Grieving Sayings and Quotes

Below you will find our collection of inspirational, wise, and humorous old grieving quotes, grieving sayings, and grieving proverbs, collected over the years from a variety of sources.

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love. Washington Irving
Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life's search for love and wisdom. Rumi
Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life. Anne Roiphe
Grief is the price we pay for love. Queen Elizabeth II
Grief is perhaps an unknown territory for you. You might feel both helpless and hopeless without a sense of a 'map' for the journey. Confusion is the hallmark of a transition. To rebuild both your inner and outer world is a major project. Anne Grant
Don't grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form. Rumi
In times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry I cry and when you hurt I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods to tears and despair and make it through the potholed street of life Nicholas Sparks
Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them. Leo Tolstoy
They say time heals all wounds, but that presumes the source of the grief is finite. Cassandra Clare
Grief is not as heavy as guilt, but it takes more away from you. Veronica Roth
Grieving is a journey that teaches us how to love in a new way now that our loved one is no longer with us. Consciously remembering those who have died is the key that opens the hearts, that allows us to love them in new ways. Tom Attig
There is no grief like the grief that does not speak. Henry Wordsworth
Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve. Earl Grollman
All things grow with time -- except grief. Yiddish Proverb
Grief is light that is capable of counsel. Proverb
Mourning is not forgetting... It is an undoing. Every minute tie has to be untied and something permanent and valuable recovered and assimilated from the dust. The end is gain, of course. Blessed are they that mourn, for theyshall be made strong, in fact. But the process is like all other human births, painful and long and dangerous. Margery Allingham
Grief is hard on friendships, but it doesn't have to be. Sometimes, all it takes is a little honesty between friends. If we gently and lovingly explain what we need from the relationship during our time of grief, and what we are willing to do in return, we can turn even a lukewarm friendship into something special. Margaret Brownley
One often calms one's grief by recounting it. Pierre Corneille
Tears are the silent language of grief. Voltaire
Grief makes one hour ten. William Shakespeare
Grief is the price we pay for love. Queen Elizabeth II
There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief. Aeschylus
We all want to do something to mitigate the pain of loss or to turn grief into something positive, to find a silver lining in the clouds. But I believe there is real value in just standing there, being still, being sad. John Green
But grieving people are selfish. They won't let you comfort them and they say you don't understand and they make you feel useless when all your life you've been functional to them. Melina Marchetta
That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted them to say. Sarah Dessen
Grieving, like being blind, is a strange business; you have to learn how to do it. We seek company in mourning, but after the early bursts of tears, after the praises have been spoken, and the good days remembered, and the lament cried, and the grave closed, there is no company in grief. It is a burden borne alone. Ursula K. Le Guin
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
It is true that the grief journey is very lonely, but it is also up to you to decide just how lonely you will make it. Elizabeth Berrien
To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness. Erich Fromm
While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it be digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it. Samuel Johnson
The time you spend grieving over a man should never exceed the amount of time you actually spent with him. Rita Rudner
He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. Epictetus
Since every death diminishes us a little, we grieve - not so much for the death as for ourselves. Lynn Caine
He that conceals his grief finds no remedy for it. Turkish Proverb
Tearless grief bleeds inwardly. Christian Nevell Bovee
There is no grief like the grief that does not speak. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
If you suppress grief too much it can well redouble. Moliere
Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy must have somebody to divide it with. Mark Twain
In private grief with careless scorn. In public seem to triumph and not to mourn. John C. Granville
You don't go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always be. Nigella Lawson
There's a general impulse to distract the grieving person - as if you could. Joan Didion
The littlest thing can have the strongest connection when you're grieving. Your proustian, poetic nerve is turned up to ten. Mike Mills
I think grieving is the same for everybody that lost someone you love deeply. It's the same. You know, you're really no different than anybody else who's lost somebody they adored. Lee Radziwill
When people are grieving, it's kind of like a storm, and you need something to grab onto, but often you have to brave it on your own. Clare Bowen
Grief is not a disorder, a disease or sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve. Earl Grollman
Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim. Vicki Harrison
Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er~fraught heart and bids it break. Shakespeare
Emotionally, grief is a mixture of raw feelings such as sorrow, anguish, anger, regret, longing, fear, and deprivation. Grief may be experienced physically as exhaustion, emptiness, tension, sleeplessness, or loss of appetite. Judy Tatelbaum
Grief is a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith...it is the price of love. Author Unkonwn
Grieving is not a short-term process; it's not even a long-term process; it's a lifelong process. 'Having a future' now means that although your life will flow again, it will flow differently as a result of the loss. Your grief will become incorporated into your life history, become a part of your identity. And you will continue now, and forever, to redefine your relationship with your deceased loved one. Death doesn't end the relationship, it simply forges a new type of relationship - one based not on physical presence but on memory, spirit, and love. Ashley Davis Bush
Grieve not for that which is irreparably lost. Roman Proverb
One grieves sincerely who grieves unseen. Roman Proverb
Too late to grieve when the chance is past. French Proverb
What the eye does not see, the eye does not grieve. Chinese Proverb
The one who grieves before it is necessary grieves more than necessary. Roman Proverb
The grief which is not dealt with properly can cause us to lose our perspective on life. Billy Graham
Grief turns us inward, but compassion turns out outward, and that's what we need when grief threatens to crush us. Billy Graham
Grieving is not weakness nor absence of faith. Grieving is as natural as crying when you are hurt., sleeping when you are tired, or sneezing when your nose itches. It is nature's way of healing a broken heart. Doug Manning
Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them. Leo Tolstoy
No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow. All we can do is see it through the end and learn something from it, but what we learn will be no help in facing the next sorrow that comes to us without warning. Haruki Murakami
Crying does not indicate that you are weak. Since birth, it has always been a sign that you are alive. Charlotte Bronte
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
it is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived. George S. Patton Jr.
The source of sorrows lies not in leaving life, but in living that which gives it meaning. Raymond Radiguet
And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief. William Cullen Bryant
I know now that we never get over great losses, we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures. Gail Caldwell
There is grace in grief and strength in sorrow. Annie Dougherty
Between grief and nothing, I will take grief. William Faulkner
Grieving is as much a part of life as falling in love or giving birth. June Cotner
Grief, I've learned is really just love. It's all the love you want to give but cannot. All that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go. Jamie Anderson
Grief, sorrow, and mourning for irremediable events are useless to the living as to the dead, except as they produce reflection, consideration, and correct errors or reform vices. Remember the best philosophy, the beloved is chastened. John Adams
Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with their heart and soul there is no such thing as separation. Rumi
There is no death, only a change of the world. Chief Seattle
Death may be the greatest of all human blessings. Socrates
Absence and death are the same— only that in death there is no suffering. Theodore Roosevelt
Death— the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening. Sir Walter Scott
Death is not a journey into an unknown land; it is a voyage home. John Ruskin
Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind. Marcel Proust
Grieving is a necessary passage and a difficult transition to finally letting go of sorrow - it is not a permanent rest stop. Dodinsky
Dying is nothing to fear. It can be the most wonderful experience of your life. It all depends on how you've lived. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil. J.R.R. Tolkien
The darker the night, the brighter the stars, the deeper the grief the closer is God. Fyodor Dostoevsky