Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Quotes & Sayings

The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

There is no mistaking love. You feel it in your heart. It is the common fiber of life, the flame that heats our soul, energizes our spirit, and supplies passion to our lives. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Everything in this life has a purpose, there are no mistakes, no coincidences. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It is important to feel the anger without judging it, without attempting to find meaning in it. It may take many forms: anger at the health-care system, at life, at your loved one for leaving. Life is unfair. Death is unfair. Anger is a natural reaction to the unfairness of loss. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Love is really the only thing we can possess, keep with us, and take with us. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

In the so-called civilized world, children are physically, sexually and/or emotionally abused; they are the leaders of our future. When children are raised in such a hostile and violent environment, how can we hope for a harmonious future for all people of this world? In this light, the purpose of human life is to achieve our own spiritual evolution, to get rid of negativity, to establish harmony among our physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual quadrants, to learn to live in harmony within the family, community, nation, ..treating all of mankind as brothers and sisters. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

You have to temper the iron. Every hardship is an opportunity that you are given, an opportunity to grow. To grow is the sole purpose of existence on this planet Earth. You will not grow if you sit in a beautiful flower garden, but you will grow if you are sick, if you are in pain, if you experience losses, and if you do not put your head in the sand, but take the pain as a gift to you with a very, very specific purpose. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Free choice is the greatest gift God gives to his children. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Mankind's greatest gift ... is that we have free choice. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Simple people with less education, sophistication, social ties, and professional obligations seem in general to have somewhat less difficulty in facing this final crisis than people of affluence who lose a great deal more in terms of material luxuries, comfort, and number of interpersonal relationships. It appears that people who have gone through a life of suffering, hard work, and labor, who have raised their children and been gratified in their work, have shown greater ease in accepting death with peace and dignity compared to those who have been ambitiously controlling their environment, accumulating material goods, and a great number of social relationships but few meaningful interpersonal relationships which would have been available at the end of life. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I look for mystery and try to decipher it while knowing it is an impossible task. I look for memory, where Mystery lies. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We bring a deeper commitment to our happiness when we fully understand, that our time left is limited and we really need to make it count. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The truth does not need to be defended. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The ultimate lesson is learning how to love and be loved unconditionally — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

When you learn your lessons, the pain goes away. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

When I came to this country in 1958, to be a dying patient in a medical hospital was a nightmare. You were put in the last room, furthest away from the nurses' station. You were full of pain, but they wouldn't give you morphine. Nobody told you that you were full of cancer and that it was understandable that you had pain and needed medication. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Memories are the only real gifts we can leave our children. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no death the way we understood it. The body dies, but not the soul. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

If we make our goal to live a life of compassion and unconditional love, then the world will indeed become a garden where all kinds of flowers can bloom and grow. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We make progress in society only if we stop cursing and complaining about its shortcomings and have the courage to do something about them. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The opinion which other people have of you is their problem, not yours. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Death is staring too long into the burning sun and the relief of entering a cool, dark room. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The simple life on the farm was everything to me. Nothing was more relaxing after a long plane flight than to reach the winding driveway that led up to my house. The quiet of the night was more soothing than a sleeping pill. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Those who learned to know death, rather than to fear and fight it, become our teachers about life. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

And after your death, when most of you for the first time realize what life here is all about, you will begin to see that your life here is almost nothing but the sum total of every choice you have made during every moment of your life. Your thoughts, which you are responsible for, are as real as your deeds. You will begin to realize that every word and every deed affects your life and has also touched thousands of lives. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

If, on the other hand, you listen to your own inner voice, to your own inner wisdom, which is far greater than anyone else's as far as you are concerned, you will not go wrong, and you will know what to do with your life. Then time is no longer relevant. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Even though I had a good income from my lectures, no one would give me a loan. The insanity almost drove me to sympathize with the feminist movement. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The five stages - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

When you spend your life doing what you love to do, you are nourishing your Soul. It matters not what you do, only that you love whatever you happen to do. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

If you truly want to grow as a person and learn, you should realize that the universe has enrolled you in the graduate program of life, called loss. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Death is the great transition. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Consciously or not, we are all on a quest for answers, trying to learn the lessons of life. We grapple with fear and guilt. We search for meaning, love, and power. We try to understand fear, loss, and time. We seek to discover who we are and how we can become truly happy. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

There are dreams of love, life, and adventure in all of us. But we are also sadly filled with reasons why we shouldn't try. These reasons seem to protect us, but in truth they imprison us. They hold life at a distance. Life will be over sooner than we think. If we have bikes to ride and people to love, now is the time. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It is inconceivable for our unconscious to imagine an actual ending of our own life here on Earth, and if this life of ours has to end, the ending is always attributed to a malicious intervention from the outside by someone else. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Death is but a transition from this life to another existence where there is no more pain and anguish. All the bitterness and disagreements will vanish, and the only thing that lives forever is love. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Our only purpose in life is growth. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I think modern medicine has become like a prophet offering a life free of pain. It is nonsense. The only thing I know that truly heals people is unconditional love. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We cannot look at the sun all the time, we cannot face death all the time. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

When I die I'm going to dance first in all the galaxies ... I'm gonna play and dance and sing. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We will never be enlightened unless we realize and own what our capacity, from the best of the best to the worst of the worst because then we have more empathy, more compassion, more sympathy for others who do things that are hurtful and harmful and we see, given certain situations, I'm capable of that myself. So, I'm less judgmental. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Those who have been immersed in the tragedy of massive death during wartime, and who have faced it squarely, never allowing their senses and feelings to become numbed and indifferent, have emerged from their experiences with growth and humanness greater than that achieved through almost any other means. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

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

Begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it were the only one we had. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We point to our unhappy circumstances to rationalize our negative feelings. This is the easy way out. It takes, after all, very little effort to feel victimized. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It is my conviction that it is the intuitive, spiritual aspects of us humans-the inner voice-that gives us the 'knowing,' the peace, and the direction to go through the windstorms of life, not shattered but whole, joining in love and understanding. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It is difficult to accept death in this society because it is unfamiliar. In spite of the fact that it happens all the time, we never see it. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

How do the geese know when to fly to the sun? — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

There is within each one of us a potential for goodness beyond our imagining; for giving which seeks no reward; for listening without judgment; for loving unconditionally. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Lots of my dying patients say they grow in bounds and leaps, and finish all the unfinished business. But assisting a suicide is cheating them of these lessons, like taking a student out of school before final exams. That's not love, it's projecting your own unfinished business — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

For years, I have been stalked by a bad reputation. Actually, I have been pursued by people who have regarded me as the 'Death and Dying' Lady. They believe that having spent more than three decades in research into death and life after death qualifies me as an expert on the subject. I think they miss the point. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Dying is something we human beings do continuously, not just at the end of our physical lives on this earth. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Dying is nothing to fear. It can be the most wonderful experience of your life. It all depends on how you've lived. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Old age is not synonymous with being 'glad to die. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

According to my parents, I was supposed to have been a nice, churchgoing Swiss housewife. Instead I ended up an opinionated psychiatrist, author and lecturer in the American Southwest, who communicates with spirits from a world that I believe is far more loving and glorious than our own. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

If we could raise one generation with unconditional love, there would be no Hitlers. We need to teach the next generation of children from Day One that they are responsible for their lives.
Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Dying nowadays is more gruesome in many ways, namely, more lonely, mechanical, and dehumanized; at times it is even difficult to determine technically when the time of death has occurred. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

People after death become complete again. The blind can see, the deaf can hear, cripples are no longer crippled after all their vital signs have ceased to exist. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

The only incontrovertible fact of my work is the importance of life. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

My work with AIDS patients started right at the beginning of the epidemic, totally unplanned and spontaneous, as all my work had proceeded in the previous two decades, if it were not already my whole life-style! In the early eighties, we knew very little about this peculiar disease. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We run after values that, at death, become zero. At the end of your life, nobody asks you how many degrees you have, or how many mansions you built, or how many Rolls Royces you could afford. That's what dying patients teach you. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

But at the time of transition, your guides, your guardian angels, people whom you have loved and who have passed on before you, will be there to help you. We have verified this beyond a shadow of a doubt, and I say this as a scientist. There will always be someone to help you with this transition. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Facing death means facing the ultimate question of the meaning of life. If we really want to live we must have the courage to recognize that life is ultimately very short, and that everything we do counts. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Learning lessons is a little like reaching maturity. You're not suddenly more happy, wealthy, or powerful, but you understand the world around you better, and you're at peace with yourself. Learning life's lessons is not about making your life perfect, but about seeing life as it was meant to be. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

When we have passed the tests we are sent to Earth to learn, we are allowed to graduate. We are allowed to shed our body, which imprisons our souls. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It's not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather our concern must be to live while we're alive. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

However healthy you think you are, remember that vegetarians die too. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It is very important that you do only what you love to do. You may be poor, you may go hungry, you may live in a shabby place, but you will totally live. And at the end of your days, you will bless your life because you have done what you came here to do. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We usually know more about suppressing anger than feeling it. Tell a counselor how angry you are. Share it with friends and family. Scream into a pillow. Find ways to get it out without hurting yourself or someone else. Try walking, swimming, gardening - any type of exercise helps you externalize your anger. Do not bottle up anger inside. Instead, explore it. The anger is just another indication of the intensity of your love. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Fear and Guilt are the only enemies of man. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

There are only two emotions: love and fear. All positive emotions come from love, all negative emotions from fear. From love flows happiness, contentment, peace, and joy. From fear comes anger, hate, anxiety and guilt. It's true that there are only two primary emotions, love and fear. But it's more accurate to say that there is only love or fear, for we cannot feel these two emotions together, at exactly the same time. They're opposites. If we're in fear, we are not in a place of love. When we're in a place of love, we cannot be in a place of fear. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It is the denial of death that is partially responsible for people living empty, purposeless lives; for when you live as if you'll live forever, it becomes too easy to postpone the things you know that you must do. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It is very important that you only do what you love to do. you may be poor, you may go hungry, you may lose your car, you may have to move into a shabby place to live, but you will totally live. And at the end of your days you will bless your life because you have done what you came here to do. Otherwise, you will live your life as a prostitute, you will do things only for a reason, to please other people, and you will never have lived. and you will not have a pleasant death. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

There is not much sense in suffering, since drugs can be given for pain, itching, and other discomforts. The belief has long died that suffering here on earth will be rewarded in heaven. Suffering has lost its meaning. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We often assume that if we are good people we will not suffer the ills of the world. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I have learned there is no joy without hardship. There is no pleasure without pain. Would we know the comfort of peace without the distress of war? — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I say to people who care for people who are dying, if you really love that person and want to help them, be with them when their end comes close. Sit with them - you don't even have to talk. You don't have to do anything but really be there with them. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Throughout life, we get clues that remind us of the direction we are supposed to be headed if you stay focused, then you learn your lessons. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

How do geese know when to fly to the sun? Who tells them the seasons? How do we, humans know when it is time to move on? As with the migrant birds, so surely with us, there is a voice within if only we would listen to it, that tells us certainly when to go forth into the unknown. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Whether you know it or not, one of the most important relationships in your life is with your Soul. Will you be kind and loving to your Soul, or will you be harsh and difficult? Many of us unknowingly damage our Souls with our negative attitudes and actions or by simple neglect. By making the relationship with your Soul an important part of your life, however, by honoring it in your daily routine, you give your life greater meaning and substance. Use your experiences-all of them-as opportunities to nourish your Soul! — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Mourning can go on for years and years. It doesn't end after a year, that's a false fantasy. It usually ends when people realize that they can live again, that they can concentrate their energies on their lives as a whole, and not on their hurt, and guilt and pain. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

You may not get what you want, but God always gives you what you need. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I always say that death can be one of the greatest experiences ever. If you live each day of your life right, then you have nothing to fear. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

We're put here on Earth to learn our own lessons. No one can tell you what your lessons are; it is part of your personal journey to discover them. On these journeys we may be given a lot, or just a little bit, of the things we must grapple with, but never more than we can handle. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature's way of letting in only as much as we can handle. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I didn't fully realize it at the time, but the goal of my life was profoundly molded by this experience - to help produce, in the next generation, more Mother Teresas and less Hitlers. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I only believe in what I see and hear with my own eyes and ears. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Religious patients seemed to differ little from those without a religion. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather, our concern must be to live while we're alive - to release our inner selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a facade designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden or even your bathtub. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

When we face the worst that can happen in any situation, we grow. When circumstances are at their worst, we can find our best. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I believe every person has a guardian spirit or angel. They assist us in the transition between life and death and they also help us pick our parents before we are born. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I once considered writing a book called I'm not OK and you're not OK, and that's OK. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross