140 Powerful Quotes About Loss to Cope with Heartache

Loss is a central aspect of life. It may be the death of a family member or friend, the dissolution of a relationship, the loss of a pet, a kid, a parent, or even our health.

It’s never simple to lose a loved one, regardless of the kind of loss. Our mental and emotional health can be greatly impacted by the high emotional reaction and grieving process. No matter who you are, going through it is difficult.

Our collection of 140 quotes about loss and grief will provide you with some encouraging words and support at this trying time, whether you’ve recently experienced a loss or are looking for the proper comforting words to say to someone.

Most of us wish we had the right words of comfort following a death. Here are 140 of the most timeless sympathy quotes about grief from history, literature, the Bible, and other sources of peace and wisdom.

Quotes About Losing a Loved One

1. “A great soul serves everyone all the time. A great soul never dies. It brings us together again and again.” – Maya Angelou

2. “There is nothing wrong with grief. It’s a natural extension of love. It’s a healthy and sane response to loss.” — Megan Devine

3. “While grief is fresh, every attempt to divert only irritates. You must wait till it is digested, and then amusement will dissipate the remains of it.” — Samuel Johnson

Quotes After Grief and Life After Loss Whats your Grief and saddness images

4. “If you ever lose someone dear to you, never say the words they’re gone. They’ll come back.” ― Prince

5. “His death brings new experience to my life – that of a wound that will not heal.” ― Ernst Jünger

6. “We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.” —Anton Chekhov

7. “Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.” – William Penn

8. “Lucky is the spouse who dies first, who never has to know what survivors endure.” —Sue Grafton

9. “When it is darkest, we can see the stars.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

10. “What they never tell you about grief is that missing someone is the simple part.”― Gail Caldwell

Comforting Quotes About Loss to Cope with Heartache and Sad Images

11. “You don’t know who is important to you until you actually lose them.” – Mahatma Gandhi

12. “Never. We never lose our loved ones. They accompany us; they don’t disappear from our lives. We are merely in different rooms.” – Paulo Coelho

13. “Perhaps they are not stars in the sky but rather openings where our loved ones shine down to let us know they are happy.” – Unknown

14. “It was a portion of my own self-analysis, my reaction to my father’s death—that is to say, to the most important event, the most poignant loss of a man’s life.” – Sigmund Freud

15. “What we have once enjoyed we can never lose; all that we deeply love becomes a part of us.” – Helen Keller

16. “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.” — Matthew 5:4

17. “Although it’s difficult today to see beyond the sorrow, may looking back in memory help comfort you tomorrow.” — Unknown

Powerful Grief Quotes Messages About Grieving and Loss and sad pictures

18. “How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.” — Eric Hoffer

19. “Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life”

20. “It’s more like she left some of herself behind in the walls and the floors and the books, like there’s something she wants to tell me.” ― Marie Bostwick

21. “Losing a loved one is painful, but losing someone like you is even worse, as you are the most loved of all. Should you return to our side, please stay longer this time, okay?” – Unknown

22. “We understand death only after it has placed its hands on someone we love.”– Anne L. de Stael

23. “Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.” – C.S. Lewis

24. “Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.” – Charles Dickens

25. “The very worst part of grief is that you can’t control it. The best we can do is try to let ourselves feel it when it comes. And let it go when we can.”— Grey’s Anatomy

26. “There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart.” – Mahatma Gandhi

27. “All of us have parents. Generations pass. We are not unique. Now it is our family’s turn.” ― Ralph Webster

28. “Remembering our loved ones is breathing life into their fading images, that we might once more see their faces and pass along a tearful “I miss you” – Richelle E. Goodrich

29. “The dead never truly die. They simply change form.” ― Suzy Kassem

30. Those we love and lose are always connected by heartstrings into infinity. – Terri Guillemets

31. “One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love.” – Sophocles

32. “To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches.” – Yann Martel

33. “Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-grandchildren will be. But we learn to live in that love.” — Jonathan Safran Foer

34. “The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not get over the loss of a loved one; you’ll learn to live with it.” —Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

35. “What do you say? There really are no words for that. There really aren’t. Somebody tries to say, ‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.’ People say that to me. There’s no language for it. Sorry don’t do it. I think you should just hug people and mop their floor or something.” — Toni Morrison

36. “Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face—I know it’s an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.” – Patrick Swayze

37. “Your legacy lives on in us, your loving family.” – Unknown

38. “Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.” – Stephen Vincent Benet

39. “Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something, and has lost something.” – Jackson Brown Jr.

40. “Healing takes time and you are doing the best you can and that is perfect.” – Unknown

41. “Though lovers be lost, love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.” – Dylan Thomas

42. “The pain of missing you is a beautiful reminder of the joy of loving you” – Dean Jackson

43. “Grief is like mending a knee. You can mend the knee and make it function, but the knee never actually heals” – Jason Reynolds

44. “He spoke well who said that graves are the footprints of angels.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

45. “Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.” — Joni Mitchell

46. “Loss can remind us that life itself is a gift.” – Louise Hay and David Kessler

47. “Remember that people are only guests in your story – the same way you are only a guest in theirs – so make the chapters worth reading.” ― Lauren Klarfeld

48. “He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

49. “All things grow with time, except grief.” —Jewish proverb

50. “You see, my father taught me that even our most profound losses are survivable. And that is — it is what we do with that loss — our ability to transform it into a positive event —that is one of my father’s greatest lessons.” – Ted Kennedy Jr.

51. “Our joys will be greater, our love will be deeper, our life will be fuller because we shared your moment.” – Unknown

52. “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside while still alive. Never surrender.” – Tupac Shakur

53. “The gift my father gave me every day of my life was that he believed in me.” – Jim Valvano

54. Do you not know that a man is not dead while his name is still spoken?” – Terry Pratchett

55. “What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” – Helen Keller

56. “When you lose what you love remember to stay strong. Look out the window and remember life goes on.” – Drew Chadwick

57. “The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief – But the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love.” – Hilary Stanton Zunin

58. “Memories… let them fill your mind, warm your heart, and lead you through.” – Unknown

59. “Everyone for whom I would have cried has already died.” ― Kathryn Orzech

60. “The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.” – G.K. Chesterton

61. “Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.” – Rumi

62. “Say not in grief that they are gone, but give thanks that they were yours.”—Hebrew Proverb

63. “Like a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

64. “It’s not about getting over it it’s about learning to live with it.” — After Chloe

65. Unseen, unheard, but always near; still loved, still missed and very dear.” – Anonymous

66. “Someday you’re gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You’ll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing.” – Elizabeth Gilbert

67. “You don’t go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always will be.” — Nigella Lawson

68. “You left me boundaries of pain Capacious as the sea, Between eternity and time, Your consciousness and me.” – Emily Dickinson

69. “What is lovely never dies, but passes into another loveliness, Star-dust or sea-foam, Flower or winged air.” – Thomas Bailey Aldrich

70. “Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.” — Shakespeare

71. “The loss of my father was the most traumatic event in my life – I can’t forget the pain.” – Frank Lowry

72. “In the memory of someone who touched so many lives and brought such happiness. May they rest in peace.” – Unknown

73. “Seeing death as the end of life is like seeing the horizon as the end of the ocean.” – David Searls

74. “Death – the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening.”– Sir Walter Scott

75. “Of course, losing my father was traumatic. I was an only child. But from the time my father died, my general theme in life has been to turn adversity into opportunity.” – Thomas G. Stemberg

76. “Once upon a memory someone wiped away a tear, held me close and loved me, Thank you, dear.” – Unknown

77. “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain.”

78. “Once the glue of the family passes away, holidays just aren’t the same anymore.”– Anonymous

79. “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” – Dr. Seuss

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

81. “Grief is like the ocean, it comes in waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.” – Vicki Harrison

82. “Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.”—Rossiter W. Raymond

83. “I am because you were.” — Unknown

84. “You cannot stop loving your friend because he’s dead, especially if he was better than anyone alive, you know?” – Jerome Salinger

85. “All deaths are sudden, no matter how gradual the dying may be.” ― Michael McDowell

86. “It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” — John Steinbeck

87. “No matter how prepared you think you are for the death of a loved one, it still comes as a shock, and it still hurts very deeply” – Billy Graham

88. “Time they said… Time will heal all wounds but they lied…” ― Tilicia Haridat

89. “You gave me a forever within the numbered days…” – John Green, The Fault In Our Stars

90. “Losing a mother doesn’t happen in a moment. It takes years to appreciate the impact of what’s gone.”– Lisa-Jo Baker

91. “It’s always hard to lose somebody. It leaves a hole in your heart that never grows back.” – Kevin Brooks

92. “I should like my epitaph to say, ‘He helped people see God in the ordinary things of life, and he made children laugh.’”– Reverend W. Awdry

93. “The heaviness of loss in her heart hadn’t eased, but there was room there for humor, too.” – Nalo Hopkinson

94. “The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.” — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

95. “Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” – Arthur Golden

96. “The sun, the moon, the wind, the stars, will forever be around, reminding you of the love you shared, and the peace she’s finally found.” – Unknown

97. “The only way to get over a death is by seeing it as a life completed, instead of a life interrupted.” ― Anonymous

98. Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.—Euripides

99. “After you have wept and grieved for your physical losses, cherish the functions and life you have left.” —Morrie Schwartz

100. “Oh heart, if one should say to you that the soul perishes like the body, answer that the flower withers, but the seed remains.”—Kahlil Gibran

101. “Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart and you’ll never walk alone.” – Rodgers and Hammerstein

102. “Your life was a blessing, your memory a treasure. You are loved beyond words and missed beyond measure.” – Renee Wood

103. “She made the broken look beautiful and strong look invincible. She walked with the universe on her shoulders and made it look like a pair of wings.”– Ariana Dancu

104. “Grieving doesn’t make you imperfect. It makes you human.” ― Sarah Dessen

105. “He loved and was loved. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I – I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” – Robert Frost

106. “The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.” – Harriet Beecher Stowe

107. “Those we love don’t go away, they walk beside us every day.

108. “I will not hide my grief, as I did not hide my love.”– Anonymous

109. “The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives.”– Norman Cousins

110. “Losing someone when you’re young is the greatest pain anyone can face.” – Amory Blaine

111. “Those we love don’t go away, they walk beside us everyday.” – Unknown

112. “I don’t think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that remains.”- Anne Frank

113. “Loss is only temporary when you believe in God!” – Latoya Alston

114. “Everyone copes differently, some cry for the loss of a loved one, others smile because they know they’ll see them again.” – Unknown

115. “Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It’s the transition that’s troublesome.” – Isaac Asimov

116. “What we once enjoyed and deeply loved we can never lose, for all that we love deeply becomes part of us.” — Helen Keller

117. “It’s hard to forget someone who gave you so much to remember.” — Unknown

118. “Absence is a house so vast that inside you will pass through its walls and hang pictures in the air.” ― Pablo Neruda

119. “Grief and love are conjoined, you don’t get one without the other.”— Jandy Nelson

120. “When you were gone, it felt as if we lost a part of our own body. It was as if you took us along with you, with all the pain of losing someone we never thought we’d lose.” – Unknown

121. “I’ll be seeing you, in all the old familiar places, that this heart of mine embraces, all day through.” – Billie Holiday

122. “Those we have held in our arms for a short while we hold in our hearts forever.” – Unknown

123. “And yet I want to be human; I want to be thinking of him because then I feel he is alive somewhere, if only in my head.”― Sally Green

124. “When we lose someone we love we must learn not to live without them, but to live with the love they left behind.” – Anonymous

125. “Tears are words the mouth can’t say nor can the heart bear.” –

126. “May you find strength and resolve today, to allow a deeper sense of healing to begin.” – Eleesha

127. “We never truly get over a loss, but we can move forward and evolve from it.” —Elizabeth Berrien

128. “For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.”—William Penn

129. “When someone is grieving, you don’t have to say anything. Just be present. Be nonjudgmental. Let them cry, scream, or sit in silence. You don’t have to fix them.” – Dana Arcuri

130. “The deep pain that is felt at the death of every friendly soul arises from the feeling that there is in every individual something which is inexpressible, peculiar to him alone, and is, therefore, absolutely and irretrievably lost.” — Arthur Schopenhauer

131. “When he died, all things soft and beautiful and bright would be buried with him.” ― Madeline Miller

132. “Grief is the price we pay for love.” – Queen Elizabeth II

133. “In life, we loved you dearly, in death we love you still. In our hearts you hold a place, no one else will ever fill.” – Unknown

134. “If it were possible to heal sorrow by weeping and to raise the dead with tears, gold were less prized than grief.”—Sophocles

135. “For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.”– Kalil Gibran

136. “The best lessons, the best sermons are those that are lived.”– Yolanda King

137. “When one person is missing the whole world seems empty.” – Pat Schweiber

138. “Your end, which is endless, is as a snowflake dissolving in the pure air.” ~Zen Teaching

139. “Sometimes memories sneak out of my eyes and roll down my cheeks.” – Unknown

140. “Say not in grief ‘he is no more’ but in thankfulness that he was.” – Hebrew Proverb