Top 1200 Grief Quotes & Sayings

People talk about the pain of grief, but I don't know what they mean. To me, grief is a devastating numbness, every sensation dulled.

Grief takes many forms, including the absence of grief

I think what I was unconsciously expressing in 'Black Rainbow' was a very abstract and metaphorical grief, in the way I had suppressed my grief about my mother dying. In retrospect I realise I started writing 'Mandy' as a sort of antidote to that, to sort of express those emotions, to purge that grief.

Between grief and nothing, I will take grief.

Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

We collected in a group in front of their door, and we experienced within ourselves a grief that was new for us, the ancient grief of the people that has no land, the grief without hope of the exodus which is renewed in every century.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.

The interesting thing about grief, I think, is that it is its own size. It is not the size of you. It is its own size. And grief comes to you. You know what I mean? I’ve always liked that phrase “He was visited by grief,” because that’s really what it is. Grief is its own thing. It’s not like it’s in me and I’m going to deal with it. It’s a thing, and you have to be okay with its presence. If you try to ignore it, it will be like a wolf at your door.

I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved - the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!

A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear, A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief, Which finds no natural outlet or relief, In word, or sigh, or tear.

Grief is a normal and natural response to loss. It is originally an unlearned feeling process. Keeping grief inside increases your pain.

Grief causes you to leave yourself. You step outside your narrow little pelt. And you can’t feel grief unless you’ve had love before it - grief is the final outcome of love, because it’s love lost. […] It’s the cycle of love completed: to love, to lose, to feel grief, to leave, and then to love again. Grief is the awareness that you will have to be alone, and there is nothing beyond that because being alone is the ultimate final destiny of each individual living creature. That’s what death is, the great loneliness.

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

I lost my father and went into a process of grief with it that was all about how to replace that grief, how to fill it, and I think there was something very desperate in the way that I was replacing it.

You can be experiencing the worst, most gut-wrenching grief and still laugh or feel something positive or even fall in love, and it doesn't diminish the depth and sincerity of your grief.

I wasn't the only orphan in Guatemala. There are many others, and it's not my grief alone, it's the grief of a whole people.

Grief best is pleased with grief's society.

New grief, when it came, you could feel filling the air. It took up all the room there was. The place itself, the whole place, became a reminder of the absence of the hurt or the dead or the missing one. I don't believe that grief passes away. It has its time and place forever. More time is added to it; it becomes a story within a story. But grief and griever alike endure.

Funeral expenses are the curse of the poor everywhere on earth, they are wasteful and unnecessary, they are the price of foolish ostentation and a display that is less an evidence of grief than a vulgar travesty of those pompous obsequies where no grief is.

One of the difficulties with grief research is that it risks making certain kinds of grief seem normal and others abnormal - and of course having a sense of the contours of grief is, I think, truly useful, one has to remember it's not a science, it's an individual reckoning, which science is just trying to help us describe.

My grief lies all within, And these external manners of lament Are merely shadows to the unseen grief That swells with silence in the tortured soul.

I hope that tomorrow we can all, wherever we are, join in expressing our grief at Diana's loss, and gratitude for her all-too-short life. It is a chance to show to the whole world the British nation united in grief and respect.

Grief is real because loss is real. Each grief has its own imprint, as distinctive and as unique as the person we lost. The pain of loss is so intense, so heartbreaking, because in loving we deeply connect with another human being, and grief is the reflection of the connection that has been lost. We think we want to avoid the grief, but really it is the pain of the loss we want to avoid. Grief is the healing process that ultimately brings us comfort in our pain.

Having some form of structure to process and manage grief collectively surely helps: as someone put it to me, grief is like a landscape without a map. Another suggested that grief makes you a stranger to yourself.

It's better to keep grief inside. Grief inside works like bees or ants, building curious and perfect structures, complicating you. Grief outside means you want something from someone, and chances are good you won't get it.

Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.

Grief is a sign that we loved something more than ourselves. . . . Grief makes us worthy to suffer with the rest of the world.

We hear the rain fall, but not the snow. Bitter grief is loud, calm grief is silent.

Acknowledgment of grief - well, it makes feeling the grief easier, not harder.

Emotionally, grief is a mixture of raw feelings such as sorrow, anguish, anger, regret, longing, fear, and deprivation. Grief may be experienced physically as exhaustion, emptiness, tension, sleeplessness, or loss of appetite.

I haven't written adult fiction, but I do not sugarcoat grief - or what I expect grief to be.

Grief is the agony of an instant. The indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

When grief recedes, grief is like a cloud.

Grief is neither a disorder nor a healing process; it is a sign of health itself, a whole and natural gesture of love. Nor must we see grief as a step toward something better. No matter how much it hurts-and it may be the greatest pain in life-grief can be an end in itself, a pure expression of love.

Grief is natural; the absence of all feeling is undesirable, but moderation in grief should be observed, as in the face of all good or evil.

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.

Grief ennobles the commonest people because it has its own essential grandeur. To shine with the luster of grief, a person need only be sincere.

Hell take curtains! Go with some show of inconvenience; sit openly - to the weather as to grief. Or do you think you can shut your grief in?

Whether we experience it or not, grief accompanies all the major changes in our lives. When we realize that we have grieved before and recovered, we see that we may recover this time as well. It is more natural to recover than to halt in the tracks of grief forever. Our expectations, willingness and beliefs are all essential to our recovery from grief. It is right to expect to recover, no matter how great the loss. Recovery is the normal way .

Grief never ends, but it changes. It is a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness nor a lack of faith: it is the price of love.

Another misconception is that if we truly loved someone, we will never finish with our grief, as if continued sorrow is a testimonial to our love. But true love does not need grief to support its truth. Love can last in a healthy and meaningful way, once our grief is dispelled. We can honor our dead more by the quality of our continued living than by our constantly remembering the past.

Grief does not seem to me to be a choice. Whether or not you think grief has value, you will lose what matters to you. The world will break your heart. So I think we’d better look at what grief might offer us. It’s like what Rilke says about self-doubt: it is not going to go away, and therefore you need to think about how it might become your ally.

O, brothers! let us leave the shame and sin Of taking vainly in a plaintive mood, The holy name of Grief--holy herein, That, by the grief of One, came all our good.

There is a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it. The grief cauterizes itself, scars over, prevents inflated feeling. Such numbness is a kind of mercy.

Grief doesn't fade. Grief scabs over like my scars and pulls into new, painful configurations as it knits. It hurts in new ways. We are never free from grief.

All those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately. But, what I've discovered is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place, and that only grieving can heal grief. The passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it.

I think the worst kind of grief is unacknowledged grief.

there is no aristocracy of grief. Grief is a great leveler.

Some pain is simply the normal grief of human existence. That is pain that I try to make room for. I honor my grief.

Grief is accepting the reality of what is. That is grief's job and purpose-to allow us to come to terms with the way things really are, so that we can move on. Grief is a gift of God. Without it, we would all be condemned to a life of continually denying reality, arguing or protesting against reality, and never growing from the realities we experience.

You mourn, for it is proper to mourn. But your grief serves you; you do not become a slave to grief. You bid the dead farewell, and you continue.

Grief is not a disorder, a disease or 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.

The grief we carry is part of the grief of the world. Hold it gently. Let it be honored. You do not have to keep it in anymore. You can let go into the heart of compassion; you can weep.

'Hamlet' is the best description of grief I've read because it dramatizes grief rather than merely describing it.

Grief is the price we pay for being close to one another. If we want to avoid our grief, we simply avoid each other.

I don't think grief of grief in a medical way at all. I think that I and many of my colleagues, are very concerned when grief becomes pathological, that there is no question that grief can trigger depression in vulnerable people and there is no question that depression can make grief worse.

It is good to divert our sorrow for other things to the root of all, which is sin. Let our grief run most in that channel, that as sin bred grief, so grief may consume sin.

Grief shared was grief lessened.

What was so terrible about grief was not grief itself, but that one got over it.

None of us are immune to grief, and everyone who has suffered loss understands that grief changes, but you never wake up one morning and you've moved on. It stays with you, and, you know, you ebb and flow.