In Times Of Loss Quotes & Sayings

It is not politic in the commonwealth of nature to preserve virginity. Loss of virginity is rational increase, and there was never virgin got till virginity was first lost. That you were made of is metal to make virgins. Virginity, by being once lost, may be ten times found: by being ever kept, it is ever lost. 'Tis too cold a companion: away with 't! — William Shakespeare

I felt her loss in a powerfully physical way. I missed her smell and the sticky wet of her breath on my neck. I missed her fingers scratching through my hair. We sat next to each other, lay across each other, pushed, pulled, stroked, and struck each other a hundred times a day and I suffered the deprivation of this. It was an ache, a hunger on the surface of my skin. — Karen Joy Fowler

She imagines him imagining her. This is her salvation.
In spirit she walks the city, traces its labyrinths, its dingy mazes: each assignation, each rendezvous, each door and stair and bed. What he said, what she said, what they did, what they did then. Even the times they argued, fought, parted, agonized, rejoined. How they'd loved to cut themselves on each other, taste their own blood. We were ruinous together, she thinks. But how else can we live, these days, except in the midst of ruin? — Margaret Atwood

If I want to be the best, I have to take risks others would avoid, always optimizing the learning potential of the moment and turning adversity to my advantage. That said, there are times when the body needs to heal, but those are ripe opportunities to deepen the mental, technical, internal side of my game. When aiming for the top, your path requires an engaged, searching mind. You have to make obstacles spur you to creative new angles in the learning process. Let setbacks deepen your resolve. You should always come off an injury or a loss better than when you went down. — Josh Waitzkin

I believe deeply that God does his best work in our lives during times of great heartbreak and loss, and I believe that much of that rich work is done by the hands of people who love us, who dive into the wreckage with us and show us who God is, over and over and over. There are years when the Christmas spirit is hard to come by, and it's in those seasons when I'm so thankful for Advent. Consider it a less flashy but still very beautiful way of being present to this season. Give up for a while your false and failing attempts at merriment, and thank God for thin places, and for Advent, for a season that understands longing and loneliness and long nights. Let yourself fall open to Advent, to anticipation, to the belief that what is empty will be filled, what is broken will be repaired, and what is lost can always be found, no matter how many times it's been lost. — Shauna Niequist

The times in my life when I've been my thinnest, I've been a walking psycho wreck. Forget the fact that I was basically starving myself; skinny was usually due to some kind of loss. Death. Rejection. Divorce. — Stephanie Klein

Sitting there, I remembered two things about going to mass with my father: he never took Communion because of his and my mother's divorce, and he always tapped his heart three times, with solemn insistence, after the recitation of the Apostles' Creed. I asked him about his ritual once. His eyes filled with such alarm that I instantly knew his heart tapping had something to do with a loss or devastation: his parents' early death, his divorce, his wounding in Vietnam. There was no reason for me to invade that space. Maybe that was the best simple explanation for religion: it filled our spaces. — Tom Bissell

do not let our princes accuse fortune for the loss of their principalities after so many years' possession, but rather their own sloth, because in quiet times they never thought there could be a change (it is a common defect in man not to make any provision in the calm against the tempest), and — Niccolo Machiavelli

I missed her so much I wanted to die: a hard, physical longing, like a craving for air underwater. Lying awake, I tried to recall all my best memories of her - to freeze her in my mind so I wouldn't forget her - but instead of birthdays and happy times I kept remembering things like how a few days before she was killed she'd stopped me halfway out the door to pick a thread off my school jacket. For some reason, it was one of the clearest memories I had of her: her knitted eyebrows, the precise gesture of her reaching out to me, everything. Several times too - drifting uneasily between dreaming and sleep - I sat up suddenly in bed at the sound of her voice speaking clearly in my head, remarks she might conceivably have made at some point but that I didn't actually remember, things like Throw me an apple, would you? and I wonder if this buttons up the front or the back? and This sofa is in a terrible state of disreputableness. — Donna Tartt

If you are impatient and want to see results sooner, then know that it's possible to increase the amount of weight you can lose per week, but you will have to watch your calories more strictly and make sure you are exercising at least four to five times a week (you will find out much more about how exercise boosts weight loss in Part Three) — Bob Harper

At times, it felt so odd being with a man in such an intimate way who was not my husband. — Brenda Perlin

All relationships have ups and downs. Romantic fantasy often nurtures the belief that difficulties and down times are an indication of a lack of love rather than part of the process. In actuality, true love thrives of the difficulties. The foundation of such love is the assumption that we want to grow and expand, to become more fully ourselves. There is no change that does not bring with it a feeling of challenge and loss. When we experience true love it may feel as though our lives are in danger; we may feel threatened. — Bell Hooks

We must face the fact that we are on the brink of times when man may be able to magnify his intellectual and inventive capability, just as in the nineteenth century he used machines to magnify his physical capacity. Again, as then, our innocence is lost. And again, of course, the innocence, once lost, cannot be regained. The loss demands attention, not denial. — Christopher Alexander

Merger Evers/John F. Kennedy/Malcolm X/Martin Luther King/Robert Kennedy/Che Guevara/Patrice Lamumba/George Jackson/Cynthia Wesley/Addie Mae Collins/Denise McNair/Carole Robertson/Viola Liuzzo
It was a decade marked by death. Violent and inevitable. Funerals became engraved on the brain, intensifying the ephemeral nature of life. For many in the South it was a decade reminiscent of earlier times, when oak trees sighed over their burdens in the wind; Spanish moss draggled blood to the ground; amen corners creaked with grief; and the thrill of being able, once again, to endure unendurable loss produced so profound an ecstasy in mourners that they strutted, without noticing their feet, along the thin backs of benches: their piercing shouts of anguish and joy never interrupted by an inglorious fall. They shared rituals for the dead to be remembered. — Alice Walker

The body directly before him, however, was that of a child. The blue of the eyes was now covered in a milky film, giving it its only depth, since all that was behind that veil was flat, like iron shields or silver coins, sealed and deprived of all promise. They were, he told himself yet again, eyes that no longer worked, and the loss of that was beyond comprehension. He would paint this child's face. He would paint it a thousand times. Ten thousand. He would offer the paintings as gifts to every man and every woman of the realm. And each time any one man or woman stirred awake the hearth gods of anger and hate, feeding the gaping mouth of violence and uttering pathetic lies about making things better, or right, or pure, or safe, he would give them yet another copy of this child's face. — Steven Erikson

In the aftermath of loss, we do what we've always done, although we are changed, maybe more afraid. We do what we can, as well as we can. My pastor, Veronica, one Sunday told the story of a sparrow lying in the street with its legs straight up in the air, sweating a little under its feathery arms. A warhorse walks up to the bird and asks, "What on earth are you doing?" The sparrow replies, "I heard the sky was falling, and I wanted to help." The horse laughs a big, loud, sneering horse laugh, and says, "Do you really think you're going to hold back the sky, with those scrawny little legs?" And the sparrow says, "One does what one can." So what can I do? Not much. Mother Teresa said that none of us can do great things, but we can do small things with great love. This reminder has saved me many times. — Anne Lamott

We need poetry most at those moments when life astounds us with losses, gains, or celebrations. We need it most when we are most hurt, most happy, most downcast, most jubilant. Poetry is the language we speak in times of greatest need. And the fact that it is an endangered species in our culture tells us that we are in deep trouble. — Erica Jong

The truth of it was he didn't want her. He wanted Mary Kate with every cell of his body. He missed everything about her. The feel of her sleeping at his side. Her gentle snores. Her soft brown curls tickling his nose enough to wake him from a sound sleep even on nights when he needed it most. Her smile. The smell of her. At odd moments he thought he had heard her laughter, or he'd catch a glimpse of her in the corner of an eye, but all of it was a lie, and every time it happened it was as if someone had ripped a deep wound in his chest. The pain was raw enough to make him want to take a razor to his wrist, but each time he considered acting upon the idea something stopped him, and so, he stumbled on barely alive and wishing for an end. At times he couldn't breathe, couldn't move without wanting to scream. — Stina Leicht

Life actually is this mystery and gift. And every moment of it can be full of real radical joy and wakefulness. And for some reason in our most difficult times, we have the best chance to wake up. Many people will tell you that their divorce or illness or loss of job was the wake up call. — Elizabeth Lesser

One never meets just Cancer, or War, or Unhappiness (or Happiness). One only meets each hour or moment that comes. All manner of ups and downs. Many bad spots in our best times, many good ones in our worst. One never gets the total impact of what we call 'the thing itself'. But we call it wrongly. The thing itself is simply all these ups and downs: the rest is a name or an idea. — C.S. Lewis

My God, the suburbs! They encircled the city's boundaries like enemy territory and we thought of them as a loss of privacy, a cesspool of conformity and a life of indescribable dreariness in some split-level village where the place name appeared in the New York Times only when some bored housewife blew off her head with a shotgun. — John Cheever

A scream is a sound we make that is born of intense feeling. A scream of fear, of being startled, is often high-pitched. It may be short or prolonged. A scream may also accompany delight or amusement, though often that is more of a squeal. And a scream of sorrow or rage ... well, that is an entirely different thing. That comes from a darker place, from the depths of our souls, and when we scream in those times, because we are sad or angry, there is a terrible knowledge that accompanies it, that we are giving voice to our emotions, to what is simply too big for our hearts to contain.
And as Li Wei cries out, I know Feng Ji is right. It is his heart I am hearing, a way of expressing what he feels over his father's loss that is both primal and beautiful, and it comes from his soul and reaches something within mine. It is the sound my own heart made when my parents died, only I didn't know it until now. — Richelle Mead

How many times do I have to say I'm sorry before you believe it? That I acknowledge I made a terrible mistake and have done everything I know how to fix it? How can you just freeze me out after that and walk away from everything we had?"
Hurt and resentment swelled inside him, mixing with the anger in a toxic, chaotic mess. "You walked away first," he shot back. "That was your choice." Then I made mine. It was a low blow, even if it was true. But he refused to feel guilty about it, even under the circumstances. He hadn't wanted to have this conversation, but she'd insisted, and he wouldn't lie to her about the way things stood.
Honor's chin came up, her tears evaporating as her eyes sparked with fresh anger. "I did," she admitted quietly, her control merely emphasizing the loss of his own. "I did walk away and it was the absolute worst mistake of my life. I'm sorry, Liam. See? I'm a big enough person to admit it to your face. Are you? — Kaylea Cross

He lost his Self a thousand times and for days on end he dwelt in non-being. But although the paths took him away from Self, in the end they always led back to it. Although Siddhartha fled from the Self a thousand times, dwelt in nothing, dwelt in animal and stone, the return was inevitable; the hour was inevitable when he would again find himself in sunshine or in moonlight, in shadow or in rain, and was again Self and Siddhartha, again felt the torment of the onerous life cycle. — Hermann Hesse

I am tortured too. I am tortured by belly fat and magazine covers about how to please everyone but myself. I am tortured by sheep who click on anything that will guarantee a ten-pound loss in one week. Sheep who will get on their knees if it means someone will like them more. I am tortured by my inability to want to hang out with desperate sheep. I am tortured by goddamned yearbooks full of bullshit. I met you when. I'll miss the times. I'll keep in touch. Best friends forever. Is this okay? Are you all right? Are you tortured too? — A.S. King

She always used to suspect that the price for happiness, the price for enjoying the company of a person you loved, was the steadily increasing risk of losing them, and at times, when she considered the possibility that she might lose Isabel or Clancy or, in the early days, Todd, Bernice didn't think she could stand it, didn't think she could go on living in a universe whose laws forced her to submit to such a terrible fear. Now she sees what a small price it is to pay, what staggering joy she received in return. You should be willing to pay that price for as little as a few days or hours with a person you love, she thinks, rubbing her fingers across a patch of linoleum the years have worn down to a cloudy smear. — Stephen Lovely

If one is lucky, opportunity cost is all the price one pays. More often than not, there are other costs to gaining your freedom. Maybe it has to do with letting go of comfort and convenience, incurring a loss, or losing friends who are no longer aligned with your goals. Maybe it is a dramatic dislocation in the way you lead your life that renders you disoriented. Some of these experiences maybe painful. You may also find the pursuit of happiness is at times a lonely road. — K.J. Kilton

And then he closed his eyes and imagined Sun Moon, the one that was always within him...she was a calm presence, open-armed, ready to save him at all times. She wasn't leaving him, she wasn't going anywhere. And here the sharp pain in his chest subsided, and Commander Ga understood that the Sun Moon inside him was the pain reserve that would allow him to survive the loss of the Sun Moon before him. — Adam Johnson

I was lonely, deadly lonely. And I was to find out then, as I found out so many times, over and over again, that women especially are social beings, who are not content with just husband and family, but must have a community, a group, an exchange with others. Young and old, even in the busiest years of our lives, we women especially are victims of the long loneliness.
It was years before I woke up without that longing for a face pressed against my breast, an arm about my shoulder. The sense of loss was there.
I never was so unhappy, never felt so great the sense of loneliness. No matter how many times I gave up mother, father, husband, brother, daughter, for His sake, I had to do it over again.
Tamar is partly responsible for the title of this book in that when I was beginning it she was writing me about how alone a mother of young children always is. I had also just heard from an old woman who lived a long and full life, and she too spoke of her loneliness — Dorothy Day

Even a 30-year-old man whose wife dies is eleven times more likely to commit suicide than a 30-year-old man whose wife is living. At age 30, when men can bury themselves in their jobs and are physically and financially attractive to women, the loss of the one woman a man loves is so devastating it is often not softened even by the opportunities for many women ... in brief, it is the loss of love that devastates men. — Warren Farrell

Sure, I've heard the weight-loss gurus spouting their "nothing tastes as good as being thin feels" mantra, and as I've said before - BULLSHIT. The times in my life when I have been thin, I enjoyed it well enough, but trust me, PLENTY of stuff tastes WAY better than being thin feels. For that matter, come to think of it, FEELING FULL FEELS better than being thin does. — Jill Conner Browne

The pleasures of the table belong to all times and ages, to every country and every day; they go hand in hand with all our other pleasures, outlast them, and remain to console us for their loss. — Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

It was one of those times you feel a sense of loss, even though you didn't have something in the first place. I guess that's what disappointment is- a sense of loss for something you never had. — Deb Caletti

When my late father died - now I'm in mourning for my late mother - that sense of grief and bereavement suddenly taught me that so many things that I thought were important, externals, etc., all of that is irrelevant. You lose a parent, you suddenly realize what a slender thing life is, how easily you can lose those you love. Then out of that comes a new simplicity and that is why sometimes all the pain and the tears lift you to a much higher and deeper joy when you say to the bad times, I will not let you go until you bless me. — Jonathan Sacks

Trapped within the confines of his mind, he is too aware of every thought passing through it, as if he were outside, looking in. At night he often lies awake ruminating endlessly about what's wrong with him, about death, and about the meaning of existence itself. At times his arms and legs feel like they don't belong with his body. But most of the time, his mind feels like it is operating apart from the body that contains it. — Daphne Simeon

I get very nostalgic for times and places and experiences, but I have a wonderful group of core friends and family who I love and adore, so I don't mourn the loss of any particular friendship. I think they're all part of a path, and the ones that really mean something are still important in my life. — Katie Aselton

Missing someone is the worst form of torture because it never goes away no matter where you are or what you do with your life. When a person is gone and all you have of them is a fuzzy recollection of what it was like to hear your phone buzz with texts from them, the joy you experienced while in their company, that instance when the bond you shared shattered, you long for all that was lost and could've been gained. You have memories and nothing more. And no matter how much times passes, you still feel the ache of their absence whenever they rise into your thoughts. Torture. — Caroline George

This here is your inheritance, says the senior partner. Yes, he says, Ludwig, I know, and stows the plan for the bathing house (5.5m long, 3.8m wide, outer wall construction: wood, roof construction: thatch), stows both the plan and the mosquito in his briefcase. On a German shelf, this mosquito, pressed flat between large quantities of paper, will outlast time and times, and one day it might even be petrified, who knows. — Jenny Erpenbeck

But mortification - literally, "making death" - is what life is all about, a slow discovery of the mortality of all that is created so that we can appreciate its beauty without clinging to it as if it were a lasting possession. Our lives can indeed be seen as a process of becoming familiar with death, as a school in the art of dying ... all these times have passed by like friendly visitors, leaving you with dear memories but also with the sad recognition of the shortness of life. In every arrival there is a leave-taking; in every reunion there is a separation; in each one's growing up there is a growing old; in every smile there is a tear; and in every success there is a loss. All living is dying and all celebration is mortification too. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

My encounter with desperation while witnessing the death of a precious child changed me, teaching me that although we will have sad times, we can move on, chastened and changed but resilient and hopeful. Laurel showed me one way to live with hope as well as cancer as she thrived even when tumors grew within her small body. She exhibited how a child can push aside despair and appreciate as many moments as possible, to believe in the power of resurrection, both the human spirit and in a Biblical sense. — Brent Green

My first life fled without a fight and left nothing behind, so I doubt it was a loss worth mourning. A man I don't remember mixed genes with a woman I can't recall, and I was called to the stage. I stumbled through the curtain, squinting into the blinding light of the birth canal, and after a brief and banal performance, I died.
This is the arc of the average life - unexamined, unremarked, unremarkable - and it should have ended there. In simpler times, life was a one-act play, and when it was over we took our bows and caught our roses and enjoyed any applause we earned, then the spotlight faded and we shuffled backstage to nibble crackers in the greenroom of eternity. — Isaac Marion

The dirty secret she'd learned about grief was that nobody wanted to hear about your loss a week after the funeral. People you'd once considered friends would turn their heads in church or cross to another side of a shopping mall to avoid the contamination of your suffering. "You might imagine I'm coping day by day," she murmured. "But it's more a case of hour by hour, and during my worst times, minute by minute. — Susan Dormady Eisenberg

I do miss you so much, but it gets harder and harder to keep you in my mind. You re like a ghost almost, fading in the light of dawn. Sometimes I close my eyes and try to summon up your face and I cant see you anymore. Then at other times I hear your voice so clearly I turn round expecting to see you standing there, and every time it happens there's the same pang of loss. Cant you send me a sketch of where you are? It would help me a lot if I could picture you somewhere definite, not just have letters dropping in from outer space. Paul — Pat Barker

I always welcomed the comforting cloak of night except for the times when I lost something in it. — Donna Lynn Hope

Of all the multitudes who throughout history have spoken for human dignity in times of great suffering and loss, no voice is more compelling than that of Anne Frank. — John F. Kennedy

Unlike some people who have experienced the loss of an animal, I did not believe, even for a moment, that I would never get another. I did know full well that there were just too many animals out there in need of homes for me to take what I have always regarded as the self-indulgent road of saying the heartbreak of the loss of an animal was too much ever to want to go through with it again. To me, such an admission brought up the far more powerful admission that all the wonderful times you had with your animal were not worth the unhappiness at the end. — Cleveland Amory

In Europe we have the "loss of self" motif clearly illustrated in the whirl dances of the Russians sects of the Molokani in Armenia ... All the countries that bordered the Meditteranean in ancient times, and the less remote sections of Asia as well, appear to have had whirl dances. — Curt Sachs

A half century from now, our grandchildren are likely to look back at the era of mass employment in the market with the same sense of utter disbelief as we look upon slavery and serfdom in former times. The very idea that a human being's worth was measured almost exclusively by his or her productive output of goods and services and material wealth will seem primitive, even barbaric, and be regarded as a terrible loss of human value to our progeny living in a highly automated world where much of life is lived on the Collaborative Commons. — Jeremy Rifkin

I grieved three thousand times. Then I grieved for myself, a lonely woman without the honor given to the wives of the fallen. The reverence for their loss, for their children's loss. It was eloquent and grand. So moving and charged with solidarity ... On September eleventh, I faced the last moments of your father's life. I saw him in every person who tried to jump and every body they pulled from the rubble. And I saw myself as I was never allowed to be, consoled, understood, and loved. — Susan Abulhawa

It's a weak faith that only serves God in times of blessing. The book of Job teaches us that true faith, genuine faith, great faith is revealed only when we serve and trust God in the hard times, the times of suffering, loss, and opposition. That's the kind of faith that makes the world sit up and take notice. — Ray Stedman

Belief without any practice is of no use to us. But there are two sides to religious practice: one is the ritualistic, which is terribly important to the people engaged in it, and the other is moral, living your life in a better way. You can pray five times a day and still not lead the moral life. We in our communities put more emphasis on the moral life than on ritual. I don't want to say that in order to restore what we need we have to be believers in any strict sense, though I do mourn the loss of the christian faith because I regard it, in some of its better forms, as a relatively peaceful way of giving people access to this idea. — Roger Scruton

The Time Line is great for getting things into perspective when you feel a bit lost and lacking direction or if you have a big change coming up such as moving to secondary school, your parents splitting up or having a new family arrangement. When you experience grief or loss, whether that is for a person or a part of your life such as leaving your Primary School, you can travel back along the time line, identify which skills you need from your old life, anchor them and bring them into the present as you move forward to Secondary School. Once you've done the Time Line a few times it will be in your head and you can conjure up the image and the steps without moving. This can be useful in situations when you can't actually move physically, in class for instance. — Judy Bartkowiak

Perhaps soul mates don't exist, I thought. Maybe they were only a way to get over a loss that couldn't be forgotten, a way to mend a heart that was unredeemable - an aberrant remedy that dissolved long before the healing began. A way to love a numberless amount of times when it was finite all along. Perhaps love was this illusory wonder and we were reaching for the impossible. Maybe it wasn't likely to know someone so completely and maybe, just maybe ... there was no beauty in having a soul. — Nadege Richards

When you suffer and lose, that does not mean you are being disobedient to God. In fact, it might mean you're right in the center of His will. The path of obedience is often marked by times of suffering and loss. — Charles R. Swindoll

So we did the only thing we knew to do. We got in the car and drove to Dallas to be at the funeral with Jen. As she and her family walked down the center aisle behind her dad's casket, she smiled at us despite the big tears that were rolling down her cheeks. And that's when I learned one of the most important lessons I've ever learned about what it means to be a good friend: you show up for your people. You don't wait for your friend to ask you to come; you get in your car and go. You don't have to know the right words to say, you don't have to offer sage wisdom about loss and love; you just show up. You hold her hand and hug her neck and wipe her tears. You let her know that you hurt because she is in pain, and you'd do anything to take it from her if you could. You listen.... You show up for your friend, in the good times and the bad times. — Melanie Shankle

I know this year hasn't gone as we'd all like it. But please, please, everyone do not forget about that 2013 season - the worst to first, the tragedy of the Boston Marathon, everyone rallying around the city, the finish line, the duck boats, everything, celebrating at home. Might be down a little bit in the win/loss column right now, but do not let that erase any of those memories from last year that I get to wear a ring on my finger for. I'm proud to be a Red Sox for those times. — Jonny Gomes

Madison described the state of play well in May 1798: "The management of foreign relations appears to be the most susceptible of abuse of all the trusts committed to a Government, because they can be concealed or disclosed, or disclosed in such parts and at such times as will best suit particular views. ... 22 Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger real or pretended from abroad." Extreme measures — Jon Meacham

He let himself into the house and sat down with his back against the door, where the tiles were cool on his legs and he tried to hear, as he had earlier imagined, every single thing that his wife was not doing in their home on this Sunday night. He could hardly keep track of it all, she was so busy being absent. She was not pouring water into a glass or a pitcher. She was not kicking his shoes out of the hall. She was not switching the laundry into the dryer. She was not opening the screen door and going outside barefoot and calling for him to come look at the sunset. She was not putting lotion on her elbows or flattening the newspaper or picking up the ringing telephone, which would go on calling out the absence of Petra in nine-ring sequences dozens of times every day. — Ramona Ausubel

At times it seems a Herculean Task to accomplish some goals without the loss of our personal integrity. The eternal ethical question remains: Isn't the man lucky who doesn't have the luxury of personal moral standards? Who is only occupied with practical matters rather than the philosophy of Right and Wrong. But in a mishap isn't it the money of the practical man that bails out the noble/honorable man? — Nora A.M. Crown

The body responds to a calorie deficit by slowing down the metabolism and burning muscle tissue. That leads to weakness, sluggishness, slow times. In girls, it can also result in cessation of menstrual periods, which in turn leads to loss of bone density and frequent stress fractures. — Don Kardong

In twenty years you could say and do a lot you wish you hadn't. In twenty years you could store up a lot of regrets. And then, when it was too late, when there was no one left to say "I'm sorry" to, "I didn't mean it" to, you could stop sleeping for regret, stop eating, talking, working, for regret. You could stop wanting to live. You could want to die for regret.
It was only remembering the good times that kept you from taking the knife from the kitchen drawer and, holding it so, tightly in your fist, on the bed, naked to no purpose except that that was how you came into the world and how your best moments in the world had been spent
holding it so, roll onto the blade, slowly so that it slid like love between your ribs and into that stupidly pumping muscle in your chest that kept you regretting. — Joseph Hansen

She looked so disappointed, so grieved and desperate that Clem longed to comfort her, only he couldn't think of thing to say that she hadn't heard a hundred times from Dad and Dr. Snow and Mrs. Mack: how things would get better in time, though no one knew how much time, and that life might be a little better for her and Jess once school began again. — Judith Clarke

That there's a deep compulsion in the human spirit to overcome the selfish antics of the I in us. War, grindingly, shifts one's perspective from I to we. Never again will many of us feel our lives so interpedently entwined as we do in these times of war. Never again will someone else's loss or gain become such an integral part of our own store of resources. — Glenn Haybittle

If you hold your knowledge of self and world wholeheartedly, your heart will at times get broken by loss, failure, defeat, betrayal, or death. What happens next in you and the world around you depends on how your heart breaks. If it breaks apart into a thousand pieces, the result may be anger, depression, and disengagement. If it breaks open into greater capacity to hold the complexities and contradictions of human experience, the result may be new life. — Parker J. Palmer

Perhaps this is an area where every generation starts from scratch. Although the crisis of the First World War inaugurated an especially strong period of disillusion with regard to the optimism of the previous age, the pattern has repeated itself in many ways in more recent times, e.g., the loss of faith in politics as a means of advancing human well-being. And perhaps this also has to do with basic elements in growing up. — George Pattison

When the years have all passed, there will gape the uncomfortable and unpredictable dark void of death, and into this I shall at last fall headlong, down and down and down, and the prospect of that fall, that uprooting, that rending apart of body and spirit, that taking off into so blank an unknown, drowns me in mortal fear and mortal grief. After all, life, for all its agonies of despair and loss and guilt, is exciting and beautiful, amusing and artful and endearing, full of liking and of love, at times a poem and a high adventure, at times noble and at times very gay; and whatever (if anything) is to come after it, we shall not have this life again. — Rose Macaulay

writing is a sanity-saving companion for people in times of grief, loss, illness, and other accidents of fate. — William Zinsser

Then everything was normal again, except that the liner was speeding for the planet Krim at something more than thirty times the speed of light. Normality extended through all the galaxy so far inhabited by men. There were worlds on which there was peace, and worlds on which there was tumult. There were busy, zestful young worlds, and languid, weary old ones. From the Near Rim to the farthest of occupied systems, planets circled their suns, and men lived on them, and every man took himself seriously and did not quite believe that the universe had existed before he was born or would long survive his loss. Time passed. Comets let out vast streamers like bridal veils and swept toward and around their suns. Some of them - one in ten thousand, or twenty - were possibly seen by human eyes. The liner bearing Hoddan sped through the void. In time it made a landfall on the Planet Krim. — Murray Leinster

There is no knowing how or why dread comes on a parent. Of course, many times apprehension arises when there is no reason for it at all. And it comes most often to the parents of only children, parents who have indulged in black dreams of loss. — John Steinbeck

In times of war, it is often best to look to our history to see how past generations of Americans dealt with the loss of their countrymen in just causes. — Virginia Foxx

For times when you feel pain:
See that it doesn't disgrace you, or degrade your
intelligence - doesn't keep it from acting rationally or
unselfishly.
And in most cases what Epicurus said should help: that
pain is neither unbearable nor unending, as long as you keep
in mind its limits and don't magnify them in your imagination.
And keep in mind too that pain often comes in disguise
as drowsiness, fever, loss of appetite ... When you're
bothered by things like that, remind yourself: I'm giving in
to pain. — Marcus Aurelius

The griefs that have been hardest for me were the ones I didn't recognize as griefs, because they came in what were supposed to be the best times of my life. No one whispered in my ear that the best times, the ones that change our lives, are woven with the thread of loss. — Anna White

At times it may seem worse - harder, at least - to live through the despair of this loss without the temporary comfort of our addictive behaviour. We cannot drown our sorrows. We must face the fact that we don't know, really, where we are, how we got here, how long the pain will last, or how to move past it. That uncertainty may be the most painful part of not knowing a God: no one is there to reassure us that a God will take the pain and confusion away. We simply don't know. And we have no way to numb ourselves or to forget the condition we're in. — Marya Hornbacher

We all handle loss in our individual ways, grieve in all kinds of ways. We all go through feeling okay sometimes, but other times, we feel so bad we hurt ourselves or those around us. — E. Journey

During these times of stress and strain where society is flooded with negativity and loss of hope for humanity, I have a friendly reminder. I am a firm believer in the particularly special sect in society that happens to be significantly socially educated in modern generations. I want to kindly remind you of the people that grasp hope and humanity firmly in one hand and their neighbor with the other. There is a significant amount of loving and educated people that will be the reason we look back at negative events that occur today in awe. And with so much bigotry and lack of humanity today, we must remember that with no struggle there is no progress. The struggles we experience today are the motives for the progress and accomplishments of tomorrow, remember that. When you encounter social pessimism, remember to set the example for newer generations to come and leave the past to dwell where it belongs. — Ghaleya Aldhafiri

At least at times of loss, we are reminded of our priorities, of our many blessings. In times of gain, we can so often lose our way. — Mindy Starns Clark

The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point, usually the flaw in an otherwise admirable character. Drama usually bases itself on the bedrock of original sin, whether the writer thinks in theological terms or not. Then, too, any character in a serious novel is supposed to carry a burden of meaning larger than himself. The novelist doesn't write about people in a vacuum; he writes about people in a world where something is obviously lacking, where there is the general mystery of incompleteness and the particular tragedy of our own times to be demonstrated, and the novelist tries to give you, within the form of the book, the total experience of human nature at any time. For this reason, the greatest dramas naturally involve the salvation or loss of the soul. Where there is no belief in the soul, there is very little drama. — Flannery O'Connor

The death of this honorable man upon this battlefield leaves all of us the poorer for his loss, yet so much the richer for the friendship and love and loyalty with which he gifted us in life. May his spirit speed unhindered to the other side to join those already there and to await us until we join him in our own times. — Walter C. Conner

Recognize those times when it's best to do nothing. The weeks and months following a significant loss, including death, divorce, or the incapacitation of a loved one, are fraught with emotions. We typically do not make our best decisions under circumstances such as these. **Avoid the inclination to immediately put your house on the market** cash in all your savings, and move to the south of France, or trust the first person who comes along who says he or she can give you all the help you need. — Lois P Frankel

Seeing his daughter slowly die, coupled with his infinite sadness and misery, the clockmaker becomes a recluse to the tower of the castle and begins to build something behind closed doors, not even his daughter knows what he's up to. For five years, she only sees him briefly at meal-times before locking himself up in the tower once again..."

"...Did he have a bathroom in the tower?"

"Yes, Jack. A big one! En-suite! Power-shower and spa! Where was I!? — Jonathan Dunne

In the first year of my grief, there were times when I felt like hiding my personal story of loss and other times when I wanted to wear a sign on my body that read "Be nice to me, I'm grieving," or "Don't tick me off; I've already got the world on my shoulders," or maybe even "BEWARE - don't upset the widow!" I needed a variety of signs that I could switch out depending on my daily mood. — Elizabeth Berrien

The loss of wealth is loss of dirt, as sages in all times assert; The happy man's without a shirt. — John Heywood

In baseball, even the best hitters fail seven of ten times, and of those seven failures there are different reasons why. Some are personal failures, others are losses to the pitcher. You just get beat. In those personal failures, I felt I could have done better. — Ichiro Suzuki

Royce traveled wrapped in his cloak with the weight of the rain collapsing the hood around his head - not a good sign for Thranic and Bernie. Until then, Royce had played the part of the good little sailor, but with the reemergence of the hood, and the loss of his white kerchief, Hadrian knew that role had ended. They had not spoken much since the attack. Not surprisingly, Royce was in no mood for idle discussion. Hadrian guessed that by now his friend had imagined killing Thranic a dozen times, with a few Bernies thrown in here and there for variety. Hadrian had seen Royce wounded before and was familiar with the cocooning - only what would emerge from that cloak and hood would not be a butterfly. — Michael J. Sullivan

In all places where there is a Summer and a Winter, and where your Gardens of pleasure are sometimes clothed with their verdant garments, and bespangled with variety of Flowers, and at other times wholly dismantled of all these; here to recompense the loss of past pleasures, and to buoy up their hopes of another Spring, many have placed in their Gardens, Statues, and Figures of several Animals, and great variety of other curious pieces of Workmanship, that their walks might be pleasant at any time in those places of never dying pleasures. — John Worlidge

I don't know if this happens in all relationships, but I just got so sick of his all too familiar stories. I had heard these stories so many times that I could have recited them myself. — Brenda Perlin

I am not suggesting that everything bad that happens to us is sent directly by a knowing hand - cooked up specially for our personal development. Nor do I mean that by using the stuff of life as grist for the mill you will learn what you need to learn and move on into a problem-free world. And I also don't recommend courting drama and disaster so that you can be broken open to the truth. A catastrophe is not a sign that God has singled you out for greatness. What I do mean is that you can use anything - everything - as a wake-up call; you can find a treasure trove of information about yourself and the world in the big trials and the little annoyances of daily life. If you turn around and face yourself in times of loss and pain, you will be given the key to a more truthful - and therefore a more joyful - life. — Elizabeth Lesser