Expressions of Feeling When You've Suffered a Loss
Every person feels something different than every other person when we suffer a loss. Often it is impossible to express oneself as we'd like - to honor the one we've loved. Poets and men and women of depth and wisdom have, from time to time, shared their feelings with the world. Following are some truly meaningful quotes that may help you express theh way you feel in your time of loss.
If you are finding it too difficult to express your feelings - too confused and overwhelmed as you prepare your words of tribute - do consider turning to a professional eulogy writer. We can take your words and your memories and weave them into a wonderful eulogy for your lost loved one. Just click on any of the tabs above for help. May your heart and spirit heal in the midst of your loss...
110 of the Best Funeral Quotes of All Time
“A new life begins for us with every second. Let us go forward joyously to meet it. We must press on, whether we will or not, and we shall walk better with our eyes before us than with them ever cast behind.” - Jerome K. Jerome
“Love like ours can never die.” - Rudyard Kipling
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.” - Ray Bradbury
“Life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.” - Khalil Gibran
“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well used brings happy death.” - Leonardo da Vinci
“Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.” - Sir Arthur Wing Pinero
“Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.” - Anonymous
“Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.” - Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” - A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh)
“There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart.” - Mahatma Gandhi
The song is ended, but the melody lingers on... - Irving Berlin
“I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
- Mark Twain
I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car.
- Steven Wright
When he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that the entire world will be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish sun. - William Shakespeare
I remember I laughed so hard I cried. But my response was half appropriate, because I was at a funeral. - Jarod Kintz
Men fear death as children fear to go into the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. - Francis Bacon
I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral. - John Burroughs
It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.
J K Rowling
Some are bound to die young. By dying young a person stays young in people's memory. If he burns brightly before he dies, his brightness shines for all time.
- Anonymous
Being fired has some of the advantages of dying without its supreme disadvantages. People say extra-nice things about you, and you get to hear them.
- Howard Zinn
The comfort of having a friend may be taken away, but not that of having had one.
- Seneca
I wanted to be at my sister's funeral, but my family has always had a complicated dynamic.
- Nick Carter
Cowards die many times before their deaths: The valiant never taste of death but once.
William Shakespeare
If anyone at my funeral has a long face, I'll never speak to him again.
- Stan Laurel
It's the circle of life, and it moves us all, through despair and hope, through faith and love, 'till we find our place, on the path unwinding. -The Lion King
Remembering is an act of resurrection, each repetition a vital layer of mourning, in memory of those we are sure to meet again. - Nancy Cobb
I've a great fancy to see my own funeral before I die. - Maria Edgeworth
The people who pretend that dying is rather like strolling into the next room always leave me unconvinced. Death, like birth, must be a tremendous event. - J B Priestley
Death is the veil which those who live call life: They sleep, and it is lifted. - Percy Blysshe Shelley
Photographs are precious memories … the visual evidence of place and time and relationships … ritual talismans for the treasure chest of the heart. - Robert Fulghum
How could you go about choosing something that would hold the half of your heart you had to bury? - Jodi Picoult
“There is no foot so small that it cannot leave an imprint on this world” - Unkown
“An angel in the book of life wrote down my baby’s birth & whispered as she shut the book ….. too beautiful for earth” - Unknown
“Everyone can master a grief but he that has it.” - Shakespeare
“We understand death only after it has placed its hands on someone we love” - Anne L. de Stael
“How very softly you tiptoed into our world, almost silently, only a moment you stayed. But what an imprint you footsteps have left upon our hearts.” - Dorothy Ferguson
“Life is like the desert, life the solitude, death joins us to the great majority” - Edward Young, 1683 –1765
“Death – the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening.”- Sir Walter Scott
“Life is a dream walking, death is a going home.” - Chinese Proverb
“God’s finger touched him, and he slept.” - Alfred Lord Tennyson
“Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional.” - Bumper sticker
“The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives” - Norman Cousins
“Suicide is what the death certificate says when one dies of depression.” - Peter D. Kramer, psychiatrist.
“Suicide is a privilege of man which deity does not possess.” - Pliny the elder, (AD 23-79)
“This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.” - Franz Kafka
“It was not frightening to die sometime; it was frightening to die right now.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“I, fed with judgments, in a fleshy tomb, am buried above ground.” - William Cowper (1731-1800) written during a period of insanity.
“I look at life as a gift of God. Now that he wants it back, I have no right to complain.” - Joyce Cary
“Let your love of justice be exceeded only by your love of mercy.” - Anonymous
“The greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity.” - Aristotle
“His innings is over, his bat is laid down. Bowled out by death’s unerring ball.” - Unknown
“Death plucks my ear and says, “Live – I’m coming.” - Virgil, 70-19BCE
“The idea is to die young as late as possible.” - Ashley Montagu, (1905 –1999)
“It’s nature’s way of telling you to slow down.” - Anonymous, (Cited as Madison Avenues latest definition of death.)
“Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re still alive, it isn’t.” - Richard Bach
“The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.” - Will Rogers
“The living are just the dead on holiday” - Maurice Maeterlinck, 1862 – 1949
“After the game the king and the Pawn go into the same box.” Italian saying
“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”- Charles Darwin
“I saw him now going the way of all flesh.” - John Webster
“But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run, we are all dead.” - John Maynard Keynes
“Seashells remind us that every passing life leaves something beautiful behind.” - Unknown
“The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life.” - Lucan
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” - Les Brown
“Across the years I will walk with you – in deep green forests, on shores of sand and when our time on earth is through, in heaven too, you will have my hand!” - Robert Sexton
“If I could reach up and hold a star for every time you’ve made me smile, the entire evening sky would be in the palm of my hand” - Unknown
“They say that time in heaven is compared to ‘the blink of an eye’ for us on this earth. Sometimes it helps me to think of my child running ahead of me through a beautiful field of wildflowers and butterflies; so happy and completely caught up in what she is doing that when she looks behind her, I’ll already be there.” - Unknown
“Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.” - Alphonse de Lamartine
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.” - George S. Patton, Jr.
“The light has gone out of my life.” Theodore Roosevelt, on the death of his wife
“I would say to those who mourn… look upon each day that comes as a challenge, as a test of courage. The pain will come in waves, some days worse than others, for no apparent reason. Accept the pain. Do not suppress it. Never attempt to hide grief.” - Daphne du Maurier
“Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.” - Oscar Wilde
“Tears are a river that take you somewhere…Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace better.” - Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“Getting old aint for sissies.” - Bette Davis
“The family with an old person in it possesses a jewel.” - Chinese saying
“It was not frightening to die sometime, it was frightening to die right now.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death’s perfect punctuation mark is a smile.” - Julie Burchill
We only part to meet again. Change, as ye list, ye winds; my heart shall be the faithful compass that still points to thee. - John Gay
“There is a remedy for everything; it is called death.” - Portuguese proverb
"Be of good cheer about death and know this as a truth - which no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death." - Socrates
"Good men must die, but death cannot kill their names." - Unknown
"Say not in grief: 'He is no more', but live in thankfulness that he was." - Hebrew Proverb
"The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures he leads me beside quiet water, he refreshes my soul… surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." - Psalm
“A mother understands what a child does not say.” - Jewish proverb
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you … I could walk in my own garden forever.” - Alfred Jennyon
“Whenever I am missing you, I also remember how fortunate I was that you were in my life. I wouldn’t trade those moments for the world.” - Cindy Adkins
“For every flower that I place on your grave, I think of all those things you did to make my life as beautiful and fragrant as a bed of flowers. I miss you.” - Unknown
I cannot forget my mother. She is my bridge. When I needed to get across, she steadied herself long enough for me to run across safely. - Renita Weems
“There is no death, daughter. People only die when we forget them,” my mother explained shortly before she left me. “If you can remember me, I will be with you always.” - Isabel Allende
I miss saying “Mom” out loud. I miss not being able to find that special card for you and then having found it, writing “To Mom” on it for yet another cherished Mother’s Day. - Millie P. Lorenz
I'll remember you. When I've forgotten all the rest. You to me were true. You to me were the best. - Bob Dylan
May you be in heaven a full half hour before the devil knows you are dead. - Irish Blessing
Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted. - Matthew 5:4
Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened. - Dr. Seuss
There are special people in our lives who never leave us, even after they are gone. - D. Morgan
We do not remember days, we remember moments. - Cesare Pavese
"We must always have old memories and young hopes." - Unknown
"Memories of you are the sweet aroma that flows up from my soul." - Unknown
"If tears could build a stairway and memories a lane, I’d walk right up to heaven and bring you home again." - Unknown
"Memories are timeless treasures of heart." - Unknown
"The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living." - Marcus Tuillius Cicero
Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives. - (A. Sachs)
When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life in a manner so that when you die the world cries and you rejoice. - (Native American Proverb)
If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master.- (Michelangelo)
Death ends a life, not a relationship. - (Jack Lemmon)
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all. - (Emily Dickenson)
"The pain passes, but the beauty remains". -Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
"He that conceals his grief finds no remedy for it". - Turkish Proverb
"Love is a fabric that never fades, no matter how often it is washed in the waters of adversity and grief". - Anon.
"Do not protect yourself from grief by a fence, but rather by your friends".- Czech Proverb
Every person feels something different than every other person when we suffer a loss. Often it is impossible to express oneself as we'd like - to honor the one we've loved. Poets and men and women of depth and wisdom have, from time to time, shared their feelings with the world. Following are some truly meaningful quotes that may help you express theh way you feel in your time of loss.
If you are finding it too difficult to express your feelings - too confused and overwhelmed as you prepare your words of tribute - do consider turning to a professional eulogy writer. We can take your words and your memories and weave them into a wonderful eulogy for your lost loved one. Just click on any of the tabs above for help. May your heart and spirit heal in the midst of your loss...
110 of the Best Funeral Quotes of All Time
“A new life begins for us with every second. Let us go forward joyously to meet it. We must press on, whether we will or not, and we shall walk better with our eyes before us than with them ever cast behind.” - Jerome K. Jerome
“Love like ours can never die.” - Rudyard Kipling
“Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touched some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there.” - Ray Bradbury
“Life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.” - Khalil Gibran
“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well used brings happy death.” - Leonardo da Vinci
“Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young.” - Sir Arthur Wing Pinero
“Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.” - Anonymous
“Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.” - Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” - A.A. Milne (Winnie the Pooh)
“There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart.” - Mahatma Gandhi
The song is ended, but the melody lingers on... - Irving Berlin
“I did not attend his funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it.”
- Mark Twain
I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car.
- Steven Wright
When he shall die, Take him and cut him out in little stars, and he will make the face of heaven so fine that the entire world will be in love with night, And pay no worship to the garish sun. - William Shakespeare
I remember I laughed so hard I cried. But my response was half appropriate, because I was at a funeral. - Jarod Kintz
Men fear death as children fear to go into the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other. - Francis Bacon
I seldom go into a natural history museum without feeling as if I were attending a funeral. - John Burroughs
It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.
J K Rowling
Some are bound to die young. By dying young a person stays young in people's memory. If he burns brightly before he dies, his brightness shines for all time.
- Anonymous
Being fired has some of the advantages of dying without its supreme disadvantages. People say extra-nice things about you, and you get to hear them.
- Howard Zinn
The comfort of having a friend may be taken away, but not that of having had one.
- Seneca
I wanted to be at my sister's funeral, but my family has always had a complicated dynamic.
- Nick Carter
Cowards die many times before their deaths: The valiant never taste of death but once.
William Shakespeare
If anyone at my funeral has a long face, I'll never speak to him again.
- Stan Laurel
It's the circle of life, and it moves us all, through despair and hope, through faith and love, 'till we find our place, on the path unwinding. -The Lion King
Remembering is an act of resurrection, each repetition a vital layer of mourning, in memory of those we are sure to meet again. - Nancy Cobb
I've a great fancy to see my own funeral before I die. - Maria Edgeworth
The people who pretend that dying is rather like strolling into the next room always leave me unconvinced. Death, like birth, must be a tremendous event. - J B Priestley
Death is the veil which those who live call life: They sleep, and it is lifted. - Percy Blysshe Shelley
Photographs are precious memories … the visual evidence of place and time and relationships … ritual talismans for the treasure chest of the heart. - Robert Fulghum
How could you go about choosing something that would hold the half of your heart you had to bury? - Jodi Picoult
“There is no foot so small that it cannot leave an imprint on this world” - Unkown
“An angel in the book of life wrote down my baby’s birth & whispered as she shut the book ….. too beautiful for earth” - Unknown
“Everyone can master a grief but he that has it.” - Shakespeare
“We understand death only after it has placed its hands on someone we love” - Anne L. de Stael
“How very softly you tiptoed into our world, almost silently, only a moment you stayed. But what an imprint you footsteps have left upon our hearts.” - Dorothy Ferguson
“Life is like the desert, life the solitude, death joins us to the great majority” - Edward Young, 1683 –1765
“Death – the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening.”- Sir Walter Scott
“Life is a dream walking, death is a going home.” - Chinese Proverb
“God’s finger touched him, and he slept.” - Alfred Lord Tennyson
“Growing old is mandatory, growing up is optional.” - Bumper sticker
“The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives” - Norman Cousins
“Suicide is what the death certificate says when one dies of depression.” - Peter D. Kramer, psychiatrist.
“Suicide is a privilege of man which deity does not possess.” - Pliny the elder, (AD 23-79)
“This morning, for the first time in a long time, the joy again of imagining a knife twisted in my heart.” - Franz Kafka
“It was not frightening to die sometime; it was frightening to die right now.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“I, fed with judgments, in a fleshy tomb, am buried above ground.” - William Cowper (1731-1800) written during a period of insanity.
“I look at life as a gift of God. Now that he wants it back, I have no right to complain.” - Joyce Cary
“Let your love of justice be exceeded only by your love of mercy.” - Anonymous
“The greatest crimes are caused by excess and not by necessity.” - Aristotle
“His innings is over, his bat is laid down. Bowled out by death’s unerring ball.” - Unknown
“Death plucks my ear and says, “Live – I’m coming.” - Virgil, 70-19BCE
“The idea is to die young as late as possible.” - Ashley Montagu, (1905 –1999)
“It’s nature’s way of telling you to slow down.” - Anonymous, (Cited as Madison Avenues latest definition of death.)
“Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: If you’re still alive, it isn’t.” - Richard Bach
“The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.” - Will Rogers
“The living are just the dead on holiday” - Maurice Maeterlinck, 1862 – 1949
“After the game the king and the Pawn go into the same box.” Italian saying
“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”- Charles Darwin
“I saw him now going the way of all flesh.” - John Webster
“But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run, we are all dead.” - John Maynard Keynes
“Seashells remind us that every passing life leaves something beautiful behind.” - Unknown
“The gods conceal from men the happiness of death, that they may endure life.” - Lucan
You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” - Les Brown
“Across the years I will walk with you – in deep green forests, on shores of sand and when our time on earth is through, in heaven too, you will have my hand!” - Robert Sexton
“If I could reach up and hold a star for every time you’ve made me smile, the entire evening sky would be in the palm of my hand” - Unknown
“They say that time in heaven is compared to ‘the blink of an eye’ for us on this earth. Sometimes it helps me to think of my child running ahead of me through a beautiful field of wildflowers and butterflies; so happy and completely caught up in what she is doing that when she looks behind her, I’ll already be there.” - Unknown
“Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can; and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.” - Alphonse de Lamartine
“It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.” - George S. Patton, Jr.
“The light has gone out of my life.” Theodore Roosevelt, on the death of his wife
“I would say to those who mourn… look upon each day that comes as a challenge, as a test of courage. The pain will come in waves, some days worse than others, for no apparent reason. Accept the pain. Do not suppress it. Never attempt to hide grief.” - Daphne du Maurier
“Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.” - Oscar Wilde
“Tears are a river that take you somewhere…Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace better.” - Clarissa Pinkola Estes
“Getting old aint for sissies.” - Bette Davis
“The family with an old person in it possesses a jewel.” - Chinese saying
“It was not frightening to die sometime, it was frightening to die right now.” - Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
“Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death. When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death’s perfect punctuation mark is a smile.” - Julie Burchill
We only part to meet again. Change, as ye list, ye winds; my heart shall be the faithful compass that still points to thee. - John Gay
“There is a remedy for everything; it is called death.” - Portuguese proverb
"Be of good cheer about death and know this as a truth - which no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death." - Socrates
"Good men must die, but death cannot kill their names." - Unknown
"Say not in grief: 'He is no more', but live in thankfulness that he was." - Hebrew Proverb
"The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures he leads me beside quiet water, he refreshes my soul… surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever." - Psalm
“A mother understands what a child does not say.” - Jewish proverb
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you … I could walk in my own garden forever.” - Alfred Jennyon
“Whenever I am missing you, I also remember how fortunate I was that you were in my life. I wouldn’t trade those moments for the world.” - Cindy Adkins
“For every flower that I place on your grave, I think of all those things you did to make my life as beautiful and fragrant as a bed of flowers. I miss you.” - Unknown
I cannot forget my mother. She is my bridge. When I needed to get across, she steadied herself long enough for me to run across safely. - Renita Weems
“There is no death, daughter. People only die when we forget them,” my mother explained shortly before she left me. “If you can remember me, I will be with you always.” - Isabel Allende
I miss saying “Mom” out loud. I miss not being able to find that special card for you and then having found it, writing “To Mom” on it for yet another cherished Mother’s Day. - Millie P. Lorenz
I'll remember you. When I've forgotten all the rest. You to me were true. You to me were the best. - Bob Dylan
May you be in heaven a full half hour before the devil knows you are dead. - Irish Blessing
Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted. - Matthew 5:4
Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened. - Dr. Seuss
There are special people in our lives who never leave us, even after they are gone. - D. Morgan
We do not remember days, we remember moments. - Cesare Pavese
"We must always have old memories and young hopes." - Unknown
"Memories of you are the sweet aroma that flows up from my soul." - Unknown
"If tears could build a stairway and memories a lane, I’d walk right up to heaven and bring you home again." - Unknown
"Memories are timeless treasures of heart." - Unknown
"The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living." - Marcus Tuillius Cicero
Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives. - (A. Sachs)
When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life in a manner so that when you die the world cries and you rejoice. - (Native American Proverb)
If we have been pleased with life, we should not be displeased with death, since it comes from the hand of the same master.- (Michelangelo)
Death ends a life, not a relationship. - (Jack Lemmon)
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all. - (Emily Dickenson)
"The pain passes, but the beauty remains". -Pierre Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
"He that conceals his grief finds no remedy for it". - Turkish Proverb
"Love is a fabric that never fades, no matter how often it is washed in the waters of adversity and grief". - Anon.
"Do not protect yourself from grief by a fence, but rather by your friends".- Czech Proverb