Quotes About Grief

How strangely men act. They will not praise those who are living at the same time and living with themselves; but to be themselves praised by posterity, by those whom they have never seen or ever will see, this they set much value on. But this is very much the same as if you should be grieved because those who have lived before you did not praise you.

If therefore it be a thing external that causes thy grief, know, that it is not that properly that doth cause it, but thine own conceit and opinion concerning the thing: which thou mayest rid thyself of, when thou wilt.

how many things may and do oftentimes follow upon such fits of anger and grief; far more grievous in themselves, than those very things which we are so grieved or angry for.

If therefore it be a thing external that causes thy grief, know, that it is not that properly that doth cause it, but thine own conceit and opinion concerning the thing:

unknown Byzantine poet composed a brief appreciation that came to be copied along with the text: ON THE BOOK OF MARCUS If you desire to master pain Unroll this book and read with care, And in it find abundantly A knowledge of the things that are, Those that have been, and those to come. And know as well that joy and grief Are nothing more than empty smoke.

My thoughts always go back to the parents – here's their kid who wouldn't be coming back. I got this feeling all the way through. It didn't matter if I saw a dead American or German, I always figured he belonged to somebody. You knew somebody was going to miss him. - Forrest Guth

William Sloane Coffin said when his son Alex died in a car wreck at the age of twenty-four. Ten days later, Coffin delivered Alex's eulogy at Riverside Church in New York City, where he was senior minister. Among many other things, he said this:

Strange how we decorate pain. These ribbons, for instance, and the small hard teardrops of blood. Who are they for? Do we think the dead care?

What pays for all this? Grief in the face of inevitable death. The wish to stop time. The human condition.

In the daylight we know what's gone is gone, but at night it's different. Nothing gets finished, not dying, not mourning;

Dearly beloved, gathered here together in this closed drawer, fading now, I miss you. I miss the missing, those who left earlier. I miss even those who are still here. I miss you all dearly. Dearly do I sorrow for you.

Blessed be those that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Nobody said when.

I didn't want to identify the body, or see it at all. If you don't see the body, it's easier to believe nobody's dead.

All those years I'd kept an outline of my father in my head, like a chalk line enclosing a father-shaped space. When I was little, I'd coloured it in often enough. But those colours had been too bright and the outline had been too large...

Blessed be those that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Nobody said when.

I feared I might lose my faith. If you've never had a faith, you will not understand what that means. You feel as if your best friend is dying; that everything that defined you is being burned away; that you'll be left all alone. You feel exiled, as if you are lost in a dark wood. It was like the feeling I'd had when Tabitha died: the world was emptying itself of meaning. Everything was hollow. Everything was withering.

Everyone's too sad for everything.

Their mother died early, and not in a good way. Not that anyone dies in a good way, Tin footnotes to himself, but there are degrees. Being hit by a truck after closing time while jaywalking blinded with mournful tears was not a good way. Though it was quick.

But I know this isn't true. It is just passing the buck, as children do, to mothers. I've mourned for her already. But I will do it again, and again.

she might have died in the accident. But there was nothing—nothing—a priest could offer her.

Mourning is a river that carries us to joy. Sometimes we need to give space for grief in order to make room for joy.

what will the South be like without all our fine boys? What would the South have been if they had lived?

It seems we've been at cross purposes, doesn't it? But it's no use now. As long as there was Bonnie, there was a chance that we might be happy. I liked to think that Bonnie was you, a little girl again, before the war, and poverty had done things to you. She was so like you, and I could pet her, and spoil her, as I wanted to spoil you. But when she went, she took everything.

Oh, it wasn't fair that she should have a dead husband and a baby yelling in the next room and be out of everything that was pleasant.