Top 100 Grief For Quotes

#1. Every artist is a cannibal/every poet is a thief/all kill for inspiration/and then sing about the grief.

Bono

#2. Small leisure have the poor for grief.

John Greenleaf Whittier

#3. Again and again, I learn how much friendship enriches my life, bringing warmth, assurance, humour, inspiration, a sense of security. It depends on honesty, trust, loyalty. It's about giving. It's for sharing the good times, but also the tough times, hurt, grief, sadness.

Quentin Bryce

#4. Grief is NOT a mental illness or an emotional disorder. Anyone who tells you otherwise has never experienced it for themselves.

Rebecca McNutt

#5. There are people who have an appetite for grief; pleasure is not strong enough and they crave pain. They have mithridatic stomachs which must be fed on poisoned bread, natures so doomed that no prosperity can sooth their ragged and dishevelled desolation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#6. Wine is an escape from grief,
a slip into sleep,
a cool forgetting of the hot pains of day.
What better cure for being human?

Euripides

#7. When the dream that was no longer can be, you have to dream a different dream.

Christina Rasmussen

#8. I felt lonely then. This is the time when you need somebody. This is the time when it is good to have a wife, and children, to absorb your grief, to hold on to you. This is when you pay, and pay and pay, for pretending that you don't need anybody.

Rick Bragg

#9. The harsh light above them caught her face, and Sean could see what she'd look like when she was much older - a handsome woman, scarred by wisdom she never asked for.

Dennis Lehane

#10. 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.

Melina Marchetta

#11. I want you to want me because you want me, not because of grief, not because he is not here. I want you to love me for me. I want you to kiss me first and not because you need me to help you, but because you need to kiss me.

Carrie Jones

#12. Grief, she reminded herself, is almost always for the mourner's loss.

Orson Scott Card

#13. In your grief, too, I weep, mother of little children, You who will murder your own, In vengeance for the loss of married love

Euripides

#14. In some respects, grief for the lost and missing is worse than grief for the dead, and sometimes just for a fraction of a second its intensity makes her wish Mikal would cease to exist, so she wouldn't have to wonder if she will ever see him again.

Nadeem Aslam

#15. Our grief is not a cry for war.

Gloria Steinem

#16. If we allow ourselves even for a moment to contemplate the vast weight of suffering in the world, we will easily be overwhelmed with grief. This is why we develop the habit and self-protective instinct of overlooking the suffering around us.

Thabiti M. Anyabwile

#17. My heart has joined the Thousand, for my friend stopped running today.

Richard Adams

#18. Even for the dead I will not bind my soul to grief, death cannot long divide; for is it not as if the rose that climbed my garden wall had bloomed the other side?

Alice Cary

#19. The world is full of tragedy; and sympathy, a little common sympathy, can do so much to soften the worst of grief. It is for the lack of that, that people despair and go down.

Mona Caird

#20. Happiness is good for the body, but it is grief which develops the strengths of the mind.

Marcel Proust

#21. I'm glad for the rain...It's good camouflage.

Lisa Schroeder

#22. It feels like I'm stuck in one spot. It's been this way for a long time. I know you understand, but now you're moving on without me. And I - I'm not ready to be alone.

Brent Jones

#23. In time, against conscience and even will, my grief for him began to include grief for myself. Sometimes I would get the feeling that I was going to waste. It was my life calling me to itself. It was the light that shines in darkness calling me back into time.

Wendell Berry

#24. You need time for the grief to heal, for the memories to fade in sharpness, time to adjust your expectation for the future. Be gentle with yourself, you'll make it.

Dee Henderson

#25. 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

#26. The inlet
our friend looks as he did
when we first knew him,
and until I wake I believe
I will die of grief, for I know
that this boy grew into a man
who was a faithful friend
who died.

Wendell Berry

#27. For my part I have no joy in tears after dinnertime. There will always be a new dawn tomorrow. Yet I can have no objection to tears for any mortal who dies and goes to his destiny. And this is the only consolation we wretched mortals can give, to cut our hair and let the tears roll down our faces.

Homer

#28. The lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.

Gretel Ehrlich

#29. And for yourself, may the gods grant you your heart's desire, a husband and a home, and the blessing of a harmonious life. For nothing is greater or finer than this, when a man and woman live together with one hear and mind, bringing joy to their friends and grief to their foes.

Homer

#30. My grief journey is my own. Others may walk it with me, but no one can walk it for me.

Danny L. Deaube

#31. In some cases, some people do get depressed in the middle of their grief, and they really need to be treated for depression.

Kay Redfield Jamison

#32. For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow. The very sun and moon seem taken from us.

Oscar Wilde

#33. Part of dealing with the sense of being cut off - for both the one dying and the one bereaved - is acknowledging that though a vital part of life has changed dramatically, all relationships (with friends, even with you, perhaps) have not.

Sandra L. Bertman

#34. For grief is crowned with consolation.

William Shakespeare

#35. With their mother lying in a coma twenty miles away, they clung together drunkenly and wept for the loss of their father.

Richard Yates

#36. You start to understand that grief is chronic. That it's more about remission and relapse than it is about a cure. What that means to you is that you can't simply wait for it to be over. You have to move through it, like swimming in an undertow.

Taylor Jenkins Reid

#37. Abandon the guilt," Prof said. "Abandon the denial. Steelheart did this to her. He's our goal. That has to be your focus. We don't have time for grief; we only have time for vengeance.

Brandon Sanderson

#38. It is foolish to pluck out one's hair for sorrow, as if grief could be assuaged by baldness.
[Lat., Stultum est in luctu capillum sibi evellere, quasi calvito maeror levaretur.]

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#39. Sometimes the grief was nearby, waiting, just barely held back, and I could ignore it for a while. But at other times it was like a cup that was always full and kept spilling over.

Lydia Davis

#40. How do you say what's in your heart if your heart is something you haven't known for years? How do you give yourself completely when all you've done is bury yourself in grief? How do you come back from the dar when it's all you can remember?

T.J. Klune

#41. Parents and children were put on earth to give each other grief. You were my punishment for how I behaved to my own father. And I'll have my revenge when you have children of your own.

Mary Jo Putney

#42. Upon that foreign soil he chose
Died he! For ever laid
Low, in the kindly shade,
He left behind no tearless grief,
No measured mourning, dull and brief,
These eyes are wet
With weeping yet,
Nor know I how to find relief."

Antigone

Sophocles

#43. Verily, a man should not cling to those who have passed, for he will likely neglect service to the living.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

#44. But every night I end up fighting my despair the second I lay my head on my pillow. It is then I miss her the most
when my brain stops moving for the day and the memories of her are allowed to flood my mind, causing agonizing grief.

Elizabeth Finn

#45. I don't say goodbye very easily, Anna. Not gracefully or prettily.Goodbye tears your heart out and leaves it a feast for carrion birds who happen by.

Patricia Briggs

#46. The only cure for grief is action.

George H. Lewis

#47. What pays for all this?"
"Grief in the face of inevitable death. The wish to stop time. The human condition.

Margaret Atwood

#48. KING HENRY VI:
Would I were dead, if God's good will were so;
For what is in this world but grief and woe?

William Shakespeare

#49. For in this worldof ours where everything withers, everything perishes, there is a thing that decays, that crumbles into dust even more completely, leaving behind, still fewer traces of itself, than beauty: namely, grief.

Marcel Proust

#50. Out of the sighs a little comes,
But not of grief, for I have knocked down that
Before the agony; the spirit grows,
Forgets, and cries;
A little comes, is tasted and found good ...

Dylan Thomas

#51. I knelt in front of life, folded my hands and prayed for some more time; there couldn't be any. My heart bled and so did my tearful eyes.
Time, they say, flies, but I saw it slowly passing by taking each of my tardy breaths with it as it walked out of my life ...

Sanhita Baruah

#52. Death has its revelations: the great sorrows which open the heart open the mind as well; light comes to us with our grief. As for me, I have faith; I believe in a future life. How could I do otherwise? My daughter was a soul; I saw this soul. I touched it, so to speak.

Victor Hugo

#53. Mourning is one of the most profound human experiences that it is possible to have ... The deep capacity to weep for the loss of a loved one and to continue to treasure the memory of that loss is one of our noblest human traits.

Edwin S. Shneidman

#54. Grief is exhausting. When you learn - maybe through my age or experience - trying to harness the energy, whatever it is, muted energy or a concentration to find yourself in a place? You try to use it for when it's really necessary and can arrive.

Ciaran Hinds

#55. He may take long walks
in the raining dark
almost aimlessly
to a spot of soaked grass
in a neighbor's open field.
He's decided this is the place
for you and him to meet again.

Kristen Henderson

#56. The Language of Sand has something for everyone: myths, mystery, community, humor, grief, and ultimately healing. I found myself not only rooting for Abigail but for the whole community of Chapel Isle. Block manages to hold sass and heartfelt emotion in perfect equilibrium.

Brunonia Barry

#57. I supposed we were more vulnerable to wondering. Grief did that to you. It made you wish for a life that wasn't yours. It made you dream.

Bella Forrest

#58. if a parent loses a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or daughter. That seemed odd.

M.L. Stedman

#59. But as the years passed, he missed her more, not less, and his need for her became a cut that would not scar over, would not stop leaking.

Dennis Lehane

#60. He would be able to suffer what his son had suffered. He would be able to suffer and his suffering would for an instance displace his grief.

Simon Lelic

#61. You're my phantom limb, Mouse. I keep looking for you. I forget. I feel stupid, Mouse. Haunt me, find me, come back from wherever you are. Be with me.

Audrey Niffenegger

#62. Embrace your grief. For there, your soul will grow.

Carl Jung

#63. Everybody dies, and everybody loses people they love-everybody-and that is not an excuse for you to fucking die. I love you, and I need you to be my mother, and I need you to have a life. So get over yourself.

Cynthia Hand

#64. Hate is a hard thing to sustain. Grief isn't. Grief is something that can stay with you for a very long time

Douglas Kennedy

#65. For every tear you shed for someone else's grief, it takes one off of their suffering.

Katie Ashley

#66. I will instruct my sorrows to be proud; for grief is proud, and makes his owner stoop.

William Shakespeare

#67. Which is to say, I'd been lonely for so long, I'd forgotten that I was.
That feeling of disconnection, of grief for something I'd never had, of screaming into a void and knowing no one would hear me
I'd forgotten that was anything other than the basic condition of life.

Robin Wasserman

#68. The goodness of God to mankind is no less evinced in the chastisement with which He corrects His children than in the smiles of His providence; for the Lord will not cast off forever, but though He cause grief, yet will He have compassion according to the multitude of His mercies.

Hosea Ballou

#69. Inflamed by greed, incensed by hate, confused by delusion, overcome by them, obsessed by mind, a man chooses for his own affliction, for others' affliction, for the affliction of both and experiences pain and grief.

Gautama Buddha

#70. But Fr Gaunt was so clipped and trim he had no antennae at all for grief. He was like a singer who knows the words and can sing, but cannot sing the song as conceived in the heart of the composer. Mostly he was dry. He spoke over young and old with the same dry music. But

Sebastian Barry

#71. I feel very sorry for myself - that is what grief is.

William Boyd

#72. This is another day! Are its eyes blurred with maudlin grief for any wasted past? A thousand thousand failures shall not daunt! Let dust clasp dust, death, death; I am alive!

Don Marquis

#73. Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not.

Xenophon

#74. She had dreams that shamed her in the morning, dreams where Ronan gave her a white powdered cake, yet spoke in Arin's voice. I made this for you, he said. Do you like it?
The powder was so fine that she inhaled its sweetness, but always woke before she could taste.

Marie Rutkoski

#75. For who can be ashamed to lose to such beauty?

Madeline Miller

#76. Mark Spitz didn't ask about Harry. You never asked about the characters that disappeared from a Last Night story. You knew the answer. The plague had a knack for narrative closure.

Colson Whitehead

#77. Modern anxiety is expressed in the longing for what most people fear, even as modern grief is expressed in the unconsummated mourning for what they never really had.

Joseph Roach

#78. Someone carries my belief that raises hope in me, but flame didn't last for long

Durgesh Satpathy

#79. It occurs to me that there is so much I never knew about him
his past, his role in the resistance, what his life was like in the Wilds, before he came to Portland, and I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.

Lauren Oliver

#80. My hands are dying.

Courtney Summers

#81. Crying all the time had made her more beautiful. Grief will do that sometimes. Not for me. Loretta had left months ago and I still looked like hell.

Junot Diaz

#82. So often I wonder whether it is my right to capitalize, as I feel, so often, on the grief of others. But then I justify, in my own particular thoughts, by feeling that I can contribute a little to the understanding of what others are going through; then there is reason for doing it.

Mark Z. Danielewski

#83. It is dangerous to abandon one's self to the luxury of grief; it deprives one of courage, and even of the wish for recovery.

Henri Frederic Amiel

#84. Forgive my grief for one removed Thy creature whom I found so fair I trust he lives in Thee and there I find him worthier to be loved.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

#85. This is why the oceans taste of salt. It is because of all the tears of mermaids for sailors who have died for their love. The oceans are salt with death and grief.

Jaxy Mono

#86. The thirst for powerful sensations takes the upper hand both over fear and over compassion for the grief of others.

Anton Chekhov

#87. I don't cry for humans. I cry for things that are so beautiful I just can't stand it, like Bonnie in front of me, all crusty from rolling in the sand, with a mouthful of half-chewed hay and eyes that knew everything I'd ever thought or felt or been.

Judith Tarr

#88. Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It's like an amputation, I feel a limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function. And yet, once it is done ... life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid and fuller than before.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

#89. ABBA: The Movie; I got a lot of grief for working on that.

Lasse Hallstrom

#90. And a real, undoubted grief is sometimes capable of making a solid and steadfast man even out of a phenomenally light-minded one, if only for a short time; moreover, real and true grief has sometimes even made fools more intelligent, also only for a time, of course; grief has this property.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

#91. I will die kissing your mad cold mouth,
embracing the lost bouquet of your body,
and searching for the light of your closed eyes

Pablo Neruda

#92. There is no grief more devastating than the grief for what could have been.

Kaya McLaren

#93. Grief, like a tree, has tears for its fruit.

Philemon

#94. My heart is broken and I grieve, for I have known love. Your heart is broken and you grieve, for you have not.

Jesikah Sundin

#95. We always think our own grief is the worst - worse than everybody else's. But the truth is, we never know for sure what the people around us are feeling.

Lynda Cohen Loigman

#96. It's like I have this large black hole in my brain and it's sucking the life out of me. The answers are in there so I sit for hours and stare. No matter how hard and long I look, I only see darkness.

Katie McGarry

#97. To get the best out of life here ... Good grief. There's plenty of it about, so indulge. Give yourself some thing to remember. Fall in love. Fall out of love. Gamble. Get drunk. See how long you can stay awake. Go for long walks at night. Discover what you're afraid of doing, and then do it.

Philip Pullman

#98. We all practice self-deception to a degree; no man can handle complete honesty without being cut at each turn. There's not enough room in a man's head for sanity alongside each grief, each worry, each terror that he owns. I'm well used to burying such things in a dark cellar and moving on.

Mark Lawrence

#99. There is no place for grief in a house which serves the Muse.

Sappho

#100. It's hard to grasp how much generosity
Is involved in letting us go on breathing,
When we contribute nothing valuable but our grief.
Each of us deserves to be forgiven, if only for
Our persistence in keeping our small boat afloat
When so many have gone down in the storm.

Robert Bly

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