Healing Through Words: A Collection of Inspirational Quotes for Loss

"It’s the ones who touch our lives in the biggest way who show us that it’s possible to laugh and cry at the same time."

- Keely Chace

"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

"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

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

- William Shakespeare

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

- MADELEINE L’ENGLE

"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

"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

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

- WILLIAM PENN

"Grief is itself a medicine."

- William Cowper

"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

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

- A. A. Milne

"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'

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

- Terri Guillemets

"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

"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

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

- From a headstone in Ireland

"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

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

- JACK THORNE

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

- HEBREW PROVERB

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

- THUCYDIDES

"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

"All things grow with time, except grief."

- Jewish Proverb

"Grief and love are conjoined — you don’t get one without the other."

- Jandy Nelson

"When I am lonely, I think of you and all that you brought to my life. Your memory rests gently on my soul."

- Cindy Adkins

"When the heart grieves over what is has lost, the spirit rejoices over what it has left."

- Sufi

"You can’t truly heal from a loss until you allow yourself to really feel the loss."

- Mandy Hale

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

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"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

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

- A.A. Milne

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it."

- Helen Keller

"Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell."

- Joni Mitchell

"The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That’s the deal."

- C.S. Lewis

"Those who weep recover more quickly than those who smile."

- Jean Giraudoux

"Sympathy is charming, but it does not make up for pain."

- Lillie Langtry

"Grief is a normal and natural response to loss. It is originally an unlearned feeling process. Keeping grief inside increases your pain."

- Anne Grant

"The more sympathy you give, the less you need."

- Malcolm Forbes

"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

"I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing."

- Agatha Christie

"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

"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."

- Mary Poppins Returns

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

- Maya Angelou

"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

"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

"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

"Never. We never lose our loved ones. They accompany us; they don’t disappear from our lives. We are merely in different rooms."

- Paulo Coelho

"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

"When I saw your strand of hair I knew that grief is love turned into an eternal missing."

- Rosamund Lupton

"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

"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

"Now there is no suffering. Now there is no more pain. Peace and comfort have taken their places. Peace and comfort will heal your heart."

- Renee Daniels

"Peace, after a long journey. Love, after a great loss."

- Kat Stano

"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."

- Vicki Harrison

"And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed."

- Maya Angelou

"Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom."

- Rumi

"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

"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

"A long good-bye is, in many ways, the hardest good-bye of all."

- Linda Staten

"A long, hard path has turned toward gentle rest and sweet release."

- Ginnie Job

"It is always too soon to say good-bye. Even though there is relief at the end of great suffering, that does not dim the sorrow we feel."

- Jeannie Hund

"We honor the struggle…and claim the peace that was found."

- Ginnie Job

"Amid the season’s hustle and bustle, a warm, quiet place is reserved in our hearts for remembering the ones we’re missing."

- Suzanne Berry

"Though they’re gone, they still live on in every happy holiday memory."

- Sara Quenzer

"May you find that your loved one is still there in the glows and touches of the season. As the beauty of the holidays begins to surround you, I hope that even in the moments of grief, your heart shines with all the things that remind you of your loved one."

- Kat Stano

"There’s a new star shining down on us this Christmas."

- Caroline Cattrell

"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

"May the clear midnight skies and the quiet snowfall of the season give you peace—knowing that your loved one has found a place among nature’s eternal beauty."

- Suzanne Berry

"Take Christmas as a sign that when this sorrow has passed, faith will yet survive, joy will come alive, life and love will last."

- Bill Gray

"Let all the Christmas bells that ring give voice to our remembering: A loved one lived among us here and will be sadly missed this year."

- Jim Howard

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

- Helen Keller

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

- Maya Angelou

"Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things."

- Arthur Schopenhauer

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

- Emily Dickinson

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

- Dante Alighieri

"We should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression."

- Confucius

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

- Henry Rollins

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

- Thomas Bailey Aldrich

"Flowers grow out of dark moments."

- Corita Kent

"The only cure for grief is action."

- George Henry Lewes

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

- Abraham Lincoln

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

- Marcel Proust

"Grief changes shape, but it never ends."

- Keanu Reeves

"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

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

- ALFRED JENNYON

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

- Alphonse de Lamartine

"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

"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

"Sadness takes its own time. It can’t be hurried along. It can’t be rushed. It moves heavily across the landscape of the heart until time and love can carry it further into the distance."

- Melvina Young

"Our grief is as individual as our lives."

- Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

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

- Aeschylus

"In quiet moments, may healing begin. In broken places, may brightness shine in."

- Keely Chace

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

- SUSAN WIGGS

"Healing is a journey with a pace its very own. It won’t be rushed or hurried. It knows what’s right for you alone."

- Cheryl Hawkinson

"Each tear releases a bit of hurt, making room, little by little, for healing to take its place."

- Keely Chace

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

- Kahlil Gibran

"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 or 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

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

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"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

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

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"Like sun through morning mist, the healing warmth of love shines through sorrow."

- Dean Walley

"Grief is the price we pay for love."

- Queen Elizabeth II

"Your grief path is yours alone, and no one else can walk it, and no one else can understand it."

- Terri Irwin

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

- William Faulkner

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

- Eleanor Roosevelt

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

- ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

"There will be a time for figuring out how to move forward. But for now, it’s enough to be still, to process, to gather our strength. To wait for hope."

- Keely Chace

"There’s honor in such a well-lived life…there’s healing in remembering…there’s hope in knowing love goes on forever."

- Diana Manning

"Let there be happy memories that take us by surprise, welcome thoughts of the one we miss, and healing moments that fill our hearts with hope."

- Keely Chace

"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

"Tears don’t measure weakness. They measure our need to grieve and keep loving the one we’ve lost."

- Melvina Young

"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

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

- Billie Holiday

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

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"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

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

- RONALD REAGAN

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

- SENECA

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

- C.S Lewis

"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

"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

"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

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

- PRINCE

"Your memory feels like home to me. So whenever my mind wanders, it always finds its way back to you."

- Ranata Suzuki

"Beautiful people do not just happen."

- Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

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

- DOROTHY FERGUSON

"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 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

"Tears water our growth."

- William Shakespeare

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

- Jean Cameron

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

- Jewish proverb

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

- C.S. Lewis

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

- Dr. Seuss

"There is no timeline for grief, no template for healing, no guideposts to follow. There is only our heart letting us know when we’re ready to heal in our own way and time."

- Melvina Young

"Our hearts are heavy. Our love is strong."

- Jake Gahr

"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

"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?'

"When we lose someone in a way we can’t imagine, love pulls us closer together."

- Kat Stano

"There’s no such thing as “moving on.” We go forward, trying to find our footing, figuring out how to live—how to love—after such loss."

- Amy Trowbridge-Yates

"In times of such tragedy and sorrow, there are no words or answers. Just love. So much love."

- Suzanne Berry

"Now there is no more pain. Your loved one is safe and well in a place where peace is endless."

- Kat Stano

"Like flowers pressed between the pages of a book, beautiful memories are ours to keep."

- Melvina Young

"In the beauty of memories left behind, in the lives touched and changed, in the gifts of wisdom shared…those we love live on, always."

- Ellen Brenneman

"The music still plays in our hearts even after the song has faded away."

- Kevin Dilmore

"What a blessing to call up beautiful memories whenever we need them. What a blessing to feel close to our loved ones each time we remember."

- Alarie Tennille

"Tears are the silent language of grief."

- Voltaire

"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

"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

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

- Eskimo legend

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

- Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

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

- Dr. Seuss

"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'

"In my dream, I was drowning my sorrows But my sorrows they'd learned to swim"

- U2 'Until The End Of The World'

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

- Helen Keller

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

- Alphonse de Lamartine

"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

"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

"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

"To have strong feelings is what living and loving are all about. It’s all right to go on remembering and missing someone who meant so much."

- Barb Loots

"We wouldn’t miss them so much if we didn’t love them so much."

- Meghan Craig

"Always forward. With love and remembrance, that’s how we move."

- Keion Jackson

"A life well-lived is simply this…one that adds to the beauty, the goodness, and the love in the world."

- Suzanne Berry

"One good life touches another, which touches another…and we are all connected, we are all part of a thousand hearts."

- Kat Stano

"A life well-lived strengthens and lifts all of us up."

- Ellen Brenneman

"That lasting connection we feel to the people we’ve loved reassures us that, in some unknowable way, love is waiting for us all."

- Lisa Riggin

"Their light shines still from a farther heaven."

- Melvina Young

"Free at last to fly home—now in a place of peace and love."

- Melvina Young

"Faith tells us that it may be the end of something beautiful…but it’s also the beginning of something glorious."

- Melvina Young

"Mourning with you, praying for you, and rejoicing that a beloved soul is now at peace."

- Melvina Young

"The flower is gone, but its beauty lives on. We stand in grief as a beautiful life is taken from this earth. And we stand in wonder at the legacy of love it leaves behind."

- Cat Hollyer

"When evening falls and shadows dim and all that’s left are stars…that’s when our dear ones shine the most. Their love is never far."

- Kat Stano

"Love will lift you up from under the waves of loss."

- Melvina Young

"We are here, like flowers, for a season. But love, like mountains, lasts for all time."

- Melvina Young

"Our souls, like the sea, move from one shore to the next to find new places of beauty."

- Melvina Young

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

- RICHARD RUSSO

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

- ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE

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

- SAMUEL BUTLER

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

- FRED ROGERS

"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

"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

"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

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

- LEONARDO DA VINCI

"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'

"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

"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

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

- Irving Berlin

"For as long as the world spins and the earth is green with new wood, she will lie in this box and not in my arms."

- Lurlene McDaniel

"What they never tell you about grief is that missing someone is the simple part."

- Gail Caldwell

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

- Mother Teresa

"Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air."

- Pablo Neruda

"In our longest, hardest hours, that’s when God’s love touches us most—when it holds us, comforts us, and prepares us to move through dark and into steadfast light."

- Courtney Taylor

"The angels are singing welcome, and the ancestors are shouting joy that a beautiful soul has come home to perfect peace and love."

- Melvina Young

"The love that surrounds us—the love that was here before us and will be here after us—will hold us up."

- Dan Taylor

"For every tearful good-bye in this world, there’s a welcome “hello” in a new one."

- Renee Daniels

"Cradled by the light of the moon, surrounded by the stars, our loved ones find their place among the heavens."

- Kat Stano

"Those we’ve lost are borne up on wings of love that carry them gently into the light."

- Ellen Brenneman

"They are forever at peace in the presence of the Father and joined in joy with the ancestors."

- Melvina Young

"Dear Lord, please bless all those in pain. Comfort those who grieve. Show them how your tender care will never fail. And bless their hearts with peace."

- Linda Elrod

"Though sorrow comes to every heart that dares to let love in, it’s that same love that carries us until we meet again."

- Suzanne Berry

"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

"He holds the hand you can’t touch. He gently kisses the face you can’t see. He fills the heart that knows it’s never alone because love is always, always there."

- Melvina Young

"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

"Beyond the sadness, hope waits with outstretched arms. Beyond the parting, heaven waits with open doors."

- Renee Daniels

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

- Jan Gildwell

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

- Lou Reed, 'Magic And Loss'

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

- Kristina McMorris

"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

"If a sunset can shine with such glory, then what must heaven be?"

- Cheryl Hawkinson

"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

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

- JIM VALVANO

"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

"Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master."

- MATTHEW 25:21

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

- CLARENCE BUDINGTON KELLAND

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

- Fanny Fern

"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

"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 expiration date on the love between a father and his child."

- Jennifer Williamson

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

- HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

- Romans 6:23

"For this God is our God forever and ever; He will be our guide even to the end."

- PSALM 48:14

"For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God."

- JOB 19:25-26

"The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He has me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside the still waters. He revives my soul; He guides me on paths of righteousness for His glory. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no harm, For you are with me … Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, And I shall abide in the house of the Lord forever."

- PSALM 23

"So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you."

- John 16:22

"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."

- General George S. Patton Jr.

"In my dream, I was drowning my sorrows But my sorrows they'd learned to swim."

- U2 'Until The End Of The World'

"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

"Those things that hurt instruct."

- Benjamin Franklin

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

- Buddhist saying

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

- Hebrew proverb

"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'

"This is my comfort in my affliction; that your promise gives me life."

- PSALM 119:50

"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'

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

- Alyson Noel 'Evermore'

"If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master."

- MICHELANGELO

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

- Anonymous

"They will come back, come back again, as long as the red earth rolls. He never wasted a leaf or a tree. Do you think He would squander souls?"

- RUDYARD KIPLING

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

- Proverb

"If God hath made this world so fair; Where sin and death abound; How beautiful beyond compare; Will paradise be found!"

- JAMES MONTGOMERY

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

- 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

"The bird is gone, and in what meadow does it now sing?"

- Philip K. Dick

"Simply touching a difficult memory with some slight willingness to heal begins to soften the holding and tension around it."

- Stephen Levine

"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

"God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away."

- REVELATION 21:4

"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

"You would never know stars were there if you looked for them in a sunlit sky. It’s only when darkness falls that you realize…some things are always shining over us…just beyond our sight."

- Suzanne Berry

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

- WINSTON CHURCHILL

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

- GEORGE CARLIN

"There is nothing easy about losing a loved one no matter the circumstance. Your heart is broken and your soul weeps for the loss BUT knowing that there are people that will handle the whole process of celebrating a life with the utmost professionalism, sensitivity, and respect is absolutely priceless."

- NADINE T., SUGAR LAND, TX

"Immortality … a fate worse than death."

- EDGAR A. SHOAFF

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

- GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

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

- Isaac Asimov

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

- WILLA CATHER

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

- ROBIN WILLIAMS

"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

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

- Buddhist quote

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

- Buddhist quote

"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

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

- ASHLEY MONTAGU

"Even on dark days we can look to light spaces in the clouds and know the sun is still there."

- Melvina Young

"Grief is the waiting room. But one day hope and healing will call our/your name."

- Keely Chace

"Winter visits each of us, but that is not the end. Spring will keep its promises. It always comes, my friend."

- Suzanne Berry

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

- DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI

"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."

"Winter to spring, darkness to light, sadness to peace."

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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

"When it feels as though nothing will ease your grief, hold on to the belief that every new sunrise brings you closer to comfort."