Deep Grief Quotes

It is with deep grief I watch the clattering down of the British Empire with all its glories and all the services it has rendered to mankind. ~ Winston Churchill

Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

We were talking the other evening about the phrases one uses when trying to comfort someone who is in distress. I told him that in English we sometimes say, 'I've been there.' This was unclear to him at first-I've been where? But I explained that deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific loacation, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.
'So sadness is a place?' Giovanni asked.
'Sometimes people live there for years,' I said. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

I felt a deep grief that crouched and stayed still as if it was afraid to move. ~ Iris Murdoch

It is better to drink of deep grief than to taste shallow pleasures. ~ William Hazlitt

My aloneness had never bothered me; I hadn't even been aware of it. But now it overwhelmed me. The awareness washed over me with painful sharpness and deep grief. Now that I had company. ~ Linda Olsson

It is proper to ask for sorrow with Christ in sorrow, anguish with Christ in anguish, tears and deep grief because of the great affliction Christ endures for me. ~ Saint Ignatius

Here is Abraham Lincoln's touching condolence letter to 22-year-old Fanny McCullough, the daughter of a long-time friend:

"Dear Fanny

It is with deep grief that I learn of the death of your kind and brave Father; and, especially, that it is affecting your young heart beyond what is common in such cases. In this sad world of ours, sorrow comes to all; and, to the young, it comes with bitterest agony, because it takes them unawares. The older have learned to ever expect it. I am anxious to afford some alleviation of your present distress. Perfect relief is not possible, except with time. You can not now realize that you will ever feel better. Is not this so? And yet it is a mistake. You are sure to be happy again. To know this, which is certainly true, will make you some less miserable now. I have had experience enough to know what I say; and you need only to believe it, to feel better at once. The memory of your dear Father, instead of an agony, will yet be a sad sweet feeling in your heart, of a purer and holier sort than you have known before.
Please present my kind regards to your afflicted mother.
Your sincere friend,
A. Lincoln ~ Abraham Lincoln

And can it be that in a world so full and busy the loss of one creature makes a void so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of eternity can fill it up! ~ Charles Dickens

The boy, Max Rüst, will later on become a tinker, father of seven more Rüsts, he will go to work for the firm of Hallis & Co., Plumbing and Roofing, in Grünau. At the age of 52 he will win a quarter of a prize in the Prussian Class Lottery, then he will retire from business and die during an adjustment suit which he has started against the firm of Hallis & Co., at the age of 55. His obituary will read as follows: On September, suddenly, from heart-disease, my beloved husband, our dear father, son, brother, brother-in-law, and uncle, Paul Rüst, in his 55th year. This announcement is made with deep grief on behalf of his sorrowing family by Marie Rüst. The notice of thanks after the funeral will read as follows: Acknowledgment. Being unable to acknowledge individually all tokens of sympathy in our bereavement, we hereby express our profound gratitude to all relatives, friends, as well as to the tenants of No. 4 Kleiststrasse and to all our acquaintances. Especially do we thank Herr Deinen for his kind words of sympathy. At present his Max Rüst is 14 years old, has just finished public school, is supposed to call by on his way there at the clinic for the defective in speech, the hard of hearing, the weak-visioned, the weak-minded, the in-corrigible, he has been there at frequent intervals, because he stutters, but he is getting better now. ~ Alfred Doblin

I had a sister who died and my mother passed away. I know that grief comes in waves. When deep grief hits, I know that it hurts like hell, and then you get a little bit of a respite, and then it comes back, and it hurts like hell. I know it can be survived. ~ Emily Saliers

Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone. His own burden in his own way. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Men today cannot claim their identity via culture because they are obliged to find other uninitiated males as their models or succumb to the empty values of a materialistic society. Again, before healing may begin, men must acknowledge the reality of what lies within. Among those confusing emotions is a deep grief for the loss of the personal father as companion, model and support, and a deep hunger for the fathers as a source of wisdom, solace and inspiration. ~ James Hollis

He had pulled out of that grief, eventually – out from under the suffocating weight of it. Suffering had formed him: made him silent and deliberate, thoughtful: deep. ~ Amanda Coplin

There are few sensations more painful, than, in the midst of deep grief, to know that the season which we have always associated with mirth and rejoicing is at hand. ~ Sarah Josepha Hale

The obliterated place is equal parts destruction and creation. The obliterated place is pitch black and bright light. It is water and parched earth. It is mud and it is manna. The real work of deep grief is making a home there. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Water is the most versatile of all elements. It isn't afraid to burn in fire or fade into the sky, it doesn't hesitate to shatter against sharp rocks in rainfall or drown into the dark shroud of the earth. It exists beyond all eginnings and ends. On the surface nothing will shift, but deep in underground silence, water will hide and with soft fingers coax a new channel for itself, until stone gives in and slowly settles around the secret space.
Death is water's close companion, and neither of them can be separated from us, for we are made of the versatilitiy of water and the closeness of death. Water doesn't belong to us, be we belong to water: when it has passed through our fingers and pores and bodies, nothing separates us from earth. ~ Emmi Itaranta

But please, please - won't you - can't you give me something that will cure Mother?'
Up till then he had been looking at the Lion's great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion's eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory's own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself.
'My son, my son,' said Aslan. 'I know. Grief is great. ~ C.S. Lewis

As it fantasizes, poetry comes across nature. The real, living world is the only project of the imagination which has once succeeded and which still goes on being endlessly successful. Look at it continuing, moment after moment a success. It is still real, still deep, utterly absorbing. It is not something you are disappointed in next morning. It serves the poet as example, even more than a sitter or a model. ~ Boris Pasternak

In light of religious teachings on sex, unrestricted people often feel they are fundamentally flawed. They are sinful and rebellious against god for having strong urges that go against the church's teachings. If the religious belief is deep enough, a person will not be able to look at his behavior rationally. The result can be a destructive cycle beginning with some religiously prohibited sexual behavior followed by repentance and prayer for a few weeks. Soon biological urges surface again, and he goes back to the behavior, followed by repentance once more. The process keeps him focused on guilt, not on rational ways to enjoy and express sexuality. Every time he goes through the cycle, it makes him feel less worthwhile. At the same time, the only way he can get relief is by going back to his religion. ~ Darrel Ray

She wouldn't even get the chance to say a proper goodbye. If he died before she returned, her last memory of him would be this one. ~ Kayla Krantz

Within just about every serial predator, there are two warring elements: A feeling of grandiosity, specialness, and entitlement, together with deep-seated feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness and a sense that they have not gotten the breaks in life that they should ~ John E. Douglas

It was a tremendously virile and yet sinister face which was turned towards us. With the brow of a philosopher above and the jaw of a sensualist below, the man must have started with great capacities for good or for evil. But one could not look upon his cruel blue eyes, with their drooping, cynical lids, or upon the fierce, aggressive nose and the threatening, deep-lined brow, without reading Nature's plainest danger-signals. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I think that a lot of people have a longing to move out of the present. The present is very constricting. You can't go back to your past, you can't go ahead to see what's in your future, so you have to put up with whatever is here now. People have a deep longing to think about something else and move into a fictional world and also to feel there are other possibilities than just everyday reality. I don't think time travel is actually possible, but as a metaphor it is interesting. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

Sorrow is food swallowed too quickly, caught in the throat, making it nearly impossible to breathe. ~ Jesmyn Ward

Fuka-Eri started to offer an opinion on the matter but then had second thoughts and stopped. Her opinion, unvoiced, snack back into the place it had originated from - a deep, dark, unknown place. ~ Haruki Murakami

The fresh, pungent summer smells of the forest bring me home to the natural, forgotten spiritual place deep inside me. The part of me where hope lives, where prayers are answered and life feels good. ~ Vanessa G. Foster

It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard. ~ May Sarton

Life is a voyage, and we are all sailing under sealed orders. We plan, plot, scheme and arrange, and some fine day Fate steps in and our dreams are tossed into the yeasty deep. We grin and bear it
anyway we bear it: it is the only thing to do. ~ Elbert Hubbard

The saying that beauty is but skin deep, is but a skin-deep saying. ~ Herbert Spencer

Love is an engraved invitation to grief. ~ Sunshine O'Donnell

What you said before…" He stopped and seemed to consider his words. "When you said love isn't about control…what did you mean?"
The insecurity in his voice charmed her down to her toes. "Well. I just think that love is supposed to empower, not subdue. To love someone unconditionally, is to give them the freedom to be who they are. There's no room for control. If you're telling someone who they should or
shouldn't be…well, that's not unconditional, is it? And there's no such thing as conditional love."
She waited for his response, but he stayed quiet, so she continued. "My dad always said love is like a stallion. You can try to tame it but you'll miss out on its most beautiful form." She snuggled closer to his warmth. "When it's wild and free, with no restricting fences, it can go on forever."
He didn't say anything for a moment and her lids grew heavy. His deep voice shook her awake again. "But, if you love someone, you do what's best for them."
Though he phrased it as a statement, she heard the question in his voice. "No. If you love someone, you support them in figuring out what's best for themselves. ~ Leia Shaw

She was still doing forty knots, driving in under the guns of the enemy, guns at maximum depression, when "A" magazine blew up, blasted off the entire bows in one shattering detonations. For a second, the lightened fo'c'sle reared high into the air" then it plunged down, deep down, into the shoulder of a rolling sea. She plunged down and kept on going down, driving down to the black floor of the Arctic, driven down by the madly spinning screws. The still thundering engines her own executioners. ~ Alistair MacLean

... Look, I'm real sorry about Cheryl, I know you loved her a lot," Mandy apologized gloomily. "It's wrong that people have to keep killing off Pollution."
"It's alright, I think she wants to be remediated," Alecto told her calmly, though his grief-stricken and depressed expression said more to Mandy than his words did.
"You don't have to forget Cheryl, no matter what Mearth said to you," Mandy pointed out. "People shouldn't be forced to forget what they love, or to just get over the death of what they love. Cheryl was your friend and nobody can make you forget her if you don't want to. ~ Rebecca McNutt

Good grief. They're like the freaking poster family for the NRA. ~ Elisabeth Wheatley

And yet to possess a young soul that has barely developed is a source of very deep delight. It is like a flower whose richest perfume goes out to meet the first ray of the sun. One must pluck it at that very moment and, after inhaling its perfume to one's heart's content, discard it along the wayside on the chance that someone will pick it up. I sense in myself that insatiable avidity that devours everything in its path. And I regard the sufferings and joys of others merely in relation to myself, as food to sustain my spiritual strength. Passion is no longer capable of robbing me of my sanity. My ambition has been crushed by circumstances, but it has manifested itself in a new form, for ambition is nothing but lust for power, and my greatest pleasure I derive from subordinating everything around me to my will. Is it not both the first token of power and its supreme triumph to inspire in others the emotions of love, devotion and fear? Is it not the sweetest fare for our vanity to be the cause of pain or joy for someone without the least claim thereto? And what is happiness? Pride gratified. Could I consider myself better and more powerful than anyone else in the world, I would be happy. Were everybody to love me, I'd find in myself unending wellsprings of love. Evil begets evil; one's first suffering awakens a realization of the pleasure of tormenting another. The idea of evil cannot take root in the mind of man without his desiring to apply it in practice. Someone has said th ~ Mikhail Lermontov

You love him, don't you?"
"That's an impossible question to answer."
"No it isn't," she argued. "It's a simple yes or no. You either love someone or you don't."
"I don't know. Maybe."
"Renee, maybe is not an acceptable answer. That's like saying you're a little bit pregnant and or caught a touch of breast cancer. Deep down, you know whether or not you love someone. ~ Rachel K. Burke

Sir Edmund Hillary, Everest's first conqueror, once said that the mountains gave him strength. I'd never really understood this until now. But it was intoxicating.
Something deep inside me knew that I could do this. ~ Bear Grylls

You who are journalists, writers, citizens, you have the right and duty to say to those you have elected that they must practice mindfulness, calm and deep listening, and loving speech. This is universal thing, taught by all religions. ~ Nhat Hanh

Does a special love withstand the test of time? Like the grass that overcomes a 500lb slab of sidewalk concrete or the proverbial flower that shatters the stone, can Christ overcome the barriers and deep darkness of mortal moments? ~ Rob Guinan

I knew he that he didn't have the strength to get free. His life was being driven by a kind of flywheel. He had submitted to it and accepted it. It was turning fast. To slow it down or stop it and come to a place that was moving with the motion only of time and loss and slow grief was more, that day, than he could imagine.

I knew too that it was more than he could bear. ~ Wendell Berry

They dived into the ocean of shadow and smog, adding to it with the fumes of their own aircraft. The goggles were useless now, but Jacob kept them on, in case there might be some break in the murky pool. It was fitting that the Worldwaker had passed through there, with the shark emblem painted on brightly. In those deep waters it could not be seen. It almost felt like it had lured them in. The dolphins do not hunt the sharks. ~ Dean F. Wilson

Grief is NOT a mental illness or an emotional disorder. Anyone who tells you otherwise has never experienced it for themselves. ~ Rebecca McNutt

Cam was sitting on the bed, still clothed. His head was lowered, hands braced on his knees in the posture of a man who was deep in thought. He glanced up as she came into the room and closed the door.
"What's the matter, love?"
"I ... " Amelia approached him hesitantly. "I'm afraid you won't let me have what I want."
His slow smile robbed her of breath. "I have yet to refuse you anything. I'm not likely to start now. ~ Lisa Kleypas

You have a freckle," he murmured. "Right" – he leaned down and dropped a light kiss near the inside of her elbow – "here."
"You've seen it before," she said softly. It wasn't in an immodest spot; she had plenty of frocks with short sleeves.
He chuckled. "But I've never given it it's proper due."
"Really."
"Mmm-hmm." He lifted her arm, twisting it just a bit so that he could pretend to be studying her freckle.
"It is clearly the most delightful beauty mark in all of England."
A marvelous sense of warmth and contentment melted through her. Even as her body burned for his, she could not stop herself from encouraging his teasing conversation.
"Only England?"
"Well, I haven't traveled very extensively abroad…"
"Oh, really?" "And you know…" His voice dropped to a husky growl.
"There may be other freckles right here in this room. You could have one here." He dipped a finger under the bodice of her nightgown, then moved his other hand to her hip.
"Or here."
"I might," she agreed.
"The back of your knee," he said, the words hot against her ear
. "You could have one there."
She nodded. She wasn't sure she was still capable of speech.
"One of your toes," he suggested.
"Or your back."
"You should probably check," she managed to get out.
He took a deep, shuddering breath. ~ Julia Quinn

Where shall the lover rest,
Whom the fates sever
From his true maiden's breast,
Parted for ever?
Where, through groves deep and high,
Sounds the far billow,
Where early violets die,
Under the willow. ~ Walter Scott

Faith would get her through when she had to face tomorrow, but her grief needed the tears to fall. There was healing in those tears. ~ Dee Henderson

I say that I hate you, but deep inside I love you. Love is in my mind, in my soul, and deep in my heart. As it always has been. As it always might be. ~ J.C. Reed

Saying what you think and wading into the deep end don't always have a happy ending. Difficult conversations are something of a gamble and you have to be willing to be okay with the outcome. And you have to know going in, where you draw the line.
You have to know when in the conversation you are going to say no.
You have to know when you are going to say, "That doesn't work for me."
You have to know when to say, "I'm done."
You have to know when to say, "This isn't worth it."
"You are worth it."
The more I said what I thought , the more willing to dive into the difficult conversations, the more I was willing to say yes to me, the less I was willing to allow people in my life who left me emptier and unhappier and more insecure than before I saw them.
My friend who asked for all the money isn't the last person I walked away from during the Year of Yes.
No. No that friend was not.
No. ~ Shonda Rhimes

Every time we killed a thousand Bugs at a cost of one M.I. it was a net victory for the Bugs. We were learning, expensively, just how efficient a total communism can be when used by a people actually adapted to it by evolution; the Bug commisars didn't care any more about expending soldiers than we cared about expending ammo. Perhaps we could have figured this out about the Bugs by noting the grief the Chinese Hegemony gave the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance; however the trouble with 'lessons from history' is that we usually read them best after falling flat on our chins. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Listen deep down: most life happens on scales a million times smaller than ours. ~ Richard Powers

I'm so deeply in love with you it's hard to fathom. No words could provide quantifiable resonance or measure. ~ Truth Devour

Design is really an act of communication, which means having a deep understanding of the person with whom the designer is communicating. ~ Donald A. Norman

Such is a community
of inviolable immunity, protected
from tampering or harpooning
mutiny. Every better thinker's impulse
to shrink us (at the shoreline from our
lifeblood's deep pulse) uses disparaging
scrutiny to sink us. ~ Kristen Henderson

It seems that every life form on this planet strives toward its maximum potential ... except human beings. A tree does not grow to half its potential size and then say, "l guess that will do." A tree will drive its roots as deep as possible. It will soak up as much nourishment as it can, stretch as high and as wide as nature will allow, and then look down as if to remind us of how much each of us could become if we would only do all that we can. ~ Jim Rohn

Logically she understood that everyone had something they were hiding, some hurt they kept deep inside, some reason why they were not really normal either, but she didn't understand how they functioned. She didn't understand how they got out of bed every morning or breathed in and out without the hurt weighing down their lungs. ~ Nicole Trope

The grief does not feel like what you feel about Uche, or Corundum, or Innon; those are rents in your soul that still seep blood. The loss of Alabaster is simply... a thinning of who you are. ~ N.K. Jemisin

As she took a deep breath, all she smelled was him, the scent going in her nose and blooming all over her body.
Bastard, she thought. Irresistible bastard ~ J.R. Ward

The Countess of Cambury is like a deep, dark hole - secrets go in, but none of them ever come out." "Sebastian," Violet replied, calmly looping the yarn about one of her needles, "it is neither proper nor respectful to let a woman know that you think of her as nothing more than a hole. ~ Courtney Milan

Women were different, no doubt about it. Men broke so much more quickly. Grief didn't break women. Instead it wore them down, it hollowed them out very slowly. ~ Cornelia Funke

For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them. MATTHEW 18:20 OCTOBER 14 Prayer can change your life. I strongly recommend that you learn the art or science of prayer and put it to work in your life. Now this may seem to you to be just one more religious idea, without much life or sparkle to it. But that is where you would be wrong. It is the way to life itself. When I say this of prayer I do not speak of the mere mumbling of words. I do not mean formal affirmations either, although formal prayers sometimes help and some formal prayers are touched with the glory of God. What I mean is a deep, fundamental, powerful relationship of the individual to God, whereby his whole mind and heart become changed and he receives power from God within himself. I have seen such prayer change the lives of many. God's peace deeply imbedded in your mind can often have a more tranquilizing and healing effect upon nerves and tension than medicine. God's peace is itself medicinal. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

It's what happens when two people become one: they no longer only share love. They also share all of the pain, heartache, sorrow, and grief. ~ Colleen Hoover

In sandy soil, when deep you delve, you reach the springs below; The more you learn, the freer streams of wisdom flow. ~ Thiruvalluvar

How often, on this great spinning ball where we're all just struggling to lead our tiny lives, do you get to see evidence of God's grace and know, the way you know your name, that at least for a little while, maybe just a few seconds, you can stop worrying, and take a deep breath, because things are all right? ~ Natalie Baszile

There are few sights sadder than a ruined book. ~ Lemony Snicket