3,968 Quotes About Grief

There he died; and as thou seest me, sawI the three fall one by one, between the fifthday and the sixth: whence I betook me,already blind, to groping over each, and forthree days called them, after they were dead;then fasting had more power than grief.

My point here is that the grieving are very dangerous, Richard said. They are like injured animals with fearsome claws, bloodied and pushed into a corner. Okay, said Clare. They are deranged, he continued. They shouldn't be let out of the house. Immediately after the funeral some sort of waiting period should be instituted, a period of confinement. It is a matter of public safety.

And I wonder what the sound of a heart breaking might be. And I think it might be quiet, unperceptively so, and not dramatic at all. Like the sound of an exhausted swallow falling gently to earth.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I read the opening lines of the book, and it’s like my own pages are coming unstuck. For so long, all I’ve felt is fear, and all this time, it was grief. I continue reading, remembering why I used to love books. Because they show us, in so many words, and so many worlds, that we are not alone. A miracle, in twenty-six letters.

He would roam about the world carrying his recollections with him, and perhaps some day he would come to forget them, for one can live only by forgetting; but when his grief should dissolve with the years he would be left an empty man, like a smiling automaton, incapable of any affections other than meterial ones.

Simply touching a difficult memory with some slight willingness to heal begins to soften the holding and tension around it. (74)

The memory of the pain did not destroy the reality of the pleasure; grief did not obliterate joy.

I miss your face. That big bright smile. You always had it, in any weather. It's hard for me to find one these days. These cold November days. Except when I think of you.

And as she grieved, she realized that she had never trusted the world to keep herself or those she loved safe. From the moment of her mother’s death, she had known that terror could be around the next corner at any moment. Had there ever been a time when she felt the clutch of fear in her gut loosen its grip, so that she could have faith in the future?