Quotes about grief
page 7

“Had this sky (fate) got me killed with grief and pain (in my imprisoned state)! This patch (of garment) of my life would not have yielded life giving poetry!”

Masud Sa'd Salman (1046–1121) Iranian writer

Original: (ur) گردوں بہ رنج و درد مارا کشتہ بود اگر
پیوند و عمر من نہ شدے نظم جان فضائے

Life, Pain, Fate

“All my life, I have had a reputation for being cold, unfeeling. Some have called me heartless, ruthless, even cruel. I am not. I am not beyond emotional response or compassion. But I possess - and my masters count this as perhaps my paramount virtue - a singular force of will. Throughout my career it has served me well to draw on this facility and steel myself, unflinching, at all that this wretched galaxy can throw at me. To feel pain or fear or grief is to allow myself a luxury I cannot afford.”

Dan Abnett (1965) British comic book writer, novelist

Inquisitor Gregor Eisenhorn:
Warhammer 40,000 Works, Eisenhorn (novel series), Xenos

Life, Pain, Fear, Feeling

“The joys of parents are secret; and so are their griefs and fears. They cannot utter the one; nor they will not utter the other.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1625), Of Parents and Children

Secret, Fear, Parent, Joy

“But — if you cannot give us ease —
Last of the race of them who grieve
Here leave us to die out with these
Last of the people who believe!
Silent, while years engrave the brow;
Silent — the best are silent now. Achilles ponders in his tent,
The kings of modern thought are dumb,
Silent they are though not content,
And wait to see the future come.
They have the grief men had of yore,
But they contend and cry no more.”

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

Stanzas from the Grande Chartreuse (1855)

Men, People, Waiting, Future

“Think of tonight as having a real purpose. Yes, it is dining with the dead in order to be at one with our ancestors, but at the same time, a good scoff in shared company provides solace for the unhappy, it anneals the internal stress of bereavement, it helps the living along the path of their recovery from grief.”

Lindsey Davis (1949) English novelist

“That’s a useful motto for a caterer!”
Invitation to Die

Thinking, Time, Help, Dead

“This is something that the novel does better than any other art form: reproducing the inner life and the inner experience of another person, particularly extreme forms of consciousness like grief, dreams, drunkenness, spiritual revelations, even insanity. Unlike movies, where we’re always onlookers, in novels we have the experience of being someone else: knowing another person’s soul from the inside. No other art form does that. And I like dealing with particularly intense inner experiences because I think that in many ways, this is what the novel does best.”

Donna Tartt (1963) American writer

On what novels convey to Tartt in “Interview with Donna Tartt” https://medium.com/@Powells/interview-with-donna-tartt-8d86a2438b41 in Medium (2015 Jul 13)

Life, Dreams, Art, Way

“When you see on the news or read in the newspaper that so many people were killed in places far away, do not let these numbers become mere abstractions to you. These are real people, like you and I. They are families, friends; they have pain, they have grief.”

Hamid Karzai (1957) President of Afghanistan

Commencement Address to Boston University Class of 2005

Pain, People, Family, Reading

“The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing... not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares.”

Henri Nouwen (1932–1996) Dutch priest and writer

Despair, Friendship, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“The really unhappy person is the one who leaves undone what they can do, and starts doing what they don't understand; no wonder they come to grief.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Understanding, Personality

“Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life's search for love and wisdom.”

Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet

Love, Life, Wisdom, Pain

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

Clive Staples Lewis book A Grief Observed

First line.
A Grief Observed (1961)

Fear, For Father

“How do we overcome our grief, pain, and our fears of our memory of abuse that traps us in time?... The way to do it is to give it up; do not identify with it. Ask yourself: “Am I this memory?” Obviously you are not. While you identify with your memory and pain, your grief, with the abuse that is trapping you.”

Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist

Source: Maitreya's Mission Vol. III (1997)

Pain, Fear, Way, Memory

“Since our Lord, who gave Fernando to us, wished to have him back, we must bend to His will and thank Him and beg Him to protect what is left. With great affection, my lady, I beg you to do this and to forget and leave behind all pain and grief.”

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor (1500–1558) Holy Roman Emperor

Pain, Forgetting

“There is a way which seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death. Even in laughter the heart may be in pain, and the end of joy may be grief. The backslider in heart will have his fill of his own ways, but a good man will be satisfied with his.”

book Bible

Source: Proverbs 14:12-14

Death, Pain, Way, Laughter

“[…] faded smiles oft linger in the face,
While grief's first flakes fall silent on the head!”

Alfred Austin (1835–1913) British writer and poet

Source: "Unseasonable Snows", line 13; p. 38, Lyrical Poems (1891)

Smile

“Seemed like I couldn't stand it any more,
The factory whistles blowin' day by day,
An' men an' children hurryin' by the door,
An' street cars clangin' on their busy way.
The faces of the people seemed to be
Washed pale by tears o' grief an' strife an' care,
Till everywhere I turned to I could see
The same old gloomy pictures of despair.The windows of the shops all looked the same,
Decked out with stuff their owners wished to sell;
When visitors across our doorway came
I could recite the tales they'd have to tell.
All things had lost their old-time power to please;
Dog-tired I was an' irritable, too,
An' so I traded chimney tops for trees,
An' shingled roof for open skies of blue.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: When Day is Done (1921), The Cure for Weariness, stanzas 1 and 2

Men, Children, People, Dogs

“Thou mourner for departed dreams!
On earth there is no rest
When grief hath troubled the pure streams
Of memory in thy breast!”

Helen Blackwood, Baroness Dufferin and Claneboye (1807–1867) British songwriter, composer, poet and author

"Disenchanted!", line 41; p. 139.
Songs, Poems, & Verses (1894)

Dreams, Memory

“The main thing for Ukraine today is that the whole other world hears and sees us, and it is important that our war does not become "habitual," so that our victims do not become statistics. That's why I communicate with people through foreign media. Don't get used to our grief!”

Olena Zelenska (1978) Ukrainian architect and screenwriter

The number one target is all of us (2022)

War, People, World, Communication

“When you listen to music, you can transcend your own pain and turn towards another and feel bonded with the whole of humanity because you know that they have felt that grief and love. By expressing it, by communing with that song or picture, you realize you are not alone.”

Susan Cain book Bittersweet

Walker, Suzy (interviewer). "The Big Happiness Interview: Susan Cain on how embracing sadness can make us happier", Metro, June 5, 2022.
Bittersweet

Love, Pain, Music, Feeling

“He told of journeys, of where sun and moon go while we stand in dark,
of an earth-journey he dreamed he would take some day
deeper than roots ...
He told of the dreams of man, wars, passions, griefs,
and I, a tree, understood words – ah, it seemed my thick bark would split like a sapling's that grew too fast in the spring when a late frost wounds it.”

Denise Levertov (1923–1997) Poet

A Tree Telling of Orpheus (1968)

War, Dreams, Spring, Tree

Quotes about grief page 7

Quotes about grief
page 7