These widow quotes will inspire you. A widow is a woman who has lost her spouse or partner by death and usually has not remarried.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging widow quotes, widow sayings, and widow proverbs.
Famous Widow Quotes
- “I think it’s not a femme fatale when someone is not doing it to manipulate men or be like a black widow. She loves him. She does it out of love. She wants him so badly to stay with her.” ~ Salma Hayek
- “The poor fatherless baby of eight months is now the utterly broken-hearted and crushed widow of forty-two! My life as a happy one is ended! the world is gone for me! If I must live on (and I will do nothing to make me worse than I am), it is henceforth for our poor fatherless children – for my unhappy country, which has lost all in losing him – and in only doing what I know and feel he would wish.” ~ Queen Victoria
- “It’s always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is. And it’s always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parades.” ~ Paddy Chayefsky
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“Widows are divided into two classes – the bereaved and relieved.” ~ Victor Robinson
- “By twice-born men, a widow must not be appointed to, cohabit with any other, then her husband, for they who appoint, her to another, man, will violate the eternal law.” ~ Guru Nanak
- “It is easier for a woman to be a good wife than a good mother. A widow has two duties with contrary obligations: she is a mother and she must exercise paternal authority. Few women are strong enough to understand and to play this role.” ~ Honore de Balzac
- “A widow is a fascinating being with the flavor of maturity, the spice of experience, the piquancy of novelty, the tang of practiced coquetry, and the halo of one man’s approval.” ~ Helen Rowland
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“Widow. The word consumes itself.” ~ Sylvia Plath
- “Widowers marry again because it makes their lives easier. Widows often don’t, because it makes their lives harder. [p. 61]” ~ Siri Hustvedt
- “When a man marries a widow his jealousies revert to the past: no man is as good as his wife says her first husband was” ~ Samuel Johnson
- “I’m ultimately a widow and a single mother, who’s not even getting to be a mother right now. I am so alone, it’s freaky.” ~ Courtney Love
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“It is better to be the widow of a hero than the wife of a coward.” ~ Dolores Ibarruri
- “Every widow wakes one morning, perhaps after years of pure and unwavering grieving, to realize she slept a good night’s sleep, and will be able to eat breakfast, and doesn’t hear her husband’s ghost all the time, but only some of the time. Her grief is replaced with a useful sadness. Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-grandchildren’s will be. But we learn to live in that love.” ~ Jonathan Safran Foer , Grief widow quotes
- “Continuous persecution of widows and orphans is a crime. Even the Bible says there is a specific place in hell for those who oppress widows.” ~ Imelda Marcos
- “A lot of widows feel that they have betrayed their spouse by continuing to live. It’s deranged thinking. I know that, but that doesn’t stop you feeling it.” ~ Joyce Carol Oates
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“If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
- “In the name of religion, we force widowhood upon our three lakh girl-widows who could not understand the import of the marriage ceremony.” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
- “In a study, we did of bereavement, we found that rather impressive numbers of widows and widowers had not simply gone back to their pre-loss functioning, but grown. This was due to a kind of increased existential awareness that resulted from this confrontation with the death of another. And I think it brought them in touch with their own death, so they began to experience a kind of preciousness to life that comes with an experience of its transiency.” ~ Irvin D. Yalom
- “A person may rightfully be happy if in this life he could do a great favor for widows and orphans, could assist support than, and facilitate fate of people.” ~ Islom Karimov
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“Widows, like ripe fruit, drop easily from their perch.” ~ Jean de la Bruyere
- “Officially, the New Testament church at an early stage took seriously their responsibility for widows who lacked family or other resources. The office of deacon was instituted initially to address this pressing need.” ~ Carolyn Custis James
- “When widows exclaim loudly against second marriages, I would always lay a wager than the man, If not the wedding day, is absolutely fixed on.” ~ Henry Fielding
- “I will work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to preserve the Social Security promise that provides secure retirement benefits for all, especially those who are most at risk such as widows, orphans, and people with disabilities when the need arises.” ~ Chaka Fattah
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“Handsome widows, after a twelve-month, enjoy a latitude and longitude without limit.” ~ Honore de Balzac
- “In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who loses a child.” ~ Jodi Picoult
- “Widows tend either to fade away when husbands die, committing emotional suttee, or else find that a new life burgeons. Here in Christchurch, a lot of burgeoning goes on.” ~ Fay Weldon
- “Most people think that a widow is inhabiting some elegiac world of – it’s like Mozart’s ‘Requiem Mass.’ You know, it’s very beautiful and elevated thoughts and some measure of dignity. I didn’t have that experience at all. I had one pratfall after another.” ~ Joyce Carol Oates
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“Nobody’s life is a bed of roses. We all have crosses to bear and we all just do our best.” ~ Yoko Ono
- “There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.” ~ Ernest Hemingway , Lonely widow quotes
- “Of the widow’s countless death duties there is really just one that matters: on the first anniversary of her husband’s death the widow should think I kept myself alive.” ~ Joyce Carol Oates
- “Silence accompanies the most significant expressions of happiness and unhappiness: those in love understand one another best when silent, while the most heated and impassioned speech at a graveside touches only outsiders, but seems cold and inconsequential to the widow and children of the deceased.” ~ Anton Chekhov
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“Fortune is like a widow won, And truckles to the bold alone.” ~ William Somerville
- “My charity is in the business of helping firefighters in any way that we can. For instance, after 9/11 we were the second-fastest charity to raise and distribute money to the widows and surviving family members of the 343 firefighters who died that day.” ~ Denis Leary
- “Since I’ve got on the Internet, it’s opened a whole world of wasted time for me. My wife says she’s an Internet widow.” ~ Mick Ralphs
- “When a child loses his parent, they are called an orphan. When a spouse loses her or his partner, they are called a widow or widower. When parents lose their child, their isn’t a word to describe them. This month recognizes the loss so many parents experience across the United States and around the world. It is also meant to inform and provide resources for parents who have lost children due to miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy, stillbirths, birth defects, SIDS, and other causes.” ~ Ronald Reagan
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“Rich widows are the only secondhand goods that sell at first-class prices.” ~ Benjamin Franklin
- “Scarlett tells Mammy: “I’m too young to be a widow.” She weeps to her mother: “My life is over. Nothing will ever happen to me anymore.” Her mother comforts her: “It’s only natural to want to look young and be young when you are young.”” ~ Vivien Leigh , Young widow quotes
- “Remember your contemporaries who have passed away and were your age. Remember the honors and fame they earned, the high posts they held, and the beautiful bodies they possessed. Today all of them are turned to dust. They have left orphans and widows behind them, their wealth is being wasted, and their houses turned into ruins. No sign of them is left today, and they lie in dark holes underneath the earth. Picture their faces before your mind’s eye and ponder.” ~ Al-Ghazali
- “Steven [Sebring] was documenting me as a widow with two children, going from 50 to 60 years old. My focus, during that time, was to rediscover myself, stay healthy, take care of my kids and reestablish a relationship with the people.” ~ Patti Smith
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“Drying a widow’s tears is one of the most dangerous occupations known to man.” ~ Dorothy Dix
- “A wife who loses a husband is called a widow. A husband who loses a wife is called a widower. A child who loses his parents is called an orphan. There is no word for a parent who loses a child. That’s how awful the loss is.” ~ Jay Neugeboren
- “The question is not what anybody deserves. The question is who is to take on the God-like role of deciding what everybody else deserves. You can talk about ‘social justice’ all you want. But what death taxes boil down to is letting politicians take money from widows and orphans to pay for goodies that they will hand out to others, in order to buy votes to get re-elected. That is not social justice or any other kind of justice.” ~ Thomas Sowell
- “Debt, grinding debt, whose iron face the widow, the orphan, and the sons of genius fear and hate; debt, which consumes so much time, which so cripples and disheartens a great spirit with cares that seem so base, is a preceptor whose lessons cannot be foregone, and is needed most by those who suffer from it most.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“War – after all, what is it that the people get? Why-widows, taxes, wooden legs, and debt.” ~ Samuel B. Pettengill
- “Yonder are the Hessians. They were bought for seven pounds and tenpence a man. Are you worth more? Prove it. Tonight the American flag floats from yonder hill or Molly Stark sleeps a widow!” ~ John Stark
- “I will hate the man you choose because he is not me, and love him if he makes you smile. No woman deserves the sure knowledge of widow’s black as her brideprice, you least of all.” ~ Robert Jordan
- “Do you not know that God entrusted you with that money (all above what buys necessities for your families) to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to help the stranger, the widow, the fatherless; and, indeed, as far as it will go, to relieve the wants of all mankind? How can you, how dare you, defraud the Lord, by applying it to any other purpose?” ~ John Wesley
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“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy – and Jill a wealthy widow.” ~ Evan Esar
- “I got so lucky on my ‘Red Widow’ cast. It was just the universe looking out for me that I got those actors. It’s a big ensemble cast, a very international cast. I don’t know how that happened.” ~ Melissa Rosenberg
- “I would suggest the widow do things the husband used to do, so he seems to be there with you. You will feel like just going to bed. It’s so wonderful, going to bed.” ~ Joyce Carol Oates
- “Here’s an interesting thing about L.A. – it’s overrun with black widow spiders. I could find you one on the street in 10 minutes.” ~ Dominic Monaghan
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“One can with dignity be wife and widow but once.” ~ Joseph Joubert
- “A widow is like a frigate of which the first captain has been shipwrecked.” ~ Alphonse Karr
- “Contrary to the macho culture of Mexico, both my grandmothers were very brave young widows. I was always very close to these hard-working, intelligent women.” ~ Carlos Fuentes
- “I had seen Cheers twice, I think. Ted [Danson] had so much hair in his widow’s peak that I remember thinking, “That dude looks like Eddie Munster.”” ~ Kirstie Alley
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“I’m not upset about my divorce. I’m only upset that I’m not a widow.” ~ Roseanne Barr
- “To every class we have a school assign’d,
Rules for all ranks, and food for every mind:
Yet one there is, that small regard to rule
Or study pays, and still is deem’d a school;
That, where a deaf, poor, patient widow sits,
And awes some thirty infants as she knits;
Infants of humble, busy wives, who pay
Some trifling price for freedom through the day.
At this good matron’s hut the children meet,
Who thus becomes the mother of the street.” ~ George Crabbe - “Anybody can become a widow. There aren’t any special qualifications. It happens in less time than it takes to draw a breath. It doesn’t require the planning, for example, that it takes to become a wife or a mother or any of the other ritual roles of womanhood.” ~ Jacquelyn Mitchard
- “women used to be elected only when their husbands died and they became widows. The men found this was too hard on them. That’s why they’ve become feminists.” ~ Gloria Steinem
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“I’ve always thought that the most perfect fate which could befall any woman would be to be born a rich widow.” ~ Faith Baldwin
- “I’m doing a collaborative project with another artist, Mary Hamill. My project is to gather the oral history of war widows, starting with the women of my village, Kop Nymit.” ~ Chauth Piersath
- “I will tell you one thing. They will never drag me out like a little old widow like they did Mrs. Wilson when President Wilson died. I will never be used that way.” ~ Jackie Kennedy
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“It’s in the homes of spiteful old widows that one finds such cleanliness.” ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
- “But the stuff that I do is more like all the comic roles like in The Merry Widow and Die Fledermaus and I just did this Offenbach operetta at the LA Opera. I love it. I just love it. For me, it’s like a great mesh of musical theatre and my classical oboe background to be standing on these huge stages with a full orchestra and all the opulence. I’m a complete sucker for the over-the-topness.” ~ Jason Graae
- “You who have suffered so much do not want to be with the kind of person who makes “black widow” jokes to deal with an uncomfortable, painful moment. You should be with a person capable of great compassion and understanding.” ~ Mallory Ortberg
