This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; common sufferings are far strong links than common joys." - Alphonse de Lamartine, fully Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine
"Time is the great comforter of grief, but the agency by which it works is exhaustion." - Letitia Elizabeth Landon
"Music's the cordial of a troubled breast, the softest remedy that grief can find." - John Oldham
"When you remember your dreams, you remember your Self, your hidden wounds, fears, desires and joys... When you explore you dreams, you begin to make yourself whole: you take back the powerful feelings of grief, rage, and love that you've denied or avoided. When you share your dreams, you are sharing deeply personal feelings that create bonds of intimacy and help you receive the love and support needed to heal and grow at times of change." - Alan B. Siegel
"Why destroy present happiness by a distant misery which may never come at all, or you may never live to see it? Every substantial grief has twenty shadows, and most of them shadows of your own making." - Sydney Smith
"To brood over our sorrow is to embitter our grief." - Union Prayer Book NULL
"Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not." - Xenophon, aka Xenophon of Athens NULL
"I tell you, hopeless grief is passionless." - Elizabeth Browning, fully Elizabeth Barrett Browning
"From love comes grief, from greed comes fear; he who is free from greed knows neither grief nor fear." - Dhammapada NULL
"From pleasure comes grief, from pleasure comes fear; he who is free from pleasure knows neither grief nor fear." - Dhammapada NULL
"It is the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet, tender joy. The mild serenity of age takes the place of the riotous blood of youth. I bless the rising sun each day, and, as before, my heart sings to meet it, but now I love even more its setting, its long slanting rays and the soft, tender, gentle memories that come with them, the dear images from the whole of my long, happy life - and over all the Divine Truth, softening, reconciling, forgiving! My life is ending, I know that very well, but every day that is left me I feel how my earthly life is in touch with a new infinite, unknown, but approaching life, the nearness of which sets my soul quivering with rapture, my mind glowing and my heart weeping with joy." -
"God is the source and goal of ideals by which to live triumphantly in the face of starkest grief. The sufferer who finds God as the strength and mainstay of his life does not merely acquiesce before the inevitable with stoic fortitude. He looks the tragedy in the face, and looks up to new heights of spiritual beauty to which he may mount by using his grief as a stairway to God’s glory." - Georgia Harkness
"The strong, manly ones in life are those who understand the meaning of the word patience. Patience means restraining one’s inclinations. There are seven emotions: joy, anger, anxiety, love, fear, grief, and hate; and if a man does not give way to these, he can be called patient. I am not as strong as I might be, but I have long known and practiced patience." - Tokugawa Ieyasu
"Grief is a species of idleness." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which he proposes to remove." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind. He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which he proposes to remove." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Meaning is at the core of the creative process and of storytelling… When it is our own life story we are telling or a story from our lives, we become aware that we are not the victims of random and chaotic circumstances, that we, too, despite our grief or feelings of insignificance, are living meaningfully in a meaningful universe." - Deena Metzger
"No one feels another's grief; no one understands another's joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by." - Franz Schubert, fully Franz Peter Schubert
"Wealth and honor, benefits and blessings shall enrich my life; poverty and failures, grief and anxiety shall help fulfill it. In my life, I will serve heaven and earth; in death I will find peace." - Zhang Zai, also Chang Tsai
"He who discerns all creatures in his Self, and his Self in all creatures, has no disquiet thence. What delusion, what grief can be with him?" - Isavasya Upanishad
"In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self, and should therefore refrain from inflicting upon others such injury as would appear undesirable to us if inflicted upon ourselves." - Yogashastra NULL
"Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone, his own burden, his own way." - Anne Morrow Lindbergh, born Anne Spencer Morrow
"What we have to do is to see as deep as we can into the truth of things, not to invent paradises of thought, sheltered gardens, from which grief and suffering shall tear us, naked and protesting; but to gaze into the heart of God, and then to follow as faithfully as we can the imperative voice that speaks within the soul." -
"What we have to do is to see as deep as we can into the truth of things, not to invent paradises of thought, sheltered gardens, from which grief and suffering shall tear us, naked and protesting; but to gaze into the heart of God, and then to follow as faithfully as we can the imperative voice that speaks within the soul." - A.C. Benson, fully Arthur Christopher “A.C.” Benson
"When a virtuous man is raised, it brings gladness to his friends, grief to his enemies, and glory to his posterity." - Ben Jonson
"Grief is the agony of an instant: the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"You grieve for those beyond grief and you speak words of insight; but learned men do not grieve for the dead or the living." - Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
"Let mourning stop when one's grief is fully expressed." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"Tragedy and comedy are simply questions of value; a little misfit in life makes us laugh; a great one is tragedy and cause for expression of grief." - Elbert Green Hubbard
"Men fear death, as children fear the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by frightful tales, so is the other. Groans, convulsions, weeping friends, and the like show death terrible; yet there is no passion so weak but conquers the fear of it, and therefore death is not such a terrible enemy. Revenge triumphs over death, loves slights its, honor aspires to it, dread of shame prefers it, grief flies to it, and fear anticipates it." - Francis Bacon
"To grief there is a limit; not so to fear." - Francis Bacon
"When a child can be brought to tears, not from fear of punishment, but from repentance for his offense, he needs no chastisement. When the tears begin to flow from grief at one’s own conduct, be sure there is an angel nestling in the bosom." - Horace Mann
"From strong relationships often comes great grief." - Irish Proverbs
"Things infinite and divine… are given not so much for definition as for trust; are less the objects we think of than the very tone and color of our thought, the tension of our love, the unappeasable thirst of grief and reverence." - James Martineau
"The grief of parting and the agony of separation are the ways of the world." - Japanese Proverbs
"Grief drives men into habits of serious reflection, sharpens the understanding and softens the heart." - John Adams
"Why need a man forestall his date of grief, and run to meet that he would most avoid?" - John Milton
"Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery, by doubling our joy, and dividing our grief." - Joseph Addison
"The utmost we can hope for in this world is contentment; if we aim at anything higher, we shall meet with nothing but grief and disappointment. A man should direct all his studies and endeavors at making himself easy now and happy forever." - Joseph Addison
"Easy tears show treachery, not grief." - Latin Proverbs
"The time will come when looking in the mirror grieves you, and that grief will be another cause of wrinkles." - Latin Proverbs
"Longevity is the result of freedom from grief and worry." - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
"Property is a divine trust. Things are tools, not prizes. Life is not for self-indulgence, but for self-devotion. When instead of saying, “The world owes me a living,” men shall say, “I owe the world a life,” then the kingdom will come in power. We owe everything to God but our sins... So live, that when thy summons comes to give an account of thy stewardship, it may be done with joy, and not with grief!" - Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
"Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind." - Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
"Grief is not natural but a matter of belief or opinion." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL