GRIEF QUOTES

quotations about grief

Grief quote

Slowly, grief tires and sleeps, but never dies. In time it grows used to its prison, and a relationship of respect develops between prisoner and jailer.

JOSEPHINE HART

Damage

Tags: Josephine Hart


Grief does not expire like a candle or the beacon on a lighthouse. It simply changes temperature. It becomes a kind of personal weather system. Snow settles in the liver. The bowels grow thick with humidity. Ice congeals in the stomach. Frost spiderwebs in the lungs. The heart fills with warm rain that turns to mist and evaporates through a colder artery.

ADAM RAPP

Nocturne

Tags: Adam Rapp


Compare your griefs with other men's, and they will seem less.

ELIZA COOK

Diamond Dust

Tags: Eliza Cook


You do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.

JULIAN BARNES

Flaubert's Parrot

Tags: Julian Barnes


Grief never mended no broken bones.

CHARLES DICKENS

Sketches by Boz

Tags: Charles Dickens


It is the peculiar nature of the world to go on spinning no matter what sort of heartbreak is happening.

SUE MONK KIDD

The Secret Life of Bees

Tags: Sue Monk Kidd


It's funny, how one can look back on a sorrow one thought one might well die of at the time, and know that one had not yet reckoned the tenth part of true grief.

JACQUELINE CAREY

Kushiel's Dart

Tags: Jacqueline Carey


Grief comes, a giantess, with strength to bind;
She grips our hand and glares into our eyes;
If we but kiss her mouth, she daily dies,
Fades into air, and leaves a flower behind.

WILLIAM WILSEY MARTIN

"Grief"

Tags: William Wilsey Martin


She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.

JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Everything Is Illuminated


Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.

JOAN DIDION

The Year of Magical Thinking

Tags: Joan Didion


To me, and to the state of my great grief,
Let kings assemble; for my grief's so great
That no supporter but the huge firm earth
Can hold it up: here I and sorrow sit;
Here is my throne, bid kings come bow to it.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

King John

Tags: William Shakespeare


Oh, what grief not to have
grief, and to spend your life
on the colorless grass
of the undecided path!

FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA

"Crossroads"

Tags: Federico Garcia Lorca


Joy and grief are things of great hazard and danger in the life of man: The one breaks the heart; the other intoxicates the head.

BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE

Moral and Religious Aphorisms

Tags: Benjamin Whichcote


grief is a house
where the chairs
have forgotten how to hold us
the mirrors how to reflect us
the walls how to contain us

JANDY NELSON

The Sky Is Everywhere


Ye, O ye
Shall grieve, and ye shall grieve, and ye shall grieve.
Your Life shall bend and o'er his shuttle toil,
A weaver weaving at the loom of grief.

SIDNEY LANIER

"The Jacquerie: A Fragment"


Joys as winged dreams fly fast,
Why should sadness longer last?
Grief is but a wound to woe;
Gentlest fair, mourn, mourn no moe.

JOHN FLETCHER

The Queen of Corinth

Tags: John Fletcher


It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.

FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY

The Brothers Karamazov

Tags: Fyodor Dostoevsky


We postpone the finality of heartbreak by clinging to hope. Though this might be acceptable during early or transitional stages of grief, ultimately it is no way to live. We need both hands free to embrace life and accept love, and that's impossible if one hand has a death grip on the past.

KRISTIN ARMSTRONG

O Magazine, Feb. 2007

Tags: Kristin Armstrong


Self carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags,
being careful between the trees to leave extra room.

JANE HIRSHFIELD

"Burlap Sack"

Tags: Jane Hirshfield


Whatever sorrow thy young heart have found,
Open it well, this ever-sacred wound
Dealt by dark angels--give thy soul relief.
Naught makes us nobler than a noble grief.

EMMA LAZARUS

"Muse"

Tags: Emma Lazarus