Loss is one of the hardest human experiences we all have to go through at some point. Saying goodbye to a loved one and grieving them is a difficult process, and it looks different for everyone. When dealing with grief, sometimes words of encouragement or a meaningful sentiment can validate the experience. Here are some thoughtful and poignant quotes about grief that reflect the complex emotions of loss, love, and healing. These words can offer light amid sorrow and be a reminder of the enduring presence of love and memories.
Grief Quotes That Describe The Experience
“Grief is the price we pay for love.”
— Queen Elizabeth II
“What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.”
— Helen Keller
“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss… you will learn to live with it.”
— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
“Grief does not change you. It reveals you.”
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
— C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
“Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart.”
— José N. Harris
“When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure.”
— Unknown
“Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.”
— Anne Roiphe
“You don’t go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always will be.”
— Nigella Lawson
“Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.”
— Alphonse de Lamartine
“Grief is love with no place to go.”
— Jamie Anderson
“Grief is like the ocean; It comes in waves; ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim. “
— Vicki Harrison
Quotes To Help You Heal
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
— A.A. Milne (Winnie-the-Pooh)
“The pain of grief is just as much a part of life as the joy of love; it is perhaps the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment.”
— Dr. Colin Murray Parkes
“To weep is to make less the depth of grief.”
— William Shakespeare
“They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies.”
— William Penn
“You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss… But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up.”
— Anne Lamott
“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition and of unspeakable love.”
— Washington Irving
“Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”
— Terry Pratchett
“Death ends a life, not a relationship.”
— Mitch Albom, “Tuesdays with Morrie”
“Grief is the last act of love we can give to those we loved. Where there is deep grief, there was great love.”
— Unknown
“Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable, can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.”
— Fred Rogers
“Grief is itself a medicine.”
— William Cowper
“The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief – But the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love.”
— Hillary Stanton Zunin
“Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.”
— Marcel Proust
“There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.”
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Sometimes, we just have to accept that some people can only be in our hearts, not in our lives.”
— Unknown
“You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.”
— Jonathan Safran Foer
“You never stop loving someone. You just learn to live without them.”
— Unknown
Quotes That Speak To The Difficulties Of Grieving
“It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”
– Rose Kennedy
“Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a 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.”
– Earl Grollman
“Nothing that grieves us can be called little; by the external laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.”
— Mark Twain, “Which Was The Dream?”
“Given a choice between grief and nothing, I’d choose grief.”
– William Faulkner
“Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.”
― Sarah Dessen, “The Truth About Forever”
“Sometimes the healing hurts more than the wound.”
— Unknown
“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o’er-wrought heart and bids it break.”
— William Shakespeare, “Macbeth“
“We never truly get over a loss, but we can move forward and evolve from it.”
— Elizabeth Berrien
“When someone you love dies, you don’t lose them all at once. You lose them in pieces over time.”
— “Simon Birch” (film)
“To mourn is to be extraordinarily vulnerable. It is to be at the mercy of uncontrollable feelings and at the risk of being misunderstood.”
— Unknown
“You never know how strong you are until being strong is the only option.”
— Bob Marley
“Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.”
— W.S. Merwin
“Healing doesn’t mean the damage never existed. It means the damage no longer controls our lives.”
— Akshay Dubey
“Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.”
― Euripides
Uplifting Grief Quotes
“May love be what you remember most.”
— Darcie Sims
“What is lovely never dies, but passes into other loveliness.”
— Thomas Bailey Aldrich
“Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower; we will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind.”
— William Wordsworth
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
— Rumi
“When the heart grieves over what it has lost, the spirit rejoices over what it has left.”
— Sufi Proverb
“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.”
— Thomas Campbell
“When you are sorrowful, look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”
— Kahlil Gibran
“The darker the night, the brighter the stars / The deeper the grief, the closer is God!”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky