quotations about grief
It is foolish to tear one's hair in grief, as if grief could be lessened by baldness.
CICERO
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Tusculan Disputations
Grief does not change you.... It reveals you.
JOHN GREEN
The Fault in Our Stars
There should be a statute of limitation on grief. A rulebook that says it is all right to wake up crying, but only for a month. That after 42 days you will no longer turn with your heart racing, certain you have heard her call out your name. That there will be no fine imposed if you feel the need to clean out her desk; take down her artwork from the refrigerator; turn over a school portrait as you pass - if only because it cuts you fresh again to see it. That it's okay to measure the time she has been gone, the way we once measured her birthdays.
JODI PICOULT
My Sister's Keeper
Self carries grief as a pack mule carries the side bags,
being careful between the trees to leave extra room.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"Burlap Sack"
It's funny, how one can look back on a sorrow one thought one might well die of at the time, and know that one had not yet reckoned the tenth part of true grief.
JACQUELINE CAREY
Kushiel's Dart
I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Return of the King
Excess of grief for the deceased is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not.
XENOPHON
attributed, Day's Collacon
Patch grief with proverbs; make misfortune drunk
With candle-wafters; bring him yet to me,
And I of him will gather patience.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Much Ado About Nothing
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
Unhappiness is selfish, grief is selfish. For whom are the tears?
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Written on the Body
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
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
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
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 and guilt. A powerful combination. Guilt like a liquid, a thin liquor, seeping everywhere, informing everything, saturating the whole--corrosive, like seawater, scented with the rich stench of ordure and corruption, and carrying with it hard, abrasive shards of grief.
SIMON MAWER
The Gospel of Judas
Joys as winged dreams fly fast,
Why should sadness longer last?
Grief is but a wound to woe;
Gentlest fair, mourn, mourn no moe.
JOHN FLETCHER
The Queen of Corinth
Grief never mended no broken bones.
CHARLES DICKENS
Sketches by Boz
Perhaps there is a limit to the grieving that the human heart can do. As when one adds salt to a tumbler of water, there comes a point where simply no more will be absorbed.
SARAH WATERS
The Little Stranger
It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
The Brothers Karamazov