LOSS QUOTES
quotations about loss
We lost not only through death, but also by leaving and being left, by changing and letting go and moving on. And our losses include not only our separations and departures from those we love, but our conscious and unconscious losses of romantic dreams, impossible expectations, illusions of freedom and power, illusions of safety -- and the loss of our own younger self, the self that thought it would always be unwrinkled and invulnerable and immortal.
JUDITH VIORST
introduction, Necessary Losses
For 'tis a truth well known to most,
That whatsoever thing is lost,
We seek it, ere it comes to light,
In every cranny but the right.
WILLIAM COWPER
The Retired Cat
He who has lost his oxen is always hearing bells.
SPANISH PROVERB
Whoever said that loss gets easier with time was a liar. Here's what really happens: The spaces between the times you miss them grow longer. Then, when you do remember to miss them again, it's still with a stabbing pain to the heart. And you have guilt. Guilt because it's been too long since you missed them last.
KRISTIN O'DONNELL TUBB
The 13th Sign
I want time to set me ugly and knotted with loss of you, marking me. I won't smooth you away. I can't say goodbye.
CHINA MIEVILLE
The Scar
Little soul,
you have wandered
lost a long time.
The woods all dark now,
birded and eyed.
Then a light, a cabin, a fire, a door standing open.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Amor Fati"
It will take mind and memory months and possibly years to gather together the details and thus learn and know the whole extent of the loss.
MARK TWAIN
Autobiography
If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven't, you cannot possibly imagine it.
LEMONY SNICKET
The Bad Beginning
At the temple there is a poem called "Loss" carved into the stone. It has three words, but the poet has scratched them out. You cannot read loss, only feel it.
ARTHUR GOLDEN
Memoirs of a Geisha
He who recovers but the tail of his cow does not lose all.
FRENCH PROVERB
It's not the loss of life that makes the death bitter -- it's the obituaries.
EVAN ESAR
20,000 Quips & Quotes
The loss which is unknown is no loss at all.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
Maxims
When one person is missing the whole world seems empty.
PAT SCHWEIBERT
Tear Soup: A Recipe for Healing After Loss
No man can lose what he never had.
IZAAK WALTON
The Compleat Angler
Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever ... finally comes to realise that nothing really belongs to them.
PAULO COELHO
Eleven Minutes: A Novel
We must know the pain of loss; because if we never knew it, we would have no compassion for others, and we would become monsters of self-regard, creatures of unalloyed self-interest. The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one.
DEAN KOONTZ
The Darkest Evening of the Year
What's saved affords
No indication of what's lost.
OWEN MEREDITH
The Scroll
If we do not suffer a loss all the way to the end, it will wait for us. It won't just dissipate and disappear. Rather, it will fester, and we will experience its sorrow later, in stranger forms.
ELIZABETH LESSER
Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow
Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.
RUMI
attributed, The Philosophy Book
The fear of loss is a path to the Dark Side.
YODA
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith