Grief and comfort quotes
Words for loss and for the people left behind: consolation from scripture, poets and letter-writers, chosen with care for memorial cards and tribute videos.
The library has 965 quotes on this topic. Here are 60 of the most quoted, no more than four from any one writer.
60 grief and comfort quotes
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One woe doth tread upon another’s heel, So fast they follow.
William Shakespeare Hamlet, Act iv. Sc. 7 -
What’s gone and what’s past help Should be past grief.
William Shakespeare The Winter’s Tale, Act iii. Sc.2 -
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.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Rainy Day, Ballads and Other Poems -
Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak Whispers the o’erfraught heart, and bids it break.
William Shakespeare Macbeth, Act iv. Sc. 3 -
Good night, good night! parting is such sweet sorrow, That I shall say good night till it be morrow.
William Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet, Act ii. Sc. 2 -
To me the meanest flower that blows can give Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
William Wordsworth Ode. Intimations of Immortality, Stanza 11 -
If a man take no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand.
Confucius Analects, XV.11 · translated by James Legge -
Oh, fear not in a world like this, And thou shalt know erelong,—Know how sublime a thing it is To suffer and be strong.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Light of Stars -
Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity there are a hundred that will stand adversity.
Thomas Carlyle Heroes and Hero-Worship. The Hero as a Man of Letters -
Prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament; adversity is the blessing of the New, which carrieth the greater benediction and the clearer revelation of God’s favour.
Francis Bacon Essays -
Our repentance is not so much sorrow for the ill we have done as fear of the ill that may happen to us.
François de La Rochefoucauld Maxims, Maxim 180 · translated by J. W. Willis Bund and J. Hain Friswell -
Affliction’s sons are brothers in distress; A brother to relieve,—how exquisite the bliss!
Robert Burns A Winter Night -
Fair Greece! sad relic of departed worth! Immortal, though no more! though fallen, great!
Lord Byron Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto ii. Stanza 73 -
Thrice he assay’d, and thrice in spite of scorn Tears, such as angels weep, burst forth.
John Milton Paradise Lost, Book i. Line 619 -
I am not now in fortune’s power: He that is down can fall no lower.
Samuel Butler Hudibras, Part i. Canto iii. Line 877 -
On every thorn delightful wisdom grows; In every rill a sweet instruction flows.
Edward Young Love of Fame: Satire I. DR -
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
William Blake Proverbs of Hell, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, c. 1790 -
Men are we, and must grieve when even the shade Of that which once was great is passed away.
William Wordsworth On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic -
A feeling of sadness and longing That is not akin to pain, And resembles sorrow only As the mist resembles the rain.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow The Day is done -
And as she looked around, she saw how Death the consoler, Laying his hand upon many a heart, had healed it forever.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Evangeline, Part ii. 5 -
Yet tears to human suffering are due; And mortal hopes defeated and o’erthrown Are mourned by man, and not by man alone.
William Wordsworth Laodamia -
Chords that vibrate sweetest pleasure Thrill the deepest notes of woe.
Robert Burns Sweet Sensibility -
Man’s inhumanity to man Makes countless thousands mourn.
Robert Burns Man was made to Mourn -
But sad as angels for the good man’s sin, Weep to record, and blush to give it in.
Thomas Campbell Pleasures of Hope, Part ii. Line 357 -
“What is good for a bootless bene?” With these dark words begins my tale; And their meaning is, Whence can comfort spring When prayer is of no avail?
William Wordsworth Force of Prayer -
Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell; And in the lowest deep a lower deep, Still threat’ning to devour me, opens wide, To which the hell I suffer seems a heaven.
John Milton Paradise Lost -
None think the great unhappy but the great.
Edward Young Love of Fame, Satire i. Line 238 -
Italia! O Italia! thou who hast The fatal gift of beauty, which became A funeral dower of present woes and past, On thy sweet brow is sorrow ploughed by shame, And annals graved in characters of flame.
Lord Byron Childe Harold, Canto IV -
As aromatic plants bestow No spicy fragrance while they grow; But crush’d or trodden to the ground, Diffuse their balmy sweets around.
Oliver Goldsmith The Captivity, Act i -
A flattering painter, who made it his care To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are.
Oliver Goldsmith Retaliation, Line 63 -
Lord of himself,—that heritage of woe!
Lord Byron Lara, Canto i. Stanza 2 -
No words suffice the secret soul to show, For truth denies all eloquence to woe.
Lord Byron The Corsair, Canto iii. Stanza 22 -
This world is all a fleeting show, For man’s illusion given; The smiles of joy, the tears of woe, Deceitful shine, deceitful flow,—There’s nothing true but Heaven.
Thomas Moore This World is all a fleeting Show -
With hue like that when some great painter dips His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse.
Percy Bysshe Shelley The Revolt of Islam, Canto v. Stanza 23 -
Let each man direct himself first to what is proper, then let him teach others; thus a wise man will not suffer.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 158 · translated by F. Max Müller -
One can always know at once whether a man has home claims upon his life or not. I have noticed a very, very sad expression in the eyes of so many married men.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
There is no suffering for him who has finished his journey, and abandoned grief, who has freed himself on all sides, and thrown off all fetters.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 90 · translated by F. Max Müller -
`All created things are grief and pain,’ he who knows and sees this becomes passive in pain; this is the way that leads to purity.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 278 · translated by F. Max Müller -
From greed comes grief, from greed comes fear; he who is free from greed knows neither grief nor fear.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 216 · translated by F. Max Müller -
It is a sad thing to think of, but there is no doubt that genius lasts longer than beauty. That accounts for the fact that we all take such pains to over-educate ourselves.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
If the Ship of State should suffer wreck now, it will never need another pilot.
Abraham Lincoln July 12 -
It is only shallow people who require years to get rid of an emotion. A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
Music creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one’s tears.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
Ill habits gather by unseen degrees,—As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.
John Dryden Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book xv. The Worship of Aesculapius, Line 155 Disputed attribution -
Man were better relate himself to a statue or picture than to suffer his thoughts to pass in smother.
Francis Bacon Essays -
Probably no man ever ventured to mourn at not having three eyes. But any one is inconsolable at having none.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 409 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Notwithstanding the sight of all our miseries, which press upon us and take us by the throat, we have an instinct which we cannot repress, and which lifts us up.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 411 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
For ’tis a truth well known to most, That whatsoever thing is lost, We seek it, ere it come to light, In every cranny but the right.
William Cowper The Retired Cat -
Excessive qualities are prejudicial to us and not perceptible by the senses; we do not feel but suffer them.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 72 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
We never seek things for themselves, but for the search. Likewise in plays, scenes which do not rouse the emotion of fear are worthless, so are extreme and hopeless misery, brutal lust, and extreme cruelty.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 135 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean. Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.
Alfred Tennyson The Princess, Part iv. Line 21 -
The people suffer from famine because of the multitude of taxes consumed by their superiors. It is through this that they suffer famine.
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 75.1 · translated by James Legge -
Cheer’d up himself with ends of verse And sayings of philosophers.
Samuel Butler Hudibras, Part i. Canto iii. Line 1011 -
Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.
Horace -
In all the silent manliness of grief.
Oliver Goldsmith The Deserted Village, Line 384 -
That which the droning world, chained to appearances, will not allow the realist to say in his own words, it will suffer him to say in proverbs without contradiction.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: First Series -
The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: Second Series -
I grieve that grief can teach me nothing, nor carry me one step into real nature.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: Second Series -
Saints are sad, because they behold sin (even when they speculate) from the point of view of the conscience, and not of the intellect.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: Second Series -
How could you stand your ground and suffer that to be proved?
Epictetus Golden Sayings, No. LXVII · translated by Hastings Crossley
Who wrote most about grief
- William Shakespeare 116
- Blaise Pascal 27
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 25
- Lord Byron 22
- Thomas Carlyle 21
- Alexander Pope 18
- Alfred Tennyson 16
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 14
- Jean Paul 14
- Robert Burns 13
- William Wordsworth 12
- The Buddha 12