Best 4819 quotes in «loss quotes» category

We spent the dark nights together But now Even in the light My heart and heartbeats are disconnected How can I express my sorrow That is invisible to her eyes

We spend a huge chunk of our lives worrying about whether or not we will eventually get the person and/or the things we need or want. Once we get them, we spend the rest of our lives worrying about whether or not we will eventually lose them.

We, the beggar class, have little to lose and our expectations are, at best, modest, and when we suffer, it seems we suffer to the depths, for there is nothing in our lives nor in our souls to buoy our hope. Nothing in the way of the blackness. It sinks to the bottom as the lead weight that is despair. We look forward such a short distance that our spirit is myopic, not to be corrected by any lens within our world.

We've got this idea that there are only two options in grief: you're either going to be stuck in your pain, doomed to spend the rest of your life rocking in a corner in your basement wearing sackcloth, or you're going to triumph over grief, be transformed, and come back even better than you were before. Just two options. On, off. Eternally broken or completely healed. It doesn't seem to matter that nothing else in life is like that. Somehow when it comes to grief, the entire breadth of human experience goes out the window.

We've all lost something along the way.

We treat what’s lost, what could have never been, what we could have never dreamed of, again. We treat it like heirlooms for it is so precious. For we know it can be lost, again.

We were a religious sect consisting of two people, and now half the congregation was gone. There would be no closure, no healing. I would simply adjust myself to a new and severely depleted reality. The world would come to an end, as it always does, one world at a time.

We weren’t that different after all, our souls laden with the same ache of loss, our hearts bursting with the same longing to save what remained of all we loved.

We were specks, bits of glass and dust. We were as numerous as the sands that lined the strand, one unrecognizable from the other. We were born; we lived; we died. And the cycle continued endlessly on. So many lives lived. And when we died, we simply vanished. A few generations would go by. And no one would know we even were. No one would remember the color of our eyes or the passion that raged inside us. Eventually, we all became stones in the grass, moss-covered monuments, and sometimes . . . not even that.

we whisper songs about scars trepidation before letting go.

We will, in truth, spend many of our hours alone with our grief. In the cover of our solitude, we encounter another layer in our apprenticeship with sorrow. Here we are asked to hold an extended vigil with loss in the well of silence, slowly ripening our sorrow into something dense and gifting to the world. Our ability to drop into this interior world and do the difficult work of metabolizing sorrow is dependent on the community that surrounds us. Even when we are alone, it is necessary to feel the tethers of concern and kindness holding us as we step off into the unknown and encounter the wild edge of sorrow.

We wrote our names in the sand You crossed mine out: I can't get back to the way I was.

What alteration was ever fot the better? Change meant loss.

What amazes me most is that we, as a people, have shared our collective story of being thrown out of our homeland, Palestine, with each other and with many others- actually we have bored the world with this collective story- but somehow the individual Palestinian shies away, or perhaps is too afraid, to share the very personal story of being thrown out of her or his home, living room, or bedroom. These personal stories are seldom told, not even to our own children, perhaps not even to ourselves. I guess the wound remains open.

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that... On the way downtown I stopped at a bar and had a couple of double Scotches. They didn’t do me any good. All they did was make me think of Silver-Wig, and I never saw her again.

What can I do but stand with my mouth open, no sound emerging? My lips move and I wave my arms making gestures from the other side of the glass, which I can’t penetrate. …people can speak out of anything, though the struggle takes years. The problem is, whatever I say about the present feels false-nothing contains it all, or catches the depth of things, or their terrible one-dimensionality. What am I living on? Someone said the other day, “that old irrepressible-impossible- hope.” And I thought no, this doesn’t feel like hope. But maybe that’s what hope is, no shining thing but a kind of sustenance, plain as bread, the ordinary thing that feeds us. How could we confuse this optimism, when it has nothing to do with expecting things to get better? Hope has to do with continuing, that’s all…I can imagine now, where I couldn’t before, this long erosion of faith, this steady drawing from one’s strength, until what’s left is tenuous, transparent.

What does it feel like, having a missing sister? I can tell you. You know how if you lose something valuable, a wallet or a piece of jewelry, you can’t concentrate on anything else? Well, it feels like that all the time, every day

What do you live for when everyone and everything you love is gone? Do you keep going, keep stumbling through the dark, or do you find something new to cherish? Maybe neither. Maybe you walk silently and ignore the blows time takes on your heart.

What else has kept any of us going, but love of someone or the memory of that love?

Whatever you have lost there are more of, just not yours.

What happens to us are tiny matters compared to us response to any situation.

...what happens when you return and find nothing but a hollowed shell, shingles and floor, walls and echoes and the light that lead you here has now burned out and the ones who built it have traveled afar and you cant go to them, no matter what shoes you wear.

What if I'm so broken I can never do something as basic as feed myself? Do you realize how twisted that is? It amazes me sometimes that humans still exist. We're just animals, after all. And how can an animal get so removed from nature that it loses the instinct to keep itself alive?

What his uncle does not understand is that in walking backwards, his back to the world, his back to God, he is not grieving. He is objecting. Because when everything cherished by you in life has been taken away, what else is there to do but object?

What I mean to say is, we had been considerable. Had been loved. Not lonely, not lost, not freakish, but wise, each in his or her own way. Our departures caused pain. Those who had loved us sat upon their beds, heads in hand; lowered their faces to tabletops, making animal noises. We had been loved, I say, and remembering us, even many years later, people would smile, briefly gladdened at the memory.

...what I'm saying isn't for him. If my words were for him they would be different; softer, and more meaningful. They would be whispered in his ear instead of projected to a crowd.

What I'm saying is that it's easy to take the high road so long as there aren't any stakes. But the minute you've got something to lose, a man'll do all sorts of things.

What is clear is that meaning may not be something we find. We found no meaning in our son's death, or in the deaths of countless others. The most we could hope was that we might be able to create meaning.

What is dying? I am standing on the seashore. A ship sails to the morning breeze and starts for the ocean. She is an object and I stand watching her Till at last she fades from the horizon, And someone at my side says, “She is gone!” Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all; She is just as large in the masts, hull and spars as she was when I saw her, And just as able to bear her load of living freight to its destination. The diminished size and total loss of sight is in me, not in her; And just at the moment when someone at my side says, “She is gone”, There are others who are watching her coming, And other voices take up a glad shout, “There she comes” – and that is dying.

What is coping? This is what it is like: a cave underground deep in rock, hung across its roof with accretions of dripping salts. I am cavernous and hard as mineral. The cave holds a pool of dark water that has not seen light. The water is very cold; it is undrinkable and its size is unmapped. It is mine, but people cannot see it. Only Ev sometimes senses that it is there. All the time people say that I am coping very well. It is impossible to explain my strategy to them. It is opaque even to me.

What is deeply felt is never lost.

What is gone is gone and will not come back. When the earth swallows, it swallows forever and we are left to stumble along feeling the absences. These are our burdens.

What is left when there is no love? A rope and rock.

What is it like to be a Spokane Indian without wild salmon? It is like being a Christian if Jesus had never rolled back the stone and risen from his tomb.

What I want to know is how you go on when you look around and don’t see anywhere you want to go without the only person you can’t have.

What is so sweet as to awake from a troubled dream and behold a beloved face smiling upon you? I love to believe that such shall be our awakening from earth to heaven. My faith never wavers that each dear friend I have “lost” is a new link between this world and the happier land beyond the morn. My soul is for the moment bowed down with grief when I cease to feel the touch of their hands or hear a tender word from them; but the light of faith never fades from the sky, and I take heart again, glad they are free. I cannot understand why anyone should fear death…Suppose there are a million chances against that one that my loved ones who have gone on are alive. What of it? I will take that one chance and risk mistake, rather than let any doubts sadden their souls, and find out afterward. Since there is that one chance of immortality, I will endeavor not to cast a shadow on the joy of the departed…Certainly it is one of our sweetest experiences that when we are touched by some noble affection or pure joy, we remember the dead most tenderly, and feel more powerfully drawn to them.

What I understand now about survival is that something in you dies. You don't become a survivor intact. Survival's cost is always loss.

What perishes is only really real. I twist the dial and you are everywhere.

What she had done over the past year had required an equivalent expenditure of energy to a year-long sprint, and when she thought of it that way it was obviously an unreasonable thing to do. Remaining sane--clinging and grasping at it, seeking to please a propriety constructed by people whose boyfriends had never killed themselves--was in fact the most insane thing she could have done, and anyone properly equipped by the right kind of experience would understand that.

What though the radiance which was once so bright Be now for ever taken from my sight, 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.

What's the difference?" You ask me The difference is, a smile touches my lips When I remember both the memory of you entering my life And the memory of you leaving my life

What was wrong with her? Why did things like this keep happening to her? Love wasn't supposed to hurt, yet it felt like all she knew when it came to love was pain. Every time she opened her heart, she just got burned. Or, in this case, frozen. And she was getting sick and tired of it.

What they knew of longing was that it sprang from the earth at odd moments, unplanned and unexpected, brone on different carriers. But loss was more uniform than that. It surged up and carried one along. Loss was a choir. Loss moved in harmony. It struggled heavenward. It crashed to earth.

What were you thinking of just now?” He asked instead of answering my question. He walked over to the window, stood beside me and joined me looking out. We gazed across the Elbe River, marveling at the amazing and incredible beauty spread out before us in the glorious sunny early morning. Then he continued, “When we came and opened the door, your face was so intent on some sort of a dream. Not a happy one I think,” it was a very gentle tone, the loving nuances. I saw the look of longing in his eyes and my heart skipped a crazy beat. I clasped my hand more firmly and gazed toward the view of the far line that marked the edge of the Elbe river of Hamburg Harbor. I was thinking about you- us, thinking everything about us,” Then I put my fancy into words. “I suppose I used to love the feeling of shutting out the world, of drawing a line of that water in the harbor around me and letting all the achingly familiar scenes stay outside the line. I started to cry. “It’s been years, Adrian. I kept everything in my heart because that’s what all was left; everything, absolutely everything. It’s completely messed up and you have no idea, at all. I was left alone to mourn.

What should I call you? A friend, a stranger, or a lover? I remember the day you laid your eyes on me the first time. There was just something unwavering about that moment. It wasn’t peaceful or absolute. It was definite. Something that was bound to happen. It was like as if our souls were waiting for us to collide. And oh we did! We collided like meteors, giving this universe a spectacular view. From my 2 am thought that used to keep me up at night, you soon became my 2 am call. From an almost stranger to my skin, you became a part of me. But just like every collision, ours also had to end in destruction. The 2 am call soon became a 2 am thought. The thought still keeps me up at night, but not for the same reasons. From strangers to lovers and lovers to strangers again, our journey hasn’t been ordinary. Someone asked me about you today and for a moment, I didn’t know what to call you. Who are you to me now? A friend – no. Definitely not a lover. I guess, you and I – we are just strangers with memories.

What we have loved and lost-that is our heaven not our hell.

What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

What went wrong? That is the question, and not "To be or not to be," for all of Shakespeare.

What we need to remember -- as a working practice -- is to honor all griefs. Honor all losses, small and not small. Life changing and moment changing. And then, not to compare them. That all people experience pain is not medicine for anything.

What you are to do without me I cannot imagine.