Best 3947 quotes in «grief quotes» category

The grief that does not speak whispers the o'erfraught heart and bids it break.

The griefs that have been hardest for me were the ones I didn’t recognize as griefs, because they came in what were supposed to be the best times of my life. No one whispered in my ear that the best times, the ones that change our lives, are woven with the thread of loss.

The grief you hide leaves the deepest scars.

The hands of the clock buried inside her soul ground to a halt then. Time outside, of course, flows on as always, but she isn't affected by it. For her, what we consider normal time is essentially meaningless.

The grief didn't fade, but it changed into something I could carry around with me, a noose I wore around my neck. It wasn't until I saw you that the knot loosened.

The harsh light above them caught her face, and Sean could see what she'd look like when she was much older - a handsome woman, scarred by wisdom she never asked for.

the heart aches through nights—the broken places of neglect

The heart aches in brokenness as daylight awakens the pain of knowing.

The heart smiles when the soul shines.

The heart's smiles help wipe away the soul's tears.

The house would never be the same again. Her grief painted it with hues of grey.

The house is eerily quiet. All this time I thought silence would be a welcome reprieve, but it's less comforting than I imagined. The house feels so much bigger and colder than it ever has.

The human capacity for grief. It just isn't capable of providing an adequate emotional response once the dead exceed a few dozen in number. And it doesn't just level off—it just gives up, resets itself to zero. Admit it. None of us feel a damn about these people.

The idea of people looking at me all sympathetic... I just can't deal with that." "Yep. I hear you," Peggy said. ... "I mean their hearts are in the right place but if you have not been through it then it's impossible to understand. It's like we're in the club or something.

The idea that a loss will get easier as time passes, is complete bullshit. It doesn’t get easier; you just learn to function while balancing the large burden on your shoulders.

The importance of humor is primarily to puncture fixed ideas—to make us step back and realize that our situation, whatever it may be, is, in the grand scheme of things, always contingent and arbitrary and ephemeral. And that helps us to deal with our emotions and to keep going. Holding on to one perspective, on the other hand, whether it takes the form of grief or anger or a particular political standpoint, is often destructive to us and to those around us

The intensity of my grief hits the mountains across Eclipse Sound, and then echoes throughout Arctic. There’s nobody around. I can barely see the town below the hill, nestled within the valley of barren tundra, across from the tiny airport, my only access to the south. I’m alone amidst this desolate landscape and there’s nowhere to hide. No trees or buildings or distractions. It’s just me in the depths of my suffering and all my faults and mistakes of the past are exposed underneath the spotlight of the midnight sun.

The instinctive posture of grief is a shuffling compromise between defiance and prostration; and pride feels the need of striking a worthier attitude in face of such a foe.

The intense roller coaster of emotions will gradually lesson over time. But there is no timeframe for the grieving process, and it will not be rushed, no matter how fast you'd like to "get over it." The reality is that there is no getting over it; you can only walk through it.

The kindest and most meaningful thing anyone ever said to me is: Your mother would be proud of you. ... The strange and painful truth is that I'm a better person because I lost my mom young. When you say you excperienced my writing as sacred, what you are touching is the divine place within me that is my mother. Sugar is the temple I build in my obliterated place. I'd give it all back in a snap, but the fact is, my grief taught me things. ... It required me to suffer. It compelled me to reach.

The kindness sent from one compassionate soul to another during the time of loss of one held so dear allows the sorrow-filled heart to open wide, filling the space of emptiness that grief may have created with a renewed sense of peace, compassion, and love.

The last time I felt alive – I was looking into your eyes. Breathing your air…. touching your skin… … Saying goodbye…. The last time I felt alive…. I was dying.

The lessons of impermanence taught me this: loss constitutes an odd kind of fullness; despair empties out into an unquenchable appetite for life.

The line between the living and the dead may not be much of a line at all, but the terrain is not for the weak of heart.

The light wraps you in its mortal flame. Abstracted pale mourner, standing that way Against the old propellers of the twilight That revolves around you. Speechless, my friend, Alone in the loneliness of this hour of the dead And filled with the lives of fire, Pure heir of the ruined day.

The list of lifesavers left him numb, clueless - the action, indifferent.

The man who doesn't howl at the moon when his mother dies is no man at all.

The look on his face told her what had happened and that hurt burrowed deeper than anything she'd ever felt, deep enough to change from the thing she felt to the thing she was. Love, she learned, could reduce its recipient to an essential thing, as important as food or shelter, whose presence is not only longed for but needed.

The man raised the violin under his chin, placed the bow across the strings, and closed his eyes. For a moment his lips moved, silently, as if in prayer. Then, with sure, steady movements, he began to play. The song was like nothing Abbey had heard anywhere else. The notes were clear, sweet and perfect, with a purity of tone that not one violin in ten thousand could produce. But the song was more than that. The song was pain, and loss, and sorrow, an anthem of unrelenting grief for which no words could be sufficient. In its strains Abbey heard the cry of the mother clutching her lifeless child; of the young woman whose husband never returned from war; of the father watching his son die of cancer; of the old man weeping at his wife's grave. It was the wordless cry of every man, woman and child who had ever shaken a fist at the uncaring universe, every stricken heart that had demanded an answer to the question, “Why?”, and was left unsatisfied. When the song finally, mercifully ended, not a dry eye remained in the darkened hall. The shades had moved in among the mortals, unseen by all but Abbey herself, and crowded close to the stage, heedless of all but the thing that called to them. Many of the mortals in the audience were sobbing openly. Those newcomers who still retained any sense of their surroundings were staring up at the man, their eyes wide with awe and a silent plea for understanding. The man gave it to them. “I am not the master of this instrument,” he said. “The lady is her own mistress. I am only the channel through which she speaks. What you have heard tonight — what you will continue to hear — is not a performance, but a séance. In my … unworthy hands … she will tell you her story: Sorrow, pain, loss, truth, and beauty. This is not the work of one man; it is the story of all men, of all people everywhere, throughout her long history. Which means, of course, that it is also your story, and mine.” He held up the violin once more. In the uncertain play of light and shadow, faces seemed to appear and vanish in the blood-red surface of the wood. “Her name is Threnody,” he said. “And she has come to make you free.

The light in that room was a glow; I seem to remember the color green, or perhaps flowers. A pale green sheet covered his inert body but not his head, which lay (eyes closed, mouth set in a tense and terrible grimace) unmoving. Gianluca. Barely able to see, barely able to stand - my knees kept buckling – and breathing so quietly I thought that I, too, might die; that out of shock, I would just drift away, the shell of my body cracking open. No longer anchored by my brother’s love, I would be reabsorbed by sky. Gianluca. If there was never another sound in the world, I would understand – yes, that would be appropriate, it would be fitting. This was the antithesis of music, the antithesis of noise. My brother’s death seemed to demand silence of all the world. Gianluca.

The loss of her is already too much and then there’s the other thing – the end of being loved in the way only my sister could love me. What I feel for her survives and that hurts like battery acid every minute, but worse is that what she felt for me died with her. I will never be loved like that again.

The loss of one's self is the hardest to bear

The midwife blinked back her own tears. "I don't know But these will be difficult days for your family. The midwife was right: the days that followed were terrible and traumatic. Yet when I think back to this time, I remember very little. Perhaps this is the mind's way of protecting us from events that are so devastating we would otherwise lose all reason. The same way a lizard, if its body is threatened, will drop its tail, providing a distraction to the predator in order with its life. And grief, for anyone who has ever experienced it, is exactly like a predator. It steals first your happiness, and then- if you allow it everything else.

The memory of the pain did not destroy the reality of the pleasure; grief did not obliterate joy.

The moonlight rained down on the beach as if to shine a spotlight on my solitude, and I wanted to cry out at it, ‘Why did you take her? You, surrounded by all of your twinkling stars and infinite wonders and darkness. There’s already enough beauty where you are.

The mightiest power of death is not that it can make people die, but that it can make people left behind want to stop living, she thinks, without remembering where she heard that.

the mind is a treasure trove, an almanac, a tomb.

The money you are looking for is not in any country, phd or your designer outlook, it is in wisdom. Solomon never prayed for wealth but he asked for wisdom.

The moon and the stars sigh. The days elude them, but they are the ones who witness the sorrows of the night. How they wish they could resolve the unbound grief of the human heart. If only, they could know what it was looking for. If only, unbound joy could be the answer.

The more I learn about life and people, the more I realise that everyone has a story and everyone’s story is the biggest in their own mind.” - Laylla Jonson

The more I remember, the more inconsolable I will be, I've told myself. But now increasingly I don't tussle with my memories. I want to remember. I want to know. Perhaps I can better tolerate being inconsolable now. Perhaps I suspect that remembering won't make me any more inconsolable. Or less.

The more you want to dig a hole and burry yourself in it, the more you need to run and be ALIVE and do things. The more you want to do nothing, the more you need to do something. The more you want to be selfish, just think about yourself and your own pain, the more you need to look outward and try to cheer other people up. Then you will find happiness for yourself, when you give yourself away in any way you can.

The more I remember, the greater my agony.

The more one suffered and lived, the more one had known of joy and grief, the deeper the response must be if an artist were great enough to summon it.

The more we know, the more we grief.

The morning after Jim’s death, as I dried off after my shower, I wondered to what extent, if at all, Jim was…around. Could he be with us, unseen or unsensed by us, but able to observe? Most importantly at this moment, could he possibly see me naked?

The name outlaw Christian describes the kind of Christian I am and the kind I’m setting myself free to become: namely, a follower of Jesus who no longer accepts cocky clichés, hackneyed hope, or snappy theodicies—defenses of God’s goodness and power—that explain away evil and suffering with a theo-magical sleight of hand. An outlaw Christian doesn’t condemn questions or discourage doubt. Instead, an outlaw Christian seeks to live an authentic life of faith and integrity, and chooses the defy the unwritten laws governing suffering, grief, and hope that our culture and religious traditions have asked us to ingest. The faith of an outlaw Christian is bold, outspoken, and active in a world of pain.

Then one morning she’d begun to feel her sorrow easing, like something jagged that had cut into her so long it had finally dulled its edges, worn itself down. That same day Rachel couldn’t remember which side her father had parted his hair on, and she’d realized again what she’d learned at five when her mother left – that what made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting. Forgetting the small things first, the smell of the soap her mother had bathed with, the color of the dress she’d worn to church, then after a while the sound of her mother’s voice, the color of her hair. It amazed Rachel how much you could forget, and everything you forgot made that person less alive inside you until you could finally endure it. After more time passed you could let yourself remember, even want to remember. But even then what you felt those first days could return and remind you the grief that was still there, like old barbed wire embedded in a tree’s heartwood. (51)

The night that our friend's wife died, my brokenhearted husband called his mother: "What do I say?"... There is nothing to say. Stop thinking there is something to say to make it go away. It won't go away. Abandon your answers. Avoid your cliches. Don't blame God and don't blame him. Learn to sit in the sadness.

Then she said, with piteous defiance, "If I could love her, the Good Lord could, and he won't be too hard on an old lady who didn't have an easy life.