Grief Comfort Quotes & Sayings

From watching Silvia, I'd learned that one of the worst things about being ill is that most people find your suffering opaque. With this sadness it was different. I felt that I needed to nurture and protect it from people's understanding. I wanted Susy's sympathy because I wanted comfort and to feel less alone, and yet I also didn't want it - I didn't want my personal grief to be part of something universal right then. — Olivia Sudjic

I was so full of missing her that I felt my heart would splinter into a thousand tiny pieces, but I found comfort in the thought of them together up there in the shade of those old trees, overlooking the bay. It tempered my grief ever so slightly, like a feather come to lodge in a dark place. — Ute Carbone

I know nothing which can so comfort the soul; so calm the swelling billows of sorrow and grief; so speak peace to the winds of trial, as a devout musing upon the subject of the Godhead. — Charles Spurgeon

With God for thy portion thou art rich indeed, for He will supply thy need, comfort thy heart, assuage thy grief, guide thy steps, be with thee in the dark valley, and then take thee home, to enjoy Him as thy portion for ever. "I have enough," said Esau; this is the best thing a worldly man can say, but Jacob replies, "I have all things," which is a note too high for carnal minds. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

If a mother is mourning not for what she has lost but for what her dead child has lost, it is a comfort to believe that the child has not lost the end for which it was created. And it is a comfort to believe that she herself, in losing her chief or only natural happiness, has not lost a greater thing, that she may still hope to "glorify God and enjoy Him forever." A comfort to the God-aimed, eternal spirit within her. But not to her motherhood. The specifically maternal happiness must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will she have her son on her knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see her grandchild. — C.S. Lewis

Dark now. Blacker than black, I know it. And words are tiny things in the face of all that dark and all that cold. But hear these words, little sister. Hear and know. Tomorrow is coming, just as fast as the turning of the sky. And as sure as it's black now, the sun will rise. Always. No matter how faint the glow. — Jay Kristoff

A good president needs a big comfort zone. He should be able to treat enemies as opportunities, appear authentic in joy and grief, stay cool under the hot lights. — Nancy Gibbs

By showing that you don't have to lose yourself, maybe someone else will feel some sort of comfort. — Lea Michele

I want you to think of two different situations. First, remember times when you've felt your best, at the top of your game, alive and vibrant. Pay attention to your posture, the muscles in your face, your breathing. Then, I want you to think of occasions where you've felt sick or anxious. Don't just think of people. Think of activities. This will help us reveal what makes you happy. Pay attention to how your body responds to these scenarios - it will serve as your biggest indicator in the future when you're actually doing things." This woman was damn brilliant. "And remember, it's okay to feel sad, but just try to limit your bouts with it to an hour a day. Let it all out, give yourself that time to heal, nurture and comfort yourself. You won't heal unless you grieve. Grieving is good."
"Good grief?"
"Yes. It takes courage to grieve. — Stephanie Klein

I think unconsciously I was afraid that if she asked me how I felt, my unleashed grief and rage would kill us all. In some unadmitted corner of myself I was already weeping and screaming and begging her not to leave me, not to go. If I started crying for real, only her comfort could make me stop, and if she died before she had finished comforting me, then I would be left to cry forever. — Jean Hegland

Only the Holy Spirit can comfort a person in the depths of grief. — Tullian Tchividjian

The real comfort is that the history of the world contains so much grief that my small griefs are edged out, and are only cinders at the borders of the fire. I am saying this again because I want it to be true. — Sebastian Barry

After he died, there was a deep calm to his face; he seemed a kind of unfathomable, still well which opened on and down beneath the suddenly smooth surface of his skin ... The heat in him lasted a long time. I loved that heat. I don't know how long I held his face and his shoulders and stroked him; as he began to cool I kept my hands on his belly, where the last of his warmth seemed to pool and concentrate. Here the fire of the body came to rest, smoldering longest, down to the last embers. — Mark Doty

Lamentations comfort only by lacerating the heart still more. Such grief does not desire consolation. It feeds on the sense of its hopelessness. Lamentations spring only from the constant craving to re-open the wound. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The tears of those who never cry, the calm, the levelheaded ones, are terrible to see. She seemed to be split or torn by the force of the tears, which she squeezed her eyes shut against, which she forced back with her fist against her lips. Smokey, afraid and awed, came immediately to her as he might to rescue his child from a fire, without thought and without knowing quite what he would do. When he tried to take her hand, speak softly to her, she only trembled more violently, the red cross branded on her face grew uglier; so he enveloped her, smothered the flames, Disregarding her resistance, as well as he could he covered her, having a vague idea that he could by tenderness invade her and then rout her grief, whatever it was, by main strength. He wasn't sure he wasn't himself the cause of it, wasn't sure if she would cling to him for comfort or break him in rage, but he had no choice anyway, savior or sacrifice, it didn't matter so long as she could cease suffering. — John Crowley

Please Say A Prayer For All Who are Broken Hearted And Grief In Despair. May They Find Peace In The Loving Arms Of God And Comfort In Our Prayers. May They Pray For Us When It's Our Turn To Need Help In Our Own Despair. — Timothy Pina

Return now to these studies and they will keep you safe. They will comfort you, they will delight you; and if they will genuinely penetrate your mind, never again will grief enter there, or anxiety, or the distress caused by futile and pointless suffering. — Seneca.

We were talking the other evening about the phrases one uses when trying to comfort someone who is in distress. I told him that in English we sometimes say, 'I've been there.' This was unclear to him at first-I've been where? But I explained that deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific loacation, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.
'So sadness is a place?' Giovanni asked.
'Sometimes people live there for years,' I said. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Duty bound, Aeneas, though he struggled with desire to calm and comfort her in all her pain, to speak to her and turn her mind from grief, and though he sighed his heart out, shaken still with love if her, yet took the course heaven gave him and turned back to the fleet. — Virgil

Sometimes it's a comfort to tell the same stories over and over; sometimes it's a torture — Corey Ann Haydu

When a group of people are forced to navigate a minefield together, everyone feels a grudging sense of comfort when someone else gets blown up. Though there may be other unseen landmines left in the ground, each death creates a safe spot. A landmine cannot explode twice in the same place. Sure, the explosion robs the survivors of a comrade. Still, each death makes everyone's next step marginally safer. So everyone keeps walking with grief on their faces, and relief in their hearts. Their own deaths are further postponed by the end of another life. — Taona Dumisani Chiveneko

It is painful to remember what and who we've lost, but it's also comforting. Grief can become its own comfort...the moment when grief itself overtakes the one grieved. When they become one and the same, so that we fear grief's retreat as much as we feared the beloved's passing. — Jessica Mesman Griffith

The dead do not
become stars or ghosts.
in fact, they are
hardly undone.
Soon their randomly
dispersed parts
reappear one
by one on
foreign hosts-
the beloved ear
or freckled arm,
separate as a
milagro or bracelet
charm. It is not
grotesque, though
odd. Even a piece
does us some good.
Charms — Kay Ryan

When we bury the old, we bury the known past, the past we imagine sometimes better than it was, but the past all the same, a portion of which we inhabited. Memory is the overwhelming theme, the eventual comfort. But burying infants, we bury the future, unwieldy and unknown, full of promise and possibilities, outcomes punctuated by our rosy hopes. The grief has no borders, no limits, no known ends, and the little infant graves that edge the corners and fencerows of every cemetery are never quite big enough to contain that grief. Some sadnesses are permanent. Dead babies do not give us memories. They give us dreams. — Thomas Lynch

The happiest, sweetest, tenderest homes are not those where there has been no sorrow, but those which have been overshadowed with grief, and where Christ's comfort was accepted. The very memory of the sorrow is a gentle benediction that broods ever over the household, like the silence that comes after prayer. There is a blessing sent from God in every burden of sorrow. — J.R. Miller

Consider the pains which martyrs have endured, and think how even now many people are bearing afflictions beyond all measure greater than yours, and say, "Of a truth my trouble is comfort, my torments are but roses as compared to those whose life is a continual death, without solace, or aid or consolation, borne down with a weight of grief tenfold greater than mine." — Saint Francis De Sales

Sometimes grief is a comfort we grant ourselves because it's less terrifying than trying for joy. Nobody wants to admit it. We'd all declare we want to be happy, if we could. So why, then, is pain the one thing we most often hold on to? Why are slights and griefs the memories on which we choose to dwell? Is it because joy doesn't last but grief does? — Megan Hart

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief,
More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring.
Comforter, where, where is your comforting?
Mary, mother of us, where is your relief?
My cries heave, herds-long; huddle in a main, a chief-
woe, world-sorrow; on an age-old anvil wince and sing
Then lull, then leave off. Fury had shrieked 'No ling-
ering! Let me be fell: force I must be brief'.
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there. Nor does long our small
Durance deal with that steep or deep. Here! creep,
Wretch, under a comfort serves in a whirlwind: all
Life death does end and each day dies with sleep. — Gerard Manley Hopkins

The world wept a silent, windless downpour, a befitting accompaniment to the arrival of death.
However, Lady Brenna Hilliard, only daughter of the late Earl Lundsford, had yet to join in the weeping. Shock and disbelief kept her from the comfort of tears. The torrent would come, she knew, in a wave of sudden grief, but for now her emotions were elusive, too numb to be felt. — Cynthia Wicklund

Minute by minute, then hour by hour, then day by day. Work is solace," he said, "friends are comfort. Life is for the living. You and I know that, even though we spend so much time with the dead - maybe because of that we know we have to live. Chale has been a great help to me."
"That's good," she said, thinking of the priest she'd suggested Morris talk to. "You can ... you know, anytime."
"Yes." His lips curved. "I know. You're work, and a friend, so have been both solace and comfort. — J.D. Robb

I'll show up and stand humble in the face of a loved one's pain. I'll admit I'm as empty-handed, dumb-struck, and out of ideas as she is. I won't try to make sense of things or require more than she can offer. I won't let my discomfort with her pain keep me from witnessing it for her. I'll never try to grab or fix her pain, because I know that for as long as it takes, her pain will also be her comfort. It will be all she has left. Grief is love's souvenir. It's our proof that we once loved... So, I'll just show up and sit quietly with her. — Glennon Doyle Melton

I pray thee, cease thy counsel,
Which falls into mine ears as profitless
As water in a sieve: give not me counsel;
Nor let no comforter delight mine ear
But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine:
... for, brother, men
Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air and agony with words.
No, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow,
But no man's virtue nor sufficiency
To be so moral when he shall endure
The like himself. Therefore give me no counsel:
My griefs cry louder than advertisement. — William Shakespeare

May tender memories soften your grief, May fond recollection bring you relief, And may you find comfort and peace in the thought Of the joy that knowing your loved one brought ... For time and space can never divide Or keep your loved one from your side. When memory paints in colors true, the happy hours that belonged to you. — Helen Steiner Rice

We reflect on what has been lost and comfort those enduring a profound grief. And somehow we know that a brighter morning will come. — George W. Bush

Dawn.
The transformation is gruesome and brings me to my feet. My legs nearly buckle, but I stumble to the doorway, terrified for the man-beast in the destroyed room.
He screams and roars, shaking with pain, and grief, and such horrible shame. My heart bleeds, weeping for him. I fall to my knees, helpless to do anything but watch.
When it is finally, blessedly over, my Beast bows his head, looking utterly exhausted. His rumbling breaths are a comfort like nothing I've ever known.
I cannot give up on the monster of a man. For this gentle, tormented Beast, I must fight on. I must find a way to free him. — Alianne Donnelly

The world values power, comfort, success, and recognition. Jesus frees us to value grief, sacrifice, weakness, and exclusion. — Timothy Keller

The purpose of a funeral service is to comfort the living. It is important at a funeral to display excessive grief. This will show others how kind-hearted and loving you are and their improved opinion of you will be very comforting. — P. J. O'Rourke

One of the hardest things about losing someone that you love is that you have to allow yourself to seek and accept comfort in other areas of your life — Meg Donohue

Now in the thriving season of love
when the bud relents into flower,
your love turned absence has turned once more,
and if my comforts fall soft as rain
on her flutters, it is because
love grows by what it remembers of love — Lisel Mueller

Confronting our feelings and giving them appropriate expression always takes strength, not weakness. It takes strength to acknowledge our anger, and sometimes more strength yet to curb the aggressive urges anger may bring and to channel them into nonviolent outlets. It takes strength to face our sadness and to grieve and to let our grief and our anger flow in tears when they need to. It takes strength to talk about our feelings and to reach out for help and comfort when we need it. — Fred Rogers

Love is so much more than some random, euphoric feeling. And real love isn't always fluffy, cute, and cuddly. More often than not, real love has its sleeves rolled up, dirt and grime smeared on its arms, and sweat dripping down its forehead. Real love asks us to do hard things - to forgive one another, to support each other's dreams, to comfort in times of grief, or to care for family. Real love isn't easy - and it's nothing like the wedding day - but it's far more meaningful and wonderful. — Seth Adam Smith

Why is it that people talk about death, as if it is a part of life, when it is entirely separate? Someone passes on into the never ending void, where the living aren't allowed. We can't see, hear, touch or feel those who have succumbed to the eternal sleep, but we comfort ourselves with thoughts of a grander plan. We tell ourselves that they are in a better place, but what could be greater than breathing the same air, as those loved ones? Their pain may be gone, but pleasure can only be when it is stark against the hurt that life brings? — J.D. Stroube

O youth! youth! you have no concerns, you possess, as it were, all the treasures of the universe, even grief is a comfort to you, even sadness suits your looks, you are self-assured and bold, you say: 'Look, I'm the only one alive!' while the very days of your life run away and vanish without a trace and without number and everything in you disappears like wax, like snow in the hear of the sun... And perhaps the entire et of your charm consists not in the possibility of doing everything, but in the possibility of thinking perhaps it consists precisely in the fact that you want only to scatter on the wind energies that you wouldn't know how to use for anything else, perhaps it consists in the fact that each one of us seriously regards himself as a spendthrift and seriously considers that he has the right to say: 'Oh, the things I could have done if only I hadn't wasted my time! — Ivan Turgenev

The truest form of love is where you are able to put your own needs aside to do what is best for the one you love. If you could know where I am now and if you love as you say you do, you would never ever wish me back from the love and the comfort and the bliss of where I am and where I wait for you. — Kate McGahan

I never knew You lived so close to the floor,
but every time I am bowed down,
crushed by this weight of grief,
I feel Your hand on my head,
Your breath on my cheek,
Your tears on my neck.
You never tell me to pull myself together,
to stem the flow of many years.
You simply stay by my side
for as long as it takes,
so close to the floor. — Sheila Walsh

Where the good begins.- Where the poor power of the eye can no longer see the evil impulse as such because it has become too subtle, man posits the realm of goodness; and the feeling that we have now entered the realm of goodness excites all those impulses which had been threatened and limited by the evil impulses, like the feeling of security, of comfort, of benevolence. Hence, the duller the eye, the more extensive the good. Hence the eternal cheerfulness of the common people and of children. Hence the gloominess and grief - akin to a bad conscience - of the great thinkers. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Loving God, in life and in death, we belong to you. So in the midst of life, we entrust ourselves to your care. We are bold to ask for help when we are confused, lost, or afraid. We are eager to ask for healing for our bodies and minds, whether wounded, ill, or recovering. And we are unceasing in our prayers for those we love who are far from us physically, emotionally, or spiritually. In the midst of death and grief, even though we are weary, we return again and again, praying for comfort, for an easing of the pain that comes from loss, and for the light of your presence to pierce the present darkness. — Kimberly Bracken Long

I slept and I woke. She gave me a ring made from a leaf, a cluster of golden berries, a flower that opened and closed at the stroking of a finger ...
And once, when I startled awake with my face wet and my chest aching, she reached out to lay her hand on top of mine. The gesture was so tentative, her expression so anxious, you would think she had never touched a man before. As if she was worried I might break or burn or bite. Her cool hand lay on mine for a moment, gentle as a moth. She squeezed my hand softly, waited, then pulled away.
It struck me as odd at the time. But I was too clouded with confusion and grief to think clearly. Only now, looking back, do I realize the truth of things. With all the awkwardness of a young lover, she was trying to comfort me, and she didn't have the slightest idea how. — Patrick Rothfuss

I am the mother of three children whose birth mother died of cancer when they were young. When I met them, they were ages twelve, ten, and eight, all grieving in very different ways. I have seen first hand the pain and confusion that accompanies childhood loss. But I have also seen the healing that can take place when children begin to understand who Jesus is and how much He loves them. By using our family's personal experience as a foundation, I hope this book will be a refuge for grieving children to express their sorrow, to feel understood in all their pain, and to come to know that God is their ultimate source of comfort, healing, hope, and joy here on earth, as well as in heaven. — Kathleen Fucci

Simos said, "Grief work must be shared. In sharing, however, there must be no impatience, censure or boredom with the repetition, because repetition is necessary for catharsis and internalization and eventual unconscious acceptance of the reality of the loss. The bereaved are sensitive to the feelings of others and will not only refrain from revealing feelings to those they consider unequal to the burden of sharing the grief but may even try to comfort the helpers." (97) — Charles L. Whitfield

I'm sorry," Leo murmured and then seemed to look through Martin for a few seconds before he returned his gaze to him. "Although if it's any comfort - and please don't take this the wrong way, because I speak from my own perspective, which I understand often places me far outside of the norm - I sometimes like to think that death, at least in the case of those we truly love, allows us to appreciate what they have done for us in ways that are not possible when we're all here, constantly changing and fixated on how to get from one day to the next. Death offers us the chance to reflect on who they were, which of course is a way to understand ourselves. As painful as it can be to see them go - and I don't mean to diminish the sense of loss or grief we all feel - there is also no greater gift. — Matthew Gallaway

One of the earliest and most vivid memories of Robin's childhood was of the day that the family dog had been put down. She herself had been too young to understand what her father was saying; she took the continuing existence of Bruno, her oldest brother's beloved Labrador, for granted. Confused by her parents' solemnity, she had turned to Stephen for a clue as to how to react, and all security had crumbled, for she had seen, for the first time in her short life, happiness and comfort drain out of his small and merry face, and his lips whiten as his mouth fell open. She had heard oblivion howling in the silence that preceded his awful scream of anguish, and then she had cried, inconsolably, not for Bruno, but for the terrifying grief of her brother. — Robert Galbraith

All I can say is, it's a sort of kinship, as though there is a family tree of grief. On this branch, the lost children, on this the suicided parents, here the beloved mentally ill siblings. When something terrible happens, you discover all of the sudden that you have a new set of relatives, people with whom you can speak in the shorthand of cousins. — Elizabeth McCracken

I knew that sunny citrus helped put things in focus, sharpened the memory, just like a squeeze of lemon juice could sharpen and clarify the taste of sweet fruit. I was also well aware that too much citrus could indicate a corrosive anger. My first wedding at Rainbow Cake had taught me that. But this was a gentle, subdued citrus, like the taste of a Meyer lemon.
Spice usually indicated grief, a loss that lingered for a long time, just like the pungent flavor of the spice itself, whether it was nutmeg or allspice or star anise. The more pronounced the flavor, the more recent the loss and the stronger the emotion. So there was some kind of loss or remembrance involved here. Yet there was also a comfort in the remembering, knowing that people had gone before you. That they waited for you on the other side. — Judith Fertig

In Louisiana, one of the first stages of grief is eating your weight in Popeyes fried chicken. The second stage is doing the same with boudin. People have been known to swap the order. Or to do both at the same time. — Ken Wheaton

Where one might break, two can stand tall. Where one might fold, two can hold firm. From here until the end of your days on earth, you will have someone to support you during times of weakness, comfort you during times of grief, encourage you during times of fear, and celebrate with you during times of joy. That is a gift, one that should never be abused or taken for granted. Cherish each other as God cherishes you, and you will both know peace. — S.C. Stephens

The very first Easter taught us this: that life never ends and love never dies. — Kate McGahan

There's some comfort in seeing things go on; birds keep singing, buses keep running. But if you want those things to continue, perhaps you have to accept that the other kinds of things, unhappier, even horrific ones, will continue too. And that's harder. — Ashley Hay

If it be a point of humanity for man to bring health and comfort to man, and especially to mitigate and assuage the grief of others, and by taking from them the sorrow and heaviness of life to restore them to joy, that is to say, to pleasure, why may it not then be said that nature does provoke every man to do the same to himself? — Thomas More

Her ideas were expressions of her inability to accept her own personal tragedy and her quest for some certainty on which she could rest a troubled spirit. Her her lack of education was a real handicap, because she had no historical or philosophical perspective from which to analyze her own experience of grief and loss. Because we lived in a cultural wasteland of suburbia, there were no schools or evening classes she might have attended which could offer an intellectually disciplined approach to her quest. Nor were there any churches which might have offered comfort through the beauty of their liturgy. — Jill Ker Conway

When we are sad ... it can be comforting to cling to familiar objects, to things that don't change. — Donna Tartt

Oh! he understood that for the humble soul of the Russian peasant, worn out by grief and toil, and still more by the everlasting injustice and everlasting sin, his own and the world's, it was the greatest need and comfort to find some one or something holy to fall down before and worship. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The great love is gone. There are still little loves - friend to friend, brother to sister, student to teacher. Will you deny yourself comfort at the hearthfire of a cottage because you may no longer sit by the fireplace of a palace? Will you deny yourself to those who reach out to you in hopes of warming themselves at your hearthfire? — Mercedes Lackey

I was beginning to taste it. Something bitter, but warm.
A flavor that woke me up and let me see things clearly. A flavor that made me feel safe, so I could let those things go. A flavor that held my hand and walked me across to the other side of loss, and assured me that one day, I would be just fine. A flavor for a change of heart- part grief, part hope.
Suddenly, I knew what that flavor would be. I padded down to the kitchen and cut a slice of sour cream coffee cake with a spicy underground river coursing through its center, left over from an order that had not been picked up today.
One bite and I was sure. A familiar flavor that now seemed utterly fresh and custom-made for me.
Cinnamon.
The comfort of sweet cinnamon. It always worked. I felt better. Lighter. Not quite "everything is going to be all right," but getting there. One step at a time. — Judith Fertig

The heart that loves must one day grieve. Love and grief are the Goddess's twined gifts. Let the pain in, let it open your heart to compassion. Let me help you bear your grief and then may your heart ease and open to greater love. May the love that flows eternally through the universe embrace and comfort you. p.85 — Cate Tiernan

But, as old Swedish legends say, Of all the birds upon that day, The swallow felt the deepest grief, And longed to give her Lord relief, And chirped when any near would come. Hugswala swala swal honom! Meaning, as they who tell it deem, Oh, cool, oh, cool and comfort Him! — Charles Godfrey Leland

Three, 300, or 3,000 - these are the number of unknown days, a week, a year, or a decade, each far too precious little and yet, poignantly too much at the same time, to see an irrevocably declined loved one languish and suffer. That fear-ridden, irreversible release lingers in the doorway, but hesitates for reasons we don't understand, leaving us to weep with a mixture of angst and gratitude all at the same time. It is finally ushered all the way in, to comfort and carry our loved one to that Better Place. When the time finally comes, we can be enveloped in a warm cloak of long-awaited acceptance and peace that eases our own pain. It quiets the grief which has moaned inside of us, at least some, every single one of those bittersweet days, weeks... or years. — Connie Kerbs

The sad truths I've been taught by the families of the dead are these: seeing is believing; knowing is better than not knowing; to name the hurt returns a kind of comfort; the grief ignored will never go away. For those whose sons and daughters, husbands, wives, mothers, fathers and friends went off alive and never did return, the worst that can happen has already happened. The light and air of what is known, however difficult, is better than the dark. The facts of death, like the facts of life, are required learning. — Thomas Lynch

Contrary to what a lot of people believe (or hope), comfort doesn't take the pain away. Comfort slides in beside the pain, pulling up a chair so that we have something more than sorrow in our hearts. Comfort gently expands our spirits so that we can breathe again. Comfort opens our eyes so that we can see possibility again.
And on those days, whether it is the next day or five years removed, on that day when grief rears its dark head again, comfort helps us remember that pain is not all there is — Peggy Haymes

We aren't born for ourselves alone. Wells couldn't abandon the others after the horror of that day. He needed to get back to help bury Priya, to comfort those who wouldn't be able to sleep. To restrain those whose grief and fear might turn into a need for vengeance. — Kass Morgan

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

During that time, The Mouth came by to pray with us, and my dad began to spend his evenings sitting in the yellow lawn chair and staring at the highway, or down in the basement with his isotope material, finding comfort in the stability that's created from decay. — Miriam Toews

I ... am left with the lingering feeling that the places we go in our minds to find comfort have little to do with where our bodies go. — Christina Baker Kline

But thou art with us, with us in the past,
The present, with us in the times to come.
There is no grief, no sorrow, no despair,
No languor, no dejection, no dismay,
No absence scarcely can there be, for those
Who love as we do. Speed thee well! — William Wordsworth

She put her head in her hands and began to cry softly. He felt confused and bitterly unhappy. A part of him wanted to go to her, to hold and comfort her, but he wasn't prepared to be pushed away in cold anger all over again. He waited in his chair and felt the room expand until there was an emptiness the size of the desert between them. — Michelle Frost

I remember my wife in white. I remember her walking toward me on our wedding day, a bouquet of red flowers in her hand, and I remember her turning away from me in anger, her body stiff as a stone. I remember the sound of her breath as she slept. I remember the way her body felt in my arms. I remember, always I remember, that she brought solace to my life as well as grief. That for every dark moment we shared between us, there was a moment of such brightness I almost could not bear to look at it head-on. I try to remember the woman she was and not the woman I have built out of spare parts to comfort me in my mourning. And I find, more and more, as the days go by and the balm of my forgiveness washes over the cracked and parched surface of my heart, I find that remembering her as she was is a gift I can give us both. — Carolyn Parkhurst

Grief is a solitary journey. No one but you knows how great the hurt is. No one but you can know the gaping hole left in your life when someone you know has died. And no one but you can mourn the silence that was once filled with laughter and song. It is the nature of love and of death to touch every person in a totally unique way. Comfort comes from knowing that people have made the same journey. And solace comes from understanding how others have learned to sing again. — Helen Steiner Rice

Becoming aware of the intense suffering of billions of animals, and of our own participation in that suffering, can bring up painful emotions: sorrow and grief for the animals; anger at the injustice and deception of the system; despair at the enormity of the problem; fear that trusted authorities and institutions are, in fact, untrustworthy; and guilt for having contributed to the problem. Bearing witness means choosing to suffer. Indeed, empathy is literally 'feeling with.' Choosing to suffer is particularly difficult in a culture that is addicted to comfort
a culture that teaches that pain should be avoided whenever possible and that ignorance is bliss. We can reduce our resistance to witnessing by valuing authenticity over personal pleasure, and integration over ignorance. — Melanie Joy

The heart bow'd down by weight of woe, To weakest hope will cling, To thought and impulse while they flow, That can no comfort bring, That can, that can no comfort bring, With those exciting scenes will blend, O'er pleasure's pathway thrown; But mem'ry is the only friend That grief can call its own. — Alfred Bunn

Persons under the shock of genuine affliction are not only upset mentally but are all unbalanced physically. No matter how calm and controlled they seemingly may be, no one can under such circumstances be normal. Their disturbed circulation makes them cold, their distress makes them unstrung, sleepless. Persons they normally like, they often turn from. No one should ever be forced upon those in grief, and all over-emotional people, no matter how near or dear, should be barred absolutely. Although the knowledge that their friends love them and sorrow for them is a great solace, the nearest afflicted must be protected from any one or anything which is likely to overstrain nerves already at the threatening point, and none have the right to feel hurt if they are told they can neither be of use or be received. At such a time, to some people companionship is a comfort, others shrink from their dearest friends. — Emily Post

When I wear her clothes, I just feel safer, like she's whispering in my ear. — Jandy Nelson

When things get really bad, you take comfort in the placeness of a place. — Banana Yoshimoto

I remember understanding what a brutal thing it is to be the bearer of truly bad news - to break off a piece of that misery and hand it to other people, one by one, and then have to comfort them; to put their grief on your shoulders on top of all your own; to be the calm one in the face of their shock and tears. And then learning that relative weight of grief is immaterial. Being smothered a little is no different than being smothered a lot. Either way, you can't breathe. — Heather Cocks

I ultimately decided to hold my tongue and settle instead for the comfort of ignorance. Not knowing the truth, I retained hope, and that hope I held like a smooth warm stone against my heart. — Catherine Gilbert Murdock

Allow grief room to air itself," Maurice had taught her."Be judicious in using the body to comfort another, for you may extinguish the freedom that the person feels to be able to share a sadness. — Jacqueline Winspear

I have noticed that after a time of deep sorrow the greatest comfort may come from a person you do not know well. — Alice Adams

Art is a communication informing man of his own dignity, and of the value of his life, whether in joy or grief, whether in laughter or indignation, beauty or terror ... Man needs the comfort of his own dignity ... And that's what the artisf is for. To give him that comfort. — Robert Nathan

When you are wanting to comfort someone in their grief take the words 'at least' out of your vocabulary. In saying them you minimise someone else's pain ... Don't take someone else's grief and try to put it in a box that YOU can manage. Learn to truly grieve with others for as long as it may take. — Kay Warren

Everything I know, everything I put in my fiction, will hurt someone somewhere as surely as it will comfort and enlighten someone else. What then is my responsibility? What am I to restrain? What am I to fear and alter
my own nakedness or the grief of the reader? I want my stories to be so good they are unforgettable; to make my ideas live and my own terrors real for people I will never meet. It is a completely amoral writer's lust. If we begin to agree that some ideas are too dangerous, too bad to invite inside our heads, then we stop the storyteller completely. We silence everyone who would tell us something that might be painful in our vulnerable moments. — Dorothy Allison

When tragedy strikes, no one is fully prepared to deal effectively with all the responsibilitie s, emotional trauma, and grief that begin to impact people. Our Rapid Response Team exists so that people can find the care and comfort of Jesus Christ in the midst of tragedy. — Billy Graham

If you're really listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so it can hold evermore wonders. -Andrew Harvey — Rob Brezsny

Music isn't just a pleasure, a transient satisfaction. It's a need, a deep hunger; and when the music is right, it's joy. Love. A foretaste of heaven. A comfort in grief.
Is it too much to think that perhaps God speaks to us sometimes through music?
How, then, could I be so ungrateful as to refuse the message? — Orson Scott Card

In the condition of men, it frequently happens that grief and anxiety lie hid under the golden robes of prosperity; and the gloom of calamity is cheered by secret radiations of hope and comfort; as in the works of nature, the bog is sometimes covered with flowers, and the mine concealed in the barren crags. — Samuel Johnson

I wait for him to do what everyone else did after my parents died. Spout of some conventional words of sympathy like, I'm so sorry. How awful. You poor thing. Terribly sad...and then run. People always do. Nobody knows what to say after the initial words of supposed comfort. Death and grief make everyone around you vanish because death and grief are intolerable. — Jessica Park

Nothing in this world compares to the comfort and security of having someone just hold your hand. — Richelle E. Goodrich

We kept on cooking and walking the dog, taking the kids to the park, cleaning the kitchen, and letting Sara and Adam hate what was going on when they needed to. Sometimes we let them resist finding any meaning or solace in anything that had to do with their daughter's diagnosis, and this was one of the hardest things to do
to stop trying to make things come out better than they were. We let them spew when they needed to; we offered the gift of no comfort when there being no comfort was where they had landed. Then we shopped for groceries. — Anne Lamott

We've run out of comforting things to say. — Suzanne Young

The worst type of crying wasn't the kind everyone could see
the wailing on street corners, the tearing at clothes. No, the worst kind happened when your soul wept and no matter what you did, there was no way to comfort it. A section withered and became a scar on the part of your soul that survived. For people like me and Echo, our souls contained more scar tissue than life. — Katie McGarry

But there is no such man; for, brother, men
Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air and agony with words. — William Shakespeare