GRIEF QUOTES
quotations about grief
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
Excess of grief for the deceased is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not.
XENOPHON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Receding from grief, it seems necessary to retrace the same steps that brought us there.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Tender Is the Night
Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.
RUMI
attributed, The Philosophy Book
It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief, as if grief could be lessened by baldness.
CICERO
Tusculan Disputations
Slowly, grief tires and sleeps, but never dies. In time it grows used to its prison, and a relationship of respect develops between prisoner and jailer.
JOSEPHINE HART
Damage
Grief is like the wake behind a boat. It starts out as a huge wave that follows close behind you and is big enough to swamp and drown you if you suddenly stop moving forward. But if you do keep moving, the big wake will eventually dissipate. And after a long time, the waters of your life get calm again, and that is when the memories of those who have left begin to shine as bright and as enduring as the stars above.
JIMMY BUFFETT
A Salty Piece of Land
Oh, what grief not to have
grief, and to spend your life
on the colorless grass
of the undecided path!
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Crossroads"
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
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"
Grief does not change you.... It reveals you.
JOHN GREEN
The Fault in Our Stars
Grief never mended no broken bones.
CHARLES DICKENS
Sketches by Boz
Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.
SOPHOCLES
Antigone
It's funny, how one can look back on a sorrow one thought one might well die of at the time, and know that one had not yet reckoned the tenth part of true grief.
JACQUELINE CAREY
Kushiel's Dart
Joy and grief are things of great hazard and danger in the life of man: The one breaks the heart; the other intoxicates the head.
BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
Moral and Religious Aphorisms
Joys as winged dreams fly fast,
Why should sadness longer last?
Grief is but a wound to woe;
Gentlest fair, mourn, mourn no moe.
JOHN FLETCHER
The Queen of Corinth
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
Unhappiness is selfish, grief is selfish. For whom are the tears?
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
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
Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.
JOAN DIDION
The Year of Magical Thinking