Sixteen Quotes About the Loss of a Loved One 

Credit: Cristina Gottardi

Losing a loved one can be incredibly painful. One saving grace is that you’re not alone. Most people will experience this kind of loss, if they haven’t already. Some of those people have left us with tips and reflections that can give us direction in a time we may feel disoriented. Here are 16 quotes about losing a loved one that can be helpful in those difficult times.

1. “As long as I can I will look at this world for both of us. As long as I can I will laugh with the birds, I will sing with the flowers, I will pray to the stars, for both of us.”

– Sascha

 

2. “They took your bodily presence from my world. But your beautiful laugh will remain in my soul forever. My darling.”

– Hatice Cengiz, fiancée of Jamal Khashoggi

Credit: Rahul Pandit

3. “When we lose someone we love we must learn not to live without them, but to live with the love they left behind.”

– Unknown

 

4. “I think the hardest part of losing someone isn’t having to say goodbye, but rather learning to live without them. Always try to fill the void, the emptiness that’s left inside your heart when they go.”

– Unknown

 

5. “Come back. Even as a shadow, even as a dream.”

– Euripides

 

6. “Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”

– C.S. Lewis

 

7. “That was the thing. You never got used to it, the idea of someone gone. Just when you think it’s reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you and it just hits you all over again…”

– Sarah Dressen

Credit: Giuseppe Mondì

8. “What did it matter if he existed for two or for twenty years? Happiness was the fact that he had existed.”

– Albert Camus

 



9. “You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”

– Anne Lamott

 



10. “Though lovers be lost love shall not; and death shall have no dominion.”

– Dylan Thomas

 



12. “If you die having had one really good friend, you’ve led a rich life.”

– Otto Gilomen

 

13. “You don’t know who is important to you until you actually lose them.”

– Mahatma Gandhi

Credit: Matthew Henry

14. “Grief is the price we pay for love.”

– Queen Elizabeth II

 

15. “Those who weep recover more quickly than those who smile.”

– Jean Giraudoux

 

16. “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”

– A.A. Milneworth