50 Inspirational Quotes About Grieving: Comfort and Strength in Loss

"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

"Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe their husband is about to return and need his shoes."

- Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

"As far as I can see, grief will never truly end. It may become softer over time, more gentle, but some days will feel sharp, but grief will last as long as love does— forever. It’s simply the way the absence of your loved one manifests in your heart. A deep longing, accompanied by the deepest love. Some days, the heavy fog may return, and the next day, it may recede, once again. It’s all an ebb and flow, a constant dance of sorrow and joy, pain and sweet love."

- Lexi Berhndt, Scribbles and Crumbs

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

- Thomas Lynch

"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

"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

"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

"Grief is the price we pay for love."

- Queen Elizabeth II

"So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love."

- E.A. Bucchianeri

"I could only be grateful when I realized that I would rather have known you for a moment than never at all. I would rather endure this inexplicable pain of outliving you than to have never seen your face, spoken your name. I would rather be yours, you be mine, regardless. Regardless of the sorrow, the sleepless nights, and the years I will walk this earth, carrying you in my heart."

- Lexi Berhndt

"Grief, I've learned, is just love. It's all the love you want to give but cannot. All of that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go."

- Anonymous

"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

"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 Erwin

"Grief has its own time frame. It has its own itinerary with you. It has its own power over you, and it will come when it comes."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"You will survive, and you will find purpose in the chaos. Moving on doesn't mean letting go."

- Mary VanHaute

"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

"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

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

- Washington Irving

"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

"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

"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

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

- C.S. Lewis

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

- Elizabeth Gilbert

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

- From a headstone in Ireland

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

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"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

"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."

- Jodi Picoult

"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

"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

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

- Dr. Seuss

"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

"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

"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

"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'

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

- Hebrew proverb

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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."

- Sascha

"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

"You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only option."

- Bob Marley

"It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone."

- John Steinbeck

"The fear of loss . . . it can destroy you as much as the loss itself."

- Sarah J. Maas, Empire of Storms

"May love be what you remember most."

- Darcie Sims

"The whole world can become the enemy when you lose what you love."

- Kristina McMorris

"For those who have lost a loved one, the recurrence of sadness is not a step backward; it is the nature of grief."

- Margaret Robinson Rutherford, Ph.D.

"The bottom line is, there is no time-line or limit on grieving, and in allowing that natural process and release to occur, allows us to gently connect to what is important to us."

- Clare Sillence

"Emotional pain cannot kill you, but running from it can. Allow. Embrace. Let yourself feel. Let yourself heal."

- Vironika Tugaleva

"Grief is not a tidy, orderly process, and there is no right way to grieve. Every person—and every family—does it differently. This can cause emotions to collide and overlap, especially during the holiday season when the emphasis is on rebirth and renewal."

- Anthony Komaroff, M.D.

"We don't 'move on' from grief. We move forward with it."

- Nora McInerny

"The loss changes you permanently, I think, but what you learn is, first, how to accommodate the loss in your own life, to keep going, and to find peace and even joy in your life again; and, second, to learn to honor that person's life and the legacy of her life. Grief is not something that ever goes away. You just learn to accommodate it so you can move forward in your life and over time it gets less intense, at least most of the time."

- David Baxter

"Grief is a complicated, nuanced emotional experience that fluctuates, ebbs, and flows. The more nuance we can infuse into our collective understanding of grief by naming its component parts, the better we can honor our own experience and support loved ones going through it."

- Sarah Epstein, LMFT

"You can't let friends, family, or society dictate your emotional state. Whatever you have going on: relief, anger, cheer...just acknowledge it as what it is, without judgment. If those feelings change you will deal with those new emotions then. But for now just try to be comfortable with what you have."

- Rob Dobrenski

"Go against the myths of staying secluded, closure, putting your loved one always in the past, and grieving without a daily diversion. You have every right to take care of yourself as you adapt to your great loss."

- Lou LaGrand

"You bring the person you love inside you. That is how you cope. You make him or her live within you. The whole experience I had with my children is in me. It is nowhere else I can see. I can see a photograph, I can feel sad, I can read a poem, but the experience of having them within myself is what matters."

- Carlos Fuentes

"Of the complex jumble of emotions that may follow the death of a pet, four stand out as being particularly difficult to acknowledge or understand, and therefore to work through: anger, guilt, denial and depression. A pet owner who "sticks" at one of these reactions faces a major obstacle in the grief swamp. If you find yourself dwelling on one of these emotions, or spending an inordinate amount of time "denying" the emotion, it is important to work on a more realistic understanding of the situation. Otherwise, your feelings may distort your entire perspective on the loss of your pet and your role in its death, and seriously hinder your recovery."

- Moira Anderson Allen, M.Ed.

"You won't get over it. I don't believe we ever 'get over' the loss of someone we've loved so much. But you'll do something much better. Gradually, and in your own time, you'll make peace with yourself and then you'll make peace with your loss. And you'll go on from there."

- Muriel Franzblau

"Grieving is a matter of relearning how to be in the world. The world is full of reminders of the person--the foods they liked, their favorite chair. At first, these may seem too painful to think about. But if you reach through the pain and let your mind go there, memories can be a comfort; they make it feel as if the separation isn't as final."

- Thomas Attig, PhD

"There is some kind of a sweet innocence in being human -- in not having to be just happy or just sad -- in the nature of being able to be both broken and whole, at the same time."

- C. JoyBell C.

"Grief does not change you, (…) It reveals you."

- John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

"You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

- A.A. Milne

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

- Mark Twain

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not a 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

"The sad ones are those who waste their energy in trying to hold it back, for they can only feel bitterness in loss and no joy in gain."

- John Steinbeck

"His grief he will not forget; but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom."

- J. R. R Tolkien

"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."

- Leo Tolstoy

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me."

- C.S. Lewis

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

- Thomas Campbell

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

- C.S. Lewis

"There will come a day, I promise you, when the thought of your son, or daughter, or your wife or your husband, brings a smile to your lips before it brings a tear to your eye. It will happen. My prayer for you is that day will come sooner than later."

- Joe Biden

"If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?"

- Jodi Picoult

"Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart."

- José N. Harris

"Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people."

- Orson Scott Card

"Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for."

- Terry Pratchett

"We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world – the company of those who have known suffering."

- Helen Keller

"I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil."

- J.R.R. Tolkien

"The weird, weird thing about devastating loss is that life actually goes on. When you're faced with a tragedy, a loss so huge that you have no idea how you can live through it, somehow, the world keeps turning, the seconds keep ticking."

- James Patterson

"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

"Moving on, as a concept, is for stupid people, because any sensible person knows grief is a long-term project. I refuse to rush. The pain that is thrust upon us let no man slow or speed or fix."

- Max Porter, Grief is the Thing with Feathers

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

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"Grief changes shape, but it never ends."

- Keanu Reeves

"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

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

- Alphonse de Lamartine

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

- Alyson Noel 'Evermore'

"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

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

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 'The Golden Legend'

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

- Chloe Woodward

"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'

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

- William Faulkner

"Grief is itself a medicine."

- William Cowper

"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'

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

- Nigella Lawson

"Death was not the opposite of life. It was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that... I lived through the following spring...with that kind knot of air in my chest, but I struggled all the while against becoming serious."

- Haruki Murakami

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

- Helen Keller

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

- Aeschylus

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

- Marcel Proust

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

- Jan Gildwell

"Sometimes all you can do is lie in bed and hope to fall asleep before you fall apart."

- William C. Hannan

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

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Tears are the silent language of grief."

- Voltaire

"Sometimes it’s okay if the only thing you did today was breathe."

- Yumi Sakugawa

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

- C.S Lewis

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

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment."

- Buddhist quote

"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

"The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!"

- Fyodor Dostoevsky

"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

"Tears water our growth."

- William Shakespeare

"Words have the power to both destroy and heal. When words are both true and kind, they can change our world."

- Buddhist quote

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

- Jewish proverb

"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?'

"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

"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

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

- Grenville Kleiser 'Dictionary Of Proverbs'

"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

"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

"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

"If you've got to my age, you've probably had your heart broken many times. So it's not that difficult to unpack a bit of grief from some little corner of your heart and cry over it."

- Emma Thompson

"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

"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

"Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind. Love is a striking example of how little reality means to us."

- Marcel Proust

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

- Proverb

"A life with love will have some thorns, but a life without love will have no roses."

- Anonymous

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

- George Ade 'More Fables'

"That song is sweetest, bravest, best, Which plucks the thistle-barb of care From a despondent brother's breast, And plants a sprig of heart's-ease there."

- Andrew Downing 'The Sweetest Song'

"Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die, so let us all be thankful."

- Buddhist quote

"May all beings everywhere, Seen and unseen, Dwelling far off or nearby, Being or waiting to become, May all be filled with lasting joy."

- Buddhist quote

"Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever finally comes to realize that nothing really belongs to them."

- Paulo Coelho

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

- Mother Teresa

"Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment, until it becomes a memory."

- Dr. Seuss

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

- Lou Reed, 'Magic And Loss'

"Those things that hurt instruct."

- Benjamin Franklin

"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

"Grief is the last act of love we can give to those we loved. Where there is deep grief, there was great love."

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

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

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

"No matter how long it's been, there are times when it suddenly becomes harder to breathe."

"The song is ended but the melody lingers on."

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

"People will believe you care if you just show up, even if you don't have much to say."

"Every time you were convinced you couldn’t go on, you did."

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

"The fact that something has happened to a million other people diminishes neither grief nor joy."

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference."

"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."

"A beautiful colourful rainbow could not exist if it were not for the rain of a grey day - it was born from the very droplets of it."

"We've shared our lives these many years. You've held my hand; you've held my heart. So many blessings, so few tears - yet for a moment, we must part."

"Sometimes the healing hurts more than the wound."

- Unknown

"No farewell words were spoken, no time to say goodbye, you were gone before we knew it, and only God knows why."