These bereavement quotes will inspire you. Bereavement is the period of grief and mourning after a death.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging bereavement quotes, bereavement sayings, and bereavement proverbs.
Best Bereavement Quotes
- “I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.” ~ Robert Fulghum
- “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 do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.” ~ Anne Morrow Lindbergh
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“To spare oneself from grief at all cost can be achieved only at the price of total detachment, which excludes the ability to experience happiness” ~ Erich Fromm
- “The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing…that is a friend who cares.” ~ Henri Nouwen , Bereavement quotes for a friend
- “Bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love.” ~ C. S. Lewis
- “We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.” ~ Kenji Miyazawa
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“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” ~ Robert Frost
- “There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” ~ Henri Nouwen
- “Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.” ~ Sarah Dessen
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“In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing.” ~ Robert Green Ingersoll
- “The weird, weird thing about devastating loss is that life actually goes on. When you’re faced with a tragedy, a loss so huge that you have no idea how you can live through it, somehow, the world keeps turning, the seconds keep ticking.” ~ James Patterson
- “On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
- “Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death’s perfect punctuation mark is a smile.” ~ Julie Burchill
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“Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.” ~ Alphonse de Lamartine
- “Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love.” ~ William Ralph Inge
- “Once you accept your own death, all of a sudden you’re free to live. You no longer care about your reputation. You no longer care except so far as your life can be used tactically to promote a cause you believe in.” ~ Saul Alinsky
- “The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal – every other affliction to forget: but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open – this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.” ~ Washington Irving
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“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” ~ A. A. Milne
- “Don’t order any black things. Rejoice in his memory; and be radiant: leave grief to the children. Wear violet and purple. Be patient with the poor people who will snivel: they don’t know; and they think they will live for ever, which makes death a division instead of a bond.” ~ George Bernard Shaw
- “Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.” ~ Marcel Proust
- “Never does one feel oneself so utterly helpless as in trying to speak comfort for great bereavement.” ~ Jane Welsh Carlyle
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“Bereavement is a darkness impenetrable to the imagination of the unbereaved” ~ Iris Murdoch
- “If, as I can’t help suspecting, the dead also feel the pains of separation (and this may be one of their purgatorial sufferings), then for both lovers, and for all pairs of lovers without exception, bereavement is a universal and integral part of our experience of love.” ~ C. S. Lewis
- “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.” ~ Washington Irving
- “Bereavement is the sharpest challenge to our trust in God; if faith can overcome this, there is no mountain which it cannot remove.” ~ William Ralph Inge
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“For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.” ~ William Penn
- “He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- “To lose what we have never owned might seem an eccentric bereavement, but Presumption has its own affliction as well as claim.” ~ Emily Dickinson
- “Most bereaved souls crave nourishment more tangible than prayers: they want a steak.” ~ M. F. K. Fisher
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“Grief is a normal and natural response to loss. It is originally an unlearned feeling process. Keeping grief inside increases your pain.” ~ Anne Grant
- “Time is the only comforter for the loss of a mother.” ~ Jane Welsh Carlyle , Bereavement quotes for mother
- “Death is simply a shedding of the physical body like the butterfly shedding its cocoon. It is a transition to a higher state of consciousness where you continue to perceive, to understand, to laugh, and to be able to grow.” ~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
- “Everyone grieves in different ways. For some, it could take longer or shorter. I do know it never disappears. An ember still smolders inside me. Most days, I don’t notice it, but, out of the blue, it’ll flare to life.” ~ Maria V. Snyder
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“If you have ever lost a loved one, then you know exactly how it feels. And if you have not, then you cannot possibly imagine it.” ~ Daniel Handler
- “How could you go about choosing something that would hold the half of your heart you had to bury?” ~ Jodi Picoult
- “You don’t know who is important to you until you actually lose them.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
- “Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?” ~ Henry David Thoreau
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“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.” ~ William Shakespeare
- “Grief is only the memory of widowed affections.” ~ James Martineau
- “Though we take from a covetous man all his treasure, he has yet one jewel left; you cannot bereave him of his covetousness.” ~ John Milton
- “Death is the mother of Beauty; hence from her, alone, shall come fulfillment to our dreams and our desires.” ~ Wallace Stevens
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“Grief is a curious thing when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly of a household is never pretty, ours no exception.” ~ Jodi Picoult
- “Life Lesson 3: 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
- “Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.” ~ Thomas Moore
- “Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon, and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.” ~ Rossiter W. Raymond
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“The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.” ~ Thornton Wilder
- “For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.” ~ Khalil Gibran
- “The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.” ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe
- “They that love beyond the world
cannot be separated by it.
Death cannot kill what never dies.” ~ William Penn -
“Grief is not a disorder, a disease or sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical, and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.” ~ Earl A Grollman
- “Good-night! good-night! as we so oft have said Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days That are no more, and shall no more return. Thou hast but taken up thy lamp and gone to bed; I stay a little longer, as one stays To cover up the embers that still burn.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- “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. I miss you like hell.” ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
- “It is the will of God and Nature that these mortal bodies be laid aside when the soul is to enter into real life; ’tis rather an embryo state, a preparation for living; a man is not completely born until he be dead: Why then should we grieve that a new child is born among the immortals?” ~ Benjamin Franklin
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“Guilt is perhaps the most painful companion of death.” ~ Coco Chanel
- “When the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.” ~ Khalil Gibran
- “When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry;
I am not there, I did not die.” ~ Mary Elizabeth Frye - “When you are sorrowful, look again.” ~ Khalil Gibran
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“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” ~ Khalil Gibran
- “To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.” ~ Thomas Campbell
- “A horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.” ~ Rossiter W. Raymond
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“Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.” ~ Emily Dickinson
- “Those we love don’t go away, they sit beside us every day.” ~ Liane Moriarty
- “Grief is the price we pay for love.” ~ Queen Elizabeth II
