Grieving Quotes

Those things that hurt, instruct. ~ M. Scott Peck

And when I hear it said that God is good and He will pardon us, and then see that men cease not from evil-doing, oh, how it grieves me! The infinite goodness with which God communicates with us, sinners as we are, should constantly make us love and serve Him better; but we, on the contrary, instead of seeing in his goodness an obligation to please Him, convert it into an excuse for sin which will of a certainty lead in the end to our deeper condemnation. ~ Catherine Of Genoa

You can stay here with your papa and die or you can go with me ... You'll be all right. ~ Cormac McCarthy

TWENTY SMALL GRAVES

There was a woman who bore a child almost every year, but the children never lived longer

than six months. Usually after three or four months they would die. She grieved long and

publicly. "I take on the work of pregnancy for nine months, but the joy vanishes quicker

than a rainbow." Twenty children went like that, in fevers to their small graves. One night

she had a revelation. She saw the place of unconditional love, call it the garden or source

of gardens. The physical eye cannot see its unseeable light. Lamp, green flower, these

are just comparisons, so that some of the love-bewildered may catch a fragrance. The woman

saw pure grace and, drunk with the seeing, fell to the ground. Those who have the vision said

then, "This morning meal is for those who rise with sincere devotion. The tragedies you've

had came from other times when you did not take refuge." "Lord, give me more grief.

Tear me to pieces, if it leads here." She said this and walked into the presence

she had seen. Her children were all there, "Lost to me," she cried, "but not to you."

Without this great grieving no one can enter the spirit. ~ Rumi

Cripple crow say something for our grieving, where do we go once we start leaving. Well close that wound or else keep on bleeding and change your tune, it's got no meaning. ~ Devendra Banhart

Loving God means rejoicing in God, being eager to think of and pray to God. It means being glad to be in God's presence and to be with God alone. It means not grieving God, but rejoicing in God simply because it is God who is involved, and because we are permitted to know and have God, and to speak with and live with God. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?
But if a spiral, am I going up or down it?
How often
will it be for always?
how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time. ~ C.S. Lewis

Grief lasts longer than sympathy, which is one of the tragedies of the grieving. ~ Elizabeth McCracken

I just finished reading it [Tanner's Grief] and found it showed many sides of grief...often never talked about. Shared it with two friends yesterday...one has a friend that has been grieving many losses but too busy to stop and feel it. Personally I have believed unresolved grief is what's behind all of the anger, mass killings, hate etc.. So many are crying out but not allowing themselves to really cry through the inner pain and anguish as we are created to do as humans. I have seen this working with kids in schools...with hospice patients as chaplain, in spiritual direction one-on-one and pastoring a church. This is the first novelook I have ever read Abby that deals with grief
in a way that can help those reading it have hope they can do this...and not believe they have to do it alone or with those in their family or friends. Getting the help they need isn't being unfaithful to anyone.

--A Retired Minister ~ Abby Osman

Getting over someone is a grieving process. You mourn the loss of the relationship, and that's only expedited by 'Out of sight, out of mind.' But when you walk outside and see them on a billboard or on TV or on the cover of a magazine, it reopens the wound. It's a high-class problem, but it's real. ~ Hank Azaria

Sometimes we grieve the living more than the dead. ~ Lawren Leo

If you are working with a therapist counselor social worker grief expert minister priest or anyone else who is trying to help you navigate the wilderness of grief and they start talking about the groundbreaking observations of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross suggesting there is an orderly predictable unfolding of grief please please please. Do yourself a favor. Leave. People who are dying often experience five stages of grief: denial anger bargaining depression and acceptance. They are grieving their impending death. This is what Elizabeth Kubler Ross observed. People who are learning to live with the death of a beloved have a different process. It isn't the same. It isn't orderly. It isn't predictable. Grief is wild and messy and unpredictable ~ Tom Zuba

So goodbye, I'll be leaving, I see no sense in this crying and grieving. We'll both live a lot longer, if you live without me. ~ Linda Ronstadt

Feel sorry for yourself.
Sure, your tiny steel-ribbed mother told you never to do that,
But who the hell is going to do it for you?
"Piangi, piangi," the old man in the opera tells Violetta.
"Cry, honey, cry." Do it right.
Do it yourself. ~ Lise Menn

What the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over. ~ Juan Gabriel Vasquez

She scanned the Starveil posts, her mood darkening. Spartan had been a part of her life since elementary school. Losing him felt like having a piece of herself torn away. No amount of fix-it fics or alternate universes could change the fact her one true character had died. ~ Danika Stone

The malefactor is you. And so I would like to know who you are, what you are, where you are, whence you are, and what good you do, for you to possess so much power and to have challenged me so evilly without warning, desolated my bliss-covered meadow, undermined and brought down my tower of strength.

Ah God, Consoler of all afflicted hearts, console and compensate me, this poor, grieving, miserable, lone-sitting man! Send, Lord, plagues; undertake retaliation; shackle and eradicate abominable Death, Your enemy, and enemy to all! Truly, Lord, there is nothing in Your creation more heinous, nothing more hideous, nothing more cruel, nothing more unjust, than Death! He distresses and destroys Your entire earthly realm; he takes the upright away before the dishonest; the harmful, the old, the infirm, the useless, he often leaves here; the good and the useful, he carries all of them off. Pass judgement, Lord, just judgement on the false judge! ~ Johannes Von Saaz

On the fences the shiny blackbirds with red epaulets clicked their dry call. The meadowlarks sang like water, and the wild doves, concealed among the bursting leaves of the oaks, made a sound of restrained grieving. ~ John Steinbeck

This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners." Between that word "save" and the next word "sinners," there is no adjective. It does not say, "penitent sinners,"" awakened sinners,"" sensible sinners," "grieving sinners," or alarmed sinners." No, it only says "sinners," and I know this, that when I come, I come to Christ to-day, for I feel it is as much a necessity of my life to come to the cross of Christ to- day as it was to come ten years ago, - when I come to him I dare not come as a conscious sinner or an awakened sinner, but I have to come still as a sinner with nothing in my hands. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I understand that you are still grieving. But we will always be grieving. ~ Michelle Moran

Formerly, people used to grieve over the departed, but in our days they grieve over the survivors. ~ Saib Tabrizi

Though it may be more romantic to picture the bereaved as gaunt, I imagine you can grieve as efficiently with chocolates as with tap water. ~ Lionel Shriver

It's different when the person you love dies. There's an awful finality to death. But it is final. The end. And there's the funeral, family gatherings, grieving, all of those necessary rituals. And they help, believe me. When the object of your love just disappears, there's no way to deal with the grief and pain. ~ Barbara Taylor Bradford

Miscarrying is a horrible painful event. That just felt like something that needed to be addressed. I am by no means prescribing how people grieve. I am just saying it's painful, it's not your fault and it's so common. Well if it's so common - let's talk about it and open a dialogue where people know what to say to you. ~ Laura Benanti

She had dispersed. She was the garden at Prem Nivas (soon to be entered into the annual Flower Show), she was Veena's love of music, Pran's asthma, Maan's generosity, the survival of some refugees four years ago, the neem leaves that would preserve quilts stored in the great zinc trunks of Prem Nivas, the moulting feather of some pond-heron, a small unrung brass bell, the memory of decency in an indecent time, the temperament of Bhaskar's great-grandchildren. Indeed, for all the Minsisster of Revenue's impatience with her, she was his regret.
And it was right that she should continue to be so, for he should have treated her better while she lived, the poor, ignorant, grieving fool. ~ Vikram Seth

I feel . . . low," I say, looking away. "Like, literally low. Flat. It's not . . . sad, exactly. I mean, sad too, obviously. But that's a different feeling, I guess."

She nods. "There's a reason it's called 'depression' and not 'chronic sadness' or 'manic sorrow.'" She picks up a foam stress ball and squeezes it, leaving imprints of her fingers. "Depressions like these are holes left behind by a physical force. With mental depression, the force can be chemical or situational or both, but it doesn't just make a hole--it presses you into one that feels impossible to escape. ~ Kate Hart

Permission is the key that unlocks the door that's been holding us trapped, muzzled, and stifled in our grief. Permission is the opposite of rejection. Permission is the opposite of abandonment. Permission lifts the weight, eases the pressure, and loosens the reins. ~ Shelby Forsythia

Is a person worth more because they have someone to grieve for them? ~ Melina Marchetta

And, I think, this greening does thaw at the edges, at least, of my own cold season. Joy sneaks in: listening to music, riding my bicycle, I catch myself feeling, in a way that's as old as I am but suddenly seems unfamiliar, light. I have felt so heavy for so long. At first I felt odd- as if I shouldn't be feeling this lightness, that familiar little catch of pleasure in the heart which is inexplicable, though a lovely passage of notes or the splendidly turned petal of a tulip has triggered it. It's my buoyancy, part of what keeps me alive: happy, suddenly with the concomitant experience of a sonata and the motion of the shadows of leaves. I have the desire to be filled with sunlight, to soak my skin in as much of it as I can drink up, after the long interior darkness of this past season, the indoor vigil, in this harshest and darkest of winters, outside and in. ~ Mark Doty

And in some of the houses, people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered. What really mattered in life, what gave it weight, was death. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

All thy old woes shall now smile on thee, and thy pains sit bright on thee. All thy sorrows here shall shine and thy sufferings be divine; Tears shall take comfort and turn to gems and wrongs repent to diadems Even thy deaths shall live and new dress the soul that once they slew. ~ Richard Crashaw

Don't let anyone make you feel guilty because you are still grieving. Grief is a slow process and often takes as long as two years to complete its healing work. That doesn't mean that you will always hurt this badly, but it does mean that you should give yourself permission to take as much time as you need to work through your loss. ~ Richard Exley

How heavy do I journey on the way,
When what I seek (my weary travel's end)
Doth teach that ease and that repose to say,
"Thus far the miles are measur'd from thy friend."
The beast that bears me, tired with my woe,
Plods [dully] on, to bear that weight in me,
As if by some instinct the wretch did know
His rider lov'd not speed, being made from thee.
The bloody spur cannot provoke him on,
That sometimes anger thrusts into his hide,
Which heavily he answers with a groan,
More sharp to me than spurring to his side,
For that same groan doth put this in my mind:
My grief lies onward and my joy behind. ~ William Shakespeare

It always grieves me to contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of life when they are scarcely more than infants. It checks their confidence and simplicity, two of the best qualities that heaven gives them, and demands that they share our sorrows before they are capable of entering into our enjoyments. ~ Charles Dickens

...human beings need someone friendly to listen to them when they're grieving. So feel free to talk to me. I will be friendly. You have nice shoes."
"Is that the only thing you notice about people?"
"I've always wanted shoes. They're the sole piece of clothing that makes any sense, assuming ideal environmental conditions. They don't play into your strange and nonsensical taboos about not letting anyone see your - "
"Is this really the only thing you can think of to comfort someone who is grieving?"
"It was number one on my list." Great.
"The list has seven million entries. Do you want to hear number two?"
"Is it silence?"
"That didn't even make the list."
"Move it to number two."
"All right, I . . . Oh. ~ Brandon Sanderson

By day the banished sun circles the earth like a grieving mother with a lamp. ~ Cormac McCarthy

Long past the moment when her neck begins to stiffen and ache, she continues to stare into the darkness, even though none of the human secrets she needs to know are to be found in the stars but rather closer to the earth her boots stand upon. ~ Larry Watson

In the chain of events, it is arbitrary to be sentimental about the passing of any one link. ~ Johnny Rich

Most of all I grieve for my soul because even though I do, finally, believe there is a God, and that I have met him, I do not know if he has given me an immortal soul, but only one that was to last me as long as my body lasted. I do not know if when the last page of my book is closed, that will be the end of me. ~ Christopher Pike

that a lot of what happens in our lives is predetermined and that the only way forward is to accept what has happened and to move on. Who knew, perhaps what destiny had in store would be better than what one is grieving over now. ~ A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

I became very good at protecting all who would ask.
How are you?
I'm all right. I'm fine. I'm hanging in there. I'm feeling OK. Thanks for asking. I'm good. I'm doing well. I'm a little tired. I'm handling things. I'm fine, thanks to all of you. I'm getting better. I'm keeping busy. I'm making progress. Fine, better, well, good and thank you for asking. ~ Christine Silverstein

I'm often uncomfortable taking pictures, especially if people are grieving, or hurt, or hungry. At such times I have to remind myself that I'm a photographer and that this is my job. ~ Eugene Richards

I spoke of the tragic illusion of perpetuity, but, no, my friends, it is a comic one. The ludicrous plot in which we are all trapped. The ancient Greeks referred to plot as mythos, attributing the random drift of human affairs to some sort of unknowable but glimpsable divine motion, attempting to attach a certain grandeur to it, the delusion of meaning. But we are characters who do not exist, in a story composed by no one from nothing. Can anything be more pitiable? No wonder we all are grieving. ~ Robert Coover

It is regret for the absence of his loved one which causes a mourner to grieve: yet it is clear that this in itself is bearable enough; for we do not weep at their being absent or intending to be absent during their lifetime, although when they leave our sight we have no more pleasure in them. What tortures us, therefore, is an idea. ~ Seneca

When all you have left of the people you love are things, then the things become really important. ~ J.W. Lynne

My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself. ~ C.S. Lewis

You will be able to check envy if you rejoice with the man whom you envy whenever he rejoices, and grieve whenever he grieves. ~ Maximus The Confessor

You don't go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always will be. ~ Nigella Lawson

If you are not grieving, you are not conscious. But if you are not rejoicing in the possibilities of how this could all change, then you are not looking through the filter of the greatest spiritual perspicacity. ~ Marianne Williamson

You're in the arms of the Angels; may you find some comfort here. ~ Sarah McLachlan

I know now what was happening to me, what was overwhelming me, what was about to consume and almost destroy me. Didier had even given me a name for it - assassin grief, he'd once called it: the kind of grief that lies in wait and attacks you from ambush, with no warning and no mercy. I know now that assassin grief can hide for years and then strike suddenly on the happiest day, without discernible reason or exegesis. But on that day, ... almost a year after Khader's death, I couldn't understand the dark and trembling mood that was moving in me, swelling to the sorrow I'd too long denied. I couldn't understand it, so i tried to fight it as a man fights pain or despair. But you can't bite down on assassin grief and will it away. The enemy stalks you, step for step, and knows your every move before you make it. The enemy is your own grieving heart and, when it strikes, it can't miss. ~ Gregory David Roberts

Remember again the principle: We will never be over those things that God has set under us until we learn to be under those things that God has placed over us. There is strength through surrender. Are you under the Word of God? Is the Bible your mandate for life? Are you loving it, reading it, obeying it, and living it? Are you consciously filled with the Holy Spirit? Have you yielded every part of the temple of your body to him? Are you grieving him in any way? Are you graciously submitting to those human authorities that God has set over you: in the home, in the church, in civil government, and in the workplace? Have you made Jesus Christ the absolute Lord over everything in your life? ~ Adrian Rogers

At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself that if I failed, at least I took a few trees down with me. ~ David Sedaris

We seem wired to grieve with greenery. Allowing the dead to dissolve into the earth, to become part of the cycle of the seasons, has, for millennia, held the promise of cheating mortality. ~ Simon Schama

I know what you are thinking. You can't now fathom ever forgetting to think about me. You're afraid that if you move forward, it will take you further away from me. This is a common misconception shared by many people and it delays their healing... It keeps you stuck in you grief and it's only because you are still clinging to me. You think if you stop grieving that you will lose me. Maybe you even feel if you let go of me that you are abandoning me; maybe you feel that you will hurt my feelings because if it were the other way around you would not ever want me to forget about you. You are afraid that if you love again that you will grow away from me.
I am Here! I am here, waiting to run to you when the time comes. It's unconditional. It's forever. ~ Kate McGahan

Good for you, Jason. It's perfectly natural to be angry with your mother for dying. Everybody who loses someone special goes through that. It's just part of the grieving process. ~ Han Nolan

Mankind is an unco squad And muckle he may grieve thee. ~ Robert Burns

This girl. In love with the boy she can't have. Grieving the death of her father, only to find out she's about to grieve the death of the only adult left in her life? This girl who's being told she can't keep the only family member she has left? ~ Colleen Hoover

Remember that a woman who has given birth to a dead child has given birth and is recovering physically, too. Don't be afraid of grieving parents. ~ Elizabeth McCracken

I didn't realize I was still grieving for my father at 30-something. ~ Natalie Cole

Parting is inevitably painful, even for a short time. It's like an amputation, I feel a limb is being torn off, without which I shall be unable to function. And yet, once it is done ... life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid and fuller than before. ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh

With climate change, of course there are things to grieve. I certainly grieved that the vision that I had for my life, that I would be a clinical psychologist and write books and have a family, that that was not going to happen, because if the world is collapsing around you, it just doesn't seem that appealing anymore. ~ Margaret D. Klein

People might be angry, stressed, or grieving over a broken heart - and in the latter case, they might think they're depressed and in need of medicines and drugs - but they're not. They're just suffering from a broken heart, and there have been broken hearts ever since the world began, ever since man discovered that mysterious thing called Love. ~ Paulo Coelho

Do not grieve over the temptations you suffer. When the Lord intends to bestow a particular virtue on us, He often permits us first to be tempted by the opposite vice. Therefore, look upon every temptation as an invitation to grow in a particular virtue and a promise by God that you will be successful, if only you stand fast. ~ Philip Neri

All he wanted was enough time to consider all his options without being dragged into his household's petty squabbles or being nagged by his wife about that damnable pilgrimage. Was that so much to ask?
Apparently so, for he'd yet to find a peaceful moment at Caen, not with Marguerite sulking and Aimar lurking and Will acting put-upon and Geoff wanting to lay plans and Richard strutting around as if he were the incarnation of Roland and poor Tilda grieving over Maman's absence and his father refusing to heed any voice but his own. ~ Sharon Kay Penman

Grief is tremendous, but love is bigger. You are grieving because you loved truly. The beauty in that is greater than the bitterness of death. Allowing this into your consciousness will not keep you from suffering, but it will help you survive the next day. ~ Cheryl Strayed

There was a silence and then Alice, the oldest person in the room, cleared her throat. Alice has watery eyes and fluffy white hair and favors sweatpants and sweatshirts with glittery stars and flowers. Alice lost her mother when she was ten. That is a whole lifetime without a mother, to get used to not having a mother, and yet here she is. All these years later. Still grieving.

Alice said, "Write me a letter telling me how to live for the rest of my life without you." She paused.

"That was sixty-four years ago, and I still would like to know."

I'm writing this down because someday I will be Alice, with a whole lifetime spent without a mother, a lifetime of walking around with a Grand Canyon of grief in my heart, and people should know what that feels like. ~ Kathleen Glasgow

I measure every grief I meet with narrow, probing eyes - I wonder if it weighs like mine - or has an easier size. ~ Emily Dickinson

Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life. ~ Jack Kerouac

Why write wrong if the writing won't right the wrong? (90) ~ Sandra M. Gilbert

Then away out in the woods I heard that kind of a sound that a ghost makes when it wants to tell about something that's on its mind and can't make itself understood, and so can't rest easy in its grave, and has to go about that way every night grieving.
As you value your life or your reason keep away from the moor. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

I didn't get to grow up and pull away from her and bitch about her with my friends and confront her about the things I'd wished she'd done differently and then get older and understand that she had done the best she could and realize that what she had done was pretty damn good and take her fully back into my arms again. Her death had obliterated that. It had obliterated me. It had cut me short at the very heigh of my youthful arrogance. It had forced me to instantly grow up and forgive her every motherly fault at the same time that it kept me forever a child, my life both ended and begun in that premature place where we'd left off. She was my mother, but I was motherless. I was trapped by her, but utterly alone. She would always be the empty bowl that no one could full. I'd have to fill it myself again and again and again. ~ Cheryl Strayed

You have no idea how grief will take you. The same with severe illness, motherhood, any profound experience. You don't know yourself. Others don't know you. These events show who you are. And you'll be surprised, shocked even. You'll feel the way you feel when you've done a particularly offensive-smelling shit – That couldn't possibly have come out of me – and start to rationalize it – Must be that bag of pistachios I ate earlier, or perhaps I am unwell. You can't believe you could do something so foul and unrecognizable. Something so outside yourself. ~ Viv Albertine

I was working in, being a single parent with a grieving child of five years old. It was horrendous. I couldn't go out much, because I had my daughter to look after. So people used to come round, and Tony Harrington from The Wire came round. ~ David Toop

For survivors, the word closure often connotes that the bereaved are underachievers who flunked a grief course. ~ Earl A Grollman

Sometimes when you grieve, you grieve at a time where you don't really expect it. You might hear a song or you might smell something or see something that might trigger something, and all of a sudden you get hit with this rush of emotion. ~ Michael B. Jordan

Vagina Warriors are done being victims. They know no one is coming to rescue them. They would not want to be rescued. They have experienced their rage, depression, desire for revenge, and they have transformed them through grieving and service. They have confronted the depth of their darkness. They live in their bodies. They are community makers. They bring everyone in. They have a keen ability to live with ambiguity. They can hold two opposite thoughts at the same time. ~ Eve Ensler

That was the problem with grieving one child in a family with other children. In my despair over losing Riley, I'd lost my daughter too. ~ Leslie A. Gordon

My friends and family had put the bedroom back together and I woke the next morning thinking, for one brief second, that it was just another beautiful early-spring day. As I sat up, though, my body began to weep even before my mind recognized the cause for grieving. The world would never be the same. Everything I would make from that day on would recall how it had changed. Everything I did for myself would be in the name of what we had been. ~ Bill T. Jones

All those who try to go it sole alone, Too proud to be beholden for relief, Are absolutely sure to come to grief. ~ Robert Frost

It is time to teach society on how to be empathetic with people grieving. ~ Nathalie Himmelrich

I've seen fire and I've seen rain I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend But I always thought that I'd see you again. ~ James Taylor

I feel myself driven towards an end that I do not know. As soon as I shall have reached it, as soon as I shall become unnecessary, an atom will suffice to shatter me. Till then, not all the forces of mankind can do anything against me. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Certainly I see no reason why society should prevent grieving parents from having a baby cloned from the cells of a dead child if they wish. ~ Gregory Benford

It's not that easy. Loss needs to be experienced. It should be felt in all it's beautiful and horrible ways. When your heart is shredded like fraying fabric and dangling in pieces, the scotch tape method isn't going to work long term. Careful stitching and honest grieving is necessary to put things back into place. Maybe not perfectly, but at least in a way so you can breathe again. ~ Chelsea Tolman

But we are not going to talk about that right now, because to talk about it I'll have to think about it, and I've thought it to death over the last year. There are parts of my brain that are still tirelessly thinking about it, about her, an entire research and development department wholly dedicated to finding new ways to grieve and mourn and feel sorry for myself. And let me tell you, they're good at what they do down there. So I'll leave them to it. ~ Jonathan Tropper

We cry in our own rooms, remembering a man who will never be here again.The house creaks. Maybe it feels the weight of our grief, maybe the floorboards are buckling because the burden is too heavy. ~ Rochelle Maya Callen

And they will pause just for an instant, and give a sigh to me, and think, "Poor girl!" believing they do great justice to my memory by this. But they will never, never realize that it was my single opportunity of existence, as well as of doing my duty, which they are regarding; they will not feel that what to them is but a thought, easily held in those two words of pity, "Poor girl!" was a whole life to me, as full of hours, minutes, and peculiar minutes, of hopes and dreads, smiles, whisperings, tears, as theirs: that it was my world, what is to them their world, and that in that life of mine, however much I cared for them, only as the thought I seem to them to be. Nobody can enter into another's nature truly, that's what is so grievous. ~ Thomas Hardy

Should prosperity befall thee, rejoice not, and should abasement come upon thee, grieve not, for both shall pass away and be no more. ~ Bahaullah

In the first year of my grief, there were times when I felt like hiding my personal story of loss and other times when I wanted to wear a sign on my body that read "Be nice to me, I'm grieving," or "Don't tick me off; I've already got the world on my shoulders," or maybe even "BEWARE - don't upset the widow!" I needed a variety of signs that I could switch out depending on my daily mood. ~ Elizabeth Berrien

What does it mean that we find victims who suffer with dignity more attractive than victims who don't? What does it mean that we don't mind it when perpetrators, torn apart by their own experiences, weep openly - but we are rendered uncomfortable when victims do the same? I don't mean that each and every person has this experience: many of us feel like weeping when we see the carnage created by a suicide bombing and the grieving and shocked faces of the survivors. I mean instead that in all I have read, I detect a strong cultural bias toward aversion when confronted with victims who act as if they have suffered.
[…]
"Fragile, powerless, and helpless victims make us uncomfortable, evoke complicated responses in us, and make it hard for us to empathize with the humiliation they underwent.
[…]
one claim I make in different ways in the book - and very explicitly in chapter 3 - is that to be really credible, a victim has to appear to have mastered his or her suffering. ~ Carolyn J. Dean

Though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve. ~ William Shakespeare

What right have I to grieve, who have not ceased to wonder? ~ Henry David Thoreau

You can grieve for me the week before I die, if I'm scared and hurting, but when I gasp that last fleeting breath and my immortal soul flees to heaven, I'm going to be jumping over fire hydrants down the golden streets, and my biggest concern, if I have any, will be my wife back here grieving. When I die, I will be identified with Christ's exaltation. But right now, I'm identified with His affliction. ~ R.C. Sproul

Her death ... brought me as nothing else could do to know and end my jealousy of God. It saved her faith from assault. ~ Sheldon Vanauken

Time heals nothing. It only brings other issues and tissues, and takes what is incurable or unacceptable out of the center of our attention. ~ Ana Claudia Antunes

Would it not grieve a woman to be over-mastered by a piece of valiant dust? to make an account of her life to a clod of wayward marle? ~ William Shakespeare

I never realized that grief and self-pity weren't the same thing. I thought grieving was what I was doing all this time I had been feeling sorry for myself, but it wasn't. So for the first time in nearly three years, I let myself grieve. ~ Katja Millay

I'll have to build a widow's walk," she said, and then she looked at Aggie and smiled so Aggie knew that she could smile, too, that the rest of their lives wouldn't be all sadness and loss. ~ Katrina Leno

Fashion is only complete when it is worn by ordinary people who exist now, managing their lives, loving and grieving. ~ Yohji Yamamoto