Elisabeth Kubler Quotes & Sayings

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

When life puts you through a tumbler, it's your choice whether you come out polished or crushed. — 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

We think sometimes we're only drawn to the good, but we're actually drawn to the authentic. We like people who are real more than those who hide their true selves under layers of artificial niceties — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Free choice is the greatest gift God gives to his children. — 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 do things hopefully because they add life to our living, but not with the illusion they will help us escape death when our time comes. — 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

Is war perhaps nothing else but a need to face death, to conquer and master it, to come out of it alive
a peculiar form of denial of our mortality? — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

If you are ready for mystical experiences, you have them. — 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

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

It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth
and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up
that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had. — 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

I'm going to dance in all the galaxies. — 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

Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings. — 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

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

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

When we grow older and begin to realize that our omnipotence is really not so omnipotent, that our strongest wishes are not powerful enough to make the impossible possible, the fear that we have contributed to the death of a loved one diminishes - and with it, the guilt. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

I am an artist because the knot is so powerful I just can not, nor want to be, anything else or do anything else. — 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

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

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

" ... All events are blessings given to us to learn from and therefore we should be grateful for the opportunity to grow and evolve into our best selves." — 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

My patients taught me not how to die, but how to live. — 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

You may not get what you want, but God always gives you what you need. — 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

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

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

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within. — 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

What is important is to realize that whether we understand fully who we are or what will happen when we die, it's our purpose to grow as human beings, to look within ourselves, to find and build upon that source of peace and understanding and strength that is our individual self. And then to reach out to others with love and acceptance and patient guidance in the hope of what we may become together. — 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

Children who die young are some of our greatest teachers. We are allowed to die when we have taught what we came to teach and when we have learned what we came to learn. — 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

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

The more you learn, the harder the lessons get. — 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

Grief will happen either as an open healing wound or a closed festering wound, either honestly or dishonestly, either appropriately or inappropriately. But emotions will be expressed. — 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

Religious patients seemed to differ little from those without a religion. — 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

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

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

Negativity can only feed on negativity. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Any natural, normal human being, when faced with any kind of loss, will go from shock all the way through acceptance. — 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

Real love doesn't die. It's the physical body that dies. Genuine, authentic love has no expectations whatsoever; it doesn't even need the physical presence of a person ... Even when he is dead and buried that part of you that loves the person will always live. — 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

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

Paul Brunton's Notebooks are a veritable treasure-trove of philosophic-spiritual wisdom. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Death is not painful. It is the most beautiful experience you will have. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Grief is real because loss is real. Each grief has its own imprint, as distinctive and as unique as the person we lost. The pain of loss is so intense, so heartbreaking, because in loving we deeply connect with another human being, and grief is the reflection of the connection that has been lost. We think we want to avoid the grief, but really it is the pain of the loss we want to avoid. Grief is the healing process that ultimately brings us comfort in our pain. — 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

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

Grief is not just a series of events, stages, or timelines. Our society places enormous pressure on us to get over loss, to get through grief. But how long do you grieve for a husband of fifty years, a teenager killed in a car accident, a four-year-old child: a year? Five years? Forever? The loss happens in time, in fact in a moment, but its aftermath lasts a lifetime. — 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

There is no joy without hardship. If not for death, would we appreciate life? If not for hate, would we know the ultimate goal is love? At these moments you can either hold on to negativity and look for blame, or you can choose to heal and keep on loving. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

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

Death is a graduation. When we're taught all the things we came to teach, learned all the things we came to learn, then we're allowed to graduate. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

Think of a lifeless forest in which a small plant pushes its head upward, out of the ruin. In our grief process, we are moving into life from death, without denying the devastation that came before. — 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

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

There is no problem that is not actually a gift. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

For those who seek to understand it, death is a highly creative force. The highest spiritual values of life can originate from the thought and study of death. — 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

Death is simply a shedding of the physical body like the butterfly shedding its cocoon. It is a transition to a higher state of consciousness where you continue to perceive, to understand, to laugh, and to be able to grow. — 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

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

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

I think that as you evolve spiritually, automatically your body tells you what is acceptable for your body and what is not. — 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

To love means not to impose your own powers on your fellow man but offer him your help. And if he refuses it, to be proud that he can do it on his own strength. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross