Grief Quote Round-up: Grief Quotes We Love
/ Coping with Grief : Litsa Williams
If you have spent any time on our Facebook or Instagram, you have probably noticed that we don't share grief quotes nearly as often as some other grief sites out there. It isn't that we don't like grief quotes, it's just that the internet is already filled with zillions of images with quotes imposed on them, covering every topic under the sun. To be honest, they have started to feel a little... overdone? Dare I say, cliché?
Yet on Sunday, when I was feeling a little bummed out about the holidays, I got sucked into the black-hole of Pinterest. As I scrolled through grief quote images until my finger cramped, I found myself feeling strangely comforted. Something about reading other's words about grief was reassuring, hence the tremendous appeal of grief memoirs I suppose. I love a good grief memoir, but some days a memoir is just too much. The grief quote comes in handy during those moments that you can't concentrate to read more than a couple sentences (or a carry-out menu). A bite-sized option.
So, today, we are going to stop judging and jump on the grief-quote-bandwagon. Here is a round-up of some grief quotes we love, to keep you company when cracking a book just seems like far too much work.
Please note that most of these were found on social media. We have linked back to the original source, if it was linked. If you were the creator of one of these fabulous images and we didn't know it, leave a comment and we will update!
~ Robert Frost
~ Mitch Albom, For One More Day
~ C.S. Lewis
~ "Bubbles," The Wire
~ Sarah Dessen
~ Vicki Harrison
~ Kahlil Gibran
~ C.S. Lewis
~ Rumi
~ Meghan O'Rourke
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth
~ C.S. Lewis
~ Sylvia Plath
~ J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers
~ Buddha
What grief quotes do you love? Let us know, leave a comment!
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Quotes Dude January 5, 2020 at 3:10 am
I read this post. You shared a very good contents. Thank you!
Bryan Dian March 5, 2019 at 2:23 am
All the quotes are good but this one is too good “The trouble is, you think you have time”.
I really like your collection of quotes. can you add some more?
By the way thanks for sharing.
Good luck!
Steph February 6, 2019 at 5:09 pm
Grief is , feeling guilty eating a nice meal, enjoying things again like a box of chocolates because your loved one can’t enjoy these things with you.
Drinking lots of tea with three sugars.
Wearing comfort clothes.
Waking up with the realisation that the person is gone -having to relive it again , shaking , and panic , reaching for tablets to get you through.
Surrounded by friends but feeling incredibly lonely, scared .
Feeling disconnected , what’s the point . Fear to go home because he isn’t there to ask about my day, make my tea , rest now baby he would say.
The best person in my life was stolen from me. I miss you Angel xxx
Liz November 9, 2018 at 5:57 pm
The world is wrapped in grey;
Muffled, spent, without joy.
Your smile haunts me
As does your laugh
And I wonder if I will ever feel
The warmth of unmeasured love;
The color and the light of that devotion
Given silently and without expectation.
The air is thinner, the light dimmer
Without your measured step upon my floor,
The solid anchor to my world.
There is much I took for granted
Of a mother’s care.
I lay in bed at night with the stresses of the day
Upon my brow and long for
Those care-worn hands
To soothe, the gentle scolding
Of your lilting voice, the lifting of my burdens,
Weight, raised like feathers in the wind.
But I wake to my colorless world,
To the shadow of my childhood joy
Scattered like fallen leaves from an autumn tree
And know that I will never see those colors again;
Not in this world……..
I wrote this after the loss of my mother; she was my best friend too…..
Risha October 18, 2018 at 12:04 am
Oww
Lisa Manzanares February 12, 2017 at 12:00 pm
I walked a mile with Pleasure,
She chatted all the way,
But left me none the wiser,
For all she had to say.
“I walked a mile with Sorrow,
and never a word said she,
but Oh! the things I learned from her,
when Sorrow walked with me.”
–author unknown
Truer words have never been spoken. I lost my beautiful son, Jeffrey, in 2014 when he was 27. I miss him every single day.
Lisa Manzanares February 12, 2017 at 11:49 am
“In the garden of memory, in the palace of dreams… that is where you and I shall meet.” –Alice Through the Looking Glass
Kendra Rogers January 5, 2016 at 1:04 am
Every morning, I wake up and forget just for a second that it happened. But once my eyes open, it buries me like a landslide of sharp, sad rocks. Once my eyes open, I’m heavy, like there’s too much gravity on my heart.
— Sarah Ockler
absencelikethesky.tumblr.com
Kelly March 23, 2015 at 3:36 pm
I don’t know why exactly, but this quote from a letter that Jane Austen wrote to her sister resonates with me. It probably was just something shared as news, but its wit and irony speak to me: “I will not say that the Mulberry trees are dead, but I am afraid they are not alive.” The quote speaks to my sense of my loved ones still being here, just not quite in the same way that they were, if that makes sense.
Eleanor March 23, 2015 at 6:59 pm
Ooooooo I love that quote (almost as much as I love Jane Austen) and it totally makes sense!! 🙂 Thank you for sharing that.
Annette Wallace July 28, 2014 at 11:58 am
@Karen Quandt. The short statement you posted on grief (Grief is infinite because love is infinite. Grief is unfinished love.) has stayed with me all day. Is this your original quote. I am considering using it but what to give proper credit for its origin. Thanks so much for sharing it. This is the first time I have posted on this site and hope my question reaches you.
Karen Quandt June 11, 2014 at 12:42 am
Grief is infinite because love is infinite. Grief is unfinished love.
Christine Branden May 30, 2014 at 4:45 am
I have so many favorites to choose from so in honor of Maya Angelou….” I am besieged with painful awe at the vacuum left by the dead. Where did she go? Where is she now?” Also from her book “Wouldn’t Take Nothing For My Journey Now”….” When I sense myself filling with rage at the absence of a beloved, I try as soon as possible to remember that my concerns should be focused on what I can learn from my departed love. What legacy was left which can help me in the art of living a good life?” The day my little sister died(12/30/13) part of me died with her and now part of her will live on in me. With tremendous loss come tremendous lessons! Time!!!!
Eleanor April 27, 2014 at 10:01 pm
Rebecca,
I get it! This is a great quote for grievers and supporters alike. Thanks for sharing.
Eleanor
Rebecca April 27, 2014 at 12:47 am
Thank you for letting me share…
“I have lived with you and loved you, and now you are gone. Gone where I cannot follow, until I have finished all of my days” (for our anniversary)
“Every morning, I wake up and forget just for a second that it happened. But once my eyes open, it buries me like a landslide of sharp, sad rocks” (A year later, this hasn’t changed)
Grief assaults you on every part of your being. Is it any wonder your brain is in a fog, you don’t care two hoots about anything and all you want to do is curl up and retreat to some place where you can pretend it never happened…
“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.” (This is what I am entering now, a year later)
Rebecca April 27, 2014 at 12:38 am
My husband died on a friday, and every week I post a memorial on his fb page…
This quote, from Steven King, my husbands favorite author, is the only memorial, in a year, that NO ONE liked, but I did and still do…
“Then, instead of telling her that where there was life there was hope, or to let a smile be her umbrella, or that it was always darkest just before the dawn, or anything else that had just lately fallen out of the dog’s ass, she simply held her.
Because sometimes only holding was best.
That was one of the things she had taught that man whose last name she had taken for her own–that sometimes it was best to be quiet; sometimes it was best to just shut your everlasting mouth and hang on, hang on, hang on.”
? Stephen King, Lisey’s Story
Janice Boltseridge April 25, 2014 at 5:58 am
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
Helen Keller
Dani April 22, 2014 at 9:47 pm
“But grief is a walk alone. Others can be there, and listen. But you will walk alone down your own path, at your own pace, with your sheared-off pain, your raw wounds, you denial, anger, and bitter loss. You’ll come to your own peace, hopefully, but it will be on your own, in your own time.”
? Cathy Lamb, The First day of the Rest of My Life
Litsa April 22, 2014 at 8:14 pm
Wow, I don’t think of Dean Koontz as a typical source of grief quotes. Who knew!
Litsa April 22, 2014 at 8:13 pm
Ah, love that!!
Litsa April 22, 2014 at 8:13 pm
I love that Gilda Radner quote — I have it on a magnet on my fridge! Sadly the other link didn’t work for me.
sandra April 22, 2014 at 8:19 am
Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect the shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. ? Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking
sandra April 22, 2014 at 8:18 am
I measure every grief I meet with narrow, probing eyes – I wonder if it weighs like mine – or has an easier size.”
~ Emily Dickinson
Lisa April 22, 2014 at 8:09 am
Good Morning All:
These are 2 wonderful quotes!
Hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
Lisa
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/300122762640439450/(Winnie the Pooh)
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/300122762640407869/ (Gilda Radner)
Paula April 22, 2014 at 7:50 am
You girls rock! You picked some good ones. I always love a good Rumi quote, so here’s my addition:
“The wound is where the light enters you” ~Rumi 🙂
Cindy April 22, 2014 at 7:14 am
Thank you for the quotes….I have been collecting them too because sometimes other people do an amazing job of expressing what you feel. This is one of my favorites (from an unlikely source). Sorry it is so long but I think it’s worth it.
————-
Grief can destroy you –or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. OR you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn’t allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it’s over and you’re alone, you begin to see that it wasn’t just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. 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, Odd Hours