Aeschylus:

There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.

Agate Nesaule:

We have to believe that even the briefest of human connections can heal. Otherwise, life is unbearable.

Agatha Christie:

I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.

Alexandre Dumas:

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state to another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life.

Amelia Burr:

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.

Anne Bradstreet:

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.

Carl Jung:

There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

Colette:

I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer.

Dorothy Parker:

As only New Yorkers know, if you can get through the twilight, you'll live through the night.

Ecclesiastes:

For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Edith Wharton:

There's no such thing as old age, there is only sorrow.

Emily Dickinson:

Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell.

Emily Dickinson:

My life closed twice before its close;
        It yet remains to see
If Immortality unveil
        A third event to me,
So huge, so hopeless to conceive,
       As these that twice befell.
Parting is all we know of heaven,
       And all we need of hell.

Emily Dickinson:

Bereavement in their death to feel
Whom We have never seen --
A Vital Kinsmanship import
Our Soul and theirs -- between --

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Erich Fromm:

One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.

Henri Nouwen:

When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.

Joseph Campbell:

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy.

Kahlil Gibran:

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

Kahlil Gibran:

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

Kahlil Gibran:

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Kahlil Gibran:

... joy and sorrow are inseparable. . . together they come and when one sits alone with you . . . remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Marge Piercy:

I mourn in grey, grey as the sleeted wind the bled shades of twilight, gunmetal, battleships, industrial paint.

Maya Angelou:

History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.

Percy Bysshe Shelley:

Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

Pierre Auguste Renoir:

The pain passes, but the beauty remains.

Robert Frost:

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.

Robert Frost:

Poetry is about the grief. Politics is about the grievance.

Robert Fulghum:

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- myth is more potent than history -- dreams are more powerful than facts -- hope always triumphs over experience -- laughter is the cure for grief -- love is stronger than death.

Talmud (attributed):

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly, now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

William Cowper:

Grief is itself a medicine.