Death is, unfortunately, an inevitable part of life. It brings incredible sadness to those who suffer a loss, and sometimes, getting over losing someone can seem as if it’s impossible. I find that whenever I feel a wave of sorrow washing over me, reading these quotes about grief helps calm me down.
After all, dealing with your feelings is the only way to move on in a healthy fashion. Furthermore, I find that sometimes quotes can have a healing effect on one’s soul.
If you’ve suffered a loss, and you’re having a hard time coming to terms with the devastation the death of a loved one has left behind, these quotes about grief will help ease your pain.
20 Quotes About Grief to Help You Cope With Loss
Perceptive Quotes About Grief That Will Spark Hope
1. “You give yourself permission to grieve by recognizing the need for grieving. Grieving is the natural way of working through the loss of love. Grieving is not a weakness nor an 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
2. “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
3. “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
4. “A feeling of pleasure or solace can be so hard to find when you are in the depths of your grief. Sometimes, it’s the little things that help get you through the day. You may think your comforts sound ridiculous to others, but there is nothing ridiculous about finding one little thing to help you feel good in the midst of pain and sorrow!” — Elizabeth Berrien
5. “While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it is digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.” — Samuel Johnson
6. “The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief — but the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love.” — Hilary Stanton Zunin
Heartfelt Quotes About Grief
7. “You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly — that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.” ― Anne Lamott
8. “Grief is the price we pay for love.” ― Queen Elizabeth II
9. “Grief, I now understand, is a sort of madness, in the same way that falling in love is madness.” — Clover Stroud
10. “We can endure much more than we think we can; all human experience testifies to that. All we need to do is learn not to be afraid of pain. Grit your teeth and let it hurt. Don’t deny it; don’t be overwhelmed by it. It will not last forever. One day, the pain will be gone, and you will still be there.” ― Harold Kushner
11. “Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary.” — Fred Rogers
12. “Grief I’ve learned is just love. It’s all the love you want to give but cannot. All of 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.” — Anonymous
Profound Quotes About Grief to Heal Your Broken Heart
13. “To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.” — J.K. Rowling
14. “They say that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity. Death cannot kill what never dies.” ― William Penn
15. “It’s OK to feel sad sometimes. Little by little, you’ll feel better again.” ― Anonymous
16. “Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.” ― Sarah Dessen
17. “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
18. “The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to.” ― Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler
19. “The only way to end grief was to go through it.” ― Holly Black
20. “I learned that, with grief, you have to take it one day at a time and learn how to find the happiness amid the heartbreak.” ― Adrienne C. Moore
In Conclusion
Over time, feeling overwhelmed by sadness can lead to long-term depression and can even bring you stress from life and work. However, you will only feel overwhelmed if you don’t know how to deal with your grief. Ultimately, reading quotes about death and the grieving process can help you gain a better understanding of human emotions and why it’s perfectly normal to feel sad.
I hope these quotes about grief will take you out of that dark place in your mind and help you slowly move on with your life.