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Grief causes you to leave yourself. You step outside your narrow little pelt. And you canโt feel grief unless youโve had love before it - grief is the final outcome of love, because itโs love lost. [โฆ] Itโs the cycle of love completed: to love, to lose, to feel grief, to leave, and then to love again. Grief is the awareness that you will have to be alone, and there is nothing beyond that because being alone is the ultimate final destiny of each individual living creature. Thatโs what death is, the great loneliness.
Philip K. Dickto love life, to love it even when you have no stomach for it and everything you've held dear crumbles like burnt paper in your hands, your throat filled with the silt of it. When grief sits with you, its tropical heat thickening the air, heavy as water more fit for gills than lungs; when grief weights you like your own flesh only more of it, an obesity of grief, you think, How can a body withstand this? Then you hold life like a face between your palms, a plain face, no charming smile, no violet eyes, and you say, yes, I will take you I will love you, again.
Ellen BassWe collected in a group in front of their door, and we experienced within ourselves a grief that was new for us, the ancient grief of the people that has no land, the grief without hope of the exodus which is renewed in every century.
Primo LeviNew grief, when it came, you could feel filling the air. It took up all the room there was. The place itself, the whole place, became a reminder of the absence of the hurt or the dead or the missing one. I don't believe that grief passes away. It has its time and place forever. More time is added to it; it becomes a story within a story. But grief and griever alike endure.
Wendell BerryThere is a level of grief so deep that it stops resembling grief at all. The pain becomes so severe that the body can no longer feel it. The grief cauterizes itself, scars over, prevents inflated feeling. Such numbness is a kind of mercy.
Elizabeth GilbertThere is far too much talk of love and grief benumbing the faculties, turning the hair gray, and destroying a man's interest in his work. Grief has made many a man look younger.
William McFeeBut that had been grief--this was joy. Yet that grief and this joy were alike outside all the ordinary conditions of life; they were loopholes, as it were, in that ordinary life through which there came glimpses of something sublime. And in the contemplation of this sublime something the soul was exalted to inconceivable heights of which it had before had no conception, while reason lagged behind, unable to keep up with it.
Leo TolstoyShe heard him mutter, 'Can you take away this grief?' 'I'm sorry,' she replied. 'Everyone asks me. And I would not do so even if I knew how. It belongs to you. Only time and tears take away grief; that is what they are for.
Terry PratchettThe first rose on my rose-tree Budded, bloomed, and shattered, During sad days when to me Nothing mattered. Grief or grief has drained me clean; Still it seems a pity No one saw,โit must have been Very pretty.
Edna St. Vincent MillayWhen you are wanting to comfort someone in their grief take the words 'at least' out of your vocabulary. In saying them you minimise someone else's pain...Don't take someone else's grief and try to put it in a box that YOU can manage. Learn to truly grieve with others for as long as it may take.
Kay WarrenMy sister will die over and over again for the rest of my life. Grief is forever. It doesn't go away; it becomes a part of you, step for step, breath for breath. I will never stop grieving Bailey because I will never stop loving her. That's just how it is. Grief and love are conjoined, you don't get one without the other. All I can do is love her, and love the world, emulate her by living with daring and spirit and joy.
Jandy NelsonToil is man's allotment; toil of brain, or toil of hands, or a grief that's more than either, the grief and sin of idleness.
Herman MelvilleThe perpetual mourner -- the grief that can never be healed -- is innocently enough felt to be wearisome by the rest of the world. And my sense of desolation increases. Each day seems a new beginning -- a new acquaintance with grief.
George EliotDaddy looked at her hard, and right before my eyes, he changed. I watched him inflate again, shake off his own emotions and puff himself up for her. Become her man. Her rock. I smiled. I loved him so much. He'd dragged mom kicking and screaming from grief once before and I knew I could rest easy that he would never let grief steal her from him again. No matter what happened to me.
Karen Marie MoningAbsolute green is the most restful color, lacking any undertone of joy, grief, or passion. On exhausted men this restfulness has a beneficial effect, but after a time it becomes tedious.
Wassily KandinskyWe 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 GreenShock, confusion, fear, anger, grief, and defiance. On Sept. 11, 2001, and for the three days following the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil, President George W. Bush led with raw emotion that reflected the public's whipsawing stages of acceptance.
Ron FournierAgain and again, I learn how much friendship enriches my life, bringing warmth, assurance, humour, inspiration, a sense of security. It depends on honesty, trust, loyalty. It's about giving. It's for sharing the good times, but also the tough times, hurt, grief, sadness.
Quentin BryceHis [Ben Okri's] work poses very serious questions for the twenty-first century. Among them: To what extent will we allow the indefinable dynamics of something called "destiny" to maintain grief and horror in the world? How hard are human beings willing to fight to achieve and sustain justice, equanimity, or joy? And should progress be called such when it devours what is best within the human spirit?
AberjhaniWhen a man's eyes are sore his friends do not let him finger them, however much he wishes to, nor do they themselves touch the inflammation: But a man sunk in grief suffers every chance comer to stir and augment his affliction like a running sore; and by reason of the fingering and consequent irritation it hardens into a serious and intractable evil.
PlutarchBut how ridiculous that I should bereft simply because I couldnโt spend hours in my world of make-believe! Wasnโt the reality of my life interesting enough? This is surely the time to let go of grievances, I told myself sternly. What good does it do to dwell on them? Brooding on a nest of grudges will only hatch more grief.
Liza DalbyAny place, then, can become a cemetery. All it takes is your body. It's not fair, I think, and I get this petulant wish for ugly flowers and mourners, my mother's old familiar grief. Somebody I love to tend my future grave. Probably this is the wrong thing to be wishing for.
Karen RussellItโs like the grief has been covered over with some kind of blanket. Itโs still there, but the sharpest edges are .. muffled, sort of. Then, ever now and then, I lift the corner of the blanket just to check, and .. whoa! Like a knife! Iโm not sure that will ever change.
Anne TylerGrief is not very different from illness: in the impetus of its fire it does not recognise lords, it does not fear colleagues, it does not respect or spare anyone, not even itself.
Eleanor of AquitaineMan is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul.
Gilbert K. ChestertonDon't engage your heart in grief over the past or you wont be ready for what is coming.
Ali ibn Abi TalibThere are all sorts of losses people suffer - from the small to the large. You can lose your keys, your glasses, your virginity. You can lose your head, you can lose your heart, you can lose your mind. You can relinquish your home to move into assisted living, or have a child move overseas, or see a spouse vanish into dementia. Loss is more than just death, and grief is the gray shape-shifter of emotion.
Jodi PicoultWith Complicated Grief I can say that there was a certain simplification in the process. Getting older means less wasted effort, things are clearer earlier. Being young meant flailing around a lot, especially as I was trying to invent new shapes without a ton of models.
Laura Mullen3:12 pm Secretly, I admit, I find many of my classmates annoying. I've often thought to myself, 'Good grief, these people are five-year-olds. Why must I spend my days among them?' But have I ever said such things aloud? No. I have been nothing but generous to them, and kept these thoughts to myself. And how have they repaid me? Have they been grateful or kind? Ho NO!
Jaclyn MoriartyHer free hand was clenched in a fist. I held still, waiting for her to say something, to tell me she should have never left me here, where her friends might look to me for help. Finally she looked at me. Her eyes were hard, but she'd let no tears fall. "This is where we blame those who are responsible, Cooper, she told me, her voice very soft. "The colemongers, and the bought Dogs at Tradesmen's kennel. We'll leave an offering for him with the Black God when all this is done, and we'll occupy ourselves with tearing these colemongers apart. all right? We put grief aside for now.
Tamora PierceAnger is a symptom, a way of cloaking and expressing feelings too awful to experience directly - hurt, bitterness, grief and, most of all, fear.
Joan RiversParents and children were put on earth to give each other grief. You were my punishment for how I behaved to my own father. And I'll have my revenge when you have children of your own.
Mary Jo PutneyTime sped. And the poet through sorrow Became like his suffering kind. Again he toiled over his poems To lighten the grief of his mind.
Ella Wheeler WilcoxWhere the good begins.- Where the poor power of the eye can no longer see the evil impulse as such because it has become too subtle, man posits the realm of goodness; and the feeling that we have now entered the realm of goodness excites all those impulses which had been threatened and limited by the evil impulses, like the feeling of security, of comfort, of benevolence. Hence, the duller the eye, the more extensive the good. Hence the eternal cheerfulness of the common people and of children. Hence the gloominess and grief - akin to a bad conscience - of the great thinkers.
Friedrich NietzscheImagine a man who doesn't believe in anything, hope for anything, doesn't love anyone. This is a description of a dead or paralyzed soul. This happens from great grief, or from an unhappy upbringing when parents make from their children's souls paralytics.
Simon SoloveychikThe humiliation that Jane had felt turned to something else--grief perhaps, or regret. Regret that she had not known how to act with a boy, regret that she had not been wiser.
Beverly ClearyIt is of no avail to know what is about to happen; for it is a sad thing to be grieved when grief can do no good.
Marcus Tullius CiceroBehind all art is an element of desire...Love of life, of existence, love of another human being, love of human beings is in some way behind all art โ even the most angry, even the darkest, even the most grief-stricken, and even the most embittered art has that element somewhere behind it. Because how could you be so despairing, so embittered, if you had not had something you loved that you lost?
Adrienne RichGrief! thou art classed amongst the depressing passions. And true it is that thou humblest to the dust, but also thou exaltest to the clouds. Thou shakest us with ague, but also thou steadiest like frost. Thou sickenest the heart, but also thou healest its infirmities.
Thomas de QuinceyNot everyone understands how you can spin two lassos at the same time, one of hope and one of grief.
Jodi PicoultA vampire is a flexible metaphor. You know, death, sex, change, stagnation, loss of self, loss of agency, having to keep one's real self secret, the possibility of something lasting forever: love, hate, grief.
Kelly LinkAll the troubles of the world, especially the spiritual, such as grief, impatience, disillusionment, despair, the truly basic troubles of man-they came about only because of the failure to view clearly the majesty of God.
Abraham Isaac KookBurnout is grist to the mill. I write every day, for most of the day, so it's just about turning into metaphor whatever's going on in my life, in the world, and in my head. Every nightmare, every moment of grief or joy or failure, is a moment I can convert into cash via words.
Grant MorrisonFor you who came so far; for you who held out, wearing a black scarf to signify grief; for you who believe true love can find you amidst this atlas of tears linking one town to its own memory of mortar, when it was still a dream to be built and people moved there, believing, and someone with sky and birds in his heart said this would be a good place for a park.
Naomi Shihab Nye