"My grief lies onward, and my joy behind."
Shakespeare
"What the heart has once owned
and had, it shall never lose."
Henry Ward Beecher
"Now comes the mystery."
Henry Ward Beecher
-Last words
"I feel myself driven towards an end that I do not know. As soon as I shall
have reached it, as soon as I shall become unnecessary, an atom will suffice
to shatter me. Till then, not all the forces of mankind can do anything
against me."
Napoleon Bonaparte
"All alone I
didn't like the feeling
All alone I
sat and cried
All alone I
had to find some meaning
In the center of the pain I felt inside."
-Sand and Water
Beth Nielsen Chapman
"Every day I say, 'I just wish
she could walk through the door just one more time.' "
Kim Coleman -from "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero"
And I shall hear, tho' soft you
tread above me
And all my dreams will warm and sweeter be
If you'll not fail to tell me that you love me
I'll simply sleep in peace, until you come to me
-Danny Boy
"I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have
been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear
of further pain."
Oriah Mountain Dreamer
"When something enters your life
that is so big and so non-negotiable
as catastrophic illness, you either go in denial for a while ... or ultimately
you accept it and you make space for it. And in making space for it, you
illuminate a lot of things that you normally don't have room for ... you
simply just look at the world differently."
Michael J. Fox
"When you are sorrowful, look
again in your heart,
and you shall see that in truth you are weeping
for that which has been your delight."
Kahlil Gibran
“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”
Kahlil Gibran
"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, some are strong at the broken
places."
Earnest Hemingway
"There is this difference between the grief of youth and that of old age;
youth’s burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares; old age may
give and give, but the sorrow remains the same."
O Henry
"Even a happy life cannot be
without a measure of darkness and the word happiness would lose its meaning if
it were not balanced by sadness."
Carl Jung
"Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something
for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another's pain, life is
not in vain."
Hellen Keller
"And yet, these insights of
connectedness and oneness, which make us feel so at home in the world, are so
difficult to hold onto. And so, inevitably, we wind up living lives of
isolation and loneliness."
Rabbi Irwin Kula, -From "Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero"
"The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe."
Joanna Macy
I feel just like I'm
sinking
and I claw for solid ground
I'm pulled down by the undertow
I never thought I could feel so low
oh darkness, I feel like letting go
Sarah McLauchlan
"I don't believe that life is
supposed to make you feel good, or to make you feel miserable either. Life is
just supposed to make you feel."
Gloria Naylor
"The dance of life finds its
beginnings in grief......Here a completely new way of living is revealed. It
is the way in which pain can be embraced, not out of a desire to suffer, but
in the knowledge that something new will be born in the pain."
Henry Nouwen
"I am become death, shatterer of worlds."
Robert Oppenheimer
-after witnessing the world's first nuclear explosion
“To a well organized mind, death is the next great adventure.”
J.K. Rowling
Grief fills the room up of my
absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form:
Then have I reason to be fond of grief.
Shakespeare, King John
"Give sorrow words.
The grief that does not speak
whispers the o're fraught heart
and bids it break."
-William Shakespeare
"Each day is a little life; every waking and rising a little birth; every
fresh morning a little youth; every going to rest and sleep a little death."
Arthur Schopenhauer
"I lift my heart as spring lifts
up a yellow daisy to the rain;
my heart will be a lovely cup, altho it holds but pain.
For I shall learn from flower and leaf that color every drop they hold,
to change the lifeless wine of grief to living gold."
Sara Teasdale
