Sympathy Inspirational Quotes: A Heartfelt Collection to Comfort and Inspire

"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

"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

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

- Hebrew Proverb

"Do not think of me as gone. I am with you still in each new dawn."

- Native American Poem

"Grieve and mourn for yourself not once or twice, but again and again."

- Morrie Schwartz

"Sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load."

- Charles Henry Parkhurst

"No matter how prepared you think you are for the death of a loved one, it still comes as a shock, and it still hurts very deeply."

- Billy Graham

"Truly, it is in darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us."

- Meister Eckhart

"Here bring your wounded hearts, here tell your anguish; Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal."

- Thomas Moore

"What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like."

- Saint Augustine

"Tears are the silent language of grief."

- Voltaire

"That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind."

- William Wordsworth

"Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth."

- George Saunders

"Pity may represent little more than the impersonal concern which prompts the mailing of a check, but true sympathy is the personal concern which demands the giving of one's soul."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The Remembrance of the good done those we have loved is the only consolation when we have lost them."

- Demoustier

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

- Katie Kacvinsky

"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

"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

"What is lovely never dies, but passes into another loveliness, Star-dust or sea-foam, Flower or winged air."

- Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

- Dorothy Ferguson

"He spoke well who said that graves are the footprints of angels."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

- Maya Angelou

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

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

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

- Mahatma Gandhi

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

- Robert Louis Stevenson

"Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you."

- Hebrews 13:5

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

- Matthew 5:4

"For it is you who light my lamp; the LORD my God lightens my darkness."

- Psalms 18:28

"Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest."

- Matthew 11:28

"And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

- Philemon 4:7

"Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand."

- Isaiah 41:10

"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you."

- Isaiah 43:2

"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

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

- William Shakespeare

"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

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

- Hebrew Proverb

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

- Kenji Miyazawa

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

- Morrie Schwartz

"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

"How very softly you tiptoed into our world, almost silently, only a moment you stayed. But what an imprint your footsteps have left upon our hearts."

- Dorothy Ferguson

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

- Thomas Campbell

"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

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

- Susan Wiggs

"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 messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love."

- Washington Irving

"Whoever you hold in the heart of you Is forever and always a part of you. To live in hearts we leave behind Is not to die."

- Thomas Campbell

"Those we love don't go away, They walk beside us every day, Unseen, unheard, but always near, Still loved, still missed and very dear. Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight."

- Rossiter Worthington Raymond

"Grieve not, nor speak of me with tears, but laugh And talk of me as if I were beside you. I loved You so—‘twas heaven here with you."

- Isla Paschal Richardson

"For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity."

- William Penn

"The angels are always near to those who are grieving, to whisper to them that their loved ones are safe in the hand of God."

- Quoted in The Angels' Little Instruction Book by Eileen Elias Freeman

"A mother’s grief is as timeless as her love."

- Joanne Cacciatore

"May you see God's light on the path ahead When the road you walk is dark. May you always hear, Even in your hour of sorrow, The gentle singing of the lark. When times are hard may hardness Never turn your heart to stone, May you always remember when the shadows fall— You do not walk alone."

- Irish Blessing

"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

"Oh heart, if one should say to you that the soul perishes like the body, answer that the flower withers, but the seed remains."

- Kahlil Gibran

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

- Aeschylus

"As we go through the journey of life, we must remember that the impressions we leave behind will define who and what we are. They are just as individual as the paths we have chosen to walk. So leave good impressions wherever you go."

- Dave Hedges

"Grant but memory to us and we lose nothing by death."

- Whittier

"Darkness may hide the trees and the flowers from the eyes but it cannot hide love from the soul."

- Rumi

"Across the years I will walk with you, in deep green forests, on shores of sand and when our time on earth is through, in heaven too, you will have my hand!"

- Robert Sexton

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

- Leonardo da Vinci

"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity."

- Gilda Radner

"Unable are the Loved to die/ For Love is Immortality."

- Emily Dickinson

"Death? Be as proud as you want: bore me later, because Love is sovereign here. Life never ends. Joy comes in the morning. Glory hallelujah. And let it be so."

- Anne Lamott

"When we are learning the world, we know things we cannot say how we know. When we are relearning the world in the aftermath of a loss, we feel things we had almost forgotten, old things, beneath the seat of reason."

- Meghan O'Rourke

"There is love in holding and there is love in letting go."

- Elizabeth Berg

"Grief when it comes, it is nothing like we expect it to be."

- Joan Didion

"Grief is the price we pay for love."

- Queen Elizabeth II

"End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The gray rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it."

- J.R.R. Tolkien

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

- Terri Guillemets

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

- Mandy Hale

"The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others."

- Albert Schweitzer

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

- Thomas Bailey Aldrich

"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

"Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength."

- Corrie ten Boom

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

- Aeschylus

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

- Confucius

"Grief changes shape, but it never ends."

- Keanu Reeves

"One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion."

- Simone de Beauvoir

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

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"The only cure for grief is action."

- George Henry Lewes

"The loss of a friend is like that of a limb; time may heal the anguish of the wound, but the loss cannot be repaired."

- Robert Southey

"Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it."

- Victor Hugo

"To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness."

- Ivan Turgenev

"It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch each other, and find sympathy. It is in our follies that we are one."

- Jerome K. Jerome

"From the end spring new beginnings."

- Pliny the Elder

"Bear and endure: This sorrow will one day prove to be for your good."

- Ovid

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

- Marcel Proust

"Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself."

- Lucius Annaeus Seneca

"There is a joy in sorrow which none but a mourner can know."

- Jean Paul

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

- Norman Cousins

"When you lose a person you love so much, surviving the loss is difficult."

- Cristiano Ronaldo

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

- Henry Rollins

"Life has never been easy. Nor is it meant to be. It is a matter of being joyous in the face of sorrow."

- Dirk Benedict

"A sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier times."

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson

"A sympathetic friend can be quite as dear as a brother."

- Homer

"The dew of compassion is a tear."

- Lord Byron

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

- Nigella Lawson

"Flowers grow out of dark moments."

- Corita Kent

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

- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good."

- Harriet Beecher Stowe

"If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world."

- Oscar Wilde

"Come away, O human child: To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand, For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand."

- William Butler Yeats

"Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid."

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Loss and possession, death and life are one, There falls no shadow where there shines no sun."

- Hilaire Belloc

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

- Joni Mitchell

"Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not."

- Xenophon

"Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people."

- Arthur Schopenhauer

"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

"I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion thrown from the table of someone who considers himself my master. I want the full menu of rights."

- Desmond Tutu

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions."

- William Shakespeare

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

- Dante Alighieri

"People who drink to drown their sorrow should be told that sorrow knows how to swim."

- Ann Landers

"It is a great consolation for me to remember that the Lord, to whom I had drawn near in humble and child-like faith, has suffered and died for me, and that He will look on me in love and compassion."

- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

"Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps."

- William Blake

"A crowd always thinks with its sympathy, never with its reason."

- William R. Alger

"It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"I will indulge my sorrows, and give way to all the pangs and fury of despair."

- Joseph Addison

"Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine."

- Thomas Aquinas

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

- Dr. Seuss

"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble."

"The object is not to forget, but to remember to go on."

"Grief never ends, but it changes. It’s a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith. It is the price of love."

"What moves through us is a silence, a quiet sadness, a longing for one more day, one more word, one more touch, we may not understand why you left this earth so soon, or why you left before we were ready to say good-bye, but little by little, we begin to remember not just that you died, but that you lived. And that your life gave us memories too beautiful to forget. Although it's difficult today to see beyond the sorrow, May looking back in memory help comfort you tomorrow."

"While we are mourning the loss of our friend, others are rejoicing to meet him behind the veil."

"The phrase "there are no words" seems like the only thing that fits right now. I cannot fathom what you're going through, but I love you and am thinking of you."

- Anonymous

"May today's sorrow give way to the peace and comfort of God's love."

"May knowing you're in the hearts and thoughts of others help you and yours through this time of sorrow. Although no words can really help to ease the loss you bear, just know that you are very close in every thought and prayer."

"A good heart has stopped beating, but a heart that has touched so many lives can’t help but live on in those it loved."

"Those we love don’t go away; they walk beside us in our hearts and memories."

"The loss can feel immeasurable, but so can the love that’s left behind."

"It will be little things that we remember—smiles, laughter—and although it is hard right now, the memories of these things will become tools to push away the pain."

"It's hard to forget someone who have us so many memories to remember."

"People come into our lives and leave footprints on our hearts and we are never the same."

"Death leaves a heartache nothing can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal."

"Those we love don’t go away, they walk beside us everyday."

- Unknown

"I loved you for your whole life and I will remember you for the rest of mine."

"The love in our family flows strong and deep, leaving us memories to treasure and keep."

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

"May you take comfort in knowing there is one more angel above us."

- Unknown

"A beautiful soul is never forgotten, just remembered with great love."

"Words often don’t express the feelings we have but sometimes those words can get us through hard times. Take solace in the memories of a wonderful person that touched the lives of many."

"Remember me in the family tree; my name, my days, my strife. Then I'll ride upon the wings of time and live an endless life."

"There's a very special garden Where the trees of memory grow Nurtured by the kindness And concern that good friends show. The roots are cherished memories Of good times in the past. The branches tender promises that souls endure and last. It's a place of peace and beauty Where bright new hopes can start It's memory's lovely garden That soothes the hurting heart"

- Unknown

"It’s hard to forget someone who gave you so much to remember."

- Unknown

"Those we hold closest to our hearts never truly leave us. They live on in the kindness they have shared and the love they brought into our lives."

"May you find strength in the love of family and in the warm embrace of friends. It will be the little things that you will remember, the quiet moments, the smiles, the laughter. And although it may seem hard right now, it will be the memories of these little things that help to push away the pain and bring the smiles back again."

"Words, however kind, can't mend your heartache: but those who care and share your loss wish you comfort and peace of mind."

"Sadly missed along life's way, quietly remembered every day... No longer in our life to share, but in our hearts, you're always there."

"The tide recedes but leaves behind bright seashells on the sand. The sun goes down, but gentle warmth still lingers on the land. The music stops, and yet it echoes on in sweet refrains..... For every joy that passes, something beautiful remains."

"At this time of sorrow, may these truths sustain you... Your loved one will always be as close as a memory, and the God of all comfort will always be as close as a prayer."

"Praying for friends to comfort you, faith to uphold you, and loving memories to help you smile again."

"Extending deepest sympathy For you in your loss. And hoping, too, That comfort and peace May come to you."

"There are some who bring a light so great to the world that even after they have gone, the light remains."

- Unknown

"The sorrow of the faithful is not that of permanent loss, but the tender sense of sadness that comes in saying good-bye for now to someone we love."

"I believe that tears can heal, memories can comfort, and love lives on forever."

"May care and love of those around you provide comfort and peace to get you through the days ahead."

"May you be comforted by the outpouring of love surrounding you."

"We’re sharing in your sorrow with love and friendship. Please accept our deepest condolences."

"Please accept my sincerest condolences and know that I am here for you."

"Our collective hearts are heavy with sympathy. Please accept our most heartfelt condolences."

"Someone so special can never be forgotten."

"Wishing you strength for today and hope for tomorrow."

"No words can describe how sorry I am for your loss. Please accept our deepest sympathy."

"Words may not suffice to express the heartfelt sorrow that I feel for the passing of your loved one."

"Nothing can replace the loss of a loved one, but life goes on, and we have to live for those we love."

"There are no goodbyes for you. Wherever they are now, they will always be in your heart."

"Those we love can never be more than a thought away; for as long as there’s a memory, they live on in our hearts."

"Wishing you peace and strength during this difficult time."

"May the sorrow you feel in your heart lighten by the love that surrounds you."

"Today and always, may loving memories bring you peace, comfort, and strength."

"Please accept my heartfelt sympathies for your loss."

"Our thoughts and prayers are with you."

"Gone from our sight, but never from our hearts."

"May the memory of [insert name] bring you comfort and peace."

"We are here for you and your family, now and forever."

"I wish you healing and peace."

"Words can’t express how saddened we are to hear of your loss."

"May my condolences bring you comfort and may my prayers ease the pain of this loss."

"We are thinking of you during these difficult times."

"My heart is with you in your time of sorrow."

"We are so sorry for your loss."

"I hope you feel surrounded by much love."