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Grief Quotes

When a long, long time later, he stares down at the silent blue marble of the earth and thinks of hi...

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Picture of Celeste Ng
Celeste NgEverything I Never Told You

He who is overly attached to his family members experiences fear and sorrow, for the root of all gri...

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Now something so sad has hold of us that the breath leaves and we can't even cry.

Picture of Charles Bukowski
Charles BukowskiYou Get So Alone at Times That it Just Makes Sense

Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief itself arose s...

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Your tale is of the longest," observed Monks, moving restlessly in his chair.It is a true tale of gr...

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Let the tears which fell, and the broken words which were exchanged in the long close embrace betwee...

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My sister Emily first declined. The details of her illness are deep-branded in my memory, but to dwe...

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The house cleared, I shut myself in, fastened the bolt that none might intrude, and proceeded—not to...

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What are heavy? sea-sand and sorrow.What are brief? today and tomorrow.What are frail? spring blosso...

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Remember me when I am gone away, Gone far away into the silent land; When you can no more hold me by...

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Sooner or later, all talk among foreigners in Pyongyang turns to one imponderable subject. Do the lo...

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Beauty is ever to the lonely mind a shadow fleeting; she is never plain. She is a visitor who leaves...

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Why shouldn't the living cords which lace our being together flick softly against a loved one in the...

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Mark Spitz didn't ask about Harry. You never asked about the characters that disappeared from a Last...

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The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow.

Picture of Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthyAll the Pretty Horses

Sorry. Don't need sorry. Not in this house. Sorry laid the hearth here. Sorry ways and sorry people ...

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All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in p...

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Here’s the truth: Who is spared love is spared grief.

Grief doesn't arrive on schedule, as much as we'd like to.

I was feeling everything much too much. Everything was pulling at my eyes. I spent hours floating in...

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Picture of Dave Eggers
Dave EggersYou Shall Know Our Velocity!

Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable haemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed.

Grief is an amputation, but hope is incurable haemophilia: you bleed and bleed and bleed. Like Schrö...

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I'd love to know how Dad saw me when I was 6. I'd love to know a hundred things. When a parent dies,...

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The past cannot be redeamed. What has been and what might have been both bring us to what is. To kno...

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Grief can destroy you—or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to e...

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Grief can destroy you --or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to...

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He lives vividly in her recollections, however, and his memory is etched on her soul.

There are silences and silences. No one of them is like another. There is the silence of grief in ve...

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Such grief might be to them quite delicious, a delicacy.

I knew that suffering can purify, that it's a kind of fire that can be worth enduring, but there wer...

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If you think about something else hard enough, you can mostly control your feelings.

The harsh light above them caught her face, and Sean could see what she'd look like when she was muc...

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But as the years passed, he missed her more, not less, and his need for her became a cut that would ...

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She said once that time is nothing to me but a series of bookmarks that I use to jump back and forth...

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Time takes away the grief of men.

Why shouldn't his death bring you into some total scandal of garment-rending grief? Why should you a...

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Picture of Don DeLillo
Don DeLilloThe Body Artist

I'd never felt more human than I did when my mother lay in bed, dying. This was not the frailty of a...

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It happened in New York, April 10th, nineteen years ago. Even my hand balks at the date. I had to pu...

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When we are sad—at least I am like this—it can be comforting to cling to familiar objects, to the th...

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Picture of Donna Tartt
Donna TarttThe Goldfinch

When we are sad...it can be comforting to cling to familiar objects, to things that don't change.

But sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the waves...

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Picture of Donna Tartt
Donna TarttThe Goldfinch

I was deluded, and I knew it. Worse: my love for Pippa was muddied-up below the waterline with my mo...

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...with a grief no less sharp for not being intimate with its object.

Picture of Donna Tartt
Donna TarttThe Secret History

He did touch people's lives, the lives of strangers, in an entirely unanticipated way. It was they w...

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Picture of Donna Tartt
Donna TarttThe Secret History

My soul hath thirsted after the strong living God; when shall I come and appear before the face of G...

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Picture of Dorothy Day
Dorothy DayThe Reckless Way of Love: Notes on Following Jesus

The eye, like a shattered mirror, multiplies the images of sorrow.

She was brave from excess of grief

The first rose on my rose-tree Budded, bloomed, and shattered, During sad days when to me Nothing ...

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There is a certain animal vitality in most of us which carries us through any trouble but the absolu...

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Picture of Edward Abbey
Edward AbbeyPostcards from Ed: Dispatches and Salvos from an American Iconoclast

And thus we all are nighingThe truth we fear to know:Death will end our cryingFor friends that come ...

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Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature's way of let...

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The five stages - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - are a part of the framewor...

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I tell you hopeless grief is passionless,That only men incredulous of despair,Half-taught in anguish...

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And wilt thou have me fashion into speechThe love I bear thee, finding words enough,And hold the tor...

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Picture of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett BrowningSonnets from the Portuguese

Alas, I have grieved so I am hard to love.

Picture of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Elizabeth Barrett BrowningSonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Plus Sonnets from the Porte-Cochere by S. H. Bass

This is what rituals are for. We do spiritual ceremonies as human beings in order to create a safe r...

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Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are...

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My heart was broken so badly last time that it still hurts. Isn't that crazy? To still have a broken...

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Someday you're gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You'll ...

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But I explained that deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map ...

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Come in! come in !’ he sobbed.‘Cathy, do come. Oh do -once more! Oh! my heart’s darling! hear me thi...

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No parson in the world ever pictured heaven so beautifully as they did, in their innocent talk

I wonder if it hurts to live,And if they have to try,And whether, could they choose between,They wou...

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When Jesus tells us about his Father, we distrust him. When he shows us his Home, we turn away, but ...

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To lose what we never owned might seem an eccentric Bereavement but Presumption has its Affliction a...

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Picture of Emily Dickinson
Emily DickinsonOpen Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson

If you've got to my age, you've probably had your heart broken many times. So it's not that difficul...

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I loathe a friend whose gratitude grows old, a friend who takes his friend's prosperity but will not...

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Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.

A whole Gothic world had come to grief...there was now no armour glittering through the forest glade...

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She could see that to lose a sibling was hard: it could only seem unnatural:out of time, out of orde...

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Picture of Fay Weldon
Fay WeldonWorst Fears

My head is full of fireand grief and my tongueruns wild, piercedwith shards of glass.

Picture of Federico García Lorca
Federico García LorcaThree Tragedies: Blood Wedding

The mystery of death, the riddle of how you could speak to someone and see them every day and then n...

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I waited for dawn, but only because I had forgotten how hard mornings were. For a second I'd be norm...

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The fairest things have fleetest end,Their scent survives their close:But the rose's scent is bitter...

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Picture of Francis Thompson
Francis ThompsonComplete Poetical Works of Francis Thompson

Despite the fact that every sport this side of badminton worries about concussions that result in br...

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Every night when I go to bed, I hope that I may never wake again, and every morning renews my grief.

For a week, almost without speaking, they went ahead like sleepwalkers through a universe of grief, ...

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Picture of Gabriel García Márquez
Gabriel García MárquezOne Hundred Years of Solitude

She was no longer wresting with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and mak...

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If you had a table spread for a feast, and was making merry with your friends, you would think it wa...

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In our instinctive rebellion against pain, we are children again, and demand an active will to wreak...

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The clouds were gathering over Mary, too--deep and dark, but of altogether another kind from those t...

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I have become a sour woman. I take no joy in meat nor mead, and song and laughter have become suspic...

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...grief can derange even the strongest and most disciplined of minds.

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder ...

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Sorrow is not itself evidence of maladjustment but of the adjustment process itself.

You can't love your mother or father if you don't also have the capacity to grieve their deaths and,...

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Picture of Glenn Beck
Glenn BeckThe 7: Seven Wonders That Will Change Your Life

Still waters run deepest, they used to tell me.

For darkness terrifies. It swallows you, warps you, nullifies you. Who alive can possibly profess co...

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It's very shocking, I think, for people caring for the dying to realise how unsaintly they feel, how...

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But undying memories stood like sentinels in her breast. When the notes of doves, calling to each ot...

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What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

If there were no life beyond this earth-life, some people I have known would gain immortality by the...

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What is so sweet as to awake from a troubled dream and behold a beloved face smiling upon you? I lov...

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We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world--the company of those w...

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The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an...

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Most people are ennobled by the actual presence of death. But how long do you suppose this nobility ...

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We will talk of this again, when the grass has first withered on her grave. Then you'll hear him spo...

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

At Night on the High SeasAt night, when the sea cradles meAnd the pale star gleamLies down on its br...

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Why so much grief for me? No man will hurl me down to Death, against my fate. And fate? No one alive...

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