Best grief & thinking Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“In our culture I think most people think of grief as sadness, and that's certainly part of it, a large part of it, but there's also this thorniness, these edges that come out.”

People Thinking Culture Grief Sadness Edges

Author:Anthony Rapp

“Learning about all those different things psychologically - about grief and my own addictions and problems and stuff like that, and really getting an education on it, I think it was part of the process of it, learning about it and trying to lick it.”

Thinking Trying Different Problem Stuff Process My Own Grief Addiction Different Things

Author:Richie Sambora

“So who is better off, those who share love long enough to see which parts inevitably fade or those who lose their love when it is still pristine? I think each is lonely in a different place, though if you lose your love while it is still perfect you at least have a clear explanation for your grief, while if it gradually crumbles in your hands you do not.”

Ifs Thinking Long Stills Different Enough Hands Loses Perfect Grief Clear Share Lonely Explanation Fades Better Off Different Place Pristine

Book:Losing Julia

Source: Losing Julia

“Sometimes I think the people to feel the saddest for are people who are unable to connect with the profound—people such as my boring brother-in-law, a hearty type so concerned with normality and fitting in that he eliminates any possibility of uniqueness for himself and his own personality. I wonder if some day, when he is older, he will wake up and the deeper part of him will realize that he has never allowed himself to truly exist, and he will cry with regret and shame and grief.”

Source: Life After God

“My heart burnt within me with indignation and grief; we could think of nothing else. All night long we had only snatches of sleep, waking up perpetually to the sense of a great shock and grief. Every one is feeling the same. I never knew so universal a feeling.”

Thinking Heart Long Feelings Night Literature Sleep Grief My Heart Universal Wake Up Shock Waking All Night Assassination Indignation Righteous Indignation

Author:Elizabeth Gaskell

“Sometimes events that lead us bereft of anything but grief just happen for no reason other than happenstance--a car turns left instead of right, a train is missed, a call comes too late--and the real test of our humanness is whether, in light of that knowledge, we are ever able to recover. When we again find our way despite the inability to manufacture a deeper meaning in our suffering, that I think is when God smiles upon us, proud of the strength of his creation.”

“I'd sooner have one real grief on my mind than twenty false. It's better to know one's robbed than to think one's going to be murdered.”

Thinking Knows Mind Real Grief Twenties

Book:Felix Holt: The Radical

Source: Felix Holt: The Radical

“They say that the Dead die not, but remain Near to the rich heirs of their grief and mirth. I think they ride the calm mid-heaven, as these, In wise majestic melancholy train, And watch the moon, and the still-raging seas, And men, coming and going on the earth.”

Thinking Men Stills Earth Dies Heaven Grief Watches Rich Wise Sea Moon Train Calm Rage Melancholy Heirs Mirth Majestic

Book:1914 & Other Poems

Source: 1914 & Other Poems

“Grief is real because loss is real. Each grief has its own imprint, as distinctive and as unique as the person we lost. The pain of loss is so intense, so heartbreaking, because in loving we deeply connect with another human being, and grief is the reflection of the connection that has been lost. We think we want to avoid the grief, but really it is the pain of the loss we want to avoid. Grief is the healing process that ultimately brings us comfort in our pain.”

“We must have faith during the period of our grief. We think that our afflictions will be greater than we can bear, but we do not know the strength of our own hearts, nor the power of God. He knows all. He knows every folding of the heart and also the extent of the sorrow that he inflicts. What we think will overwhelm us entirely only subdues and conquers our pride. Our renewed spirit rises from its subjugation with a celestial strength and consolation.”

Thinking Knows Heart Spirit Grief Greater Pride Bears Periods Sorrow Conquer Have Faith Affliction Consolation Celestial Power Of God Subjugation Folding

Author:Francois Fenelon

“I'm not particularly keen on pity. Pity takes something away from grief. People think they're sharing it, but really they're just taking some. I prefer to keep my grief intact.”

People Thinking Grief Pity

Book:Getting It Right

Source: Getting It Right

“Ah, the mysterious croak. Here today, gone tomorrow. It's the best reason I can think of to throw open the blinds and risk belief. Right now, this minute, time to move out into the grief and glory. High tide.”

Thinking I Can Reason Today Moving Belief Grief Gone Risk Minutes Tomorrow Right Now Glory Mysterious Tides Here Today Gone Tomorrow

Book:High Tide in Tucson

Source: High Tide in Tucson

“However long the horror continued, one must not get to the stage of refusing to think about it. To shrink from direct pain was bad enough, but to shrink from vicarious pain was the ultimate cowardice. And whereas to conceal direct pain was a virtue, to conceal vicarious pain was a sin. Only by feeling it to the utmost, and by expressing it, could the rest of the world help to heal the injury which had caused it. Money, food, clothing, shelter - people could give all these and still it would not be enough; it would not absolve them from paying also, in full, the imponderable tribute of grief.”

Source: A pocketful of pebbles

“In what touches their social convictions, most persons do not think. The threat of change, with all it suggests to them in the loss of social and economic privilege, alarms so deeply that they are incapable of unprejudiced thought. They seem to themselves to be thinking, with lucidity and fairness, but since they start from the conviction that change must undoubtedly be for the worse or from settled grief at the thought of losing what is old and lovely, they are doing no more than following a logical sequence of ideas from a false premise.”

Thinking Persons Ideas Seems Social Loss Grief Economic Losing Threat Privilege Following Conviction Lovely Logical Fairness Incapable Sequence Premises Alarms Lucidity

Author:Storm Jameson

“I think the heartbreak of September 11 - America's grief not only over the loss of life but also the loss of our own innocence -has expanded us as people because it has tenderized our hearts. On a psychological level, the American people have matured as a result of that awful day.”

People Thinking Heart America Loss Levels Results Grief Psychological Awful Innocence September September 11 Matured Awful Days

Author:Marianne Williamson

“I think the worst kind of grief is unacknowledged grief.”

Thinking Kind Grief Worst

Author:Gerry Adams

“When some one sorrow, that is yet reparable, gets hold of your mind like a monomania,--when you think, because Heaven has denied you this or that, on which you had set your heart, that all your life must be a blank,--oh, then diet yourself well on biography,--the biography of good and great men. See how little a space one sorrow really makes in life. See scarce a page, perhaps, given to some grief similar to your own, and how triumphantly the life sails on beyond it.”

Thinking Men Mind Wells Heart Littles Given Heaven Space Grief Sorrow Pages Diets Great Men Denied Blank Sail Biographies Scarce

Author:Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

“Oh youth, youth! You don't worry about anything; you seem to possess all the treasures of the universe--even sorrow gives you pleasure, even grief suits you.... And perhaps the whole secret of your charm lies not in your ability to do everything, but in your ability to think that you will do everything.”

Thinking Giving Whole Seems Lying Universe Ability Pleasure Grief Secret Worry Youth Sorrow Treasure Suits Charm Suits You

Author:Ivan Turgenev

“I think losing a loved one must be a little like losing a leg. First there is the shock, then the anesthetic, and the painkillers; the attention of doctors and nurses, flowers and cards and visits from friends. But sooner or later you have to learn to walk without it.”

Thinking Firsts Littles Walks Grief Attention Flower Losing Doctors Legs Cards Shock Nurse Loved Ones Sooner Or Later Losing A Loved One Anesthetics Painkillers Doctors And Nurses

Author:Ruth Graham

“Nothing is durable, I think anybody who thinks sex is durable is going to have a lot of grief.”

Thinking Sex Grief

Author:Gore Vidal

“Consider the pains which martyrs have endured, and think how even now many people are bearing afflictions beyond all measure greater than yours, and say, "Of a truth my trouble is comfort, my torments are but roses as compared to those whose life is a continual death, without solace, or aid or consolation, borne down with a weight of grief tenfold greater than mine."”

People Thinking Pain Life Is Religious Grief Greater Trouble Mines Comfort Weight Rose Aids Affliction Torment Consolation Martyr Solace

Book:Introduction to the Devout Life

Source: Introduction to the Devout Life

“I do think environmental writers need to be forward thinking, not just lamenting our losses. We do need to lament; in some ways it's important to be the vessels for grief for all that's being lost on our planet. But we also need to be forward thinking.”

Thinking Way Needs Important Lost Loss Grief Planets Environmental Vessel Our Planet Lament Forward Thinking

Author:Alison Hawthorne Deming

“I have spoken about what we can do as citizens, what we can do as a responsive citizenry, and this is where we have to shatter our complacency and become "active souls,"and be prepared to engage in aware - that personal struggle between our grief and our sorrow. But I don't think we have any choice.”

Thinking Soul Choices Can Do Grief Struggle Citizens Sorrow Prepared Active Be Prepared Complacency Citizenry Personal Struggle

Author:Terry Tempest Williams

“Think of your child, then, not as dead, but as living; not as a flower that has withered, but as one that is transplanted, and touched by a Divine hand, is blooming in richer colors and sweeter shades than those of earth.”

Thinking Children Hands Earth Parent Loss Grief Divine Color Flower Our Children Your Children Touched Shade Think Of You Blooming Withered Parent Child Loss Of A Parent

Author:Richard Hooker

“I feel that writers think with their noses to the ground, and the dark stuff kind of comes to me more, even though I really am sort of an upbeat guy. It's an honest descent into darkness. And you can't have the joy without the grief - it's why we listen to Mozart's 'Requiem.'”

Thinking Feels Kind Joy Guy Stuff Dark Grief Darkness Honest Noses Descent Upbeat Requiem

Author:Andre Dubus

“I think that when you're depressed, you can't concentrate long enough and well enough to read for the most part; some people can, but by and large people - that's one of the first things that goes, is the capacity to read meaningful literature. With grief, that's not true. For a while you can't read, but then you really are amenable to solace.”

People Thinking Firsts Wells Long Enough Literature Grief Capacity Meaningful Solace Amenable

Author:Kay Redfield Jamison

“I don't think grief of grief in a medical way at all. I think that I and many of my colleagues, are very concerned when grief becomes pathological, that there is no question that grief can trigger depression in vulnerable people and there is no question that depression can make grief worse.”

People Thinking Way Grief Concerned Medical Vulnerable Colleagues Triggers

Author:Kay Redfield Jamison

“I think you have waves of awareness and one of the things that I found with grief was actually - I was well prepared for it by the cyclicality of my manic depressive illness because I was used to things coming and going and so forth.”

Thinking Wells Used Found Grief Awareness Prepared Wave Illness Manic Depressive

Author:Kay Redfield Jamison

“I think grief is a step towards strength because it allows you to be porous and take everything in, and have it transform you. What will sit within you is despairing, but at least it's feeling. You're not numb. Grief is sort of the allowance of feeling.”

Thinking Feelings Grief Steps Within You Numb Allowance

Author:Carrie Brownstein

“One of the difficulties with grief research is that it risks making certain kinds of grief seem normal and others abnormal - and of course having a sense of the contours of grief is, I think, truly useful, one has to remember it's not a science, it's an individual reckoning, which science is just trying to help us describe.”

Thinking Trying Kind Helping Seems Remember Certain Courses Individual Grief Risk Normal Research Difficulty Abnormal Reckoning

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“While I did a lot of research, I ended up feeling that the best way to write about grief was to describe it from the inside out - the show the strange intensities that come along with it, the peculiar thoughts, the longing for that past - all the strange moments of thinking you glimpse the dead person on the street, or in your dreams.”

Thinking Way Writing Persons Moments Shows Feelings Dream Past Grief Streets Strange Research Longing Best Way Your Dreams Intensity Peculiar Glimpse

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“I think that grief is a profound spiritual, metaphysical, and - oddly - physical reckoning with death, which we don't understand well. It's both the process by which you relearn the world in the absence of someone who was a pillar in it, and the process in which you confront the reality of death.”

Thinking World Wells Reality Spiritual Process Grief Profound Absence Metaphysical Pillars Reckoning Profound Spiritual Reality Of Death

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“Through the process of specifically writing this memoir, there was so much reckoning that I had to do. It was very difficult. It doesn't erase anything that happened, but I think that it was healthy for me to do it. The teenage self-loathing that I suffered from all of a sudden found itself turned into rapids with my grief after my brother died. I turned it inwards. In the same way that my mom processes her grief and her problems. This project, as a memoir, has helped me funnel it outwards.”

“The fallacy is that you have to hold some sort of stake in the grief or horror in order to write about it - I think the opposite is true.”

Thinking Writing Order Grief Horror Opposites Stakes Fallacy

Author:Richard Flanagan

“The general assumption, which I think is a valid one, is that a lot of the major media were on their heels a little bit and prone to share the grief of the nation and to give Bush all the support it could.”

Thinking Giving Littles Nations Bits Grief Support Share Media Majors Little Bit Assumption Heels

Author:Seymour Hersh

“And during the campaign of 1936, she writes that she and her brother would always rather be out doing things when they're sick, rather than take to their beds. And I think Eleanor Roosevelt always responded to pain by doing more, by doing something, by being active. And I think she just couldn't bear to look at her childhood grief. And she didn't.”

Thinking Writing Looks Pain Grief Childhood Brother Bears Bed Sick Active Campaigns Eleanor

Author:Blanche Wiesen Cook

“I don't think that anyone can age in a conscious way and not experience grief.”

Thinking Way Age Grief Conscious

Author:Marianne Williamson

“It's Steven's [Sebring] view of what he saw in traveling and working with me. But on another scale, I think the film [Dream of Life] is very humanistic: It touches on motherhood, death, birth, art, laundry, anger against the Bush administration... While I don't think it's the kind of film where one goes to find some of the darker, edgier aspects of life, the film was born of grief.”

Thinking Kind Art Dream Film Life Is Born Views Grief Saws Birth Aspect Motherhood Scales Administration Laundry Aspects Of Life Humanistic

Author:Patti Smith

“I think grief is a huge subject; it's one of the things that everybody is going to confront in one way or another. There's been a lot of books written about how Americans have an odd way of trying to defer grief or minimize the need to grieve. People used to have a lot more ritual grief in their lives. For the most part, we think of it as a strictly temporal process: you grieve for a time and then you're over [it], but it's also a spatial process. It travels across a map.”

People Thinking Way Needs Trying Book Used Process Grief Written Subjects Huge One Way Odd Grieving Over It Maps Ritual Spatial

Author:John Darnielle

“I just think that gay men have much better taste than any straight man I have met. I have never gotten any grief about having a good time, being unapologetic, and irreverent from a gay man.”

Thinking Men Grief Taste Mets Gay Good Times Having A Good Time Gay Men Irreverent Unapologetic

Author:Kesha

“These kinds of tragedies [like shooting in Fort Lauderdale] have happened too often during the eight years that I've been president. The pain, the grief, the shock that they must be going through is enormous. I've asked me staff to reach out to the mayor down there and make sure that coordination between the state and local officials is what it should be. But I think we'll find out over the next 24 hours exactly how this happened and what motivated this individual.”

Thinking Should Years Kind States Pain Next Individual President Hours Grief Happened Tragedy Eight Enormous Locals Shooting Officials Shock Motivated Reach Out Staff Mayors Forts Coordination

Author:Barack Obama

“When poets die, other poets take it personally, almost as an affront. A lot of us "left behind" are thinking that poetry is the one thing keeping us alive and present, so what does it mean when one of our ranks chooses to end his or her life? There's an anger beneath the grief, you know? That anger and grief, in turn, breeds other poems from those of us left behind.”

Thinking Knows Mean Doe Ends Dies Turns Left Grief Behinds Alive One Thing Poet Poetry Is Left Behind Affront

Author:Allison Joseph

“There's been a lot of talk about how bad the reporting was, particularly with the George W. Bush Administration after 9/11. The general assumption, which I think is a valid one, is that a lot of the major media were on their heels a little bit and prone to share the grief of the nation and to give Bush all the support it could.”

Thinking Giving Grief Support Share Assumption Heels

Author:Seymour Hersh

“No president ever puts American lives at risk without a terrible sense of responsibility. And no American ever hears or reads of a soldier’s death without saying a silent prayer for the dead hero or thinking of the grief of the family and friends. Every young man or woman who dies represents a life with its own dreams and plans, extinguished so suddenly. But all said and done, it is our responsibility to see that (1) we never put our troops in situations where they are subject to unnecessary risk, and (2) we give them all our support at all times.”

“Grief comes and goes, it ebbs and flows. I think one of the lessons of this for me is that there's no one way to grieve. Everyone does it in their own way, in their own time, and we all process life and its challenges and its ups and downs as they come.”

Thinking Challenges Grief Grieving Ups & Downs

Author:Sheryl Sandberg

“I'm not ... pumped about being alive. But I don't think about suicide ever. I have a kid. I think that's just an automatic shut-off of that idea. In fact, I just instantly went into the necessities of parenting, and I think it's been very good for grief. Because it's a reality check, I guess. I have very real tasks that need immediate attention all the time.”

Thinking Real Reality Kids Grief Attention Suicide Very Good

Author:Phil Elvrum

“I think people become environmentalists through experiences of beauty and grief. There was that pond that you visited when you were a child, and there were frogs and turtles. You go back there and it's dead now. The forest you went to, now there are bulldozers, now it's a strip mall. These experiences of beauty followed by grief affect us more than learning that CO2 levels are now 400 parts per million.”

People Thinking Children Grief Environmentalist

Author:Charles Eisenstein

“I am certainly not proposing that we wait passively for the people in power to change their minds. I think we need to be confrontational, to expose the truth in ways that are uncomfortable and that, yes, require courage. What I caution against is using hateful rhetoric to inspire action, and I see a lot of that today. We strengthen the underlying field of hatred, dehumanization, and conquest. It certainly doesn't engage what allows people to do courageous things and to commit deeply, which is the experience of beauty, love, grief.”

People Thinking Mind Today Action Waiting Grief Inspire Hatred Commit Uncomfortable Courageous Rhetoric Conquest Caution Hateful Dehumanization

Author:Charles Eisenstein

“I don't think anybody deals well with tragedy or grief, but maybe my characters are particularly bad at it. Which is why I love them.”

Thinking Character Grief Tragedy

Author:Dan Chaon

“I think all those years that I spent as a nurse, from the age of seventeen, just allowed me an insight into human emotion at those times of life when it's so important. And to see and witness those times of grief and love and loss and all those things was such a huge privilege, both in my own personal life, but it also, I think, spills over into my writing. I think the one thing that most novelists have is some degree of emotional intelligence, and if you don't have that, then perhaps you might struggle to be a novelist, because that has to come out somewhere.”

Thinking Writing Important Age Loss Grief Emotion Struggle Emotional Insight Witness Nurse Personal Life Love And Loss

Author:Christie Watson

Grief Quotes

Related topics

Grief Quotes