100+ Inspirational Quotes to Heal Your Heart After 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

"The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for."

- Fyodor Dosoevsky

"When all else is lost, the future still remains."

- Christian Nestell Bovee

"Believe in your heart that you’re meant to live a life full of passion, purpose, magic and miracles."

- Roy T. Bennett

"And once the storm is over you won’t remember how made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what the storm’s all about."

- Haruki Murakami

"Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone."

- Rodgers and Hammerstein

"Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose."

- Viktor Frankl

"Hope Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering ‘It will be happier’…"

- Alfred Tennyson

"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 and David Kessler

"Grief changes shape, but it never ends. People have a misconception that you can deal with it and say, 'It's gone, and I'm better'. They're wrong. When the people you love are gone, you're alone. I miss being a part of their lives and them being part of mine. I wonder what the present would be like if they were here – what we might have done together. I miss all the great things that will never be."

- Keanu Reeves

"What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us."

- Helen Keller

"And once the storm is over you won't remember you how made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what the storm's all about."

- Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

"Life has to end. Love doesn't."

- Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

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

- Marcel Proust

"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

"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

"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 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

"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

"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

"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

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

- William Shakespeare

"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

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

- E.A. Bucchianeri

"When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

- Dodinsky

"Grief is itself a medicine."

- William Cowper

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

- From a headstone in Ireland

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

- C.S Lewis

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

- Aeschylus

"Tears are the silent language of grief."

- Voltaire

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

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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

- William Faulkner

"Grief changes shape, but it never ends."

- Keanu Reeves

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

- Nigella Lawson

"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

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

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

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

- Jan Gildwell

"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. That it's okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays."

- Jodi Picoult

"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

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

- Dr. Seuss

"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'

"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 guess by now I should know enough about loss to realize that you never really stop missing someone-you just learn to live around the huge gaping hole of their absence."

- Alyson Noel, Evermore

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

- Bob Marley

"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

"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

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

- Kristina McMorris

"We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us."

- E.M. Forster

"It takes strength to make your way through grief, to grab hold of life and let it pull you forward."

- Patti Davis

"Love is really the only thing we can possess, keep with us, and take with us."

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"The path to our destination is not always a straight one. We go down the wrong road, we get lost, we turn back. Maybe it doesn’t matter which road we embark on. Maybe what matters is that we embark."

- Barbara Hall

"She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with It as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts."

- George Eliot

"Allow yourself to feel sad, angry, lonely, or even relieved. It’s okay to cry or to feel moments of happiness, even if they are fleeting. Giving yourself permission to experience all your emotions will help you process your grief more fully."

- Scott Stoness

"Grief is not about letting go of your loved one; it’s about learning to live in a world where they are no longer physically present."

- Scott Stoness

"Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place."

- Sarah Dessen

"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

"Things we lose have a way of coming back to us in the end, if not always in the way we expect."

- J. K. Rowling

"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

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

- Thomas Campbell

"When I think of death, and of late the idea has come with alarming frequency, I seem at peace with the idea that a day will dawn when I will no longer be among those living in this valley of strange humors. I can accept the idea of my own demise, but I am unable to accept the death of anyone else. I find it impossible to let a friend or relative go into that country of no return. Disbelief becomes my close companion, and anger follows in its wake. I answer the heroic question ‘Death, where is thy sting? ‘ with ‘ it is here in my heart and mind and memories.’"

- Maya Angelou

"Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?"

- Terry Pratchett

"Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart and you'll never walk alone."

- Rodgers and Hammerstein

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built of a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touches some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there."

- Ray Bradbury

"Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell."

- Edna St. Vincent Millay

"Losing my mother at such an early age is the scar of my soul. But I feel like it ultimately made me into the person I am today. I understand the journey of life. I had to go through what I did to be here."

- Mariska Hargity

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain."

- Kahlil Gibran

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

- A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

"Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything."

- C.S. Lewis

"I will not say: Do not weep; For not all tears are evil."

- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

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

- William Shakespeare, Macbeth

"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 be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish sun."

- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

"Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated."

- Alphonse de Lamartine

"Death ends a life, not a relationship."

- Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

"But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer."

- Viktor E. Frankl

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

- WILLIAM PENN

"For me look into a mirror, say this to yourself, "your a gorgeous human being who was given the gift of life." A hella bumpy road then in unprincipled, its called a adventure. cherish every second of your life as you will never know when it may end. why did god take someone that meant so much? I will never know. don't feel pity. as bad as it all sounds "things happens for reasons. Those reasons will lead to something better.""

- Bryenna Peachey

"We MUST carry on."

- Barbara Stone

"Hug them and remind them how much you need them. Tell them that they must all keep their brothers memory alive and put your pain and loss in an imaginary box and put it on a shelf. Wake up each day and remember what you have that is still alive. Be thankful for the time you had with your son. His destiny was to pass. Hopefully he will be reborn and live another longer lifetime. Until then he will always be alive in you. Hold your kids tight and dont let go."

- Jenifer Hope Dawson-Amar

"We all know that all life comes to an end. The difference is that between us & the animals, we have a soul that is capable of love. Losing a loved one should not be a devastating experience! The hardest part is that we will miss them, but in time. we WILL see them again for eternity! That fact alone , is enough to carry one through any grief that one could experience. The bond of love will bring us together again!"

- Jerry from Maine

"It is well with my soul."

- Lerato

"Where there is love there is life."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world."

- Doug Ebbert

"Well, every one can master a grief but he that has it."

- William Shakespeare

"People always want a reason for the bad things in life; sometimes there ain’t one."

- Stephen King

"An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior."

- Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

"The healing power of even the most microscopic exchange with someone who knows in a flash precisely what you're talking about because she experienced that thing too cannot be overestimated."

- Cheryl Strayed

"SO WHAT IF MY SON IS GONE, FOR IN HIS MEMORY HUNDREDS WILL LIVE ON."

- Anju Chawla

"So when you need her touch And loving gaze Gone but not forgotten Is the perfect phrase Smiling from a star That she makes glow Trust she's always there Watching as you grow Find her in the place Where the lost things go."

- The Place Where Lost Things Go, Mary Poppins Returns

"I do not know what tomorrow holds, but I know who holds my tomorrow."

- Priscella

"Look closely and you will see almost everyone carrying bags of cement on their shoulders. That's why it takes courage to get out of bed in the morning and climb into the day."

- Edward Hirsch

"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

"When you die, it does not mean that you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and in the manner in which you live."

- Stuart Scott

"All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on."

- Havelock Ellis

"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 times you lived through, the people you shared those times with; Nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they can add up to the story of a life."

- Rob Sheffield

"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'

"Ain't no shame in holding on to grief... as long as you make room for other things too."

- "Bubbles," The Wire

"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

"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

"If I die before you which is all but certain then in the moment before you will see me become someone dead in a transformation as quick as a shooting star’s I will cross over into you and ask you to carry not only your own memories but mine too until you too lie down and erase us both together into oblivion."

- Galway Kinnell, Promissory Note

"God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December."

- J.M. Barrie

"The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"Should you shield the valleys from the windstorms, you would never see the beauty of their canyons."

- Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

"May love be what you remember most."

- Darcie Sims

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

- Yumi Sakugawa

"Make the most of your regrets; Never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it 'til it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh."

- Henry David Thoreau

"Understanding that your grief is valid and that it’s okay to feel whatever you’re feeling is the first step in navigating this season."

- Scott Stoness

"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

"One of the most healing ways to navigate grief during the holidays is to find meaningful ways to honor your loved one’s memory through symbolic gestures or creating rituals."

- Scott Stoness

"I'll be seeing you In all the old familiar places That this heart of mine embraces All day through."

- Billie Holiday

"Allowing yourself small moments of joy doesn’t mean you’re forgetting your loved one; it’s a way to honor life and healing."

- Scott Stoness

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

- Sarah J. Maas, Empire of Storms

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

- John Steinbeck

"You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself."

- Alan Alda

"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?'

"You gave me a forever within the numbered days…"

- John Green

"I would always look for clues to her in books and poems, I realized. I would always search for the echoes of the lost person, the scraps of words and breath, the silken ties that say, 'Look: She existed.'"

- Meghan O'Rourke

"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

"Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure."

- Paulo Coelho

"On this bald hill the new year hones its edge. Faceless and pale as china The round sky goes on minding its business. Your absence is inconspicuous; Nobody can tell what I lack."

- Sylvia Plath

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

- Lou Reed, 'Magic And Loss'

"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

"When we have joy we crave to share; We remember them."

- Sylvan Kamens & Rabbi Jack Riemer

"It’s okay to adjust or let go of these expectations to match where you are emotionally. You don’t have to force yourself to be part of events or traditions that feel too painful right now."

- Scott Stoness

"Healing from the loss of a parent requires time and patience. The surviving parent and their children must give themselves permission to grieve, adapt, and reestablish their relationships on new terms."

- Donna Galanti

"One more day One more time One more sunset, maybe I'd be satisfied But then again I know what it would do Leave me wishing still for one more day with you."

- Diamond Rio

"At the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of summer, we remember them."

- Sylvan Kamens & Rabbi Jack Reimer

"When a child dies, you bury the child in your heart."

- Korean Proverb

"There are no happy endings. Endings are the saddest part, so just give me a happy middle and a very happy start."

- Shel Silverstein

"Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;"

- Shakespeare

"What separates us from animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we've never met."

- David Levithan

"Bless all our lost loves and us-I try to remember they don’t miss us-they don’t know why we are sad, all they know now is happiness and peace-they are with all our others we lost."

- Jody Lewonas

"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?"

- Edgar Allan Poe

"Someday soon, we all will be together If the fates allow Until then, We'll have to muddle through somehow."

- Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

"Healthy communication becomes crucial after the death of a parent. Grief is a deeply personal experience, and each family member may process it differently."

- Donna Galanti

"Grief is the price we pay for love."

- Queen Elizabeth II

"My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it."

- CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND

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

- Helen Keller

"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

"The holiest of holidays are those kept by ourselves in silence and apart: The secret anniversaries of the heart."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Hope Smiles from the threshold of the year to come, Whispering 'It will be happier'..."

- Alfred Tennyson

"14 years. My longest relationship. My only experience of maternal love. My constant companion. My best friend. Duck."

- Sarah Silverman

"The death of a parent is a profound and life-altering event for any family. Not only does it bring intense emotional grief, but it also fundamentally can change your family dynamics."

- Donna Galanti

"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

"Grief sucks."

- Everyone Ever

"No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man."

- Heraclitus

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

- Irving Berlin

"My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it."

- Clarence Budington Kelland

"It's coming on Christmas They're cutting down trees They're putting up reindeer And singing songs of joy and peace Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on."

- Joni Mitchell, River

"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

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

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

"Sometimes the healing hurts more than the wound."

- Unknown

"Grief, I’ve learned, is really 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 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 to grief is to grieve."

"Those whom we love and lose are no longer where they were before. They are now wherever we are."

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

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

"Grief is a continuous process, and remembering a loved one doesn’t have to end as the years pass. Rituals provide a bridge between past and present, allowing you to stay connected to their memory while moving forward in life."

"Lighting a candle for a loved one is a timeless tradition, symbolizing the light they brought into your life."

"Honoring a loved one during the holiday season can bring comfort, joy, and a sense of connection during what might otherwise be a difficult time."

"It's a divine gift to find the light inside while in the midst of despair."

"Next person that minimizes my grief is getting a swift kick to the shin."