Quotes About Loss

Sadness was the dowry Jill had brought to her marriage with my father.

As Kierkegaard sums it up "The loss of possibility signifies either that everything has become necessary to man or that everything has become trivial. Actually, in the extreme of depressive psychosis, we seem to see the merger of these two. Everything becomes necessary and trivial at the same time, which leads to complete despair.

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.

How did you go bankrupt? Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.

By then I knew that everything good and bad left an emptiness when it stopped. But if it was bad, the emptiness filled up by itself. If it was good you could only fill it by finding something better.

No one you love is ever truly lost.

The world is a fine place and worth fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.

My heart's broken,' he thought. 'If I feel this way my heart must be broken.

It could be worse,' Passini said respectfully. There is nothing worse than war. Defeat is worse. I do not believe it, Passini said still respectfully. What is defeat? You go home.

I wish I had died before I ever loved anyone but her.

So this was how you died, in whispers that you did not hear.

When I saw my wife again standing by the tracks as the train came in by the piled logs at the station, I wished I had died before I had ever loved anyone but her.

War is not won by victory.

But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason.

Now Catherine would die. That was what you did. You died. You did not know what it was about. You never had time to learn. They threw you in and told you the rules and the first time they caught you off base they killed you. Or they killed you gratuitously like Aymo. Or gave you the syphilis like Rinaldi. But they killed you in the end. You could count on that. Stay around and they would kill you.

And we could have all this,' she said. 'And we could have everything and every day we make it more impossible.' 'What did you say?' 'I said we could have everything.' 'We can have everything.' 'No, we can't.' 'We can have the whole world.' 'No, we can't.' 'We can go everywhere.' 'No, we can't. It isn't ours anymore.' 'It's ours.' 'No, it isn't. And once they take it away, you never get it back.

If you have to go away,' she said,'is it absolutely necessary to kill off everything you leave behind? I mean do you have to take away everything? ...

Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light.

I would take anything I love and throw it off the highest cliff you ever saw and not wait to hear it bounce.

What happens to people that love each other? - I suppose they have whatever they have, and they are more fortunate than others. Then one of them gets the emptiness forever.

I wished I had died before I loved anyone but her.

He held her close and hard and inside himself he said goodbye and then goodbye and goodbye.

No, he thought, when everything you do, you do too long, and do too late, you can't expect to find the people still there. The people all are gone. The party's over and you are with your hostess now. I'm getting as bored with dying as with everything else, he thought.

For sale: baby shoes, never used.