Quotes for coping with death
64 Quotes After Grief and Life After Loss Whats your Grief
Here are 64 (okay fine, 63) quotes about grief, coping, and life after loss. Although we love a good grief quote, Litsa and I were slow to join in on the quote-pic phenomenon. The internet just seemed plastered with inspirational platitudes pasted on pictures of sunsets and rainbows. It all seemed so trite and reductive we decided not to add to the noise. Then we got over ourselves because, well, a good quote serves many purposes. A quote helps us put our own thoughts and feelings into perspective. It allows us to use the words of others to communicate or to convey a message. It helps us to feel a sense of commonality when we find our feelings, experiences, and observations match those of another. We hope something here resonates with you (and feel free to steal and share any of these images with your grieving family and friends).
“The times you lived through, the people you shared those times with; Nothing brings it all to life like an old mix tape. It does a better job of storing up memories than actual brain tissue can do. Every mix tape tells a story. Put them together, and they can add up to the story of a life.”
~ Rob Sheffield, Love is a Mix Tape
“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.”
~ Thomas Campbell
“When I think of death, and of late the idea has come with alarming frequency, I seem at peace with the idea that a day will dawn when I no longer be among those living in this valley of strange humors.
I can accept the idea of my own demise, but I am unable to accept the death of anyone else.
I find it impossible to let a friend or relative go into that country to no return.
Disbelief becomes my close companion, and anger follows in its wake.
I answer the heroic question ‘Death, where is thy sting?’ with ‘It is here in my heart and mind and memories.'”
~ Maya Angelou, When I Think of Death
“At the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of summer, we remember them.
”
~ Sylvan Kamens & Rabbi Jack Reimer
“Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?”
~ Terry Pratchett
“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.”
~ Havelock Ellis
“God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.”
~ J.M. Barrie
“It’s so curious; One can resist tears and ‘behave’ very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then someone makes you a friendly sign behind a window, or one notices that a flower that was in bud only yesterday has suddenly blossomed, or a letter slips from a drawer… and everything collapses.”
~ Colette
“There are no happy endings. Endings are the saddest part, so just give me a happy middle and a very happy start.”
~ Shel Silverstein
“Should you shield the valleys from the windstorms, you would never see the beauty of their canyons.”
~ Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
“Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone.
”
~ Rodgers and Hammerstein, Carousel
“On this bald hill the new year hones its edge.
Faceless and pale as china
The round sky goes on minding its business.
Your absence is inconspicuous,
Nobody can tell what I lack.”
~ Sylvia Plath, Parliament Hill Fields
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built of a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touches some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.”
~ Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
“When we have joy we crave to share; We remember them.”
~ Sylvan Kamens & Rabbi Jack Riemer
“Make the most of your regrets; Never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it ’til it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.”
~ Henry David Thoreau
“I’ll be seeing you
In all the old familiar places
That this heart of mine embraces
All day through.
”
~ Billie Holiday, I’ll Be Seeing You
“One more day
One more time
One more sunset, maybe I’d be satisfied
But then again
I know what it would do
Leave me wishing still, for one more day with you.”
~ Diamond Rio, One More Day
“You gave me a forever within the numbered days…”
~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
“I would always look for clues to her in books and poems, I realized. I would always search for the echoes of the lost person, the scraps of words and breath, the silken ties that say, ‘Look: She existed.'”
~ Meghan O’Rourke, Story’s End
“14 years.
My longest relationship.
My only experience of maternal love.
My constant companon.
My best friend.
Duck.”
~ Sarah Silverman, On Her Dog Duck
“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.
”
~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Look closely and you will see almost everyone carrying bags of cement on their shoulders.
That’s why it takes courage to get out of bed in the morning and climb into the day.”
~ Edward Hirsch
“Losing my mother at such an early age is the scar of my soul. But I feel like it ultimately made me into the person I am today. I understand the journey of life. I had to go through what I did to be here.”
~ Mariska Hargity
“My father didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.”
~ Clarence Budington Kelland
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
~ C.S. Lewis
“Ain’t no shame in holding on to grief… as long as you make room for other things too.”
~ “Bubbles,” The Wire
“She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with It as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.”
~ George Eliot
“The holiest of holidays are those kept by ourselves in silence and apart: The secret anniversaries of the heart.
”
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“When a child dies, you bury the child in your heart.”
~ Korean Proverb
“If I die before you
which is all but certain
then in the moment
before you will see me
become someone dead
in a transformation
as quick as a shooting star’s
I will cross over into you
and ask you to carry
not only your own memories
but mine too until you
too lie down and erase us
both together into oblivion.”
~ Galway Kinnell, Promissory Note
“It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on.”
~ Joni Mitchell, River
“Hope
Smiles from the threshold of the year to come,
Whispering ‘It will be happier’…”
~ Alfred Tennyson
“When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows.
”
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.
“When you die, it does not mean that you lose to cancer. You beat cancer by how you live, why you live, and in the manner in which you live.”
~ Stuart Scott
“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”
~ Khalil Gibran
“Grief sucks.”
~ Everyone Ever
“It takes strength to make your way through grief, to grab hold of life and let it pull you forward.”
~ Patti Davis
“The healing power of even the most microscopic exchange with someone who knows in a flash precisely what you’re talking about because she experienced that thing too cannot be overestimated.”
~ Cheryl Strayed
“What separates us from animals, what separates us from the chaos, is our ability to mourn people we’ve never met.”
~ David Levithan
“Someday soon, we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then,
We’ll have to muddle through somehow.
”
~ Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it is not the same river and he is not the same man.”
~ Heraclitus
“Next person that minimizes my grief is getting a swift kick to the shin.”
“Well, every one can master a grief but he that has it.”
~ William Shakespeare
“So when you need her touch
And loving gaze
Gone but not forgotten
Is the perfect phrase
Smiling from a star
That she makes glow
Trust she’s always there
Watching as you grow
Find her in the place
Where the lost things go.”
~ The Place Where Lost Things Go, Mary Poppin Returns
“If there ever comes a day where we can’t be together, keep me in your heart. I’ll stay there forever.”
~ A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh
“The whole world can become the enemy when you lose what you love.”
~ Kristina McMorris, Bridge of Scarlett Leaves
“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.
”
~ C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
“I will not say:
Do not weep;
For not all tears are evil.”
~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.”
~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler
“Give the sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”
~ William Shakespeare, Macbeth
“The song is ended, but the melody lingers on.”
~ Irving Berlin
“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine,
That all the world will be in love with night,
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
~ William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
“The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague.
Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?”
~ Edgar Allan Poe
“Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.”
~ Alphonse de Lamartine, Méditations Poétiques
“Love is really the only thing we can possess, keep with us, and take with us.”
~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.”
~ Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
“Death ends a life, not a relationship.”
~ Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie
“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”
~ Viktor E. Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
“They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies.”
~ William Penn
“Life has to end.
Love doesn’t.”
~ Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
“And once the storm is over you won’t remember you how made it through, how you managed to survive.
You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what the storm’s all about.”
~ Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
“What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us.”
~ Helen Keller
Have a favorite grief quote we forgot? Share it below!
56 Powerful Grief Quotes - Messages About Grieving and Loss
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Thomas Campbell
“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.”
Woman's Day/Getty ImagesNicholas Sparks
“Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face — I know it’s an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.”
Woman's Day/Getty ImagesJodi Picoult
“Grief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly.
It is a band-aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly of a household is never pretty, ours no exception.”
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Winnie The Pooh
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
Woman's Day/Getty ImagesElisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler
“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you’ll learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.”
Woman's Day/Getty ImagesPablo Neruda
“Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures on the air.”
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Sarah Dessen
“Grieving doesn’t make you imperfect. It makes you human.
”
Paulo Coelho
“Never. We never lose our loved ones. They accompany us; they don’t disappear from our lives. We are merely in different rooms.”
Woman's Day/Getty ImagesPierre Auguste Renoir
“The pain passes, but the beauty remains.”
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Jose N. Harris
“Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart.”
Woman's Day/Getty ImagesIrving Berlin
“The song is ended but the melody lingers on.”
Woman's Day/Getty ImagesMaya Angelou
“And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.”
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Unknown
“When someone you love becomes a memory, that memory becomes a treasure.
”
Mandy Hale
“You can’t truly heal from a loss until you allow yourself to really feel the loss.”
Woman's Day/Getty ImagesDean Koontz
“Grief can destroy you — or focus you. You can decide a relationship was all for nothing if it had to end in death, and you alone. OR you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn’t allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it.”
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Sylvan Kamens & Rabbi Jack Reimer
“At the blueness of the skies and in the warmth of summer, we remember them.”
Woman's Day/Getty ImagesJ.M. Barrie
“God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.”
Woman's Day/Getty ImagesRodgers and Hammerstein, 'Carousel'
“Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone.
”
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John Green, 'The Fault In Our Stars'
“You gave me a forever within the numbered days…”
Woman's Day/Getty ImagesAeschylus
“There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.”
Woman's Day/Getty ImagesLarry Stansbury
Contributing Writer
Larry Stansbury is a writer whose work has appeared in POPSUGAR, Sports Illustrated, Her Campus, Distractify and more. He covers a wide range of topics, including entertainment, lifestyle and sports. Larry graduated with a B.A. in writing and rhetoric from Syracuse University in 2018. When he’s not writing, he is either working out, eating carbs or dancing to the next Little Mix song.
Manal Aman
Manal Aman is a lifestyle expert and founder of Hello Holy Days! where she designs fun products for Muslim holidays. She’s licensed her art to retailers like Crate & Kids and American Greetings and her products can be found all across North America at stores like Paper Source in the US and Indigo! in Canada.
She’s worked with Martha Stewart, Real Simple, Better Homes & Gardens, Chatelaine and countless other media sites over the past decade sharing inspiring ideas and helpful tips for celebrating Muslim holidays. You can find her over at www.helloholydays.com and @helloholydays on social media.
23 great quotes about fear
As much as a person conquers fear, so much he is a person.
- Thomas Carlyle, British writer
Only mutual fear makes an alliance reliable.
- Thucydides, ancient Greek historian
For other people, wealth only brings that fear of losing it.
- Antoine de Rivarol, French writer
Fear of low and unworthy deeds is courage.
- Benjamin Johnson, English poet and playwright
Shame is the fear of people, conscience is the fear of God.
- Samuel Johnson, English literary critic
Love of the fatherland, shame and fear of reproach are the means of taming and power to restrain many crimes.
— Catherine II
At the moment of death, selfishness undergoes a complete collapse. Hence the fear of death.
- Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher
Whoever knows the fullness of life does not know the fear of death.
Fear of death is only the result of an unfulfilled life.
— Franz Kafka, Austrian writer
Fear makes people think.
- Aristotle, ancient Greek philosopher
Better a terrible end than endless fear.
- Johann Friedrich Schiller, German poet, playwright
There are two levers that can move people: fear and self-interest.
- Napoleon I
Most refuse [freedom] out of fear.
- Sallust, Roman historian
Haste is not far from fear, while slowness is closer to true fortitude.
- Tacitus, Roman historian
We will never negotiate out of fear and we will never be afraid of negotiations.
- John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States (1961-1963)
Courage is a special kind of knowledge: how to be afraid of what you should be afraid of, and how not to be afraid of what you should not be afraid of.
- David Ben-Gurion, 1st Prime Minister of Israel (1948-1953)
In misfortune, one often regains peace, taken away by fear of misfortune.
— Maria Ebner-Eschenbach, Austrian writer
In politics, what begins with fear usually ends in madness.
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English poet
Superstitious people in society are the same as cowards in the army: they themselves harbor panic fears and infect others with them.
- Voltaire, French philosopher
The only thing to fear on this planet is man.
- Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist
Fear is a painful realization of one's own uniqueness.
— Korney Chukovsky, Russian Soviet writer
Fear is not at all in danger, it is in us.
- Stendhal, French writer
Sadness and fear are a reaction to time.
Anguish and horror - a reaction to eternity. Sadness and fear are turned down. Longing and horror - to the sky.
- Sergey Dovlatov, Russian writer and journalist
Fear is nothing but deprivation of help from reason.
From the Bible. Prem. 17: 11
Quotes about the death of a loved one 😢 with meaning
Surviving such a test as the death of a loved one is not easy. It seems that the ground is slipping from under your feet when you realize that there is nothing you can do to help. It becomes even more painful when you realize that you will never see your own eyes again, you will not be able to feel the warmth of your own hands, you will not hear your own voice.
Filling the void in the soul seems completely impossible. The pain, even if it subsides with time, will not completely go away. The memory only hurts more. You will find some consolation in the quotes collected on this page. And grief will become easier.
READ ALSO: Quotes from songs.
The word "forever" - but what does it mean? I believe that someday we will definitely meet.
We are much calmer about the death of millions of people as a result of an explosion than about the death of one acquaintance. – Erich Maria Remarque
The worst thing about the death of a father is the memories of a happy life and the realization that this will never happen again.
How often, for the sake of loyalty, you are tormented by loneliness, your love is not needed by the dead, your love is needed by the living.
The crown of every human life is the memory of it - the highest that is promised to a person over his grave is eternal memory. And there is no soul that does not secretly languish in the dream of this crown.
IA Bunin
What remains inside after you learn about the death of a loved one? Probably love. Perhaps even one that you did not suspect while this person was around.
When your loved ones leave, you think the world has collapsed. Your voice breaks into a scream, but they do not hear. You only see their back. A small piece comes off the heart, which they take with them, silently slam the door.
You grieve incurably for those who themselves called death, because you believe that they could live for a long time. Pliny the Younger
Let's forgive each other's transgressions, mistakes. Just because then it might be too late!
I will definitely remember you. I will also remember the pain I felt when you left.
Who lived in such a way that his memory is sacredly preserved in the souls of the people he loved, he, I think, did his job to continue his existence after death. G. Ebers
We don't get to choose to live forever or die. And this is good, because anyway, no one knows which choice is right.
The higher the piles of dead bodies over which the survivor stands, the more often he experiences these moments, the stronger and more irresistible the need for them becomes. Elias Canetti
About the dead, or good, or nothing. Inscription in the anatomical theater of the University of Paris
Death is the most convenient moment to take a tax from a rich man. David Lloyd George
Death is not terrible, but sad and tragic. To be afraid of the dead, cemeteries, morgues is the height of idiocy. It is necessary not to be afraid of the dead, but to feel sorry for them and their loved ones. Those whose life was interrupted, not allowing something important to be done, and those who remained forever mourning the departed.
A person who has lost a loved one faces an incredible sense of guilt. Veronika Stepanova
We are all equal before death, everyone is struck by her spear,
A glorious death is better than a shameful life.
Nizami Ganjavi
I'm not going to forget you.
Whoever says anything, and whoever claims anything...
Death and love are two wings that carry a good person to heaven. Michelangelo
We all lose those we love. How else can we understand how important they are to us?
In sadness and misfortune, death is not torment, but repose from hardships.
We should mourn people when they are born, not when they die. Charles Montesquieu
If you love your son or wife, remember that you love mortal people. Thus, if they happen to die, you will not lament. Epictetus
Everyone knows that death is inevitable, but since it is not close, no one thinks about it. Aristotle
Only when we lose do we begin to appreciate… only when we are late do we learn to hurry… only if we do not love, we can let go… Only by seeing death do we learn to live.
Death is a challenge. Death is impossible to win - it will find you anyway. The question is how do you lose to her.
When you lose a loved one, take courage and let him go…
Life is a chain of losses.
You lose youth, parents, loved ones, friends, pleasures, health and, finally, life itself. You can not accept it - and you will still lose.
When you retreat, death stands behind you and your meeting with it is inevitable. Ali ibn Abi Talib
INTERESTING: Quotes from poetry.
Everyone died, what's the point in denying it now. But how to understand this with the heart.
A person can come to terms with the thought of his own death, but not with the absence of those he loves.
The life of the deceased seems to us smoothed out, as if we see it through a haze. Ludwig Wittgenstein
Man is mortal, and that would be half the trouble. The bad thing is that he is sometimes suddenly mortal, that's the trick! Mikhail Afanasyevich Bulgakov
Death sometimes comes at the zenith of life, it will take the measure. You forgot, you don't remember who came, you live as you used to live. But the dress is sewn.
I don't want death to come for the people I love.
Never.
The most difficult thing that each of us can experience is the loss of a loved one.
Death is not evil. You ask what she is? - The only thing in which the entire human race is equal. — Seneca Lucius Annaeus
That which made my life beautiful will make my death also beautiful.
Nothing burns the heart like the loss of a loved one and time cannot kill this pain… Alexey Tkachenko
RECOMMENDED: Movie quotes.
It's easy to die when you're perfectly healthy. On a beautiful spring morning, in the garden, in a pleasant and cheerful mood - how easy it would be to lie down on the grass and go to another world! Mark Rutherford
Neither on earth, nor in the sky, nor in the ocean, nor in the mountains can one find a place where death could not defeat a person.
Who knows the fullness of life does not know the fear of death. Fear of death is only the result of an unfulfilled life. This is an expression of betrayal to her.
