When you lose someone you love, it’s so difficult to put into words the depth of your sorrow and the feelings of profound loss you’re experiencing. Grief can wash over you like a tsunami, making it impossible to sort through your emotions — much less articulate them in any coherent way. Perhaps you know someone else who is dealing with grief, and you want to share quotes on grief that will reflect your care and concern for their loss. Whether you are looking for quotes about grief to soothe yourself during a heartbreaking time, or you want to ease the pain of someone you care about, these hand-selected quotes will give you the words you need to express how you feel.
Here are 67 grief quotes to provide comfort and wisdom:
“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 ”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 “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 touched 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 “What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” ― Helen Keller “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 “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 “We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.” ― John Banville “Grief is love turned into an eternal missing” ― Rosamund Lupton “That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted them to say.” ― Sarah Dessen “I miss her all the time. I know in my head that she has gone. The only difference is that I am getting used to the pain. It’s like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it’s there and keep falling in. After a while, it’s still there, but you learn to walk round it.”― Rachel Joyce “The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can’t get off your knees for a long time, you’re driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.” ― Dean Koontz “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 honour the person that you miss, you can take something that is incredibly sad and have some form of positivity.” ― Terri Irwin “I learned that, with grief, you have to take it one day at a time and learn how to find the happiness amid the heartbreak.” ― Adrienne C. Moore “The healing power of even the most microscopic exchange with someone who knows in a flash precisely what you’re talking about because she experienced that thing too cannot be overestimated.” ― Cheryl Strayed “It takes strength to make your way through grief, to grab hold of life and let it pull you forward.” ― Patti Davis “Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?” ― Terry Pratchett “So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.” ― E.A. Bucchianeri “Grief is a most peculiar thing; we’re so helpless in the face of it. It’s like a window that will simply open of its own accord. The room grows cold, and we can do nothing but shiver. But it opens a little less each time, and a little less; and one day we wonder what has become of it.” ― Arthur Golden “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 “When you part from your friend, you grieve not; For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.” ― Khalil Gibran “Every widow wakes one morning, perhaps after years of pure and unwavering grieving, to realize she slept a good night’s sleep, and will be able to eat breakfast, and doesn’t hear her husband’s ghost all the time, but only some of the time. Her grief is replaced with a useful sadness. Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-grandchildren’s will be. But we learn to live in that love.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer “Everyone grieves in different ways. For some, it could take longer or shorter. I do know it never disappears. An ember still smolders inside me. Most days, I don’t notice it, but, out of the blue, it’ll flare to life.” ― Maria V. Snyder “A feeling of pleasure or solace can be so hard to find when you are in the depths of your grief. Sometimes it’s the little things that help get you through the day. You may think your comforts sound ridiculous to others, but there is nothing ridiculous about finding one little thing to help you feel good in the midst of pain and sorrow!” ― Elizabeth Berrien “Grieving doesn’t make you imperfect. It makes you human.” ― Sarah Dessen “I would always look for clues to her in books and poems, I realized. I would always search for the echoes of the lost person, the scraps of words and breath, the silken ties that say, Look: she existed.” ― Meghan O’Rourke “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, A Prayer for Owen Meany “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives? When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. 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 “Love is really the only thing we can possess, keep with us, and take with us.” ― Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. “Death ends a life, not a relationship. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on- in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.” ― Morrie Schwartz “They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can spirits ever be divided, that love and live in the same divine principle, the root and record of their friendship. If absence be not death, neither is theirs. Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.” ― William Penn “And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you 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 this storm’s all about.” ― Haruki Murakami “It hurts when they’re gone. And it doesn’t matter if it’s slow or fast, whether it’s a long drawn-out disease or an unexpected accident. When they’re gone the world turns upside down and you’re left holding on, trying not to fall off.” ― Walter Mosley “I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, however, turns out to be not a state but a process.” ― C.S. Lewis “There is love in holding and there is love in letting go.” ― Elizabeth Berg “No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through to the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning.” ― Haruki Murakami “Because God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. 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 “I lost a child. (…) I thought I wouldn’t live through it. But you do. You learn to love the place somebody leaves behind for you.” ― Barbara Kingsolver “Tears of grief are unique. They contain chemicals that aren’t found in the more mundane droplets of moisture that bathe the eyes, as if our tears wash us free of some noxious cause of sorrow. And tonight, after crying until I am empty, I have a rare glimpse of my own interior landscape – wounds piled like tiny skeletons into the reef of conscious adult life. I am aground amid my conquered traumas, stranded as a consequence of my achievements.” ― Carol Cassella “When a relationship of love is disrupted, the relationship does not cease. The love continues; therefore, the relationship continues. The work of grief is to reconcile and redeem life to a different love relationship.” ― W. Scott Lineberry “I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.” ― Robert Fulghum “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 “There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.” ― Aeschylus “Grief can take care if itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.” ― Mark Twain “Tears are the silent language of grief” ― Voltaire “Grief is perhaps an unknown territory for you. You might feel both helpless and hopeless without a sense of a ‘map’ for the journey. Confusion is the hallmark of a transition. To rebuild both your inner and outer world is a major project.” ― Anne Grant “You cut off the capacity for grief in your life, and you cut off the joy at the same time. They both come up through the same tunnel. You don’t have one without the other.” ― William Hurt “Perhaps grief is not about empty, but full. The full breath of life that includes death. The completeness, the cycles, the depth, the richness, the process, the continuity and the treasure of the moment that is gone the second you are aware of it.” ― Alysia Reiner “Love remembered and consecrated by grief belongs, more clearly than the happy intercourse of friends, to the eternal world; it has proved itself stronger than death.” ― William Inge “Grief, no matter where it comes from, can only be resolved by connecting to other people.” ― Thomas Horn “You don’t go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always will be.” ― Nigella Lawson “The more we love the more we lose. The more we lose the more we learn. The more we learn the more we love. It comes full circle. Life is the school, love is the lesson. We cannot lose.” ― Kate McGahan “When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure.” ― Unknown “You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building nests in your hair.” ― Old Chinese proverb “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 “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not a 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 “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 “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 “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 “Grief is a terrible, painful place. You can’t grind away on grief in a solid way and say, ‘I’m going to work on this until it’s over’ because it will be with you for the rest of your life, whatever you do. So, you deal with it and move on.” ― Pam Ferris “Grieving is a necessary passage and a difficult transition to finally letting go of sorrow – it is not a permanent rest stop.” ― Dodinsky “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 “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” ― Dr. Seuss “Although it’s difficult today to see beyond the sorrow, may looking back in memory help comfort you tomorrow.” ― Unknown “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 “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 “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 “I basked in you; I loved you, helplessly, with a boundless tongue-tied love. And death doesn’t prevent me from loving you. Besides, in my opinion you aren’t dead. (I know dead people, and you are not dead.)” ― Franz Wright
Did these grieving quotes speak to you?
I hope you found some quotes in this selection that resonated with you and helped ease the loss you are experiencing. Or maybe you found the perfect quote for someone you know who is struggling after the death of a loved one. Everyone you know will experience the death of a loved one at some point in their lives. Many of your friends and family or the friends of your inner circle are grieving a loss right now. Take just a moment to share these quotes on your preferred social media platform so that others who are going through this difficult time can find some comfort and support. May this one kind act of love be returned back to you tenfold.
