50 Inspirational Death Quotes for Friends: Comfort and Hope in Loss

"We get no choice. If we love, we grieve."

- Thomas Lynch

"The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not 'get over' the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to."

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"To lose a friend is the greatest of all losses."

- Cicero

"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'

"Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened."

- Dr. Seuss

"You will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through. It's like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly - that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp."

- Anne Lamott

"Grief is a normal and natural response to loss. It is originally an unlearned feeling process. It is a reaction to change: life-altering change. Those who grieve are not weak; they are strong people with an overabundance of sensitivity and humanity in facing an overwhelming situation."

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"Say not in grief 'he is no more' but live in thankfulness that he was."

- Hebrew proverb

"Death leaves a heartache no one can heal; love leaves a memory no one can steal."

- Irish Proverb

"There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"I still miss those I loved who are no longer with me but I find I am grateful for having loved them. The gratitude has finally conquered the loss."

- Rita Mae Brown

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

- Helen Keller

"I'm gone now, but I'm still very near, death can never separate us. Each time you feel a gentle breeze, it's my hand caressing your face. Each time the wind blows, it carries my voice whispering your name. When the wind blows your hair ever so slightly, think of it as me pushing a few stray hairs back in place. When you feel a few raindrops fall on your face, it's me placing soft kisses. At night look up in the sky and see the stars shining so brightly. I'm one of those stars and I'm winking at you and smiling with delight. For never forget, you're the apple of my eye."

- Mary M Green

"When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time - the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes - when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever - there comes another day, and another specifically missing part."

- John Irving

"The bond between friends cannot be broken by chance; no interval of time or space can destroy it. Not even death itself can part true friends"

- John Cassian

"We do not have to rely on memories to recapture the spirit of those we have loved and lost – they live within our souls in some perfect sanctuary which even death cannot destroy."

- Nan Witcomb

"We all lose friends… we lose them in death, to distance, and over time. But even though they may be lost, hope is not. The key is to keep them in your heart, and when the time is right, you can pick up the friendship right where you left off. Even the lost find their way home, when you leave the light on"

- Amy Marie Waltz

"The melody that the loved one played upon the piano of your life will never be played quite that way again, but we must not close the keyboard and allow the instrument to gather dust. We must seek out other artists of the spirit, new friends who gradually will help us to find the road to life again, who will walk the road with us."

- Joshua Loth Liebman

"Those things that hurt instruct."

- Benjamin Franklin

"I will welcome happiness for it enlarges my heart; Yet I will endure sadness for it opens my soul. I will acknowledge rewards for they are my due; Yet I will welcome obstacles for they are my challenge."

- Og Mandino

"Some people come in your life as blessings. Some come in your life as lessons."

- Mother Teresa

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart."

- Helen Keller

"Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys."

- Alphonse de Lamartine

"They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies."

- WILLIAM PENN

"The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart."

- Helen Keller

"Say not in grief ‘he is no more’ but live in thankfulness that he was."

- Hebrew proverb

"Don’t be dismayed at goodbyes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetime, is certain for those, who are friends"

- Richard Bach

"You cannot stop loving your friend because he’s dead, especially if he was better than anyone alive, you know?"

- J.D. Salinger

"Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality."

- Emily Dickinson

"Nobody ever gets over losses like that. It's just part of your broken heart forever."

- Cheryl Strayed

"If there ever comes a day when we can’t be together, keep me in your heart, I’ll stay there forever."

- A.A. MILNE

"It's sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew."

- Henry Rollins

"The comfort of having a friend may be taken away, but not that of having had one."

- Seneca

"Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it."

- Haruki Murakami

"Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time... It says, 'Now is the time to do what you will.'"

- Leo Buscaglia

"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."

- Mark Twain

"Grief does not change you, it reveals you."

- John Green

"In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing."

- Robert G. Ingersoll

"When he shall die, take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that all the world will fall in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun."

- William Shakespeare

"If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever."

- Alfred Lord Tennyson

"What is lovely never dies. But passes into other loveliness."

- Thomas Bailey Aldrich

"The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the way life is."

- Hugh Laurie

"Life is not the way it is supposed to be. It is the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference."

- Virginia Satir

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. The death of a beloved is an amputation."

- C.S. Eliot

"Though nothing can bring back the hour, Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower, We will grieve not, rather find, Strength in what remains behind."

- William Wordsworth

"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."

- Norman Cousins

"Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come."

- Rabindranath Tagore

"He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man."

- Antoine de Saint– Exupéry

"To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die."

- Thomas Campbell

"Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal."

- From a headstone in Ireland

"There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

- Thornton Wilder

"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and for deeds left undone."

- Harriet Beecher Stowe

"A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you."

- Elbert Hubbard

"Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form."

- Rumi

"Perhaps they are not stars, but openings in Heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy."

- The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"What soap is for the body, tears are for the soul."

- Jewish proverb

"Perhaps they are not stars in the sky, but rather openings where our loved ones shine down to let us know they are happy."

- Eskimo legend

"Dying is nothing to fear. It can be the most wonderful experience of your life. It all depends on how you've lived."

- Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen."

- Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

"In times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry I cry and when you hurt I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods of tears and despair and make it through the potholed street of life."

- Nicholas Sparks 'The Notebook'

"Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face - I know it's an impossibility, but I cannot help myself."

- Nicholas Sparks 'Message In A Bottle'

"It's so curious: one can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer... and everything collapses."

- Colette

"These days grief seems like walking on a frozen river; most of the time he feels safe enough, but there is always that danger he will plunge through."

- David Nicholls 'One Day'

"I don't know why they call it heartbreak. It feels like every part of my body is broken too."

- Chloe Woodward

"The grave itself is but a covered bridge, Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness!"

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 'The Golden Legend'

"Every heart has its secret sorrows which the world knows not, and oftentimes we call a man cold, when he is only sad."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Forgiveness is healing ... especially forgiving yourself."

- Alyson Noel 'Evermore'

"Of all Sad Words of Tongue or Pen, the Saddest are these, "It Might Have Been.""

- George Ade 'More Fables'

"A ton of regret never makes an ounce of difference."

- Grenville Kleiser 'Dictionary Of Proverbs'

"Grief is what I feel when someone passes away, Grief is what I feel when I am concerned, Grief is what I feel when I have done wrong, Grief is what I feel when some accident happens, Grief is something that all people have gone through."

- Brandi Reissig

"Honest listening is one of the best medicines we can offer the dying and the bereaved."

- Jean Cameron

"People touch our lives if only for a moment, And yet we're not the same from that moment on, The time is not important, The moment is forever."

- Fern Bork

"Our grief is as individual as our lives."

- Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well."

- Buddhist saying

"We need never be afraid of our tears."

- Charles Dickens

"Grief is the price we pay for love."

- Queen Elizabeth II

"Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile."

- Julie Burchill

"When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight."

- Kahlil Gibran

"Grieving is a necessary passage and a difficult transition to finally letting go of sorrow - it is not a permanent rest stop."

- Dodinsky

"Tears have a wisdom all their own. They come when a person has relaxed enough to let go and to work through his sorrow. They are the natural bleeding of an emotional wound, carrying the poison out of the system. Here lies the road to recovery."

- F. Alexander Magoun

"Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break."

- William Shakespeare

"There are three needs of the griever: To find the words for the loss, to say the words aloud and to know that the words have been heard."

- Victoria Alexander

"Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives."

- Alan Sachs

"There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rule book that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass - if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it. That it's okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays."

- Jodi Picoult

"Grief changes shape, but it never ends."

- Keanu Reeves

"Death —the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening."

- Walter Scott

"Death may be the greatest of all human blessings."

- Socrates

"Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another."

- Ernest Hemingway

"Given a choice between grief and nothing, I'd choose grief."

- William Faulkner

"Death is only a horizon. And a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight."

- Richard Dehmel

"A friend who dies, it’s something of you who dies"

- Gustave Flaubert

"Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve."

- Earl Grollman

"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."

- Washington Irving

"Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened."

- Dr. Seuss

"The loss of a friend is like that of a limb; time may heal the anguish of the wound, but the loss cannot be repaired."

- Robert Southey

"The loss of a friend is the greatest of losses"

- Publilius Syrus

"Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love."

- George Elio

"It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live."

- Marcus Aurelius

"There is no grief like the grief that does not speak."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"But fate ordains that dearest friends must part"

- Edward Young

"The grave itself is but a covered bridge, leading from light to light, through a brief darkness."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Even the darkest night will end, and the sun will rise."

- Les Miserables

"He spoke well who said that graves are the footprints of angels."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Tears are the silent language of grief."

- Voltaire

"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."

- Hillary Stanton Zunin

"When our friends are alive, we see the good qualities they lack; dead, we remember only those they possessed."

- Jean Antoine Petit-Senn

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

- Marcel Proust

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

- Aeschylus

"Nothing that grieves us can be called little; by the external laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size."

- Mark Twain, 'Which Was The Dream?'

"There’s one thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die – their silence."

- Ben Hecht

"The heart was made to be broken."

- Oscar Wilde

"A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself."

- Josh Billings

"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened."

- Anatole France

"It is a wise father that knows his own child."

- William Shakespeare

"A brother is a friend given by nature."

- Jean Baptiste Legouve

"When brothers agree, no fortress is so strong as their common life."

- Antisthenes

"Sweet is the voice of a sister in the season of sorrow."

- Benjamin Disraeli

"There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery."

- Dante Alighieri

"Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once."

- Billy the Kid

"For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity."

- William Penn

"Parting is such sweet sorrow."

- William Shakespeare

"The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again."

- Charles Dickens

"Absence diminishes little passions and increases great ones."

- François de La Rochefoucauld

"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone."

- Harriet Beecher Stowe

"All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother."

- Abraham Lincoln

"The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness."

- Honoré de Balzac

"A mother is the truest friend we have."

- Washington Irving

"We are born of love; love is our mother."

- Rumi

"It is not length of life, but depth of life."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Grief is itself a medicine."

- William Cowper

"You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair."

- Chinese Proverb

"No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear."

- C.S Lewis

"The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Memory is a way of holding on to the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose."

- from The Wonder Years

"The smallest feline is a masterpiece."

- Leonardo da Vinci

"Time spent with cats is never wasted."

- Sigmund Freud

"There's a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out."

- Lou Reed, 'Magic And Loss'

"Although it's difficult today to see beyond the sorrow, May looking back in memory help comfort you tomorrow."

- Author unknown

"If tears could build a stairway,and memories a lane, I'd walk right up to Heaven and bring you home again."

- Author unknown

"A friend who dies, it’s something of you who dies."

"We have known each other from time everlasting. You were a friend before life began. We shall know one another again in heaven."

- Unknown

"Goodbyes are not forever. Goodbyes are not the end. They simply mean I’ll miss you until we meet again"

"True friends are the ones who never leave your heart, even if they leave your life for a while. Even after years apart, you pick up with them right where you left off, and even if they die they’re never dead in your heart"

"Our friendship was a blessing, and the memory of you will never fade. You are loved, and always be dearly missed."

"Goodbyes are not the end, it won’t be eternal. Rather, it means I’ll miss you, and we will surely meet again later."

"We’ll meet in the garden of memories. Rest in love, dear friend. You will always be missed dearly."

"In the journey of life, you left kindness and love. Memories of you will always stay with us."

"Death is not extinguishing the light; it is only putting out the lamp because the dawn has come."

"Your spirit will still live within me. You are not gone for good."

"When someone you love becomes a memory, that memory becomes a treasure."

"When you lose someone you love, you gain an angel you know."

- Unknown

"Grief is a journey that leaves us changed forever. So don't run from it or hide from it. Embrace it and let it change you."

- Unknown

"No matter what, you’ll always be remembered. Hope you’ll be happier with God by your side."

"You may be gone now, but I know your soul will always be here. Always live, in my mind."

"Your laughter and smile will always be remembered, for they brought sunshine into our lives."

"The pain passes, but the beauty remains."

"In the night of death, hope sees a star."

"Life is eternal and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon, and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight."

"Heartstrings always connect those we cherish, no matter where they are now."

"May you find peace and comfort in the arms of angels."

"We understand death only after it has placed its hands on someone we love."

"What is lovely never dies, but passes into another loveliness."

"Sorrow makes us all children again."

"While we are mourning the loss of our friend, others are rejoicing to meet him behind the veil."

"Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them."

"While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die."

"Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell."

"To weep is to make less the depth of grief."

"Death is a dialogue between the spirit and the dust."

"For in that sleep of death what dreams may come…"

"The heart that has truly loved never forgets."

"The righteous man walks in his integrity; his children are blessed after him."

"His life was gentle; and the elements so mix'd in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, ‘This was a man.’"

"There is no friend like a brother."

"A brother’s love is a sheltering tree."

"We came into the world like brother and brother; and now let’s go hand in hand, not one before another."

"There is no friend like a sister, in calm or stormy weather."

"Grief fills the room up of my absent child."

"Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o’er-wrought heart and bids it break."

"Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal."

"The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live."

"All that lives must die."

"Life is but a walking shadow."

"Those we love don’t go away, they walk beside us every day… unseen, unheard, but always near, still loved, still missed, and very dear."

"Dum vivimus, vivamus. (While we live, let us live.)"

"Requiescat in pace. (May he/she rest in peace.)"

"When you arise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive."

"The soul takes flight to the world that is invisible."

"Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back."

"The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague."

"Respice post te. Hominem te esse memento. (Look behind you. Remember that you are but a man.)"

"Fata viam invenient. (Fate will find a way.)"

"He who is not prepared to die is not fit to live."

"Mors certa, hora incerta. (Death is certain, the hour is uncertain.)"

"Death is nothing at all."

"Memento mori. (Remember that you must die.)"

"She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps."

"The more I see of men, the more I like dogs."

"When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?"

"Histories are more full of examples of the fidelity of dogs than of friends."

"You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you."

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness."

"The cat is above all things, a dramatist."

"No philosopher understands his dog."

"If tears could build a stairway, and memories a lane, I'd walk right up to heaven and bring you home again."

"Love is like standing in wet cement, the longer you stay the harder to leave and you can never leave without leaving your marks behind."

"When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure."

"Why does it take a minute to say hello and forever to say goodbye?"