Grief Quotes - Page 36

• The caterpillar dies so the butterfly could be born. And, yet, the caterpillar lives in the butterfly and they are but one. So, when I die, it will be that I have been transformed from the caterpillar of earth to the butterfly of the universe.

  John Harricharan

  Butterfly, Grieving, Life And Death

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• No benefit comes from a just man's prayer if he who asks for it finds more pleasure in sin than in virtue. For Samuel mourned over Saul when he sinned, but he was not able to obtain God's mercy, for his grief was not supported by the necessary change of life on the part of the sinner. Hence God put an end to the pointless grief of His servant, saying to him, 'How long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel?' (I Sam. 16:1).

  Maximus the Confessor

  Christian, Prayer, Life Changing

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• I like big doses of grief when I read: Richard Yates, Flannery O'Connor, Kenzabaro Oe, Thomas Bernhard.

  Ben Marcus

  Bigs, Dose

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• Burnout is grist to the mill. I write every day, for most of the day, so it's just about turning into metaphor whatever's going on in my life, in the world, and in my head. Every nightmare, every moment of grief or joy or failure, is a moment I can convert into cash via words.

  Grant Morrison

  Writing, Joy, World

  Interview with Leonard Pierce, www.avclub.com. July 22, 2009.

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• I work grief and sadness out of my body when I dance, and I bring in joy and rhythm.

  Inga Muscio

  Sadness, Joy, Body

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• So who is better off, those who share love long enough to see which parts inevitably fade or those who lose their love when it is still pristine? I think each is lonely in a different place, though if you lose your love while it is still perfect you at least have a clear explanation for your grief, while if it gradually crumbles in your hands you do not.

  Jonathan Hull

  Lonely, Thinking, Hands

  Jonathan Hull (2001). “Losing Julia”, Island Books

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• Grief is Newark. It's there. Can't avoid it. The idea is to hold your nose, hope the traffic's not too bad and get on to Manhattan as quickly as possible.

  Eli Attie

  Ideas, Noses, Manhattan

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• When in these fresh mornings I go into my garden before anyone is awake, I go for the time being into perfect happiness. In this hour divinely fresh and still, the fair face of every flower salutes me with a silent joy. . . . All the cares, perplexities, and griefs of existence, all the burdens of life slip from my shoulders and leave me with the heart of a little child that asks nothing beyond the present moment of innocent bliss.

  Celia Thaxter

  Morning, Children, Flower

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• All whom the Lord has chosen and received into the society of his saints ought to prepare themselves for a life that is hard, difficult, laborious and full of countless griefs.

  John Calvin

  Saint, Lord, Difficult

  John Calvin (2004). “Golden Booklet of the True Christian Life”, p.47, Baker Books

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• There was a brief moment after 9/11 when Colin Powell said we "should not rush to satisfy the desire for revenge." It was a great moment, an extraordinary moment, because what he was actually asking people to do was to stay with a sense of grief, mournfulness, and vulnerability.

  Judith Butler

  Revenge, Extraordinary Moments, People

  "Judith Butler". Interview with Jill Stauffer, www.believermag.com. May, 2003.

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• I decided to write 'True Refuge' during a major dive in my own health. Diagnosed with a genetic disease that affected my mobility, I faced tremendous fear and grief about losing the fitness and physical freedom I loved.

  Tara Brach

  Writing, Mobility, Disease

  "Where Do We Find Peace and Freedom?". Interview with Elisha Goldstein, www.huffingtonpost.com. February 14, 2013.

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• To walk into Bill Olsen's poems is to enter a mind so weirdly curious, you can't be released to sadness, not yet: it's just too surprising.  But this book-half microscope, half telescope-shadows grief, our shared and ordinary life where an old neighbor obsessively gathers twigs to wish back the tree, where the moon is regularly ‘sawn in half,’ where sprinklers give off ‘little wet speeches.’  What else?  It's brilliantly instead and odd.

  Marianne Boruch

  Book, Sadness, Moon

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• It's a Cyprus of misery and soup kitchens and a state which cannot meet basic obligations. It can only cause me grief.

  Nicos Anastasiades

  Soup Kitchens, Cyprus, Causes

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• These days it seems the lyric impulse, so seemingly fragile, comes in for a lot of abuse-or simply a lot of mistrust. What's it for, anyway, in this hard-edged, worried world? Into this cultural uncertainty Gregory Orr's spirited meditation on the surprisingly tensile strength of poetry in the face of profound suffering and grief presents a welcome fresh view of the ancient human instinct to cry out and to praise.

  Patricia Hampl

  Views, Profound, Meditation

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• Sometimes I think the people to feel the saddest for are people who are unable to connect with the profound—people such as my boring brother-in-law, a hearty type so concerned with normality and fitting in that he eliminates any possibility of uniqueness for himself and his own personality. I wonder if some day, when he is older, he will wake up and the deeper part of him will realize that he has never allowed himself to truly exist, and he will cry with regret and shame and grief.

  Douglas Coupland

  Brother, Regret, Thinking

  Douglas Coupland (2012). “Life After God”, p.31, Simon and Schuster

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• The world has no sympathy with any but positive griefs. It will pity you for what you lose; never for what you lack

  Sophie Swetchine

  Sympathy, World, Pity

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• Another misconception is that if we truly loved someone, we will never finish with our grief, as if continued sorrow is a testimonial to our love. But true love does not need grief to support its truth. Love can last in a healthy and meaningful way, once our grief is dispelled. We can honor our dead more by the quality of our continued living than by our constantly remembering the past.

  Judy Tatelbaum

  Meaningful, Grieving, Past

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• In the midst of excitement, grief, joy, and solitude, I remind myself every moment that the sole mission of my life is to find 'the ultimate questioner' - that unimaginable who has put me in this madness to answer an unanswerable question.

  Kedar Joshi

  Joy, Solitude, Answers

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• Even the Savior of the world, the Only Begotten Son of God, was obliged to come to earth and to take upon himself an earthly tabernacle. He experienced joy and sorrow, happiness and grief, lasting satisfaction and frequent disappointments. As Paul has written, "Though he were a Son yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; and being made perfect, he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him."

  Alma P Burton

  Happiness, Disappointment, Son

  Alma P. Burton, Clea M. Burton (1966). “For They Shall Be Comforted”, p.30, Cedar Fort

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• And what art thou, thou idol Ceremony? What kind of god art thou, that suffer'st more Of mortal griefs than do thy worshippers?

  William Shakespeare

  Art, Idols, Suffering

  William Shakespeare, T.W. Craik (1995). “King Henry V: Third Series”, p.272, Cengage Learning EMEA

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• Tut, man, one fire burns out another's burning; One pain is less'ned by another's anguish; Turn giddy, and be holp by backward turning; One desperate grief cures with another's languish.

  William Shakespeare

  Pain, Men, Fire

  William Shakespeare (2009). “CliffsComplete Romeo and Juliet”, p.41, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Yet then from all my grief, O Lord, Thy mercy set me free, Whilst in the confidence of pray'r My soul took hold on thee.

  Joseph Addison

  Prayer, Soul, Praying

  Joseph Addison (1749). “The Spectator”, p.69

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• Of all the griefs that harass the distress'd, Sure the most bitter is a scornful jest; Fate never wounds more deep the generous heart, Than when a blockhead's insult points the dart.

  Samuel Johnson

  Heart, Fate, Bitter

  Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, Tobias Smollett, George Gilfillan (1855). “The Poetical Works of Johnson: Parnell, Gray, and Smollett, with Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes”, p.22

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• Inflamed by greed, incensed by hate, confused by delusion, overcome by them, obsessed by mind, a man chooses for his own affliction, for others' affliction, for the affliction of both and experiences pain and grief.

  Gautama Buddha

  Pain, Hate, Confused

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• Depend upon it, a man never experiences such pleasure or grief after fourteen years as he does before, unless in some cases, in his first lovemaking, when the sensation is new to him

  Charles Kingsley

  First Love, Men, Years

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