It is grief that develops the powers of the mind. Marcel Proust
1Put your grief behind you. Let me hear you say it. The Sopranos s3e1: Mr Ruggerio's Neighbourhood starring James Gandolfini & Lorriane Bracco & Edie Falco & Michael Imperioli & Dominic Chianese & Steven van Zandt & Tony Sirico & Robert Iler et al, goon squad
You haven’t grieved in this way for people. The Sopranos s4e10: The Strong, Silent Type, Dr Melfi to Tony
It’s grief: for a life wasted. I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead 2003 starring Clive Owen & Charlotte Rampling & Ken Stott & Sylvia Syms & Jonathan Rhys Meyers & Malcolm McDowell & Jamie Foreman & Alexander Norton & John Surman et al, director Mike Hodges, Will
A grief without a pang, void, dark and drear,
A drowsy, stifled, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet or relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear. Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Well it’s my grief; I’ll do whatever I like with it. Rab C Nesbitt: Mother, BBC 1994
In all the silent manliness of grief. Oliver Goldsmith
Grief is the price we pay for love. Queen Elizabeth II
Grief is itself a med’cine. William Cowper, 1731-1800, Charity, 1782
Winter is come and gone,
But grief returns with the revolving year. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonis st18, 1821
Music, when soft voices die,
Vibrates in the memory;
Odours, when sweet violets sicken,
Live within the sense they quicken.
Rose leaves, when the rose is dead,
Are heap’d for the belovéd’s bed;
And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone,
Love itself shall slumber on. Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘Music, When Soft Voices Die’
The wise grieve neither for the living nor for the dead. There was never a time when you and I and all the kings gathered here have not existed and nor will there be a time when we will cease to exist. Bhagavad Gita
Waste not fresh tears over old griefs. Euripides
There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief. Aeschylus
Not louder shrieks the pitying heav’n are cast,
When husbands or when lapdogs breathe their last. Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. C S Lewis, A Grief Observed, 1961
All the old statues of Victory have wings: but Grief has no wings. She is the unwelcome lodger that squats on the hearthstone between us and the fire and will not move or be dislodged. Arthur Quiller-Couch
Oh that my grief were thoroughly weighed, and my calamity laid in the balances together! Job 6:2
But I would strengthen you with my mouth, and the moving of my lips should asswage your grief.
Though I speak, my grief is not asswaged: and though I forbear, what am I eased. Job 16:5-6
The pleasure of remembering had been taken from me, because there was no longer anyone to remember with. It felt like losing your co-rememberer meant losing the memory itself, as if the things we’d done were less real and important than they had been hours before. John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
The deeper the grief, the closer is God! Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment
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
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
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. But when it’s over and you’re alone, you begin to see that it wasn't just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can’t get off your knees for a long time, you’re driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life. Dean Koontz, Odd Hours
And I can’t be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight. J D Salinger, Franny and Zooey
But grief makes a monster out of us sometimes ... and sometimes you say and do things to the people you love that you can’t forgive yourself for. Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road
You can not die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things. There comes a day when you smile again, and you feel like a traitor. How dare I feel happy. How dare I be glad in a world where my father is no more. And then you cry fresh tears, because you do not miss him as much as you once did, and giving up your grief is another kind of death. Laurell K Hamilton
Whoever said that loss gets easier with time was a liar. Here’s what really happens: The spaces between the times you miss them grow longer. Then, when you do remember to miss them again, it’s still with a stabbing pain to the heart. And you have guilt. Guilt because it’s been too long since you missed them last. Kristin O’Donnell Tubb, The 13th Sign
I sometimes hold it half a sin
To put in words the grief I feel;
For words, like Nature, half reveal
And half conceal the Soul within.
But, for the unquiet heart and brain,
A use in measured language lies;
The sad mechanic exercise,
Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.
In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er,
Like coarsest clothes against the cold:
But that large grief which these enfold
Is given in outline and no more. Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam
We are not strong enough to stand up against endless grief. And yet pain is the constant drone of life. So if we are to have any happiness at all, it is only in the passing instant. Charles Frazier
Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size. Mark Twain
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
5We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world – the company of those who have known suffering. Helen Keller
Royal summoned mourners. They came from the village, from the neighboring hills and, wailing like dogs at midnight, laid siege to the house. Old women beat their heads against the walls, moaning men prostrated themselves: it was the art of sorrow, and those who best mimicked grief were much admired. After the funeral everyone went away, satisfied that they'd done a good job. Truman Capote, House of Flowers