100 Inspirational Quotes for Missing Someone Who's Died: Comfort and Hope in Words

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

- Lexi Berhndt

"Grief is just love with no place to go."

- Jamie Anderson

"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

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

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"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 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. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered."

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

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

- William Shakespeare

"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

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

- Helen Keller

"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

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

- WILLIAM PENN

"Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give, but cannot."

- Jamie Anderson

"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

"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."

- Anne Lamott

"Death ends a life, not a relationship."

- Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

"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

"Do not stand at my grave and weep; I am not there. I do not sleep. … I am the soft stars that shine at night. Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there, I did not die."

- Clare Harner

"Healing comes from letting there be room for all of ‘this’ to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy."

- Rumi

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

- Leo Tolstoy

"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

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

- Thomas Campbell

"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 a normal and natural response to loss. It is originally an unlearned feeling process. It is a reaction to change: life-altering change. Those who grieve are not weak; they are strong people with an overabundance of sensitivity and humanity in facing an overwhelming situation."

- Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"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

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

- Helen Keller

"He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man."

- Antoine de Saint– Exupéry

"There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart."

- Mahatma Gandhi

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

- From a headstone in Ireland

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

- Irish Proverb

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

- Alphonse de Lamartine

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

- Aeschylus

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

- Marcel Proust

"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

"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

"Grief is the price we pay for love."

- Queen Elizabeth II

"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

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

- Thomas Bailey Aldrich

"Grief is itself a medicine."

- William Cowper

"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?'

"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

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

- Quintus Ennius

"Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death's perfect punctuation mark is a smile."

- Julie Burchill

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

- Jan Gildwell

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

- Dr. Seuss

"So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

- William Shakespeare

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

- Alfred Lord Tennyson

"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

"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

"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

"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'

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

- Chloe Woodward

"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

"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

"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

"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

"In our hearts your memory lingers, Sweetly tender, fond and true… There’s not a day that goes by that we don’t think of you."

- Wendell Berry

"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

"Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted."

- Matthew 5:4

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

- Seneca

"Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life."

- Anne Roiphe

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

- Fyodor Dostoevsky

"We never truly get over a loss, but we can move forward and evolve from it."

- Elizabeth Berrien

"We are born of love; Love is our mother."

- Rumi

"There are no good-byes, where ever you’ll be, you’ll be in my heart."

- Gandhi

"Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation."

- Kahlil Gibran

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen nor even touched, but just felt in the heart."

- Helen Keller

"No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. The death of a beloved is an amputation."

- C.S. Eliot

"To lose a friend is the greatest of all losses."

- Cicero

"Though nothing can bring back the hour, Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower, We will grieve not, rather find, Strength in what remains behind."

- William Wordsworth

"Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because dawn has come."

- Rabindranath Tagore

"Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great."

- Roger de Rabutin

"There is a land of the living and a land of the dead, and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning."

- Thornton Wilder

"The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and for deeds left undone."

- Harriet Beecher Stowe

"A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you."

- Elbert Hubbard

"Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form."

- Rumi

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

- The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

"Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it."

- Haruki Murakami

"Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time... It says, 'Now is the time to do what you will.'"

- Leo Buscaglia

"The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time."

- Mark Twain

"Grief does not change you, it reveals you."

- John Green

"In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing."

- Robert G. Ingersoll

"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 fall in love with night and pay no worship to the garish sun."

- William Shakespeare

"The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart."

- Helen Keller

"Nobody ever gets over losses like that. It's just part of your broken heart forever."

- Cheryl Strayed

"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

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

- Joe Biden

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

- Jodi Picoult

"May love be what you remember most."

- Darcie Sims

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

- Kristina McMorris

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

- Sylvan Kamens & Rabbi Jack Riemer

"Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another."

- Ernest Hemingway

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

- John Steinbeck

"The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That's the way life is."

- Hugh Laurie

"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live."

- Norman Cousins

"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

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

- Henry Rollins

"Death —the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening."

- Walter Scott

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

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 'The Golden Legend'

"All that life is love."

- James Montgomery

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

- José N. Harris

"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

"Death may be the greatest of all human blessings."

- Socrates

"What is essential is invisible to the eye."

- Antoine de Saint– Exupéry

"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

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

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"We need never be afraid of our tears."

- Charles Dickens

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

- Dr. Seuss

"Everyone must leave something behind when he dies… 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

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

- Hebrew proverb

"Our grief is as individual as our lives."

- Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

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

- John Green

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

- Bob Marley

"Tears are the silent language of grief."

- Voltaire

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

- Lou Reed, 'Magic And Loss'

"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

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

- C.S. Lewis

"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

"Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean."

- David Searls

"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

"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

"Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor my covenant of peace be removed,” says the LORD, who has compassion on you."

- Isaiah 54:10

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

- George Ade 'More Fables'

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

- Sarah J. Maas, Empire of Storms

"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'

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

- Alyson Noel 'Evermore'

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

- Yumi Sakugawa

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

- David Levithan

"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

"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."

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

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

"When you lose someone you love, you gain an angel you know."

- Unknown

"We have known each other from time everlasting. You were a friend before life began. We shall know one another again in heaven."

- Unknown

"The only way to get over a death is by seeing it as a life completed, instead of a life interrupted."

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

- Unknown

"Our love lives on."

"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?"

"You may be gone from my sight but you are never gone from my heart."

"Those who touch our lives stay in our hearts forever."

"Sometimes the healing hurts more than the wound."

- Unknown

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