20 inspirational quotes about grief

Coping with grief is often impossible to put into words. Though no inspirational quote can make grief better, sometimes it’s comforting to know how others have experienced loss – and that you’re not alone in what you are feeling.

These 20 grief quotes from famous writers, artists and influential figures describe the pain of losing a loved one and what it takes to keep on going through the darkest of times.

1. “Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.”

Mitch Albom, For One More Day

2. “Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night.”

Edna St. Vincent Millay

3. “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

4. “Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face – I know it's an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.”

Nicholas Sparks, Message In A Bottle

5. “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

6. “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.”

Ray Bradbury, Farenheit 451

7. “And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in.”

Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

8. “Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.”

Anne Roiphe

9. “Grief is forever. It doesn’t go away; it becomes a part of you, step for step, breath for breath.”

Jandy Nelson, The Sky Is Everywhere

10. “If you have ever lost someone very important to you, then you already know how it feels, and if you haven’t, you cannot possibly imagine it.”

Lemony Snicket, The Bad Beginning

11. “When one person is missing the whole world seems empty.”

Pat Schweibert, Tear Soup: A Recipe for Healing After Loss

12. “I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.”

Gail Caldwell, Let's Take the Long Way Home: A Memoir of Friendship

13. “I have lived with you and loved you, and now you are gone. Gone where I cannot follow, until I have finished all of my days.”

Victoria Hanley, The Seer and the Sword

14. “You can’t rush grief. It has its own timetable. All you can do is make sure there are lots of soft places around – beds, pillows, arms, laps.”

Patti Davis, Two Cats and the Woman They Own: or Lessons I Learned from My Cats

15. “You can’t feel grief unless you’ve had love before it – grief is the final outcome of love, because it’s love lost.”

Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

16. “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths.”

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

17. “Death ends a life, not a relationship.”

Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

18. “It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one… It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is.”

Lemony Snicket, Horseradish

19. “No truth can cure the sorrow we feel from losing a loved one. No truth, no sincerity, no strength, no kindness can cure that sorrow.”

Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

20. “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, We Bereaved

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