Grieving Quotes: Looking for Words in Times of Loss

Death. No words. Maybe tears. Maybe not. Strong feelings of certainty and uncertainty at the same time. What is this?

A quick web search of “grief experience” or “grieving quotes” and a click on a link that blasts you to a webpage. A picture of a serene sunrise and four lines of bolded text fill the screen. It is a quote about grief. With a big inhale, you read over each word.

Perhaps you feel some connection to the words – finally something that makes sense of this confusing process surrounding death. The quote may resonate with you in a way that strangely brings a brief union to your thoughts and feelings. The words may even stick in your mind as you continue to navigate grief, providing a small comfort.

Or maybe they slip away and you are left, once again, unsure. After all, they were just someone else’s words, right?

What are we looking for when we search for grieving quotes? Is it a connection to someone else’s experience? Is it insight into our own experience? Are we seeking an opportunity to experience the pain or a means to escape it? Is it all of these things at once? This article briefly explores why we may seek quotes about grief and some words that others have found helpful in their own times of grief.

Heavy and associated with dark imagery, death is a looming concept. Its air of absoluteness beckons feelings of uncertainty and existential curiosity. Even in titling this article, I felt the weight of the word “death” compared to the word “loss.”

“Loss” stands polite and gentle, “death” threatens alarm and foreshadowing seriousness, almost as if using the word “death” would bear down on the rest of the words and bring metaphoric collapse to the whole article. The gravity of its presence shifting all other structure and meaning. But in a way, doesn’t death do just that? Doesn’t it collapse certainty and stability, and jar us from comfort and contentment?

Apart from the security or insecurity you may have about what happens after death. Death, in itself, shifts what we know. We think we know, but when it is in front of us, we find that we really had no idea what “knowing” meant in the first place.

We enter the world, aware that death is a guarantee, but when we are face-to-face with mortality a disorientation sets in and we are often left in our shaken state wondering; “How can I hurry this process up? Why can’t I respond the way I want to? Why can’t I make sense of this?” And of course, “Now what?”

Grieving Quotes

In pursuit of better understanding people’s experiences with grief beyond what I have gained from research studies and textbooks, I reached out to a few people within my own community. The following are not statements from my clients*, but they are all from people who have had people close to them die.

I encourage you to read each grieving quote slowly and pause before moving to the next. Knowing that people often search for quotes about grief and having this article in mind, I asked them specifically to share any words that were meaningful to them in times of loss as well as their experience with death and grief.

These are some of their thoughts:

“Grief is pain and numbness at the same time; like stepping into shocking subzero temperatures when your fingers and toes are so cold that they don’t feel attached to your body but yet they still hurt.”

“This quote really stuck with me, ‘The reality is 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 again. Nor should you be the same, nor should you want to.” – Elizabeth Kubler Ross.

She knows what’s what when it comes to grief. I have a lot of thoughts about this one quote, but I think what hits me is the acknowledgment that grief is something you have forever. It gets better, it changes, it manifests, but it doesn’t go away. And that is okay.

I think personally, and when talking to patients in the hospital where I work, is that at any stage of grieving (a terminal diagnosis, admittance into rehab, a divorce, loss of a significant person in their life) it’s important to acknowledge that this is not a linear thing. It’s not like one day you see the other side and you aren’t grieving anymore.

“Grief, at least in my experience, is like waves. It ebbs and flows, sometimes to hurricane strength, but it always recedes. You have to learn how to ride it. I think acknowledging your emotions as they happen is the first step.”

“I feel guilty saying this, but at first I felt relieved. They had been in so much pain and it had been so much in those final days…I felt such a strange mix of emotions.”

“”We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” Kenji Miyazawa said that and I used it to push me forward after they died.”

“What I found hit me hardest was that I really didn’t know who I was apart from them.”

“I found a quote from Pierre Renoir ‘The pain passes, but the beauty remains’. Those words were helpful in reminding me that death does not change the life that I had with them.”

“I didn’t question the existence of God but I certainly questioned God’s role in my life at the time. I was angry at him and felt guilty for my anger. Turning to Scripture, I realized that many people in the Bible experienced similar anger toward God. It didn’t mean that God no longer loved me. I was reassured to know that his love was as consistent in my loss and anger as it was in my joy and celebration.”

“The best advice that I received in the grieving process was to do whatever you need to do in that particular moment and don’t think twice about it. Sometimes that meant watching tv for hours, sometimes it meant keeping myself incredibly busy, and other times it meant going away for the weekend and reflecting on what I was experiencing. It was most helpful to be open with the people around me with what I was going through.”

“Inspiration to deal with my grief came from Viktor Frankl’s words: ‘If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.’ I realized that death is not something that I can ignore and that I can live in the hatred of it, or I can look for the regrowth – so I decided to take my life back.”

“I did not expect what I felt after they died. I didn’t know how to feel or what to do. I thought I was prepared but I was shaken in a way that I cannot describe.”

““I tell you these things so that you may have peace. In this world, you will face trials, but take heart for I have overcome the world.” – John 16:33. This was given to me by a church friend and was the first scripture that really spoke to me. It’s my favorite still and continues to be something I come back to in difficult times.”

“I remember getting so angry because I couldn’t cry. And everything that people tried to tell made me more angry.”

“I’m a thespian so it all comes back to Shakespeare: ‘To weep is to make less the depth of grief. – William Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part II, Act II’. So I definitely did a lot of crying.”

“My brother gave me A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis and this quote stuck with me: ‘No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear’… From this, I realized I was really, really afraid. I didn’t know what I was afraid of but I had this epiphany that what I was feeling was fear.”

“‘In the valley of suffering, despair and bitterness are brewed. But there also character is made. The valley of suffering is the vale of soul-making. – Nicholas Wolterstorff’ This quote holds meaning for me because, after the death around me, my soul has never been the same.”

“Working in a field where I see death a lot, I try to cope with it by thinking that with each painful experience with death, there is new space for hope being carved out. Take it however, but it helps me to think positively and that there are good things that can come after death.

Also, kind of along the same lines, this quote has been helpful for me, ‘Tragedy can increase the soul’s capacity for darkness and light, for pleasure as well as pain, for hope as well as dejection. The soul contains the capacity to know and love God to become virtuous, to learn truth, and to live my moral conviction. The soul is elastic like a balloon. It can grow larger through suffering.’”

Perhaps you can relate to some of these experiences with grief or perhaps these grieving quotes feel foreign. Within these words, there is a range of emotion, reflection, and meaning. As a person who is reading this article, you understand that in a general sense, words can hold great power; particularly when there is emotion behind them.

Each of the aforementioned quotes holds power; perhaps not for you, but certainly for the people that shared them. The words themselves will not change. However, the influence of the words may vacillate.

Death certainly is a word, as well as an experience, loaded with emotion. And like any word, the influence, power, and emotional response surround the word morphs to person and circumstance. Even if the emotion surrounding death feels distant and numb, it is still a product of interacting with death.

Often, numbness is externally mistaken for “no emotion,” when the reality is, like each reaction we have, there are cause and meaning to the response. For some, death may bring feelings of joy as they celebrate their loved one in heaven but for others, it brings a complex sorrow for the absence of their loved one on earth. Unfortunately, there is not a one-size-fits-all way to navigate death and dying. Each experience has validity.

If you are searching for grieving quotes, my guess is that you are feeling the weight of death in some way and you are seeking comfort. Here is some truth for you: you are not alone, yet you are unique in the way you interact with life, how you view death, and circumstances that you are experiencing right now.

You are not alone, but your experience with death and grief will be your own. Take comfort in a quote, a book, or the presence of a friend. Consider finding further support in a therapeutic relationship such as that which is found in counseling.

Talking to a counselor, trained in therapeutic techniques to encourage wellness, may help you in the grieving process. A trained professional may offer insight and support to what you are experiencing right now.

As previously mentioned on my website, I am here to be with you in the grieving process; not to push you through it, or expect you to react in a certain way, but to affirm that you are not alone.

In working together, we will also build coping skills that will support you during this difficult time. I am here to be with you in whatever you are experiencing. Please reach out with an email or phone call to connect or set up an initial appointment online.

*Although many of my clients have offered profound insight to grief, to protect their confidentiality their words are not shared here.