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Quotes About Grief

Desiring always to be in mourning, he clothed himself with night.
~ Victor Hugo
If one could only get out of a grief as one gets out of a city!
~ Victor Hugo
a mother who loses her child can no longer believe in God
~ Victor Hugo
Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched.
~ Victor Hugo
Quasimodo then lifted his eye to look upon the gypsy girl, whose body, suspended from the gibbet, he beheld quivering afar, under its white robes, in the last struggles of death; then again he dropped it upon the archdeacon, stretched a shapeless mass at the foot of the tower, and he said with a sob that heaved his deep breast to the bottom, 'Oh-all that I've ever loved!' The Hunchback of Notre Dame
~ Victor Hugo
She talked thus, bent double, shaken with sobs, blinded by tears, her neck bare, clenching her hands, coughing with a dry and short cough, stammering very feebly with an agonised voice. Great grief is a divine and terrible radiance which transfigures the wretched. At that moment Fantine had again become beautiful. At certain instants she stopped and tenderly kissed the policeman's coat. She would have softened a heart of granite; but you cannot soften a heart of wood
~ Victor Hugo
He believed that faith gives health. He sought to counsel and calm the despairing by pointing out the Man of Resignation, and to transform the grief that contemplates the grave by showing it the grief that looks up to the stars.
~ Victor Hugo
Every torment they had experienced was returned to them an intoxication. It seemed to them that the griefs , the sleeplessness, the tears, the anguish, the dismay, the despair, became caresses and radiance...and that their sorrows were so many servants preparing their joy. To have suffered, how good it is! Their grief made a halo around their happiness.
~ Victor Hugo
Happy, even in anguish, is he to whom God has given a soul worthy of love and grief! He who has not seen the things of this world, and the heart of men in this double light, has seen nothing, and knows noting of the truth.
~ Victor Hugo
Nothing chills the heart like symmetry, for symmetry is ennui and ennui is at the heart of grief.
~ Victor Hugo
As he wished always to appear in mourning, he clothed himself with the night.
~ Victor Hugo
He sought not to efface sorrow by forgetfulness, but to magnify and dignify it by hope. He said:— Have a care of the manner in which you turn towards the dead. Think not of that which perishes. Gaze steadily. You will perceive the living light of your well-beloved dead in the depths of heaven.
~ Victor Hugo
Great grief contains dejection. They discourage existence.
~ Victor Hugo
It is the property of grief to cause the childish side of man to reappear.
~ Victor Hugo
He did not seek to efface pain in forgetfulness, he sought to elevate it and to dignify it with hope. He would say, Be careful how you turn to the dead. Don't think of the rotting. Hold your gaze and you will see the living light of your dearly loved departed up above in heaven.
~ Victor Hugo
He understood how to sit down and hold his peace for long hours beside the man who had lost the wife of his love
~ Victor Hugo
There his wife died of a malady of the chest, from which she had long suffered. He had no children.
~ Victor Hugo
Mes amis! qui de vous, qui de nous n'a souvent, Quand le deuil à l'oeil sec, au visage rêvant, Cet ami sérieux qui blesse et qu'on révère, Avait sur notre front posé sa main sévère, Qui de nous n'a cherché le calme dans un chant!
~ Victor Hugo
To such an extent was this disease that for those who know that Quasimodo has existed, Notre-Dame is to-day deserted, inanimate, dead. One feels that something has disappeared from it. That immense body is empty; it is a skeleton; the spirit has quitted it, one sees its place and that is all. It is like a skull which still has holes for the eyes, but no longer sight.
~ Victor Hugo
It was ridiculous. She knew crying wouldn't help, because she cried in her sleep. Night after night she woke with tears on her cheeks, and none of it helped one bit. In fact, the opposite was true. The expression of grief didn't help. Only its suppression would get her through these hard times.
~ Kristin Hannah
Vianne knew Rachel wasn't asking how to hide in the barn; she was asking how to live after a loss like this, how to pick up one child and let the other go, how to keep breathing after you whisper "good-bye." "I can't leave her.
~ Kristin Hannah
Grief is a sneaky thing, always coming and going like some guest you didn't invite and can't turn away. She wants this grief, although she'd never admit it. lately, it's the only thing that feels real.
~ Kristin Hannah
Grief, like regret, settles into our DNA and remains forever a part of us.
~ Kristin Hannah
I stand up feeling my new role. I am a motherless daughter now, a sisterless woman. There is no one left of the family I was born into; there is only the family I have made. My mother is in all of us, though especially in me, and the dreams of my father to, so it is my job to be all of us now.
~ Kristin Hannah