GRIEF QUOTES
quotations about grief
Slowly, grief tires and sleeps, but never dies. In time it grows used to its prison, and a relationship of respect develops between prisoner and jailer.
JOSEPHINE HART
Damage
Grief does not expire like a candle or the beacon on a lighthouse. It simply changes temperature. It becomes a kind of personal weather system. Snow settles in the liver. The bowels grow thick with humidity. Ice congeals in the stomach. Frost spiderwebs in the lungs. The heart fills with warm rain that turns to mist and evaporates through a colder artery.
ADAM RAPP
Nocturne
You do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.
JULIAN BARNES
Flaubert's Parrot
Compare your griefs with other men's, and they will seem less.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
grief is a house
where the chairs
have forgotten how to hold us
the mirrors how to reflect us
the walls how to contain us
JANDY NELSON
The Sky Is Everywhere
Self carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags,
being careful between the trees to leave extra room.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Burlap Sack"
Whatever sorrow thy young heart have found,
Open it well, this ever-sacred wound
Dealt by dark angels--give thy soul relief.
Naught makes us nobler than a noble grief.
EMMA LAZARUS
"Muse"
Ye, O ye
Shall grieve, and ye shall grieve, and ye shall grieve.
Your Life shall bend and o'er his shuttle toil,
A weaver weaving at the loom of grief.
SIDNEY LANIER
"The Jacquerie: A Fragment"
Oh, what grief not to have
grief, and to spend your life
on the colorless grass
of the undecided path!
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
"Crossroads"
We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.
C. S. LEWIS
A Grief Observed
Grief is like the wake behind a boat. It starts out as a huge wave that follows close behind you and is big enough to swamp and drown you if you suddenly stop moving forward. But if you do keep moving, the big wake will eventually dissipate. And after a long time, the waters of your life get calm again, and that is when the memories of those who have left begin to shine as bright and as enduring as the stars above.
JIMMY BUFFETT
A Salty Piece of Land
It is better to drink of deep griefs than to taste shallow pleasures.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Characteristics
Grief--unlike sex, music, and cheating at cards--was not a skill that could be honed by practice.
TIM PRATT
Cup and Table
She was a genius of sadness, immersing herself in it, separating its numerous strands, appreciating its subtle nuances. She was a prism through which sadness could be divided into its infinite spectrum.
JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER
Everything Is Illuminated
Receding from grief, it seems necessary to retrace the same steps that brought us there.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Tender Is the Night
It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief, as if grief could be lessened by baldness.
CICERO
Tusculan Disputations
Unhappiness is selfish, grief is selfish. For whom are the tears?
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
Grief comes, a giantess, with strength to bind;
She grips our hand and glares into our eyes;
If we but kiss her mouth, she daily dies,
Fades into air, and leaves a flower behind.
WILLIAM WILSEY MARTIN
"Grief"
It's better to keep grief inside. Grief inside works like bees or ants, building curious and perfect structures, complicating you. Grief outside means you want something from someone, and chances are good you won't get it.
HILARY THAYER HAMANN
Anthropology of an American Girl
Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.
SOPHOCLES
Antigone