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Quotes About Bereavement

No matter how prepared you think you are for the death of a loved one, it still comes as a shock, and it still hurts very deeply.
~ Billy Graham
Ach! Er ist tot! Wie dauert er mich! Wie bin ich bekümmert!
~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Among other things, Kathryn knew, grief was physically exhausting.
~ Anita Shreve, The Pilot's Wife
When you experience bereavement at a youngish age, you suddenly realise that life is unjust and unfair, that bad things will happen, and you have to take that on board.
~ William Boyd
Coming to terms with loss is a difficult, painful, and largely solitary process which may be delayed rather than aided by distractions. Any rituals which underline the fact that bereavement is a profoundly traumatic event are helpful.
~ Anthony Storr
Love is the religion that bereaves the bereft.
~ Galway Kinnell
From now on Anne saw herself as someone indelibly marked by suffering. Her letters to Sarah often ended with an allusion to her tragic history of bereavement, for she took to signing them your poor unfortunate faithful Morley.
~ Anne Somerset
Even with my father and brother dying, I didn't quite process the grief.
~ Marc Forster
To me, death is dark, pain, grief.
~ Mary Roach
Silas himself was feeling the withering desolation of that bereavement about which his neighbours were arguing at their ease.
~ George Eliot
When you lose a spouse, you're a widow or widower; when you lose your parents, you're an orphan. When you lose a child, there's no word in the English language for that position, that place that you're left.
~ Frances McDormand
Part of dealing with the sense of being cut off - for both the one dying and the one bereaved - is acknowledging that though a vital part of life has changed dramatically, all relationships (with friends, even with you, perhaps) have not.
~ Sandra L. Bertman
Mrs. Quiverful, when she first heard from her husband the news which he had to impart, felt within her bosom all the rage of the lioness, the rapacity of the hound, the fury of the tragic queen, and the deep despair of the bereaved mother.
~ Anthony Trollope
Nobody had yet spoken to her about her father since she had been at Framley. It had been as though the subject were a forbidden one. And how frequently is this the case! When those we love are dead, our friends dread to mention them, though to us who are bereaved no subject would be so pleasant as their names. But we rarely understand how to treat our own sorrow or those of others.
~ Anthony Trollope
In a blink of a life my brother James, mother and I lost a vital part of our tiny family. We were devastated. I felt completely bereft. And then 9/11 happened. And I had written the only book in the world about the group behind the devastating attack.
~ Simon Reeve
One of my hardest parts of my job is to console the family members who have lost their life.
~ George W. Bush
Horror is a feeling that cannot last long; human nature is incapable of supporting it. Sadness, whether it be from bereavement, or disappointment, or misfortune of any kind may linger on through life
~ James De Mille
Recreating the experience of, say, bereavement in my own head is pretty rough. I was used to switching off from emotions every day of my working life as a journalist, but in fiction, you have to feel it 100%, or else it's a flat experience for the reader.
~ Karen Traviss
If you have a bereavement in your family, it's a terrible, terrible thing. But, you know, time passes. It's part of the cycle. It doesn't hurt so much.
~ Bernard Sumner
Blue that was unstable and misbehaved when left in skin. Blue like the sea that had taken his father. Blue, for his mother's sake, and for the true colour of every bereaved and bloodless heart when it is collapsing.
~ Sarah Hall
Red, brown, yellow, green, black. Five colours to say everything that could be said. And what Cy suddenly wanted, more than anything in the world just then, what he wanted was that missing blue, primary and resistant to the trade. Blue that was unstable and misbehaved when left in skin. Blue like the sea that had taken his father. Blue, for his mother's sake, and for the true colour of every bereaved and bloodless heart when it is collapsing.
~ Sarah Hall
And now, Though haply mellow'd by correcting time, I thank thee, Heaven! that the bereaving world Hath not diminish'd the subliming hopes Of youth, in manhood's more imposing cares.
~ Robert Montgomery
In bereavement, make yourself better, not bitter.
~ Martin Amis
Hamlet doesn't fully see that his metaphysical miseries constitute a subliminal symptom of grief; and this was exactly my case. I thought I was sick, I thought I was dying (maybe that is what bereavement actually asks of you). Literature gives us these warnings about the main events, but we don't recognize the warnings until the events have come and gone. Isabel, my senior in the loss of a sibling, told me that you just have to take it, like weather—yes, like sleet in your face.
~ Martin Amis