Best Grief Observed Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

Source: A Grief Observed Readers' Edition: With contributions from Hilary Mantel, Jessica Martin, Jenna Bailey, Rowan Williams, Kate Saunders, Francis Spufford and Maureen Freely

“Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.”

Inspirational Love Is Christianity Kindness Mere Splendid Grief Observed

Book:Joyful Christian

Source: Joyful Christian

“Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not 'So there's no God after all,' but 'So this is what God's really like. Deceive yourself no longer.”

Thinking Believe Real God Faith Belief Danger Cease Conclusion Believe In God Dread Deceiving Deceiver Grief Observed

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“I thought I could describe a state; make a map of sorrow. Sorrow, hoever, turns out to be not a state but a process.”

States Turns Process Grief Sorrow Maps Grief Observed

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“Five senses; an incurably abstract intellect; a haphazardly selective memory; a set of preconceptions and assumptions so numerous that I can never examine more than a minority of them - never become even conscious of them all.”

I Can Memories Five Conscious Intellect Senses Abstract Assumption Minorities Selective Preconceptions Five Senses Grief Observed

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down.”

Way Trying Facts Order House Realizing Quality Boxes Trials Experiments Cards Witness Temples Benches Docks Grief Observed House Of Cards

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“When I lay these questions before God I get no answer. But a rather special sort of 'No answer.' It is not the locked door. It is more like a silent, certainly not uncompassionate, gaze. As though He shook His head not in refusal but waiving the question. Like, 'Peace, child; you don't understand.”

Children Answers Doors Special Lays Silent Locked Refusal God Is Love Grief Observed Locked Doors

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“Sometimes it is hard not to say, 'God forgive God.' Sometimes it is hard to say so much. But if our faith is true, He didn't. He crucified Him.”

Ifs Sometimes Hard Forgiving God Forgives Grief Observed

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead.”

Thinking Trying Feelings Let Me Grief Observed

Book:A Grief Observed Readers' Edition: With contributions from Hilary Mantel, Jessica Martin, Jenna Bailey, Rowan Williams, Kate Saunders, Francis Spufford and Maureen Freely

Source: A Grief Observed Readers' Edition: With contributions from Hilary Mantel, Jessica Martin, Jenna Bailey, Rowan Williams, Kate Saunders, Francis Spufford and Maureen Freely

“The time when there is nothing at all in your soul except a cry for help may be just that time when God can't give it: you are like the drowning man who can't be helped because he clutches and grabs. Perhaps your own reiterated cries deafen you to the voice you hoped to hear.”

Men Giving May Soul Helping Voice Cry Your Soul Drowning Clutch Grief Observed

Author:C. S. Lewis

“When you are happy, so happy you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be — or so it feels— welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.”

Ifs Needs Feels Helping Remember Faces Turns Sound Silence Doors Arms Gratitude Claims Praise Vain Desperate Your Face Tempted Interruptions Open Arms Grief Observed

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively. But don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.”

Wisdom Grief Talking Duty Suspects Consolation Talk To Me Grief Observed

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“Grief ... gives life a permanently provisional feeling. It doesn't seem worth starting anything. I can't settle down. I yawn, I fidget, I smoke too much. Up till this I always had too little time. Now there is nothing but time. Almost pure time, empty successiveness.”

Giving Littles I Can Feelings Seems Grief Too Much Pure Empty Starting Smoke Settling Little Time Settling Down Grief Observed

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth of falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn't you then first discover how much you really trusted it?”

Knows Firsts Believe Long Matter Belief Strong Easy Sound Know How Boxes Life And Death Trusted Falsehood Rope Cords Precipice Grief Observed

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“What do people mean when they say, 'I am not afraid of God because I know He is good'? Have they never even been to a dentist?”

People Knows Mean Not Afraid Dentist Grief Observed

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“Nothing less will shake a man — or at any rate a man like me — out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself.”

Thinking Men Doe Belief Rate Silly Senses Gods Will Like Me Torture Shakes Grief Observed

Author:C. S. Lewis

“For in grief nothing "stays put." One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral? But if a spiral, am I going up or down it? How often -- will it be for always? -- how often will the vast emptiness astonish me like a complete novelty and make me say, "I never realized my loss till this moment"? The same leg is cut off time after time.”

Ifs Moments Loss Grief Cutting Rounds Dare Legs Circles Repeats Emptiness Phases Novelty Emerging Spirals Grief Observed Stillbirth

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it Himself.”

Ideas Grief Divine Grieving Shattered Grief Observed Stillbirth

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back -- to be sucked back -- into it?”

Ifs Force Trouble Creatures Shells Doomed Grief Observed Stillbirth

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many hours are in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the questions we ask - half our great theological and metaphysical problems - are like that.”

Thinking Should Problem Asks Hours Half Rounds Miles Mortals Nonsense Squares Yellow Metaphysical Theological Grief Observed

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“And there’s also ‘To him that hath shall be given.’ After all, you must have a capacity to receive, or even omnipotence can’t give. Perhaps your own passion temporarily destroys the capacity.”

Giving Passion Given Capacity Bereavement Omnipotence Grief Observed

Author:C. S. Lewis

“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. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in. It is so uninteresting. Yet I want the others to be about me. I dread the moments when the house is empty. If only they would talk to one another and not to me.”

Source: A Grief Observed

“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”

Grief Sky Spread Absence Grieving Infant Grief Observed Empty Houses Stillbirth

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.”

May Long Grief Landscape Valleys Grief Observed

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“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. I keep on swallowing.”

Wisdom Felt Grief Sensations Stomach Not Afraid Being Afraid Restlessness Swallowing Fluttering Yawning Grief Observed

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.”

Night England Atheist Reluctant Great Divorce Grief Observed Dejected

Book:Yours, Jack: The Inspirational Letters of C. S. Lewis

Source: Yours, Jack: The Inspirational Letters of C. S. Lewis

“At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says.”

World Feels Hard Invisible Drunk Pet Blanket Grief Observed

Book:A Grief Observed

Source: A Grief Observed

“You can't see anything properly while your eyes are blurred with tears.”

Eye Tears Pet Grief Observed

Book:A Grief Observed Readers' Edition: With contributions from Hilary Mantel, Jessica Martin, Jenna Bailey, Rowan Williams, Kate Saunders, Francis Spufford and Maureen Freely

Source: A Grief Observed Readers' Edition: With contributions from Hilary Mantel, Jessica Martin, Jenna Bailey, Rowan Williams, Kate Saunders, Francis Spufford and Maureen Freely

“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.”