Heartfelt Inspirations: A Beautiful Collection of Quotes for Bereaved Families

"Love as powerful as your mother's for you leaves its own mark. To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever."

- J.K. Rowling

"Grief is the price we pay for love."

- Queen Elizabeth II

"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness but of power. They speak more eloquently than 10,000 tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief and unspeakable love."

- Washington Irving

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."

- Dr. Seuss

"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

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

- Washington Irving

"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 reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not get over the loss of a loved one; you’ll learn to live with it."

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"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

"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 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

"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

"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

"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

"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

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

- Helen Keller

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

- Emily Dickinson

"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

"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

"To live in the hearts we leave behind is to live forever."

- Carl Sagan

"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

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

- Dr. Seuss

"In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years."

- Abraham Lincoln

"This is the price you pay for having a great father. You get the wonder, the joy, the tender moments—and you get the tears at the end, too."

- HARLAN COBEN

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

- Aeschylus

"Tears are the silent language of grief."

- Voltaire

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

- Marcel Proust

"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

"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

"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 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

"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

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

- Clarence Budington Kelland

"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'

"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

"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'

"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

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

- Buddhist quote

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

- Buddhist quote

"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'

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

- Thomas Lynch

"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

"There is something about losing a mother that is permanent and inexpressible—a wound that will never quite heal."

- SUSAN WIGGS

"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

"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

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

- William C. Hannan

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

- Abraham Lincoln

"The connections we make in the course of life—maybe that's what heaven is."

- Fred Rogers

"Grief is itself a medicine."

- William Cowper

"How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard."

- A. A. Milne

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

- ANONYMOUS

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

- WILLIAM PENN

"Every life is noted and is cherished, and nothing loved is ever lost or perished."

- MADELEINE L’ENGLE

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

- SENECA

"Wherever a beautiful soul has been, there is a trail of beautiful memories."

- RONALD REAGAN

"You are gone, but thank you for all these soft, sweet things you left behind. In my home, in my head, in my heart."

- NIKITA GILL

"There is no expiration date on the love between a father and his child."

- Jennifer Williamson

"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

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

- C.S. Lewis

"Say not in grief that she is no more, but say in thankfulness that she was. A death is not the extinguishing of a light but the putting out of the lamp because the dawn has come."

- RABINDRANATH TAGORE

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

- ALFRED JENNYON

"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

"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

"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?'

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

- HEBREW PROVERB

"Those we love never truly leave us. There are things that death cannot touch."

- JACK THORNE

"If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them."

- James O’Barr

"When a great man dies, for years the light he leaves behind him lies on the paths of men."

- HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

"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

"Remembering is an act of resurrection, each repetition a vital layer of mourning, in memory of those we are sure to meet again."

- NANCY COBB

"To die completely, a person must not only forget but be forgotten, and he who is not forgotten is not dead."

- SAMUEL BUTLER

"Those we love and lose are always connected by heartstrings into infinity."

- Terri Guillemets

"Like a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow."

- ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

"Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends leave footprints in your heart."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"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

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

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

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

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"After you have wept and grieved for your physical losses, cherish the functions and life you have left."

- Morrie Schwartz

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

- Kenji Miyazawa

"Say not in grief that they are gone, but give thanks that they were yours."

- Hebrew Proverb

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

- Richard Bach

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

- Leo Tolstoy

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

- Samuel Johnson

"All you need is one safe anchor to keep you grounded when the rest of your life spins out of control."

- Katie Kacvinsky

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

- Thomas Campbell

"No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away."

- TERRY PRATCHETT

"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

"A father is the one friend upon whom we can always rely. In the hour of need, when all else fails, we remember him upon whose knees we sat when children."

- ÉMILE GABORIAU

"My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could give another person, he believed in me."

- JIM VALVANO

"How can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind?"

- CARSON MCCULLERS

"A great soul serves everyone all the time. A great soul never dies. It brings us together again and again."

- Maya Angelou

"To her, the name of father was another name for love."

- Fanny Fern

"What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments but what is woven into the lives of others."

- THUCYDIDES

"Only a moment you stayed but what an imprint your footprints have left on our hearts."

- DOROTHY FERGUSON

"Those things that hurt instruct."

- Benjamin Franklin

"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'

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

- Grenville Kleiser 'Dictionary Of Proverbs'

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

- George Ade 'More Fables'

"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

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

- Proverb

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

- Anonymous

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

- Alphonse de Lamartine

"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

"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

"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

"Grief and gratitude are kindred souls, each pointing you to the beauty of what is transient and given to us by grace."

- Patricia Campbell Carlson

"Gratitude doesn’t change the scenery. It merely washes clean the glass you look through so you can clearly see the colors."

- Richelle E. Goodrich

"Like a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in a time of sorrow."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

"Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow."

- Melody Beattie

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

- Kahlil Gibran

"Tears water our growth."

- William Shakespeare

"A grateful heart is a medicine for grief, as well as a catalyst for blessings yet to come."

- Proverbs

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

- Jewish proverb

"As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well-used brings happy death."

- LEONARDO DA VINCI

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

- Author unknown

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

- Author unknown

"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

"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

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

- Lou Reed, 'Magic And Loss'

"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

"The boundaries between life and death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where one ends and where the other begins?"

- EDGAR ALLAN POE

"Life is a song—sing it. Life is a game—play it. Life is a challenge—meet it. Life is a dream—realise it. Life is a sacrifice—offer it. Life is love—enjoy it."

- SAI BABA

"Life is for the living. Death is for the dead. Let life be like music. And death a note unsaid."

- Langston Hughes

"In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Sometimes, when one person is absent, the whole world seems depopulated."

- ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE

"If you ever lose someone dear to you, never say the words they're gone. They'll come back."

- Prince

"I can't think of a more wonderful thanksgiving for the life I have had than that everyone should be jolly at my funeral."

- Admiral Lord Mountbatten

"She made broken look beautiful and strong look invincible. She walked with the universe on her shoulders and made it look like a pair of wings."

- Ariana Dancu

"Unless a man undertakes more than he possibly can do, he will never do all that he can."

- HENRY DRUMMOND

"A person's true wealth is the good he or she does in the world."

- Nazr Mohammed

"I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived."

- WILLA CATHER

"The idea is to die young as late as possible."

- ASHLEY MONTAGU

"Death is nature's way of saying, 'Your table is ready.'"

- Robin Williams

"Immortality … a fate worse than death."

- EDGAR A. SHOAFF

"I'm always relieved when someone is delivering a eulogy and I realize that I'm listening to it."

- George Carlin

"Dying is a very dull, dreary affair. And my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it."

- W. SOMERSET MAUGHAM

"I am ready to meet my maker. Whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter."

- WINSTON CHURCHILL

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

- Mark Twain

"Life is stressful, dear. That's why they say 'rest in peace.'"

- David Mazzucchelli

"Lives are like rivers: eventually they go where they must. Not where we want them to."

- RICHARD RUSSO

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies... A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you're there."

- Ray Bradbury

"Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome."

- Isaac Asimov

"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people live."

- GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

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

- Helen Keller

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

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

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

"The world changes from year to year, our lives from day to day, but the love and memory of you, shall never pass away."

"Dad, your guiding hand on my shoulder will remain with me forever."

"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."

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

"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."

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

"May you see sunshine where others see shadows and opportunities where others see obstacles."

- Unknown

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

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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