43 Quotes About Grieving

There are many lessons that can be learned following the loss of a loved one. These quotes about grieving capture some of the most common experiences.

“Do not brood over your past mistakes and failures as this will only fill your mind with grief, regret and depression. Do not repeat them in the future.”

“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes around in another form.”

“Even hundredfold grief is divisible by love.”

“Every one can master a grief but he that has it.”

“Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief.”

“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.”

“Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.”

“Grief changes shape, but it never ends.”

“Grief doesn’t have a plot. It isn’t smooth. There is no beginning and middle and end.”

“Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.”

“Grief is perhaps an unknown territory for you. You might feel both helpless and hopeless without a sense of a ‘map’ for the journey. Confusion is the hallmark of a transition. To rebuild both your inner and outer world is a major project.”

“Grief is the price we pay for love.”

“Grief starts to become indulgent, and it doesn’t serve anyone, and it’s painful. But if you transform it into remembrance, then you’re magnifying the person you lost and also giving something of that person to other people, so they can experience something of that person.”

“Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion to death.”

“Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”

“He who is overly attached to his family members experiences fear and sorrow, for the root of all grief is attachment. Thus one should discard attachment to be happy.”

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.”

“I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief… For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.”

“I think faith is incredibly important because you will become overwhelmed with what’s happening and you will have waves of grief, but when you turn to your faith, I believe God will give you waves of grace to get through it.”

“If I can see pain in your eyes then share with me your tears. If I can see joy in your eyes then share with me your smile.”

“It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment’s grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one’s life.”

“Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.”

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

“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”

“Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.”

“Suppressed grief suffocates, it rages within the breast, and is forced to multiply its strength.”

“Tears are the silent language of grief.”

“The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.”

“The five stages – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.”

“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.”

“The pain passes, but the beauty remains.”

“The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief – But the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love.”

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.”

“There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.”

“There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.”

“Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand.”

“To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness.”

“To weep is to make less the depth of grief.”

“We can alleviate physical pain, but mental pain – grief, despair, depression, dementia – is less accessible to treatment. It’s connected to who we are – our personality, our character, our soul, if you like.”

“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.”

“What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.”

“When grief is deepest, words are fewest.”

“While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.”

There is no right way to grieve the loss of a loved one.