Top 100 Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. ”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Featured in: Being Strong Quotes, Beautiful Quotes

2. “It’s only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth – and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up, we will then begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

3. “People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

4. “I’m not okay, you’re not okay, and that’s okay.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

5. “Beautiful people do not just happen.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

6. “Begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it were the only one we had.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

7. “Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature’s way of letting in only as much as we can handle.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

8. “The opinion which other people have of you is their problem, not yours.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

9. “We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind’s greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

10. “You may not get what you want, but God always gives you what you need.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

11. “It is the denial of death that is partially responsible for people living empty, purposeless lives; for when you live as if you’ll live forever, it becomes too easy to postpone the things you know that you must do.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

12. “I have learned there is no joy without hardship. There is no pleasure without pain. Would we know the comfort of peace without the distress of war?”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

13. “There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

14. “Everything in this life has a purpose, there are no mistakes, no coincidences.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

15. “There is no joy without hardship. If not for death, would we appreciate life? If not for hate, would we know the ultimate goal is love? At these moments you can either hold on to negativity and look for blame, or you can choose to heal and keep on loving.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

16. “The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Featured in: Caring Quotes

17. “We think sometimes we’re only drawn to the good, but we’re actually drawn to the authentic. We like people who are real more than those who hide their true selves under layers of artificial niceties.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Featured in: Real Quotes

18. “I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

19. “Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

20. “Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

21. “When we face the worst that can happen in any situation, we grow. When circumstances are at their worst, we can find our best.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

22. “It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we’re alive – to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

23. “Death is but a transition from this life to another existence where there is no more pain and anguish. All the bitterness and disagreements will vanish, and the only thing that lives forever is love.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

24. “Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

25. “If you truly want to grow as a person and learn, you should realize that the universe has enrolled you in the graduate program of life, called loss.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

26. “How do geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within if only we would listen to it, that tells us certainly when to go forth into the unknown.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

27. “The five stages – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

28. “Learning lessons is a little like reaching maturity. You’re not suddenly more happy, wealthy, or powerful, but you understand the world around you better, and you’re at peace with yourself. Learning life’s lessons is not about making your life perfect, but about seeing life as it was meant to be.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

29. “It is important to feel the anger without judging it, without attempting to find meaning in it. It may take many forms: anger at the health-care system, at life, at your loved one for leaving. Life is unfair. Death is unfair. Anger is a natural reaction to the unfairness of loss.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

30. “The ultimate lesson is learning how to love and be loved unconditionally.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

31. “Live, so you do not have to look back and say: “God, how I have wasted my life.” ”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

32. “When life puts you through a tumbler, it’s your choice whether you come out polished or crushed.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

33. “Fear and Guilt are the only enemies of man.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

34. “Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

35. “Consciously or not, we are all on a quest for answers, trying to learn the lessons of life. We grapple with fear and guilt. We search for meaning, love, and power. We try to understand fear, loss, and time. We seek to discover who we are and how we can become truly happy.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

36. “We bring a deeper commitment to our happiness when we fully understand, that our time left is limited and we really need to make it count.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

37. “Death is a graduation. When we’re taught all the things we came to teach, learned all the things we came to learn, then we’re allowed to graduate.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

38. “Death is simply a shedding of the physical body like the butterfly shedding its cocoon. It is a transition to a higher state of consciousness where you continue to perceive, to understand, to laugh, and to be able to grow.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

39. “There is within each one of us a potential for goodness beyond our imagining; for giving which seeks no reward; for listening without judgment; for loving unconditionally.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

40. “Children who die young are some of our greatest teachers. We are allowed to die when we have taught what we came to teach and when we have learned what we came to learn.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

41. “Negativity can only feed on negativity.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

42. “If we make our goal to live a life of compassion and unconditional love, then the world will indeed become a garden where all kinds of flowers can bloom and grow.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

43. “We make progress in society only if we stop cursing and complaining about its shortcomings and have the courage to do something about them.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

44. “If we could see that everything, even tragedy, is a gift in diguise, we would then find the best way to nourish the soul.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

45. “There is no problem that is not actually a gift.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

46. “When we have passed the tests we are sent to Earth to learn, we are allowed to graduate. We are allowed to shed our body, which imprisons our souls.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

47. “It is difficult to accept death in this society because it is unfamiliar. In spite of the fact that it happens all the time, we never see it.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

48. “Dying is an integral part of life, as natural and predictable as being born. But whereas birth is cause for celebration, death has become a dreaded and unspeakable issue to be avoided by every means possible in our modern society. Perhaps it is that.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

49. “We run after values that, at death, become zero. At the end of your life, nobody asks you how many degrees you have, or how many mansions you built, or how many Rolls Royces you could afford. That’s what dying patients teach you.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

50. “Those who learned to know death, rather than to fear and fight it, become our teachers about life.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross