quotations about grief
Grief is fantastical, and loves the dead,
And the apparel of the grave.
LORD BYRON
The Two Foscari
What is called happiness is an abstract idea, composed of various ideas of pleasure; for he who has but a moment of pleasure is not a happy man, in like manner that a moment of grief constitutes not a miserable one.
VOLTAIRE
A Philosophical Dictionary
While I am compassed round
With mirth, my soul lies hid in shades of grief,
Whence, like the bird of night, with half-shut eyes,
She peeps, and sickens at the sight of day.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Rival Ladies
There is a kind of indignation excited in us when one likens our grief to his own. The soul is jealous of its experiences, and does not like pride to be humbled by the thought that they are common. For, though we know that the world groans and travails in pain, and has done so for ages, yet a groan heard by our ears is a very different thing from a groan uttered by our mouth. The sorrows of other men seem to us like clouds of rain that empty themselves in the distance, and whose long-travelling thunder comes to us mellowed and subdued; but our own troubles are like a storm bursting right overhead, and sending down its bolts upon us with direct plunge.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
And I felt like my heart had been so thoroughly and irreparably broken that there could be no real joy again, that at best there might eventually be a little contentment. Everyone wanted me to get help and rejoin life, pick up the pieces and move on, and I tried to, I wanted to, but I just had to lie in the mud with my arms wrapped around myself, eyes closed, grieving, until I didn't have to anymore.
ANNE LAMOTT
Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
My tears fall inward on my heart,
And, dew-like, keep its memories green:
Sad strains, unheard by other ears,
Break forth for me from lips unseen.
ALBERT LAIGHTON
"The Veiled Grief"
Always denial. Grief in the morning, washed away
in coffee, crumbled to a dozen errands between
busy fingers.
DENISE LEVERTOV
"A Lamentation"
The only cure for grief is action.
GEORGE HENRY LEWES
The Spanish Drama
My years of grief are o'er, I see the shore
Where war shall waste, and want shall howl no more.
JOHN STRUTHERS
The Peasant's Death
There is this difference between the grief of youth and that of old age: youth's burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares; old age may give and give, but the sorrow remains the same.
O. HENRY
"The Count and the Wedding Guest"
So life discloses--
Howe'er the pathway curve or turn--
New hopes that rise, new stars that burn
In changing splendor night or day;
New joys that drive old griefs away.
ANDREW DOWNING
"Among the Roses"