Top 40 Grief Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Death ends a life, not a relationship.”

— Mitch Albom

Also featured in: Relationship Quotes, Loss Quotes, Beautiful Quotes, Sympathy Quotes, Healing Grief Quotes

2. “What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.”

— Helen Keller

Also featured in: Relationship Quotes, Positive Inspirational Quotes, Meaning Quotes, Emotional Quotes, Reflection Quotes

3. “Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”

— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Also featured in: Happiness Quotes, Deep Quotes About Life, Quotes About Humanity, Sorrow Quotes, Depression Quotes

4. “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”

— William Shakespeare

Also featured in: Sad Quotes, Loss Quotes, Quotes About Feelings, Suffering Quotes

5. “Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that’s all. You can’t see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it.”

— Mitch Albom

Also featured in: Loss Quotes, Moving Quotes, Romantic Quotes, Book Quotes About Love, Broken Heart Quotes

6. “You think the dead we loved truly ever leave us? You think that we don’t recall them more clearly in times of great trouble?”

— J.K. Rowling

Also featured in: Missing Someone Quotes

7. “The death of a beloved is an amputation.”

— C. S. Lewis

Also featured in: Sad Quotes About Life, Loss Quotes, Missing Someone Quotes

8. “It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.’ I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.”

— Rose Kennedy

Also featured in: Time Quotes, Sad Quotes, Loss Quotes, Pain Quotes

9. “Tears are words that need to be written.”

— Paulo Coelho

Also featured in: Interesting Quotes, Quotes About Writing, Quotes About Feelings, Moving Quotes

10. “Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom.”

— Rumi

Also featured in: Emotional Quotes, Poetry Quotes, Sad Quotes, Loss Quotes

11. “Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.”

— Anonymous

Also featured in: Relationship Quotes, Loss Quotes, Pain Quotes, Broken Heart Quotes

12. “The rest, is silence.”

— William Shakespeare

Also featured in: Loss Quotes, Powerful Quotes, Character Quotes, Silence Quotes

13. “Grief is the price we pay for love.”

— Queen Elizabeth II

Also featured in: Relationship Quotes, Loss Quotes, Compassion Quotes, Quotes About Feelings, Family Quotes

14. “You matter because you are you, and you matter to the end of your life. We will do all we can not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die.”

— Cicely Saunders

Also featured in: Care Quotes, Compassion Quotes, Caring Quotes, Moving Quotes, Health Quotes

15. “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.”

— Washington Irving

Also featured in: Loss Quotes, Quotes About Feelings, Suffering Quotes, Sorrow Quotes, Sadness Quotes

16. “And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.”

— Maya Angelou

Also featured in: Quotes About Hope, Quotes About Humanity, Appreciation Quotes, Powerful Quotes

17. “When the pain overtakes you, reach inside. Gather the broken pieces, and hand them to God. Ask Him to remake your heart. Different, this time. Stronger. More beautiful. This is how we are made, and remade by the Maker.”

— Yasmin Mogahed

Also featured in: Faith Quotes, Moving On Quotes, Spirituality Quotes, Beautiful Quotes, Pain Quotes

18. “What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.”

— Seneca the Younger

Also featured in: Emotion Quotes, Suffering Quotes, Sadness Quotes

19. “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”

— Mary Oliver

Also featured in: Sad Quotes About Life, Sorrow Quotes, Healing Grief Quotes

20. “There is a saying in Tibetan, ‘Tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength.’ No matter what sort of difficulties, how painful experience is, if we lose our hope, that’s our real disaster.”

— Dalai Lama XIV

Also featured in: Perseverance Quotes, Mental Strength Quotes, Wellness Wednesday Quotes, Quotes About Hope

21. “We shake with joy, we shake with grief. What a time they have, these two housed as they are in the same body.”

— Mary Oliver

Also featured in: Sorrow Quotes

22. “Hearts united in pain and sorrow will not be separated by joy and happiness. Bonds that are woven in sadness are stronger than the ties of joy and pleasure. Love that is washed by tears will remain eternally pure and faithful.”

— Khalil Gibran

Also featured in: Relationship Quotes, Poetry Quotes, Quotes About Heart, Love Is Quotes

23. “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

— Khalil Gibran

Also featured in: Suffering Quotes, Healing Grief Quotes

24. “O, here Will I set up my everlasting rest, And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars From this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last! Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O you The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss A dateless bargain to engrossing death!”

— William Shakespeare

Also featured in: Poetry Quotes, Sad Quotes

25. “Those who do not weep, do not see.”

— Victor Hugo

Also featured in: Sad Quotes About Life, Suffering Quotes, Sadness Quotes

26. “A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun, for sorrow, will not show his head: Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished: For never was a story of more woe Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

— William Shakespeare

Also featured in: Poetry Quotes, Suffering Quotes, Sorrow Quotes, Broken Heart Quotes

27. “Cry. Forgive. Learn. Move on. Let your tears water the seeds of your future happiness.”

— Steve Maraboli

Also featured in: Quotes About Heart, Forgiveness Quotes, Hurt Quotes

28. “In much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”

— Solomon

Also featured in: Scripture Quotes, Life is Hard Quotes, Depressing Quotes, Sadness Quotes

29. “A father’s death is the most important event, the most heartbreaking and poignant loss in a man’s life.”

— Sigmund Freud

Also featured in: Depressing Quotes, Sorrow Quotes

30. “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

— C. S. Lewis

Also featured in: Sad Quotes About Life, Sadness Quotes, Sympathy Quotes

31. “A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal.”

— Steve Maraboli

Also featured in: Empathy Quotes, Recovery Quotes, Depression Quotes, Hurt Quotes

32. “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears. And how else can it be? The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”

— Khalil Gibran

Also featured in: Human Nature Quotes, Sad Quotes About Life, Sorrow Quotes

33. “Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”

— Leo Tolstoy

Also featured in: Love You Quotes, Sorrow Quotes, Love Hurts Quotes

34. “But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

Also featured in: Courage Quotes, Mental Health Quotes, Sad Quotes About Life, Suffering Quotes

35. “It’s not what you take when you leave this world behind you. It’s what you leave behind you when you go.”

— Randy Travis

Also featured in: Make A Difference Quotes, Legacy Quotes, Simple Life Quotes

36. “The heart dies a slow death, shedding each hope like leaves until one day there are none. No hopes. Nothing remains.”

— Arthur Golden

Also featured in: Depression Quotes, Heartbreak Quotes

37. “I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.”

— Pablo Neruda

Also featured in: Poetry Quotes, Sad Quotes, Sorrow Quotes, Heartbreak Quotes

38. “I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow and called out, ‘It tastes sweet, does it not?’ ‘You’ve caught me,’ grief answered, ’and you’ve ruined my business. How can I sell sorrow, when you know it’s a blessing?”

— Rumi

Also featured in: Sorrow Quotes

39. “I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair, with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere.”

— Leonard Cohen

Also featured in: Depression Quotes, Deep Love Quotes, Heartbreak Quotes, Love Hurts Quotes

40. “His grief he will not forget; but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom.”

— J. R. R. Tolkien