The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears.
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!
Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts.
The persons on whom I have bestowed my dearest love, lie deep in their graves; but, although the happiness and delight of my life lie buried there too, I have not made a coffin of my heart, and sealed it up, for ever, on my best affections. Deep affliction has but strengthened and refined them.
There is no feeling, except the extremes of fear and grief, that does not find relief in music.
Life is very insistent; and it always seems to be so when friends sadly leave us.
The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal - every other affliction to forget; but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open - thisaffliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.
No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing. At other times it feels like being mildly drunk, or concussed. There is a sort of invisible blanket between the world and me. I find it hard to take in what anyone says. Or perhaps, hard to want to take it in.
When we lose one we love, our bitterest tears are called forth by the memory of hours when we loved not enough.
Those who don't know how to weep with their whole heart don't know how to laugh either.
I mourn in grey, grey as the sleeted wind the bled shades of twilight, gunmetal, battleships, industrial paint.
You know it takes a year, a full turn of the calendar, to get over losing somebody. That's a true saying.
I will instruct my sorrows to be proud;
for grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.
To me and to the state of my great grief
let kings assemble; for my grief's so great
that no supporter but the huge firm earth
Can hold it up:
The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.