Quotes & Sayings About Love Loss And Pain

Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, lemme tell you. Those are big years. Everybody always thinks of it as a time of adolescence - just getting through to the real part of your life - but it's more than that. Sometimes your whole life happens in those years, and the rest of your life it's just the same story playing out with different characters. I could die tomorrow and have lived the main ups and downs of life. Pain. Loss. Love. And what you all so fondly refer to as wisdom. Wanna know the difference between adult wisdom and young adult wisdom? You have the ability to look back at your past and interpret it. I have the ability to look at my present and live it with my whole body. — Lidia Yuknavitch

For long minutes we cried, our grief inconsolable. We mourned the innocence of our childhood love; we grieved as parents of our own children. We agonized in the unfairness of the haphazard and tumultuous world we'd been pushed out into through our mothers' flesh. We wept for the first time, one among many firsts we'd shared, for the sheer emotional pain of bedrock loss. — Larry J. Dunlap

I get an audience personally involved in a song - because I'm involved myself. It's not something I do deliberately: I can't help myself. If the song is a lament at the loss of love, I get an ache in my gut. I feel the loss myself and I cry out the loneliness, the hurt and the pain that I feel. — Frank Sinatra

The risk of love is loss and the price of loss is grief. But the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love — Hilary Stanton Zunin

There is nothing but love. There was nothing but love. Love is all it is, and nothing exists that does not exist of love. That which is real and true is love. Suffering pain and loss is not real. Reality is that which is from love and love is the essence of the divine. What is not love is not real. What is not real is a construct made up by the ego through the instrument of the mind. It is the world of illusion, the veil on our eyes of utter darkness preventing us from seeing that which is real and true, which is love — Maha Khalid

Any life he'd ever heard of, his own included, was burdened with emotions - love, loss, jobs, jealousy, money, death, pain. But if you were Jewish, always there was this extra one, the added pull at your endurance, the one more thing. There was that line in Thoreau about 'quiet desperation' - that was indeed true of most men. But for some men and women, for some fathers and mothers and children, the world still contrived that one extra test, endless and unrelenting. — Laura Z. Hobson

Relationships are like walls painted off-white and every time you'll hurt me, it will be like resting dirty shoes on them, like bashing holes in the walls, one after the other. And then there will come a day, where the walls will be filled with so many holes, that there wouldn't be any place left for you to place the tiniest kiss. Only then will I walk away for good. — Malak El Halabi

Everyone keeps telling me that time heals all wounds, but no one can tell me what I'm supposed to do right now. Right now I can't sleep. It's right now that I can't eat. Right now I still hear his voice and sense his presence even though I know he's not here. Right now all I seem to do is cry. I know all about time and wounds healing, but even if I had all the time in the world, I still don't know what to do with all this hurt right now. — Nina Guilbeau

Because some things in life just hurt so much that you need to feel physical pain to start to heal from it. — Kristen Hope Mazzola

It took a moment to recognize Timothy ... her first love. There had been a time when the mere sight of his handsome face had made her catch her breath. It had taken her years to recover from losing Timothy. Now the pain of his loss was muted and somehow apart from her, as if a broken engagement had happened to some other young, naive girl. She looked at him, and all she could think was, Thank Goodness. Thank goodness she's escaped marrying him. — Elizabeth Hoyt

I guess this was what it felt like to love someone and feel like you had lost them. Even when you were still holding them in your arms. — Margaret Stohl

Loss pushes us to difficult places where we have not been before. We often question whether or not we have the courage and stamina to survive the pain. However, we often are given gifts that tell us that we are not alone and that we can withstand the journey. — Susan Barbara Apollon

What was wrong with her? Why did things like this keep happening to her? Love wasn't supposed to hurt, yet it felt like all she knew when it came to love was pain. Every time she opened her heart, she just got burned. Or, in this case, frozen. And she was getting sick and tired of it. — Elizabeth Rudnick

It had been some time since Magnus was last in love, and he was beginning to feel the effects. He remembered the glow of love as brighter and the pain of loss as gentler than they had actually been. He found himself looking into many faces for potential love, and seeing many people as shining vessels of possibility. Perhaps this time there would be that indefinable something that sent hungry hearts roving, longing and searching for something, they knew not what, and yet could not give up the quest. Every time a face or a look or a gesture caught Magnus's eye these days, it woke to life a refrain in Magnus's breast, a song in persistent rhythm with his heartbeat. Perhaps this time, perhaps this one. — Cassandra Clare

The desire to know the future gnaws at our bones. That is where it started, and might have ended, years ago.
I had cast the stones, seeing their faces flicker and fall: Death, Love, Murder, Treachery, Hope. We are a treacherous people - half of our stones show betrayal and violence and death from those close, death from those far away. It is not so with other peoples. I have seen other sets that show only natural disasters: death from sickness, from age, the pain of a broken heart, loss in childbirth. And those stones are more than half full with pleasure and joy and plain, solid warnings like "You reap what you sow" and "Victory is not the same as satisfaction."
Of course, we live in a land taken by force, by battle and murder and invasion. It is not so surprising that our stones reflect our history. — Pamela Freeman

The earth will never be the same again
Rock, water, tree, iron, share this greif
As distant stars participate in the pain.
A candle snuffed, a falling star or leaf,
A dolphin death, O this particular loss
A Heaven-mourned; for if no angel cried
If this small one was tossed away as dross,
The very galaxies would have lied.
How shall we sing our love's song now
In this strange land where all are born to die?
Each tree and leaf and star show how
The universe is part of this one cry,
Every life is noted and is cherished,
and nothing loved is ever lost or perished. — Madeleine L'Engle

But now, seeing these letters his father wrote to June Bailey Roe, seeing his father's painful devotion to someone who simply wasn't real - a daughter he never had - Wade is unable to suppress his dread. All that love, all those feelings, all that pain, fastened to nothing, a terrible, drifting chaos. His future loss of mind becomes the new premise of his life, and he feels, already, the loss of the things he loves, feels himself trying to find some other way to hold on to them. — Emily Ruskovich

Loss of someone we love cannot be adequately expressed with words. Grappling with loss, struggling with disconnection and despair, fills us with a sense of anguish and actual pain. Indeed, the parts of our brain that process physical pain overlap with the neural centers that record social ruptures and rejection. Loss rips us apart. — Daniel J. Siegel

For you see, the face of destiny or luck or god that gives us war also gives us other kinds of pain: the loss of health and youth; the loss of loved ones or of love; the fear that we will end our days alone. Some people suffer in peace the way others suffer in war. The special gift of that suffering, I have learned, is how to be strong while we are weak, how to be brave when we are afraid, how to be wise in the midst of confusion, and how to let go of that which we can no longer hold. In this way, anger can teach us forgiveness, hate can teach us love, and war can teach us peace. — Le Ly Hayslip

And in weeping there was power. The power to heal, the power to release pain and let go, the power to endure love and to shoulder loss. And as the weeks became months, I cried less and smiled more. And peace became a more frequent companion. — Amy Harmon

The loss of a loved one is like the loss of a part of oneself; an arm or a leg. At first, the pain is so physical that it is hard to ignore. The trauma is so intense that the mind finds it hard to cope with the loss. With time the pain eases, the body recovers and the brain figures out new ways to go on. — Federico Chini

Life is not easy for anyone here. Loss and fear, failure and disappointment, pain and ill-health, doubt and death-even those who have escaped from poverty have no escape from these. What makes life bearable is love-to love, to be loved, and-even after death or parting-to know that you have loved and been loved. — Vikram Seth

The love between us is fire and ice. It's loss, and it's redemption. It's pain, and it's comfort. It is everything. — Callie Hart

If, as a culture, we don't bear witness to grief, the burden of loss is placed entirely upon the bereaved, while the rest of us avert our eyes and wait for those in mourning to stop being sad, to let go, to move on, to cheer up. And if they don't - if they have loved too deeply, if they do wake each morning thinking, I cannot continue to live - well, then we pathologize their pain; we call their suffering a disease.
We do not help them: we tell them that they need to get help. — Cheryl Strayed

Don't listen to those people who suggest you should be "over" your daughter's death by now. The people who squawk the loudest about such
things have almost never had to get over anything. Or at least not anything that was genuinely, mind-fuckingly, soul-crushingly life altering. Some of
those people believe they're being helpful by minimizing your pain. Others are scared of the intensity of your loss and so they use their words to
push your grief away. Many of those people love you and are worthy of your love, but they are not the people who will be helpful to you when it
comes to healing the pain of your daughter's death.
They live on Planet Earth. You live on Planet My Baby Died. — Cheryl Strayed

No popularity exists when tragedy strikes. All that's left are human hearts and love and ache. We all love each other, deep down, and when we see another soul in pain we can't help but hurt too. — Maya Van Wagenen

a shift in thinking' toward someone who has wronged you, 'such that your desire to harm that person has decreased and your desire to do him good (or to benefit your relationship) has increased.' Forgiveness, at a minimum, is a decision to let go of the desire for revenge and ill-will toward the person who wronged you. It may also include feelings of goodwill toward the other person. Forgiveness is also a natural resolution of
the grief process, which is the necessary acknowledgment of pain and loss. — Sonja Lyubomirsky

Amina would not know herself until years later, when she understood what it was to long for someone, to ache for their smell and taste on you, to imagine the weight of their hips pinning yours so precisely that you crane up to meet your own invisible desire — Mira Jacob

Love was dangerous. It made one too vulnerable, too open to the pain of loss and betrayal. — Lauren Royal

I have come to realize that what is important is not my loss and the pain it caused but the fact that I have picked myself up (with help), taken the memories and the lessons, and becoming the woman they have wanted me to become.

The fact that I have lost those I love is not what defines me. What defines me is the fact that I have survived and now live, despite the pain and with memory of their love. — Heather Ward

Never say you understand someone's pain if you haven't felt the same, because not only would you sound mocking but also ignorant. — Lolah Runda

It's the same with people who say, 'Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger.' Even people who say this must realize that the exact opposite is true. What doesn't kill you maims you, cripples you, leaves you weak, makes you whiny and full of yourself at the same time. The more pain, the more pompous you get. Whatever doesn't kill you makes you incredibly annoying. — Rob Sheffield

The loss of her parents was an echo now. She hadn't stopped missing them and figured she never would. It was just that it was no longer a pain she ran from, but a lesson in how love morphs with loss and what you remember of those you loved. — J.H. Croix

I'd experienced loss. My parents were gone. Ren was ... gone. But I was still here. I still had things to accomplish. I had a job to do. I'd done this before, and I could do it again. Push through the pain and move on with life. If I could find love with someone along the way, then so be it. If I couldn't, then I would do my best to be happy by myself. I'd suffered when Ren was gone before, and I'd suffer now, but I'd survive. — Colleen Houck

Every story is true and a lie. The true part of this one is: Love and the memory of love can't be drowned. The lie part is that this is a good thing. — Leigh Allison Wilson

The still affection of the heart Became an outward breathing type, That into stillness past again, And left a want unknown before; Although the loss had brought us pain, That loss but made us love the more. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

Grief brings us great pain, but the Other Side teaches us that this pain is not about the absence of love - it's about the continuation of that love. The brilliant cords of love that connect us to someone in this life endure into the afterlife. And when we feel unbearable pain at the loss of a loved one, it is like we are tugging on that cord of love. The pain is real because the cord is real. Our love doesn't end - it goes on. — Laura Lynne Jackson

Perhaps winning requires that we love the game unconditionally. Life provides all the pieces. When I accepted certain parts of life and denied and ignored the rest, I could only see my life a piece at a time - the happiness of a success or a time of celebration, or the ugliness and pain of a loss or a failure I was trying hard to put behind me out of sight. But like the dark pieces of the puzzle, these sadder events, painful as they are, have proven themselves a part of something larger. — Rachel Naomi Remen

Everyone just laughed. But then, I closed my eyes and deeply thought about the story of the tourist, deeply thinking about that story of how many times he was lied to and when he had only his head left, he still thankfully cried. And then, I understood it. Ahh, that's "love", isn't it? Am I right? Loss ... All sorts of pain ... He never thought about it. The tourist never thought of himself. And even though he's an idiot to lots of people, to me, he's not an idiot at all. A lot of people would take the chance to cheat him, but I would never do that. I would want to make him happy, and that's all. — Natsuki Takaya

I don't really enjoy experiencing pain. No one does. But we will become less human if we learn to detach ourselves from one another to the point that when we experience death of a beautiful being (our mothers, our fathers, our sisters, our brothers, our soul mates, our friends etc.) that it will not bother us that we will not feel. But see that's suppression. It will bother us somewhere deep inside. So, love someone. Hold them tight. Don't fear the loss. Fear the part of being too afraid to love someone. Love Everyone. It's inevitable: we all die. Thats the ugly part of life. But Love and being alive is so beautiful and so strong that the love, the memories stay even in death. Life is love, life is being alive to feel pain. The love the beautiful love always remains. Love. Life. Joy. Peace — Jill Telford

A feeling that all his hard decisions, all the pain and loss and spilled blood, had not been for nothing, after all. There was a reason. There was a purpose. There was life and love. — Stephen King

By the age of four one has experienced nearly everything one needs to be a writer of fiction; love, pain, loss, boredom, rage, guilt and fear of death. — Nicholas Delbanco

If there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don't snuff it out, don't be brutal with it. Withdrawal can be a terrible thing when it keeps us awake at night, and watching others forget us sooner than we'd want to be forgotten is no better. We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste! (p. 225) — Andre Aciman

I loved her in spite of myself. I loved her immeasurably.
Infinitely. And I feared that love as much as I feared my own fury at the
world. — Susan Abulhawa

You don't have to tell me everything right away, but I have to tell you everything right away? Can't you see how stupid that is? — Veronica Roth

Enraged
I throw myself to the ground and I scream,
my best friend is gone, this world is so mean.
I cry as I pound my fists on his grass,
I'm very upset that our time went so fast.
My heart beats faster than ever before,
my tears unstoppable, I'm hurt to the core.
There are no words people can say,
that will ease my excruciating pain.
I don't understand why you had to go.
You leaving me, we just didn't know.
I'll make it somehow, I'll start anew.
But, there is no way I can replace you.
I struggle to make it through each day,
and retain my sanity in this foggy haze.
The sadness and pain that I display,
is because God decided to take you away. — Michele Lena Lucy

He dared not love again and lose. That loss was too great, that pain too keen. — William Peter Blatty

Time is ungovernable, but grief presents us with a choice: what do we do with the savage energies of bereavement? What do we do with the memory - or in the memory - of the beloved? Some commemorate love with statuary, but behavior, too, is a memorial, as is a well-lived life. In death, there is always the promise of hope. The key is opening, rather than numbing, ourselves to pain. Above all, we must show our children how to celebrate existence in all its beauty, and how to get up after life has knocked us down, time and again. Half-dead, we stand. And together, we salute love. Because in the end, that's all that matters. How hard we loved, and how hard we tried. — Antonella Gambotto-Burke

If you are a card-carrying human being, chances are that you share the same fear as all other humans: the fear of losing love, respect and connection to others. And if you are human, in order to avoid or prevent the pain, trauma and perceived devastation of the loss, you will do anything to avoid your greatest fear from being visited on you. — Iyanla Vanzant

Thus ended the first and adventurous part of his existence.
What followed was so different that, but for the reality of sorrow which remained with him, this strange part must have resembled a dream. — Joseph Conrad

Love.' What a wilderness of pain, of yearning, of loss could be contained in that word. Patient and kind nonsense, is how Lady Fennimore had put it. Love wasn't for cowards; he wondered if it was for the wise. He supposed love itself made you stupid at first, or no one, no one would ever fall in love at all. — Julie Anne Long

No. The universe has to move forward. Pain and loss, they define us as much as happiness or love. Whether it's a world, or a relationship ... Everything has its time. And everything ends. — Elisabeth Sladen

Wanna know what a bullet feels like, Warren? A real one? It's not like in the comics ... I think you need to. Feel it ... It's not going to make a neat little hole. First - it'll obliterate your internal organs. Your lung will collapse, feels like drowning ... When it finally hits your spine, it'll blow your central nervous system- ... I'm talking. The pain will be unbearable, but you won't be able to move ... A bullet usually travels faster than this, of course. But the dying? It seems like it takes forever. Something, isn't it? One tiny piece of metal destroys everything. It ripped her insides out ... It took her light away. From me. From the world ... And now the one person who should be here is gone - and a waste like you gets to live. A tiny piece of metal. Can you feel it now? — Joss Whedon

There would be many that would take back the experience of falling in love if it meant also carrying the pain associated with losing them, but I couldn't agree less. To feel the pain of loss is to know you once had something worth losing and I would always carry the memory of how the world was once right, when I laid on a couch, holding the woman I loved in my arms while she slept. — Georgia Cates

It was only that night, dreaming forbidden dreams of Laurence and the clear attraction he had already displayed towards her, that the dream was disturbed. She woke to pain, her eyes and mouth flashing open in a wordless scream as two strong fangs pierced her neck. A body lay across hers, warm and strong as she felt the life being sucked out of her. The moment he knew she was awake, Laurence had pulled back from feeding and smiled at her with a bloody grin. 'You are mine now, Shiloh. You may never leave this house until the day I die.' He had warned her, planting a tormenting kiss on her lips before resuming his feed. — Elaine White

Love is like a lighthouse, a beacon in the dark. When you lose the path that lights your way, you feel that you have died, but I assure you, you have not. You are reaching out for help or you would not have found this page. So red these quotations, allow yourself to feel your pain and cry out your loss and anguish. As you let it go, you will find the strength and courage to put your relationship in perspective and move on. — Laura Ramirez

I was in love and love died and the pain you've left isn't pain I can see myself having the strength to face again. — Adam Silvera

And when she at last came out, her eyes were dry. Her parents stared up from their silent breakfast at her. They both started to rise but she put a hand out, stopped them. 'I can care for myself, please,' and she set about getting some food. They watched her closely.
In point of fact, she had never looked as well. She had entered her room as just an impossibly lovely girl. The woman who emerged was a trifle thinner, a great deal wiser, and an ocean sadder. This one understood the nature of pain, and beneath the glory of her features, there was character, and a sure knowledge of suffering.
She was eighteen. She was the most beautiful woman in a hundred years. She didn't seem to care.
'You're all right?' her mother asked.
Buttercup sipped her cocoa. 'Fine,' she said.
'You're sure?' her father wondered.
'Yes,' Buttercup replied. There was a very long pause. 'But I must never love again.'

She never did. — William Goldman

You can't love anyone without pain, the pain of jealousy and the pain of loss. It will always be under your skin and in your heart waiting to pounce. — V.C. Andrews

And I realized that until we have healed, pain is how we bear loss in our bodies. Sometimes we mistake the pain for love, so we hold on to it, we stay there in the darkness, in the valley. Or we think that if it doesn't hurt, it isn't love. But when we allow ourselves to move through it and out of it...eventually we heal. And only when we experience the entire journey, through the suffering to wholeness, do we know the full scope of love. — Emily Foster

She had never looked as well. She had entered her room as just an impossibly lovely girl. The woman who emerged was a trifle thinner, a great deal wiser, an ocean sadder. This one understood the nature of pain, and beneath the glory of her features, there was character, and a sure knowledge of suffering. — William Goldman

I could never understand my purpose in this world. I have had nothing but pain and loss my hole life. But now I know why god saved me the first time. It was so I could find you. Then he saved me the second time so I could love you forever. This house is perfect; you are perfect and no one will ever take that away from us. Our love is infinite and I'm going to spend the rest of my life showing you. — Sandi Lynn

After the fierce midsummer all ablaze
Has burned itself to ashes, and expires
In the intensity of its own fires,
There come the mellow, mild, St. Martin days
Crowned with the calm of peace, but sad with haze.
So after Love has led us, till he tires
Of his own throes, and torments, and desires,
Comes large-eyed friendship: with a restful gaze,
He beckons us to follow, and across
Cool verdant vales we wander free from care.
Is it a touch of frost lies in the air?
Why are we haunted with a sense of loss?
We do not wish the pain back, or the heat;
And yet, and yet, these days are incomplete. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

To see and feel one's beloved naked for the first time is one of life's pure, irreducible epiphanies. If there is a true religion in the universe, it must include that truth of contact or be forever hollow. To make love to the one true person who deserves that love is one of the few absolute rewards of being a human being, balancing all of the pain, loss, awkwardness, loneliness, idiocy, compromise, and clumsiness that go with the human condition. To make love to the right person makes up for a lot of mistakes. — Dan Simmons

Falling apart is curling up into a fetal position and staying in bed for a week. What you were doing is having the emotional response an individual has to the loss of someone they love. We cry to give voice to our pain. — Anna Quindlen

Lost love belongs in a three-minute song, pullling back feelings from a time when they came unbidden, recalling the infatuation, the walking on sunshine that cannot last and the pain of its loss, whether through parting or the passage of time, reminding us that we are emotional beings — Graeme Simsion

Unconnected to the life of love, uncolored by love, the world resumes its own, its natural and callous importance. This is first a blow, then an odd consolation. And already I felt my old self - my old, devious, ironic, isolated self - beginning to breathe again and stretch and settle, though all around it my body clung cracked and bewildered, in the stupid pain of loss. — Alice Munro

As this pain comes up also focus on the love you feel for him/her. Focus on the love. Love feels good, love is expansive. Love is open and accepting. This love you feel is healing the pain of your loss. One day soon your pain will go and only the love will remain. — John Gray

I don't know one thing about the future. I don't know what the next hour will hold. There may be sickness, accident, personal or world catastrophe. Before this day is over I may have to deal with death, pain, loss, rejection. I don't know what the future holds for me, for those I love, for my nation, for this world. Still, despite my ignorance and surrounded by tinny optimists and cowardly pessimists, I say that God will accomplish his will, and I cheerfully persist in living in the hope that nothing will separate me from Christ's love. — Eugene H. Peterson

I say, "Well then I don't know if it was real,
and that makes me feel like I'm going insane again."
"Absolutely it was real. It was a real, partial picture. Because it ended preemptively, things you would have learned about him in the relationship, you are instead learning in the breakup. You have learned that he has a desperate desire for intimacy
and then a desperate desire for the cave.
He will get lonely there eventually and come back."
"To me?"
He doesn't pause. "To someone new."
"And I'll have to watch another girl?"
"You will have to, but you will also know
what lies ahead for that poor girl. — Emma Forrest

You think I don't know pain?" Puck shook his head at me. "Or loss? I've been around a lot longer than you, prince! I know what love is, and I've lost
my fair share, too. Just because we have a different way of handling it, doesn't mean I don't have scars of my own."
"Name one," I scoffed. "Give me one instance where you haven't - "
"Meghan Chase!" Puck roared, startling me into silence. I blinked, and he sneered at me. "Yeah, your highness. I know what loss is. I've loved that
girl since before she knew me. But I waited. I waited because I didn't want to lie about who I was. I wanted her to know the truth before anything else.
So I waited, and I did my job. For years, I protected her, biding my time, until the day she went into the Nevernever after her brother. And then you
came along. And I saw how she looked at you. And for the first time, I wanted to kill you as much as you wanted to kill me. — Julie Kagawa

It almost contradicts itself," she says after a moment. "It's as if there is love and loss at the same time, together in a kind of beautiful pain. — Eric Morgenstern

It's like he has emotional amnesia ... I think you have to accept that the person you knew isn't there at the moment. I was witness to how much he loved you. I have the photos. This isn't the person we knew. I don't recognize this person. He's shed his skin. Her heart is broken too. She has to say the thing that will give me back my life. She draws on every reserve. I see how much it hurts her and it hurts me too. I came from her joy and her pain, I lived in it and I live in it now. — Emma Forrest

I recognized that Christianity had taught me that sacrifice is the way of life. I forgot the neighbor who raped me, but I could see that when theology presents Jesus' death as God's sacrifice of his beloved child for the sake of the world, it teaches that the highest love is sacrifice. To make sacrifice or to be sacrificed is virtuous and redemptive.

But what if this is not true? What if nothing, or very little, is saved? What if the consequence of sacrifice is simply pain, the diminishment of life, fragmentation of the soul, abasement, shame? What if the severing of life is merely destructive of life and is not the path of love, courage, trust, and faith? What if the performance of sacrifice is a ritual in which some human beings bear loss and others are protected from accountability or moral expectations? — Rebecca Ann Parker

Not many people understood the inherent pain of a career in heroics. Your body aches from the demands of day-to-day protection. Your mind whirs with the things you did wrong, the ways you could've done better, the scores of citizens you didn't save. And when you lose someone you love, when their blood forms a puddle beneath your cheek while you watch ... Your name, Watcher, becomes the cruelest agony of all. — Shirin Dubbin

Peace is the fruit of love, a love that is also justice. But to grow in love requires work
hard work. And it can bring pain because it implies loss
loss of the certitudes, comforts, and hurts that shelter and define us. — Jean Vanier

It can take years of tears to melt the hardness that develops in this world, covering our tender, gentler inner selves. Tears for every devastating loss, tears for every humiliating failure, tears for every repeated mistake. Those who honor those tears, and even honor them, are not failures at love but rather its true initiates. First the pain and then the power. First the heart breaks and then it soars. — Marianne Williamson

Take the pain and grow beauty...You know I've always loved volcanoes. I love how they spew searing, deadly lava that goes on to nurture the most beautiful landscapes on earth. It's from searing pain that the deepest beauty can sprout — Carrie Firestone

Every person's story contains chapters of pain and loss, victory and defeat, love and hate, pride and prejudice, courage and fear, faith and self-distrust, charity and kindness, selfishness and jealously. Every person's story also contains folios of hopefulness and truthfulness, deceit and despair, action and change, passion and compassion, excitement and boredom, birth and creation, mutation and defect, generation and preservation, delusions and illusions, imagination and fantasy, bafflement and puzzlement. What makes a person's selfsame story unique is how he or she organizes the pure and impure forces that comprise them, how they respond to internal and external crisis, if they act in a safeguarding and humble manner, or lead a self-seeking and destructive existence. — Kilroy J. Oldster

There's a secret to get through loss, pain and grief. If we're alone we can't see who we are. When we join the club, other people become the mirror. Through them, we see ourselves and gain an understanding of what we're going through. Then slowly, real slowly, we learn to accept who we see in the mirror. Then you become the mirror for them; by being honest about who you are, you'll help them learn to love and accept themselves. — Melody Beattie

And even if Amina didn't yet know what it was to love like that, to burn until your spine has no choice but to try to wind itself around an empty shirt, she understood for sure that the people who said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all were a bunch of dicks. — Mira Jacob

I also very well remember that on another occasion the father dean said: 'In order that at responsible age a man may be a real man and not a parasite, his education must without fail be based on the following ten principles. 'From early childhood there should be instilled in the child: Belief in receiving punishment for disobedience. Hope of receiving reward only for merit. Love of God - but indiference to the saints. Remorse of conscience for the ill-treatment of animals. Fear of grieving parents and teachers. Fearlessness towards devils, snakes and mice. Joy in being content merely with what one has. Sorrow at the loss of the goodwill of others. Patient endurance of pain and hunger. The striving early to earn one's bread. — G.I. Gurdjieff

You don't think I know that?" Puck was shouting now, green eyes feverish. "You don't think I regret what I did, every single day? You lost Ariella, but I lost you both! Believe it or not, I was kind of a mess, too, Ash. It got to a point where I actually looked forward to our random duels, because that was the only time I could talk to you. When you were freaking trying to kill me!"
"Don't compare your loss to mine," I snarled. "You have no idea what I went through, what you caused."
"You think I don't know pain?" Puck shook his head at me. "Or loss? I've been around a lot longer than you, prince! I know what love is, and I've lost my fair share, too. Just because we have a different way of handling it, doesn't mean I don't have scars of my own."
"Name one," I scoffed. "Give me one instance where you haven't - "
"Meghan Chase!" Puck roared, startling me into silence. — Julie Kagawa

And you're everything I don't want." Julie pushed away, breaking his embrace, and shook her head. "If you loved me, you couldn't have done this. You couldn't have been so careless with me. You know pain, and loss, and hurt better than anyone." She hated each word as it came out of her mouth. "And that's what you gave me. I know that it's not the same. I know yours is worse. I'm so sorry for you, Matt. For your whole family. You've all been through hell. And you've been braver than anyone could. But I hurt now, too. And I can't love you. — Jessica Park

It is far easier to talk about loss than it is to talk about love. It is easier to articulate the pain of love's absence than to describe its presence and meaning in our lives. — Bell Hooks

Certainly, it is. Love is love, and loss is loss. We all love, and we all die, and everyone suffers the pain of grieving. The trick is to enjoy what you have while you have it. Not run like a bunny from the good things because they might be taken away sooner than you'd like. — Lynsay Sands

Solace is what we must look for when the mind cannot bear the pain, the loss or the suffering that eventually touches every life and every endeavour; when longing does not come to fruition in a form we can recognize, when people we know and love disappear, when hope must take a different form than the one we have shaped for it. — David Whyte

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

Death is to be feared because of the pain and loss it inflicts through love, and for no other reason. — K.J. Parker

What made losing someone you loved bearable was not remembering but forgetting. Forgetting small things first ... it's amazing how much you could forget, and everything you forgot made that person less alive inside you until you could finally endure it. After more time passed you could let yourself remember, even want to remember. But even then what you felt those first days could return and remind you the grief was still there, like old barbed wire embedded in a tree's heartwood. — Ron Rash

When you have endure the worse situations, you build the courage and confidence to cope with any other situations. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in the hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without faith, hope, and love. — Parker J. Palmer

I wondered if he could ever understand that it was a blessing, not a sin, to be graced with more than one love.
It could be complicated; of course it could be complicated. And it opened one up to the possibility of more pain and loss.
Still, it was a blessing I would never relinquish. Love, genuine love, was always a cause for joy. — Jacqueline Carey

Isn't there anything you care about?" "All is death, woman. All is pain. Love breeds loss. Isolation breeds resentment. No matter which way we turn, we are beaten. Our only true inheritance is death. And our only legacy, dust. — Clive Barker

How long before the shouting starts? How long before the tears and the accusations and the pain? That specific stone n the stomach pain when you lose something you haven't got round to valuing? Why is the measure of love loss? — Jeanette Winterson

The people who squawk the loudest about such things have almost never had to get over anything. Or at least not any thing that was genuinely, mind-fuckingly, soul-crushingly life altering. Some of those people believe they're being helpful by minimizing your pain. Others are scared of the intensity of your loss and so they use their words to push your grief away. Many of those people love you and are worthy of your love, but they are not the people who will be helpful to you when it comes to healing the pain ... — Cheryl Strayed

If you love somebody deeply and you lose that relationship - whether through death, rejection or separation - you will feel pain. That pain is called grief. Grief is a normal emotional reaction to any significant loss, whether a loved one, a job or a limb. There's no way to avoid or get rid of it - it's just there. And, once accepted, it will pass in its own time.
Unfortunately, many of us refuse to accept grief. We will do anything rather than feel it. We may bury ourselves in work, drink heavily, throw ourselves into a new relationship 'on the rebound' or numb ourselves with prescribed medications. But no matter how hard we try to push grief away, deep down inside it's still there. And eventually it will be back.
It's like holding a football underwater. As long as you keep holding it down, it stays beneath the surface. But eventually your arm gets tired and the moment you release your grip, the ball leaps straight up out of the water. — Russ Harris

To put it simply, my mother worried. She worried about our neighbors' reactions. Would they break me with their disparaging glances, their cruel intolerance? She worried I was just like every other teenage girl, all tender heart and fragile ego. She worried I was more myth and figment than flesh and blood. She worried about my calcium levels, my protein levels, even my reading levels. She worried she couldn't protect me from all of the things that had hurt her: loss and fear, pain and love. Most especially from love. — Leslye Walton

Each memory rips through me, and although I stow myself against the emotions, I can't prevent the pain that accompanies each image. Pain for a love never acknowledged, pain for a friendship now gone. Pain for a loss I can't possibly endure. — Christine Fonseca

There is only one thing worse than losing the one you love, and that is losing them without knowing why. If you are a dog, then your master is like a god to you, and the pain of losing him is greater still. — Louis De Bernieres