This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"There is no grief which times does not lessen and soften." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"No grief is so acute but time ameliorates it." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"The spoken word is man's physician in grief." - Menander, aka Menander of Athens NULL
"Being a man ne'er asks the gods for life set free from grief, but asks for courage that endures long." - Menander, aka Menander of Athens NULL
"One can bear grief, but it takes two to be glad." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"It is some relief to weep; grief is satisfied and carried off by tears." - Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL
"Suppressed grief suffocates." - Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL
"Not by lamentations and mournful chants ought we to celebrate the funeral of a good man, but by humans; for, in ceasing to be numbered with mortals, he enters upon the heritage of a diviner life. Since he is gone where he feels no pain, let us not indulge in too much grief. The soul is incapable of death... And he, like a bird not long enough in his cage to become attached to it, is free to fly away to a purer air... Since we cherish a trust like this, let our outward actions be in accord with it, and let us keep our hearts pure and our minds calm." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"The only thing grief has taught me is to know how shallow it is." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Men sheds grief as his skin sheds rain" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The only thing grief has taught me is how shallow it is." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"What a strange power there is in silence! How many resolutions are formed, how many sublime conquests effected, during that pause when lips are closed, and the soul secretly feels the eye of her Maker upon her! They are the strong ones of earth who know how to keep silence when it is a pain and grief unto them, and who gives time to their own souls to wax strong against temptation." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge; that myth is more potent than history. I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts; that hope always triumphs over experience; that laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe love is stronger than death." - Robert Fulghum, fully Robert Lee Fulghum
"Doing a straight-forward, clear-cut task that has a beginning and an end balances out the complexity-without-end that often vexes the rest of my life. Sacred simplicity." - Robert Fulghum, fully Robert Lee Fulghum
"The end of wisdom is peace and tranquillity, whilst that of gold is grief and vexation." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
"Who does not patiently subdue his mourning prolongs his grief." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
"God in eternity is without contradiction, suffering and grief, and nothing can hurt or vex him of all that is or befalleth. But with God, when he is made Man, it is otherwise." - Theologia Germanica, aka Theologia Deutsch or Teutsch NULL
"Time and Thought tame the greatest Grief." - Thomas Fuller
"Tears are the silent language of grief." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"To weep is to make less the depth of grief." - William Shakespeare
"What's gone and past help, should be past grief." - William Shakespeare
"Patch grief with proverbs." - William Shakespeare
"Be free from grief not through insensibility like the irrational animals, nor through want of thought like the foolish, but like a man of virtue by having reason as the consolation of grief." - Epictetus "the Stoic" 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." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
"It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man, so weak, but it mates, and masters, the fear of death; and therefore, death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him, that can win the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear preoccupieth it." - Francis Bacon
"The more a man loves, the more he suffers. The sum of possible grief for each soul is in proportion to its degree of perfection. " - Henri Frédéric Amiel
"When I look upon the tombs of the great, every emotion of envy dies in me; when I read the epitaphs of the beautiful, every inordinate desire goes out; when I meet with the grief of parents upon a tombstone, my heart melts with compassion; when I see the tombs of the parents themselves, I consider the vanity of grieving for those whom we must quickly follow; when I see kings lying by those who deposed them, when I consider rival wits placed side by side, or the men that divided the world with their contests and disputes, I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the little competitions, factions, and debates of mankind. When I read the several dates of the tombs, of some that died yesterday, and some six hundred years ago, I consider that great Day when we shall all of us be contemporaries, and make our appearance together." - Joseph Addison
"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." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
"For present grief there is always a remedy; however much thou sufferest, hope; hope is the greatest happiness of man." - Leopold Schefer
"Even broken in spirit as he is, no one can feel more deeply than he does the beauties of nature. The starry sky, the sea, and every sight afforded by these wonderful regions, seems still to have the power of elevating his soul from earth. Such a man has a double existence: he may suffer misery, and be overwhelmed by disappointments; yet, when he has retired into himself, he will be like a celestial spirit that has a halo around him, within whose circle no grief or folly ventures." - Mary Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
"The earth will never be the same again. Rock, water, tree, iron share this grief As distant stars participate in pain. A candle snuffed, a falling star or leaf, A dolphin death, O this particular loss Is Heaven-mourned; for if no angel cried, If this small one was tossed away as dross, The very galaxies then would have lied. How shall we sing our love's song now In this strange land where all are born to die? Each tree and leaf and star show how The universe is part of this one cry, That every life is noted and cherished, And nothing loved is ever lost or perished." - Madeleine L’Engle
"Sincere penance does not consist in perpetuating grief for the wrongs, but in resolving to avoid in future those deeds which call forth remorse." - Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
"This passage from nothingness to real being, this quitting of oneself is a birth accompanied by pain, for by it natural love is excluded. All grief except grief for sin comes from love of the world. In God is neither sorrow, nor grief, nor trouble. Wouldst thou be free from all grief and trouble, abide and walk in God, and to God alone. As long as love of the creature is in us, pain cannot cease." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
"Learn to detach...Don't cling to things, because everything is impermanent... But detachment doesn't mean you don't let the experience penetrate you. On the contrary, you let it penetrate fully. That's how you are able to leave it... Take any emotion--love for a woman, or grief for a loved one, or what I'm going through, fear and pain from a deadly illness. If you hold back on the emotions--if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them--you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that love entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely. You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, 'All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment." - Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
"If you hold back on the emotions - if you don't allow yourself to go all the way through them you can never get to being detached, you're too busy being afraid. You're afraid of the pain, you're afraid of the grief. You're afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails. But by throwing yourself into these emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even ,you experience them fully and completely You know what pain is. You know what love is. You know what grief is. And only then can you say, "Alright I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion for a moment." - Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
"If you suppress grief too much it can well redouble." - Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL
"This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his dog. I looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands. Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears. And by what? By the grief of one dog. " - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
"The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous." - Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
"What grief is not taken away by time? What passion will survive an unequal battle with it? I knew a man in the bloom of his still youthful powers, filled with true nobility and virtue, I knew him when he was in love, tenderly, passionately, furiously, boldly, modestly, and before me, almost before my eyes, the object of his passion - tender, beautiful as an angel - was struck down by insatiable death. I never saw such terrible fits of inner suffering, such furious scorching anguish, such devouring despair as shook the unfortunate lover. I never thought a man could create such a hell for himself, in which there would be no shadow, no image, nothing in the least resembling hope" - Nikolai Gogol, fully Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol or Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol
"The wise do not indulge in grief for things that are inevitably changeable and evanescent. Those who always weep and complain that life is filled with bitter things reveal the narrowness of their minds. In God's consciousness, all worldly things are trifles, because they are not eternal." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. " - Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
"One often calms one's grief by recounting it." - Pierre Cornielle
"Very distasteful is excessive fame to the sour palate of the envious mind, who hears with grief his neighbors good by name, and hates the fortune that he ne’er shall find. " - Pindar NULL
"She remembered him smiling, and realized that time, that great old healer, had finally accomplished its work, and now, across the years, the face of love no longer stirred up agonies of grief and bitterness. Rather, one was left feeling simply grateful. For how unimaginably empty the past would be without him to remember. " - Rosamunde Pilcher, also pen name Jane Fraser
"And my great grief cry will happen to you." - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"In the end, those who were carried off early no longer need us: they are weaned from earth's sorrows and joys, and as gently as children outgrow the soft breasts of their mothers. But we, who do need such great mysteries, we for whom grief is so often the source of our spirit's growth" - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke