frontier cities under his rule, he said, "If a man dies from grief because of this act, he should not be reprimanded."
Today, even the children are not spared and are targeted by their bullets. Palestinian men and women are abducted and tortured in their fearsome prisons. People are shot dead in schools, on the streets and at markets.”

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (1956) 6th President of the Islamic Republic of Iran

2006, 2006 International Qods Conference address

Women, Men, Children, People

“I am Goya
of the bare field, by the enemy's beak gouged
till the craters of my eyes gape
I am grief
I am the tongue
of war, the embers of cities
on the snows of the year 1941
I am hunger.”

Andrey Voznesensky (1933–2010) Soviet poet

"I am Goya"; translated by Stanley Kunitz, p. 3.
Antiworlds, and the Fifth Ace

Hunger, War

“But by and by, the cause of my disease
Gives me a pang, that inwardly doth sting,
When that I think what grief it is again
To live and lack the thing should rid my pain.”

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516–1547) English Earl

"A Complaint by Night of the Lover Not Beloved", line 11.

Pain, Disease, Thinking

“At the vital moment there seems to be a failure of leadership, and also a failure of the general human spirit among the peoples. I hope I am wrong, but I have a sense of impending calamity, a fear that the war was only the vanguard of calamity … I cannot look at that draft treaty without a sense of grief and shame.”

Jan Smuts (1870–1950) military leader, politician and statesman from South Africa

Smuts to Mary Murray, wife of Gilbert Murray, on the Treaty of Versailles, 2 June 1919, as cited in Antony Lentin, 2010, Jan Smuts – Man of courage and vision, p. 106. ISBN 978-1-86842-390-3

War, People, Fear, Hope

“Do right! and thou hast naught to fear;
Right hath a power that makes thee strong.
The night is dark, but light is near;
The grief is short, the joy is long.”

Thomas Cogswell Upham (1799–1872) American philosopher and psychologist

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 201.

Fear, Light, Strong, Joy

“If our inward griefs were seen written on our brow, how many would be pitied who are now envied!”

Pietro Metastasio (1698–1782) Italian poet and librettist (born 3 January 1698, died 12 April 1782)

Se a ciascun l'interno affanno
Si leggesse in fronte scritto,
Quanti mai, che invidia fanno,
Ci farebbero pietà!
Part I.
Giuseppe Riconosciuto (1733)

Envy

“Grief carries its own antidote along with it.”

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) American novelist, historian and editor

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

“But no. Too soon I voun' my charm abroke.
Noo comely soul in white like her—
Noo soul a-steppen light like her—
An' nwone o' comely height like her—
Went by; but all my grief agean awoke.”

William Barnes (1801–1886) English writer, poet, clergyman, and philologist

The Wind at the Door, from Poets of the English Language, W. H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson (1950).

Soul, Light

“The hearts of their families are still broken and bereaved and our people remain grief-stricken and angry. Instead of apology and remorse and judicial prosecution of those who were directly at fault in that horrifying event, Saudi rulers- with utmost shamelessness and insolence- refused to allow the formation of an international Islamic fact-finding committee.”

Ali Khamenei (1939) Iranian Shiite faqih, Marja' and official independent islamic leader

2016, Hajj hijacked by oppressors, Muslims should reconsider management of Hajj (September 2015)

People, Family, Heart

“And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-school'd, self-scann'd, self-honour'd, self-secure,
Didst tread on earth unguess'd at. — Better so! All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,
Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.”

Matthew Arnold (1822–1888) English poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools

"Shakespeare" (1849)

Pain, Star, Victory

“I cannot grieve at death. It seems to me the greatest boon the Almighty has granted us. Consequently I cannot appreciated the grief of those who mourn the loss of loved ones, particularly if they go early from this hell of misery to which we have been doomed.”

Edwin Booth (1833–1893) 19th century American actor

letter to William Winter, 23 April 1886, quoted in Life and art of Edwin Booth, pp. 306–307 https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015053687821;view=1up;seq=360

Love, Death, Hell, Loss

“The puella mother who has never taken up residence in her own body, and therefore fears her own chthonic nature, is not going to experience pregnancy as a quiet meditation with her unborn child, nor birth as a joyful bonding experience. Although she may go through the motions of natural childbirth, the psyche/soma split in her is so deep that physical bonding between her and her baby daughter does not take place. Her child lives with a profound sense of despair, a despair which becomes conscious if in later years she does active imagination with her body and releases waves of grief and terror that resonate with the initial, primal rejection. […] The body that appears in dreams wrapped in fire, encircled by a black snake or encumbered by a fish tail from the waist down, may be holding a death-wish too deep for tears.”

Marion Woodman (1928–2018) Canadian writer

Source: The Pregnant Virgin (1985), p. 37

Death, Fear, Dreams, Imagination

“We look to find each other but cannot—
we only see those green mulberry groves.
Mulberry groves all share one shade of green—
of your own grief and mine, which hurts the more?”

Đặng Trần Côn (1710–1745) writer

Source: Chinh phụ ngâm, Lines 61–64

Hurt

“As far too many know, it is the small, loving acts that help an enormous amount in times of grief. My father is good with advice, as you might guess, but he keeps it short, and the takeaway is usually the same: to help us find our own way, and our own gifts. If you do what you love, hold nothing back, and never let fear of failure get in the way, then you've pretty much figured out the Trump formula.”

Tiffany Trump (1993) American Internet personality and daughter of Donald Trump and Marla Maples

Speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention (July 19, 2016)

Love, Fear, Way, Failure

“Every transgression is a game, every grief easy to bear compared with having discovered beauty; it was at once the crime that could never be atoned and the hurt that could never be assuaged, the tear that could never be dried.”

Halldór Laxness (1902–1998) Icelandic author

Heimsljós (World Light) (1940), Book Four: The Beauty of the Heavens

Beauty, Game, Tear, Hurt

“And that brings me to the other big lesson that I want to share with you today. It’s a lesson about how to get through those struggles, and that is, instead of letting your hardships and failures discourage or exhaust you, let them inspire you. Let them make you even hungrier to succeed. Now, I know that many of you have already dealt with some serious losses in your lives. Maybe someone in your family lost a job or struggled with drugs or alcohol or an illness. Maybe you’ve lost someone you love […]. […] So, yes, maybe you’ve been tested a lot more and a lot earlier in life than many other young people. Maybe you have more scars than they do. Maybe you have days when you feel more tired than someone your age should ever really feel. But, graduates, tonight, I want you to understand that every scar that you have is a reminder not just that you got hurt, but that you survived. And as painful as they are, those holes we all have in our hearts are what truly connect us to each other. They are the spaces we can make for other people’s sorrow and pain, as well as their joy and their love so that eventually, instead of feeling empty, our hearts feel even bigger and fuller. So it’s okay to feel the sadness and the grief that comes with those losses. But instead of letting those feelings defeat you, let them motivate you. Let them serve as fuel for your journey.”

Michelle Obama (1964) lawyer, writer, wife of Barack Obama and former First Lady of the United States

2010s, Commencement speech for Martin Luther King Jr. College Prep graduates (2015)

Love, Life, Pain, People

“Why not make an end of it all?" he asked himself. "Why this obstinate resistance to the fate that is crushing me? It is all very well my forming what are apparently the most reasonable forms of conduct, my life is a succession of griefs and bitter feelings. This month is no better than the last; this year is no better than last year. Why this obstinate determination to go on living? Can I be wanting in firmness? What is death?" he asked himself, opening his case of pistols and examining them. "A very small matter, when all is said; only a fool would be concerned about it.”

Stendhal book Armance

Pourquoi ne pas en finir? se dit-il enfin; pourquoi cette obstination à lutter contre le destin qui m'accable? J'ai beau faire les plans de conduite les plus raisonnables en apparence, ma vie n'est qu'une suite de malheurs et de sensations amères. Ce mois-ci ne vaut pas mieux que le mois passé; cette année-ci ne vaut pas mieux que l'autre année; d'où vient cette obstination à vivre? Manquerais-je de fermeté? Qu'est-ce que la mort? se dit-il en ouvrant la caisse de ses pistolets et les considérant. Bien peu de chose en vérité; il faut être fou pour s'en passer.
Source: Armance (1827), Ch. 2

Life, Death, Fate, Fools

“If I had loved any one sufficiently to make confiding my griefs a necessity, I should not have been in the condition.”

John Stuart Mill book Autobiography

Autobiography (1873)

Love, Confidence

“My friend, the pleasures to which we are not accustomed oppress us more than the griefs with which we are familiar.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

Le Vicomte de Bragelonne ou Dix ans plus (The Vicomte de Bragelonne) (1847)

Pleasure

“No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.”

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889) English poet

" No Worst, There Is None http://www.bartleby.com/122/41.html", lines 1-2 Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1918)

School, Past

“Sorrow and scarlet leaf,
Sad thoughts and sunny weather:
Ah me, this glory and this grief
Agree not well together!”

Thomas William Parsons (1819–1892) American writer

Sadness, Weather

“Alas! that all we loved of him should be,
But for our grief, as if it had not been,
And grief itself be mortal! Woe is me!
Whence are we, and why are we? of what scene
The actors or spectators?”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Adonaïs

St. XXI
Adonais (1821)

Love

“They took captive a great number of handsome and elegant maidens, amounting to 20,000, and children of both sexes, 'more than the pen can enumerate'… In short, the Muhammadan army brought the country to utter ruin, and destroyed the lives of the inhabitants, and plundered the cities, and captured their offspring, so that many temples were deserted and the idols were broken and trodden under foot, the largest of which was one called Somnat, fixed upon stone, polished like a mirror of charming shape and admirable workmanship' Its head was adorned with a crown set with gold and rubies and pearls and other precious stones' and a necklace of large shining pearls, like the belt of Orion, depended from the shoulder towards the side of the body….
'The Muhammadan soldiers plundered all these jewels and rapidly set themselves to demolish the idol. The surviving infidels were deeply affected with grief, and they engaged 'to pay a thousand pieces of gold' as ransom for the idol, but they were indignantly rejected, and the idol was destroyed, and 'its limbs, which were anointed with ambergris and perfumed, were cut off. The fragments were conveyed to Delhi, and the entrance of the Jami' Masjid was paved with them, that people might remember and talk of this brilliant victory.' Praise be to God, the Lord of the worlds. Amen! After some time, among the ruins of the temples, a most beautiful jasper-coloured stone was discovered, on which one of the merchants had designed some beautiful figures of fighting men and other ornamental figures of globes, lamps, etc., and on the margin of it were sculptured verses from the Kurdn. This stone was sent as an offering to the shrine of the pole of saints… At that time they were building a lofty octagonal dome to the tomb. The stone was placed at the right of the entrance. "At this time, that is, in the year 707 h. (1307 a. d.), 'Alau-d din is the acknowledged Sultan of this country. On all its borders there are infidels, whom it is his duty to attack in the prosecution of a holy war, and return laden with countless booty."”

Alauddin Khalji (1266–1316) Ruler of the Khalji dynasty

Somnath. Abdu’llah ibn Fazlu’llah of Shiraz (Wassaf) : Tarikh-i-Wassaf (Tazjiyatu’l Amsar Wa Tajriyatu’l Ãsar), in Elliot and Dowson, Vol. III : Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, 8 Volumes, Allahabad Reprint, 1964. pp. 43-44. Also quoted in Jain, Meenakshi (2011). The India they saw: Foreign accounts.
Quotes from The History of India as told by its own Historians

Men, God, War, Children

“In the first days
Of my distracting grief, I found myself
As women wish to be who love their lords.”

John Home Douglas

Act i, scene 1.
Douglas (first performed 1756)

Love, Women

“I saw the fare welling hands,
They were sickly,
When my hand
Touched her cold and long fingers
Which was from the family of the wailing reed
It gripped an eternal grief in its fist
The pen broke
And pain
Like black drops of ink
dropped on our papery hearts.
I saw the fare welling hands,
They were sickly;”

Farrokh Tamimi (1934–2003) Iranian poet and translator

Poet, Fare welling Hands

Pain, Family, Heart

“Rough wind, the moanest loud
Grief too sad for song;
Wild wind, when sullen cloud
Knells all the night long;
Sad storm, whose tears are vain,
Bare woods, whose branches strain,
Deep caves and dreary main, —
Wail, for the world's wrong!”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

A Dirge http://poetryarchive.bravepages.com/RSTU_poets/shelley_percy.b.htm#dirge (1821)

World, Sadness, Tear, Night

“His eyes are quickened so with grief,
He can watch a grass or leaf
Every instant grow; he can
Clearly through a flint wall see,
Or watch the startled spirit flee
From the throat of a dead man.”

Robert Graves (1895–1985) English poet and novelist

"Lost Love," lines 1-6, from Treasure Box (1919).
Poems

Grass, Dead

“And coincidence convinces the credulous. Two things happen at the same time, or one after another, and we assume there must be a link; well, we sacrificed a virgin last year, and there was a good harvest. Of course the ceremony to raise the sun works—it comes up every morning, doesn’t it? I say my prayers each night and the world hasn’t ended yet…
Dung beetle thinking. Life is too complicated for there not to be continual coincidences, and we just have to come to terms with the fact that they merely happen and aren’t ordained, that some things occur for no real reason whatsoever, and that this is not a punishment and that is not a reward. Good grief; the most copper-bottomed, platinum-card proof of divine intervention, of some holy masterplan, would be if there were no coincidences at all! That really would look suspicious.”

Iain Banks (1954–2013) Scottish writer

“Piece” (p. 75)
Short fiction, The State of the Art (1991)

Life, World, Thinking, Time

“A woman always exaggerates her beauty and its influence when they are past; and it was a perpetual grief to think what her pretty face might have done for her.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Monthly Magazine

Beauty, Thinking, Past

“Daughter of heaven, fair art thou! the silence of thy face is pleasant! Thou comest forth in loveliness. The stars attend thy blue course in the east. The clouds rejoice in thy presence, O moon! They brighten their dark-brown sides. Who is like thee in heaven, light of the silent night? The stars are ashamed in thy presence. They turn away their sparkling eyes. Whither dost thou retire from thy course, when the darkness of thy countenance grows? Hast thou thy hall, like Ossian? Dwellest thou in the shadow of grief? Have thy sisters fallen from heaven? Are they who rejoiced with thee, at night, no more? Yes! they have fallen, fair light! and thou dost often retire to mourn. But thou thyself shalt fail, one night; and leave thy blue path in heaven. The stars will then lift their heads: they, who were ashamed in thy presence, will rejoice. Thou art now clothed with thy brightness. Look from thy gates in the sky. Burst the cloud, O wind! that the daughter of night may look forth! that the shaggy mountains may brighten, and the ocean roll its white waves in light.”

James Macpherson (1736–1796) Scottish writer, poet, translator, and politician

"Dar-thula"
The Poems of Ossian

Art, Mountain, Star, Sister

“Grief restrains grief as dams torrential rain
And time grows fertile with extended pain”

J. V. Cunningham (1911–1985) American writer

'Exclusion of Rhyme' Alan Swallow Denver 1942
Epigrams

Pain, Time

“His shroud was damp, his face was white:
He said,—"I cannot sleep,
Your tears have made my shroud so wet;
Oh, mother, do not weep!"
Oh, love is strong!—the mother's heart
Was filled with tender fears;
Oh, love is strong!—and for her child
Her grief restrained its tears.”

Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) English poet and novelist

The Little Shroud from The London Literary Gazette (28th April 1832)
The Vow of the Peacock (1835)

Love, Fear, Tear, Sleep

“Everything depends on the mind. Nothing can be achieved without purity of mind. It is said, "The aspirant may have received the grace of the guru, the Lord and the Vaishnavas; but he comes to grief without the grace of 'one' ". That 'one' is the mind. The mind of the aspirant should be gracious to him.”

Sarada Devi (1853–1920) Hindu religious figure, spiritual consort of Ramakrishna

Women Saints of East and West

Dependency

“There was a brief moment after 9/11 when Colin Powell said “we should not rush to satisfy the desire for revenge.” It was a great moment, an extraordinary moment, because what he was actually asking people to do was to stay with a sense of grief, mournfulness, and vulnerability.”

Judith Butler (1956) American philosopher and gender theorist

Interview with Judith Butler. in: The Believer. May 2003

People, Revenge, Sense

“Friends, don't be afraid to go home. The Heavenly Father is waiting. Not because He wants to give you a whipping. Not because He wants to rub your nose in your failures, but because He had a Son who was a composite failure. He had a Son who tried to have this great ministry, had thousands of followers. His Son chose for Himself, He had twelve people on His staff. In three years' time He had managed to alienate every person in one way or another. He died His Father's Son, stricken with grief, so overloaded with guilt that He had to look away, His Father could not look at Him.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

Plymouth, Michigan http://www.kidbrothers.net/words/concert-transcripts/plymouth-michigan-aug1597.html (August 15, 1997) In Concert

People, Way, Home, Failure

“For there is a certain luxury in grief; especially when we pour out our sorrows in the bosom of a friend, who will approve, or, at least, pardon our tears.”
Est enim quaedam etiam dolendi voluptas, praesertim si in amici sinu defleas, apud quem lacrimis tuis vel laus sit parata vel venia.

Pliny the Younger (61–113) Roman writer

Letter 16, 5.
Letters, Book VIII

Tear

“But first me behoveth to tell you as anent my feebleness, wretchedness and blindness. — I have said in the beginning: And in this all my pain was suddenly taken from me: of which pain I had no grief nor distress as long as the Fifteen Shewings lasted following. And at the end all was close, and I saw no more. And soon I felt that I should live and languish; and anon my sickness came again: first in my head with a sound and a din, and suddenly all my body was fulfilled with sickness like as it was afore. And I was as barren and as dry as I never had comfort but little. And as a wretched creature I moaned and cried for feeling of my bodily pains and for failing of comfort, spiritual and bodily.”

Julian of Norwich (1342–1416) English theologian and anchoress

The Fifteenth Revelation, Chapter 66

Pain, Feeling

“It is very difficult to explain what takes place in me when I see or hear anything majestic which allows no doubt that it proceeds from the actualization of Our Maker Creator. Each time, my tears flow of themselves. I weep, that is to say, it weeps in me, not from grief, no, but as if from tenderness.”

G. I. Gurdjieff (1866–1949) influential spiritual teacher, Armenian philosopher, composer and writer

All and Everything: Meetings with Remarkable Men (1963)

Tear, Time

“Expel by reasoning the unrestrained grief of a torpid soul.”

Stobaeus Ancient Greek anthologist

50
Pythagorean Ethical Sentences

Soul

“Then once more comes deep grief to their hearts, when he comrades sat in their places and no lion's hide was there to see, but the empty seat upon that mighty thwart. Loyal Aeacides weeps, the heart of Philoctetes is sad, brother Pollux with his dear Castor makes lament. The ship is flying fast, and still all cry "Hercules," all cry "Hylas," but the names are lost in the middle of the sea.”
Hic vero ingenti repetuntur pectora luctu, ut socii sedere locis nullaeque leonis exuviae tantique vacant vestigia transtri. flet pius Aeacides, maerent Poeantia corda, ingemit et dulci frater cum Castore Pollux. omnis adhuc vocat Alciden fugiente carina, omnis Hylan, medio pereunt iam nomina ponto.

Gaius Valerius Flaccus book Argonautica

Source: Argonautica, Book III, Lines 719–725

Sadness, Heart, Cry, Flying

“When the passions, such as joy, anger, grief, and pleasure, have not awakened, that is our central self, or moral being (chung). When these passions awaken and each and all attain due measure and degree, that is harmony, or the moral order (ho). Our central self or moral being is the great basis of existence, and harmony or moral order is the universal law in the world.
When our true central self and harmony are realised, the universe then becomes a cosmos and all things attain their full growth and development.”

Zisi (-481–-402 BC) Chinese philosopher

Variant translation: "Before joy, anger, sadness and happiness are expressed, they are called the inner self; when they are expressed to the proper degree, they are called harmony. The inner self is the correct foundation of the world, and harmony is the illustrious Way. When a man has achieved the inner self and harmony, the heaven and earth are orderly and the myriad things are nourished and grow thereby."
As translated by Lin Yutang in The Importance of Living (1937), pp. 143–144
Source: The Doctrine of the Mean, p. 104

Pleasure, World, Law, Universe

“I lost myself to him and laid my face upon my lover's breast
And care and grief grew dim as in the morning's mist became the light
There they dimmed amongst the lilies fair.”

Loreena McKennitt (1957) Canadian musician and composer

The Mask and Mirror (1994), The Dark Night of The Soul

Lovers, Light

“The turbulent lives of their entrepreneurial ancestors led to grief and angst and adventures, and as Sirhan is fond of observing, an adventure is something horrible that happens to someone else.”

Charles Stross book Accelerando

Source: Accelerando (2005), Chapter 9 (“Survivor”), p. 387

“The swimming hole is still in use. It has the same mudbank. It is still impossible to dress without carrying mud home in one’s inner garments. As an engineer I could devise improvements for that swimming hole. But I doubt if the decrease in mother’s grief at the homecoming of muddy boys would compensate the inherent joys of getting muddy.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

The New Day: Campaign Speeches of Herbert Hoover (1928)

Home, Boy, Joy

“And thus she helps the Maid to check her grief
Which, being vented, is less bitter now.”

Ludovico Ariosto book Orlando Furioso

Così fa ch'ella un poco il duol raffrena;
Ch'avendo ove sfogarlo, è meno acerbo.
Canto XLII, stanza 28 (tr. B. Reynolds)
Orlando Furioso (1532)

Help

“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 Bruyère book Les Caractères

Les douleurs muettes et stupides sont hors d'usage: on pleure, on récite, on répète, on est si touchée de la mort de son mari, qu'on n'en oublie pas la moindre circonstance.
Aphorism 79
Les Caractères (1688), Des Femmes

Death, Fashion, Forgetting

“850. He that talkes much of his happinesse summons griefe.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)