40 Quotes On Grief To Help You Let Go and Move Forward

The loss of someone we love can be an excruciating experience, even when we expect it to happen, and even if this is a universal part of our human existence.

I’ve heard so many people saying “well, she was 80, what did you expect?” But it doesn’t really matter how old they are, does it? We want our dear ones to live forever. And the pain of their passing away is even greater when they go too soon, because then we have to live with both grief and shock.

Grief allows us to gradually accept the loss of someone. In time, we’ll realize that they are no longer physically present, but they will always be alive in our hearts. Letting all the good memories stay with you forever is all that matters and all that will ultimately bring you peace.

So cry if you must, but learn to carry on by remembering them with a smile on your face. That’s what they would’ve wanted and that’s how you’ll want to be remembered as well. Honor them by thinking of all the happy moments you’ve shared together.

Here are 40 grief quotes that will help you let go and move forward:

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.

WASHINGTON IRVING

I don’t think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that remains.

ANNE FRANK (more Anne Frank quotes)

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 the 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

What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, For all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.

HELEN KELLER (more Helen Keller quotes)

I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.

J. R. R. TOLKIEN

Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom.

RUMI (more Rumi quotes)

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning.

C. S. LEWIS

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The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not 'get over' the loss of a loved one; you'll 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 KUBLER-ROSS

Sometimes, only one person is missing, and the whole world seems depopulated.

ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE

Against eternal injustice, man must assert justice, and to protest against the universe of grief, he must create happiness.

ALBERT CAMUS

When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time – the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes – when there’s a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she’s gone, forever – there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.

JOHN IRVING

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world – the company of those who have known suffering.

HELEN KELLER

It is as if the intensity of grief fused the distance between you and the dead. Or perhaps, in reality, part of one dies. Like Orpheus, one tries to follow the dead on the beginning of their journey. But one cannot, like Orpheus, go all the way, and after a long journey, one comes back. If one is lucky, one is reborn.

ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH

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

All you need is one safe anchor to keep you grounded when the rest of your life spins out of control.

KATIE KACVINSKY

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.

J.M. BARRIE

If there ever comes a day when we can't be together, keep me in your heart, I'll stay there forever.

WINNIE THE POOH (more Winnie the Pooh quotes)

Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time. It tell us to tell each other right now that we love each other.

LEO BUSCAGLIA

It takes strength to make your way through grief, to grab hold of life and let it pull you forward.

PATTI DAVIS

This is not goodbye, my darling, this is a thank you. Thank you for coming into my life and giving me joy.

NICHOLAS SPARKS

Although it’s natural to forget your power after you lose a loved one, the truth is that after a breakup, divorce, or death, there remains an ability within you to create a new reality.

LOUISE HAY AND DAVID KESSLER

RELATED: How Death Can Be Life’s Greatest Gift

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 (more Leo Tolstoy quotes)

Never. We never lose our loved ones. They accompany us; they don’t disappear from our lives. We are merely in different rooms.

PAULO COELHO (more Paulo Coleho quotes)

I know in my head that she has gone. The only difference is that I am getting used to the pain. It's like discovering a great hole in the ground. To begin with, you forget it's there and keep falling in. After a while, it's still there, but you learn to walk round it.

RACHEL JOYCE

So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.

E.A. BUCCHIANERI

Life seems sometimes like nothing more than a series of losses, from beginning to end. That's the given. How you respond to those losses, what you make of what's left, that's the part you have to make up as you go.

KATHARINE WEBER

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

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.

DEAN KOONTZ

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.

KENJI MIYAZAWA

Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.

MARCEL PROUST

The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!

FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is nature’s delight.

MARCUS AURELIUS

To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.

J.K. ROWLING (more J. K. Rowling quotes)

Some things in life cannot be fixed. They can only be carried.

MEGAN DEVINE

Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart.

JOSÉ N. HARRIS

Every one of us is losing something precious to us. Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive.

HARUKI MURAKAMI

The pain passes, but the beauty remains.

PIERRE AUGUSTE RENOIR

My mom has experienced a lot of loss in her life and she told me at one point, there is an empowerment that comes with grief—at some point you find it. It's very hard but you will find it, and I think at a certain point you can choose to sort of fall from this or you can choose to rise. And that's what I'm just trying to do my best for him, because I know that that's what he would have.

LEA MICHELE

And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.

MAYA ANGELOU (more Maya Angelou quotes)

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5 Incredible Lessons That Grief Will Give You