Quotessence
Home / Quotes / G Quotes

G Quotes

Browse famous quotes beginning with G. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.

All G Quotes

“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. Or you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn’t allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it’s over and you’re alone, you begin to see it wasn’t just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can’t get off your knees for a long time, you’re driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. “And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.”

“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. OR you can realize that every moment of it had more meaning than you dared to recognize at the time, so much meaning it scared you, so you just lived, just took for granted the love and laughter of each day, and didn't allow yourself to consider the sacredness of it. But when it's over and you're alone, you begin to see that it wasn't just a movie and a dinner together, not just watching sunsets together, not just scrubbing a floor or washing dishes together or worrying over a high electric bill. It was everything, it was the why of life, every event and precious moment of it. The answer to the mystery of existence is the love you shared sometimes so imperfectly, and when the loss wakes you to the deeper beauty of it, to the sanctity of it, you can't get off your knees for a long time, you're driven to your knees not by the weight of the loss but by gratitude for what preceded the loss. And the ache is always there, but one day not the emptiness, because to nurture the emptiness, to take solace in it, is to disrespect the gift of life.”

“Grief cannot be fixed because it is not a problem to solve; it is a deep emotional response to loss. The idea of 'healing' from grief often feels inadequate because it suggests an end point, a time when the pain will disappear. But the truth is, we don't heal from grief in the traditional sense. Instead, we heal through grief. We allow ourselves to feel the waves of sorrow, to confront the emptiness, and to adapt to life without the person we have lost.”

“Grief causes you to leave yourself. You step outside your narrow little pelt. And you can’t feel grief unless you’ve had love before it - grief is the final outcome of love, because it’s love lost. […] It’s the cycle of love completed: to love, to lose, to feel grief, to leave, and then to love again. Grief is the awareness that you will have to be alone, and there is nothing beyond that because being alone is the ultimate final destiny of each individual living creature. That’s what death is, the great loneliness.”

“Grief comes in tides, dark shadows in deep, A sudden, silent gulf where timeless treasures sleep, A hole, it tears, a hole that will never fill, And begs us to keep living, when joy has come to an end. The dark, dark path, deep in the woods, With heavy hearts, we walk, burnt in grief. In the achiest of ache, the quiet, pushing pain, for memories rise, like sunlight after rain. The times we once shared, a thread of radiant gold, Stretched, not torn, a story yet to be told, The grief-wet eyes, in the dark, dark days, Now they see the dawn-filled sky, for deep in the soul, a flower has opened, in the stream of tears, watering the soil. For those truly loved, no death can touch, those once held, no death can steal, They live in the deep, in the flowering of memories.”

“Grief comes to us in all shapes, knocking down doors of all sizes, the unanticipated guest that it is. We lose life, lose livelihood. Dreams die and bodies deteriorate with disease. Wedding bands go missing and houses fold in foreclosure. We hold our breath waiting for the bad news, waiting to hear that the world will be ripped from under our feet. We, all of us, cradle unnamed grief, crying into corners when the world isn’t looking as we wait for someone—anyone—to say it’s not too much to want to make sense of it all.”

“Grief, Cordelia would realize during that night and the next day, was like drowning. Sometimes one would surface from the dark water: a period of brief lucidity and calmness, during which ordinary tasks might be accomplished. During which one's behavior was, presumably, normal, and it was possible to hold a conversation. The rest of the time, one was pulled deep below the water. There was no lucidity, only panic and terror, only her mind screaming incoherently, only the sensation of dying. Of not being able to breathe. She would remember the time later as flashes of light in the dark, moments when she surfaced, when the making of memories was possible, if incomplete.”

“Grief does not change you. It reveals you. And herein lies the gift that cannot die. It changes the course of your life forever. If you allow yourself the chance to feel it for as long as you need to - even if it is for the rest of your life - you will be guided by it. You will become someone it would have been impossible for you to be, and in this way your loved one lives on, in you”

“Grief does not end and love does not die and nothing fills its graven place. With grace, pain is transmuted into the gold of wisdom and compassion and the lesser coin of muted sadness and resignation; but something leaden of it remains, to become the kernel arond which more pain accretes (a black pearl): one pain becomes every other pain ... unless one strips away, one by one, the layers of pain to get to the heart of the pain - and this causes more pain, pain so intense as to feel like evisceration.”

“Grief does not exist within a vacuum, but it also does not exist within just one life. It spreads out and affects the people “above you” in your family tree and the people who will come after you or “below you.” Grief also impacts entire races, genders, generations, and communities, and those beliefs about grief and the stories we tell ourselves about whether or not grief is acceptable, what’s at the root cause of grief, and whether or not we can recover from that grief have an enormous impact on how we give ourselves permission to grieve, whether we consciously acknowledge it or not.”

“Grief does not expire like a candle or the beacon on a lighthouse. It simply changes temperature. It becomes a kind of personal weather system. Snow settles in the liver. The bowels grow thick with humidity. Ice congeals in the stomach. Frost spiderwebs in the lungs. The heart fills with warm rain that turns to mist and evaporates through a colder artery.”

“Grief does not seem to me to be a choice. Whether or not you think grief has value, you will lose what matters to you. The world will break your heart. So I think we’d better look at what grief might offer us. It’s like what Rilke says about self-doubt: it is not going to go away, and therefore you need to think about how it might become your ally. Grief might be, in some ways, the long aftermath of love, the internal work of knowing, holding, more fully valuing what we have lost…”

“Grief does not seem to me to be a choice. Whether or not you think grief has value, you will lose what matters to you. The world will break your heart. So I think we’d better look at what grief might offer us. It’s like what Rilke says about self-doubt: it is not going to go away, and therefore you need to think about how it might become your ally.”

“Grief does not want to force itself into a life, a body, or an identity it has outgrown. Grief does not want to take shelter in a new life, a new body, or a new identity it is not ready to call home. Grief wants to be given time, space, and support in the in-between. It wants to be given room to help you decide who you are in the aftermath of loss without the pressure to decide RIGHT NOW.”

“Grief does that—makes you run and hide in places it can’t find you so easily. But now, that grief had melted away, like a candle burning gently through the night. And she was ready to go back. That’s how it works for most people. That’s how it’s supposed to be. You grieve. You heal. You move on. But his candle… his candle had steel-clad, it seemed.”