Grief

"Why wilt thou add to all the griefs I suffer Imaginary ills, and fancy'd tortures?"

"Acceptance is the better part of grief."

"But what is grief, if not love persevering?"

"I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless."

"O, brothers! let us leave the shame and sin Of taking vainly in a plaintive mood, The holy name of Grief—holy herein, That, by the grief of One, came all our good."

"Thank God, bless God, all ye who suffer not More grief than ye can weep for. That is well— That is light grieving!"

"To say that a life is grievable is to claim that a life, even before it is lost, is, or will be, worthy of being grieved on the occasion of its loss; the life has value in relation to mortality. One treats a person differently if one brings the sense of the grievability of the other to one’s ethical bearing toward the other. If an other’s loss would register as a loss, would be marked and mourned, and if the prospect of loss is feared, and precautions are thus taken to safeguard that life from harm or destruction, then our very ability to value and safeguard a life depends upon an ongoing sense of its grievability—the conjectured future of a life as an indefinite potential that would be mourned were it cut short or lost."

"We are not yet speaking about equality if we have not yet spoken about equal grievability, or the equal attribution of grievability. Grievability is a defining feature of equality. Those whose grievability is not assumed are those who suffer inequality—unequal value."

"The heart which grief hath cankered Hath one unfailing remedy - the Tankard."

"Nullus dolor est quem non longinquitas temporis minuat ac molliat."

"One often calms one's grief by recounting it."

"In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow."

"Grief is the price we pay for love."

"In all the silent manliness of grief."

"Grief tears his heart, and drives him to and fro, In all the raging impotence of woe."

"Quis desiderio sit pudor aut modus Tam cari capitis?"

"On me, on me Time and change can heap no more! The painful past with blighting grief Hath left my heart a withered leaf. Time and change can do no more."

"Grief and disappointment give rise to anger, anger to envy, envy to malice, and malice to grief again, till the whole circle be completed."

"Ponamus nimios gemitus: flagrantior æquo Non debet dolor esse viri, nec vulnere major."

"Grieving is a sign of spiritual health."

"If grief can be a doorway to love, then let us all weep for the world we are breaking apart so we can love it back to wholeness again."

"We tend to shy away from that grief. But I think that that’s the role of art: to help us into grief, and through grief, for each other, for our values, for the living world. You know, I think about grief as a measure of our love, that grief compels us to do something, to love more."

"There is an indolence in grief Which will not even seek relief. What is the toil, or care, or pain, The human heart cannot sustain? Enough if struggling can create A change or colour in our fate; But where's the spirit that can cope With listless suffering, when hope, The last of misery's allies, Sickens of its sweet self, and dies."

"The only cure for grief is action."

"Oh, well has it been said, that there is no grief like the grief which does not speak!"

"Believe me, it is no time for words when the wounds are fresh and bleeding; no time for homilies when the lightning's shaft has smitten and the man lies stunned and stricken. Then let the comforter be silent; let him sustain by his presence, not by his preaching; by his sympathetic silence, not by his speech. "Afterward," when the storm is spent, he may venture to open his mouth; "afterward," when the morn has dawned, he may seek "to justify the ways of God to man;" for " afterward" the sufferer will be prepared to hear, and "afterward" the sufferer himself may be able to extract sweetness from bitterness, music from mourning, songs from sorrow, and "the peaceable fruit of righteousness" from the root of wretchedness and woe."

"Grief exists only so long as one considers oneself to be of a definite form. If the form is transcended one will know that the one Self is eternal. There is no death nor birth. That which is born is only the body. The body is the creation of the ego."

"Ille dolet vere qui sine teste dolet."

"There is a solemn luxury in grief."

"Se a ciascun l'interno affanno Si leggesse in fronte scritto, Quanti mai, che invidia fanno, Ci farebbero pietà!"

"What need a man forestall his date of grief, And run to meet what he would most avoid?"

"Great, good, and just, could I but rate My grief with thy too rigid fate, I'd weep the world in such a strain As it should deluge once again; But since thy loud-tongued blood demands supplies More from Briareus' hands than Argus' eyes, I'll sing thy obsequies with trumpet sounds And write thy epitaph in blood and wounds."

"Strangulat inclusus dolor, atque exæstuat intus, Cogitur et vires multiplicare suas."

"Grief must be a reflection of love. It is perhaps the ultimate proof of love. Grief is an uncontrollable manifestation of your belief that the lost person’s existence, limited and flawed as it might have been, was worthwhile, despite the limitations and flaws even of life itself."

"I’ve climbed up here holding the hilt of time’s sword after driving it into my tender heart."

"Whether anybody comes to convince me or not a part of my life does always ache arresting my chest."

"Grief—unlike sex, music, and cheating at cards—was not a skill that could be honed by practice."

"Le bonheur est salutaire pour le corps, mais c'est le chagrin qui développe les forces de l'esprit."

"All the old statues of Victory have wings: but Grief has no wings. She is the unwelcome lodger that squats on the hearthstone between us and the fire and will not move or be dislodged."

"Curæ leves loquuntur, ingentes stupent."

"Levis est dolor qui capere consilium potest."

"Magnus sibi ipse non facit finem dolor."

"If thou engrossest all the griefs are thine, Thou robb'st me of a moiety."

"For grief is crowned with consolation."

"O, grief hath chang'd me since you saw me last, And careful hours with time's deform'd hand Have written strange defeatures in my face."

"That we two are asunder; let that grieve him; Some griefs are medicinable."

"Great griefs, I see, medicine the less."

"Oft have I heard that grief softens the mind And makes it fearful and degenerate."

"What private griefs they have, alas, I know not, That made them do it."

"For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop."