92 Inspirational Loss Quotes: Finding Light in Grief and Heartache

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

- From a headstone in Ireland

"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 the price we pay for love."

- Queen Elizabeth II

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

- Earl Grollman

"The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief - But the pain of grief isonly a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love."

- Hillary Stanton Zunin

"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."

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"Grief is like the ocean; It comes in waves; ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim."

- Vicki Harrison

"Grief is never something you get over. You don't wake up one morning and say, 'I've conquered that: now I'm moving on.' It's something that walks beside you every day. And if you can learn how to manage it and honor the person that you miss, you can take something that is incredibly sad and have some form of positivity."

- Terri Irwin

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

- Thomas Lynch

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love."

- Washington Irving

"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

"Grief is like a moving river, it's always changing. I would say in some ways it just gets worse. It's just that the more time that passes, the more you miss someone."

- Michelle Williams

"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'

"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

"It's possible to go on, no matter how impossible it seems, and that in time, the grief …lessens. It may not go away completely, but after a while, it's not so overwhelming."

- Nicholas Spark

"Tears are the silent language of grief."

- Voltaire

"Grief changes shape, but it never ends."

- Keanu Reeves

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

- Chloe Woodward

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

- Aeschylus

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

- Dodinsky

"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"

"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

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

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"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

"You don't go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always will be."

- Nigella Lawson

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

- Hebrew Proverb

"We all want to do something to mitigate the pain of loss or to turn grief into something positive, to find a silver lining in the clouds. But I believe there is real value in just standing there, being still, being sad."

- John Green

"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

"We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy."

- Pema Chodron

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

- C.S. Lewis

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

- William Faulkner

"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

"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

"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'

"Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion to death."

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

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

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

- William Shakespeare

"Our grief is as individual as our lives."

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"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

"Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people. Because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. Let no man slow, speed, or fix."

- Max Porter

"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

"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."

- Henri Nouwen

"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

"Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone; his own burden in his own way."

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"As long as I can I will look at this world for both of us. As long as I can I will laugh with the birds, I will sing with the flowers, I will pray to the stars, for both of us."

- Sasha

"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

"Grief is itself a medicine."

- William Cowper

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

- Alphonse de Lamartine

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

- Jewish Proverb

"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'

"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

"Anything that's human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable, can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone."

- Fred Rogers

"I have learned now that while those who speak about one's miseries usually hurt, those who keep silence hurt more."

- C.S. Lewis

"You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present."

- Jan Glidewell

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

- Dr. Seuss

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

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 'The Golden Legend'

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

- Jean Cameron

"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

"Tears water our growth."

- William Shakespeare

"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

"We need never be afraid of our tears."

- Charles Dickens

"Letting go doesn't mean that you don't care about someone anymore. It's just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself."

- Deborah Reber

"Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"Let no one weep for me, or celebrate my funeral with mourning; for I still live, as I pass to and fro through the mouths of men."

- Quintus Ennius

"Time heals old pain, while it creates new ones."

- Proverb

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

- Buddhist saying

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

- Helen Keller

"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

"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?'

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

- Marcel Proust

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

- Alyson Noel 'Evermore'

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

- Mother Teresa

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

- Lou Reed, 'Magic And Loss'

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

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"Those things that hurt instruct."

- Benjamin Franklin

"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

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

- Grenville Kleiser 'Dictionary Of Proverbs'