Widowhood Quotes

• the final lesson of learning to be independent - widowhood ... is the hardest lesson of all.

  Anne Morrow Lindbergh

  Independent, Finals, Lessons

  15 Copy quote

• Anybody can become a widow. There aren't any special qualifications. It happens in less time than it takes to draw a breath. It doesn't require the planning, for example, that it takes to become a wife or a mother or any of the other ritual roles of womanhood.

  Jacquelyn Mitchard

  Mother, Wife, Special

  7 Copy quote

• There are many women whose lives would be immeasurably improved by widowhood, but one should not always point that out.

  Alexander McCall Smith

  Would Be, Should

  Alexander McCall Smith (2007). “Espresso Tales”, p.5, Anchor

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• A widow is a fascinating being with the flavor of maturity, the spice of experience, the piquancy of novelty, the tang of practiced coquetry, and the halo of one man's approval.

  Helen Rowland

  Maturity, Men, Halos

  Helen Rowland (2017). “A Guide to Men: Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl”, p.45, Litres

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• If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Love, Breakup, Two

  Ernest Hemingway (2002). “Death in the Afternoon”, p.100, Simon and Schuster

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• Widows are divided into two classes - the bereaved and relieved.

  Victor Robinson

  Class, Two, Widows

  Victor Robinson (1907). “William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft”

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• There is nothing on earth so easy as to forget, if a person chooses to set about it. I'm sure I have as much forgot your poor, dear uncle, as if he had never existed; and I thought it my duty to do so.

  Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  Uncles, Earth, Forget

  Richard Brinsley Sheridan, Thomas Moore (1833). “The works: With a biographical sketch”, p.10

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• He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good and evil; and with whom he could set his mind at liberty, to retrace the past or anticipate the future. The continuity of being is lacerated; the settled course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless.

  Samuel Johnson

  Love, Past, Long

  Samuel Johnson (2002). “A Johnson Sampler”, Non Pareil Books

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• Widow. The word consumes itself.

  Sylvia Plath

  Widows, Widowers, Widowed

  'Widow' (1971)

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• What armies and how much of war I have seen, what thousands of marching troops, what fields of slain, what prisons, what hospitals, what ruins, what cities in ashes, what hunger and nakedness, what orphanages, what widowhood, what wrongs and what vengeance.

  Clara Barton

  War, Army, Cities

  15 Copy quote

• You evidently feel that brevity is the soul of widowhood.

  Hector Hugh Munro

  Soul, Brevity, Feels

  "The Chronicles of Clovis". Book by Saki (Hector Hugh Munro). Chapter: "The Match Maker", 1911.

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• There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Love, Life, Relationship

  Ernest Hemingway (2002). “Death in the Afternoon”, p.100, Simon and Schuster

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• Being a rock widow is not my job, so I would hire people to do it for me.

  Courtney Love

  Jobs, Rocks, People

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• The poor fatherless baby of eight months is now the utterly broken-hearted and crushed widow of forty-two! My life as a happy one is ended! the world is gone for me! If I must live on (and I will do nothing to make me worse than I am), it is henceforth for our poor fatherless children - for my unhappy country, which has lost all in losing him - and in only doing what I know and feel he would wish.

  Queen Victoria

  Life, Country, Baby

  Queen Victoria, Victoria Victoria, A. C. Benson (2014). “The Letters of Queen Victoria”, p.602, Cambridge University Press

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• One step at a time, over the years, as I sought to plumb the mystery of suffering (which cannot be plumbed), I began to see that there is a sense in which everything is a gift. Even my widowhood.

  Elisabeth Elliot

  Years, Suffering, Steps

  Elisabeth Elliot (1988). “Loneliness: it can be a wilderness, it can be a pathway to God”, Oliver-Nelson Books

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• Widowhood provided Mama with a higher form of being. In refusing to recover from my father's death she had discovered that her life was endowed with a seriousness her years in the kitchen had denied her. She remained devoted to this seriousness for thirty years. She never tired of it, never grew bored or restless in its company, found new ways to keep alive the interest it deserved and had so undeniably earned.

  Vivian Gornick

  Father, Tired, Years

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• In the name of religion, we force widowhood upon our three lakh girl-widows who could not understand the import of the marriage ceremony.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Girl, Names, Religion

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• If we would be pure, if we would save Hinduism, we must rid ourselves of this poison of enforced widowhood.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Would Be, Poison, Hinduism

  Mahatma Gandhi (1959). “India of My Dreams”, p.213, Rajpal & Sons

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• When the moon, after covering herself with darkness as in sorrow, at last throws off the garments of her widowhood, she does not at once expose herself impudently to the public gaze; but for a time remains veiled in a transparent cloud, till she gradually acquires courage to endure the looks and admiration of beholders.

  Augustus William Hare

  Moon, Clouds, Darkness

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• Widowhood imposed by religion or custom is an unbearable yoke and defiles the home by secret vice and degrades religion.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Home, Secret, Vices

  Mahatma Gandhi (1959). “India of My Dreams”, p.213, Rajpal & Sons

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• The unmarried woman seldom escapes a widowhood of the spirit. There is sure to be some one, parent, brother, sister, friend, more comfortable to her than the day, with whom her life is so entwined that the wrench of parting leaves a torn void never entirely healed or filled.

  Charlotte Mary Yonge

  Brother, Grief, Loss

  Charlotte Mary Yonge (2015). “Delphi Complete Novels of Charlotte Mary Yonge (Illustrated)”, p.8801, Delphi Classics

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• When my mother died, my father's early widowhood gave him social cachet he would not have had if they had divorced. He was a bigger catch for the sorrow attached.

  Amy Hempel

  Mother, Father, Sorrow

  Amy Hempel, Rick Moody (2007). “The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel”, p.367, Simon and Schuster

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• [Hermogenes] despises God's law in his painting, maintains repeated marriages [almost certainly a reference to remarrying after divorce or perhaps even widowhood, which Tertullian, who became a Montanist, opposed], alleges the law of God in defense of lust [likely same reference], and yet despises it in respect of his art.

  Tertullian

  Religious, Art, Divorce

  13 Copy quote

• I don't believe in divorce. I believe in widowhood.

  Carolyn Green

  Believe, Memorable, Divorce

  4 Copy quote