Grief quotes

Grief

2.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

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Grief quotes (page 12 of 104)

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Rainer Maria Rilke Poet, Novelist
Grief

"How I will cherish you then, you grief-torn nights! Had I only received you, inconsolable sisters, on more abject knees, only buried myself with more abandon in your loosened hair. How we waste our afflictions! We study them, stare out beyond them into bleak continuance, hoping to glimpse some end. Whereas they're really our wintering foliage, our dark greens of meaning, one of the seasons of the clandestine year -- ; not only a season --: they're site, settlement, shelter, soil, abode."

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Samuel Beckett Playwright, Novelist
Grief

"Personally of course I regret everything. Not a word, not a deed, not a thought, not a need, not a grief, not a joy, not a girl, not a boy, not a doubt, not a trust, not a scorn, not a lust, not a hope, not a fear, not a smile, not a tear, not a name, not a face, no time, no place...that I do not regret, exceedingly. An ordure, from beginning to end."

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Rebecca West Novelist, Journalist
Grief

"There are acacias, a graceful species amusingly devitalized by sentimentality, this kind drooping its leaves with the grace of a young widow bowed in controllable grief, this one obscuring them with a smooth silver as of placid tears. They please, like the minor French novelists of the eighteenth century, by suggesting a universe in which nothing cuts deep."

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Thomas Jefferson Politician, Founding Father
Grief

"Shake hands with Pain, give greeting unto Grief, Those angels in disguise, and thy glad soul From height to height, from star to shining star, Shall climb and claim blest immortality."

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Rumi Poet, Philosopher
Grief

"Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror up to where you're bravely working."

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J. D. Salinger Novelist, Short Story Writer
Grief

"Against my better judgment I feel certain that somewhere very near here—the first house down the road, maybe—there's a good poet dying, but also somewhere very near here somebody's having a hilarious pint of pus taken from her lovely young body, and I can't be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight."

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Ovid Poet
Grief

"What is deservedly suffered must be borne with calmness, but when the pain is unmerited, the grief is resistless."

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Niccolo Machiavelli Political Philosopher, Historian
Grief

"The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous."

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Niccolo Machiavelli Political Philosopher, Historian
Grief

"A man who wishes to make a profession of goodness in everything must necessarily come to grief among so many who are not good. Therefore, it is necessary for a prince, who wishes to maintain himself, to learn how not to be good, and to use this knowledge and not use it according to the necessity of the case."

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Niccolo Machiavelli Political Philosopher, Historian
Grief

"We must distinguish between those who depend on others, that is between those who to achieve their purposes can force the issue and those who must use persuasion. In the second case, they always come to grief, having achieved nothing; when, however, they depend on their own resources and can force the issue, then they are seldom endangered."

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George Eliot Novelist, Poet, Journalist
Grief

"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."

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Julian Barnes Author
Grief

"We live on the flat, on the level, and yet - and so - we aspire. Groundlings, we can sometimes reach as far as the gods. Some soar with art, others with religion; most with love. But when we soar, we can also crash. There are few soft landings. We may find ourselves bouncing across the ground with leg-fracting force, dragged towards some foreign railway line. Every love story is a potential grief story. If not at first, then later. If not for one, then for the other. Sometimes, for both."

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Joey Green Author, Humorist
Grief

"The way to live in the present is to remember that "This too shall pass." When you experience joy, remembering that "This too shall pass" helps you savor the here and now. When you experience pain and sorrow, remembering that "This too shall pass" reminds you that grief, like joy, is only temporary."

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C. S. Lewis Writer, Scholar
Grief

"We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it. I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination."

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Paramahansa Yogananda Spiritual Teacher, Author
Grief

"There is in India a story of a dying youth who, hearing the sobs of grief around him, cried: Insult me not with your cries of sympathy. When I soar to the land of eternal light and love; it is I who should feel for you. For me, disease, shattering of bones, sorrow, excruciating heartaches no more. I dream joy, I glide in joy, I breathe in joy evermore."

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