I would never trust a man who didn't cry; he wouldn't be human.

- Norman Schwartzkopf

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

- Robert Frost

Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.

- Leo Buscaglia

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, not to anticipate the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.

- Buddha

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh....

- Kahlil Gibran

Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.

- Hafiz of Persia

I bid you awake at dawn and discover I have gone my way and left you free.

- Sara Teasdale

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.

- Rabbi Tarfon

The excursion is the same when you go looking for your sorrow as when you go looking for your joy.

- Eudora Welty

Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of joy, you must have somebody to divide it with.

- Mark Twain

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.

- Agatha Christie

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

- Kahlil Gibran

- Roger Bertschausen

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

- Joseph Campbell

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

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

- Erich Fromm



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.

- Alexandre Dumas



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

- Marge Piercy



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

- Agate Nesaule



Do not surrender your grief so quickly
Let it cut more deeply
Let it ferment and season you
As few human or divine ingredients can.

- Hafiz of Persia



Grief is itself a medicine.

- William Cowper



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. (attributed)

- Talmud



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.

- Robert Fulghum



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

- Dorothy Parker



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 --

- Emily Dickinson



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.

- Colette



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

- Amelia Burr



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

- Ecclesiastes



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

- Aeschylus



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.

- Anne Bradstreet



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

- Emily Dickinson



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

- 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



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

- Kahlil Gibran



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.

- Carl Jung



Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

- Percy Bysshe Shelley



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

- Robert Frost



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

- Edith Wharton



The pain passes, but the beauty remains.

- Pierre Auguste Renoir



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.

- Henri Nouwen