Quotes about grief from books

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.

I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive: for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.

At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

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.

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered? Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.

Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves.

Death belongs to life as birth does. The walk is in the raising of the foot as in the laying of it down.

’Tis better to have loved and lostThan never to have loved at all.

There is always light behind the clouds.

His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

Be still, sad heart! and cease repining;Behind the clouds is the sun still shining;Thy fate is the common fate of all,Into each life some rain must fall,Some days must be dark and dreary.

They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead,They brought me bitter news to hear and bitter tears to shed.I wept as I remember’d how often you and IHad tired the sun with talking and sent him down the sky.And now that thou art lying, my dear old Carian guest,A handful of grey ashes, long, long ago at rest,Still are thy pleasant voices, thy nightingales, awake;For Death, he taketh all away, but them he cannot take.

Grief can take care of itself; but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with.