Grief can be a complex and paradoxical emotion to both experience and witness. We can take solace in knowing it’s a feeling we all go through at some point in our lives – and this goes for some legendary wordsmiths of the literary world. Read on to comfort yourself with some inspirational quotes about grief from the most beloved authors of our time.
Leo Tolstoy
“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.”
With these words, Tolstoy provides us with the gentle assertion that our ability to experience such uninhibited feelings of pain and loss is parallelled with the human capacity to love. These emotions of great depth go hand in hand – without one, the other would not exist.
J.R.R. Tolkien
“I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.”
This quote, extracted from The Return of the King, perfectly encapsulates the innate need to express your emotions when dealing with concepts of loss, farewells and endings. In essence, it summarises the beauty of feeling these complex and difficult feelings as an integral part of the human experience.
William Shakespeare
“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”
Taken from the famous tragedy Macbeth, this astute line urges us to give a voice to our feelings of grief. Whether this entails having a heart-to-heart with a close friend about personal loss, sharing our thoughts with a trusted therapist or even pouring our emotions out into a raw journal entry, Shakespeare’s message is clear: let it all out.
Mark Twain
“Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child’s loss of a doll and a king’s loss of a crown are events of the same size.”
Invoking the concept that everything in life is relative, Twain reassures us that we should not minimise our feelings of grief. This means it’s perfectly okay to feel completely heartbroken and lost at the passing of a beloved pet or even a celebrity you really admired and connected to – grief is a deeply personal emotion that is ours alone to feel.
Faraaz Kazi
“No matter how bad your heart is broken, the world doesn’t stop for your grief.”
Short but sweet, this quote reminds us of an essential fact of life: even in the midst of sorrow, life goes on.
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