Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak

Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break.

-William Shakespeare

Grief remains one of the few things that has the power to silence us. It is a whisper in the world and a clamor within. More than sex, more than faith, even more than its usher death, grief is unspoken, publicly ignored except for those moments at the funeral that are over too quickly, or the conversations among the cognoscenti, those of us who recognize in one another a kindred chasm deep in the center of who we are.

-Anna Quindlen

Jesus wept.

John, 11:35

My grief lies all within,

My grief lies all within,

And these external manners of laments

Are merely shadows to the unseen grief

That swells with silence in the tortured soul.

There lies the substance.

-William Shakespeare

Grief knits two hearts in closer bonds than happiness ever can and common sufferings are far stronger links than common joys.

-Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

-CS Lewis

For three days after death, hair and fingernails continue to grow but phone calls taper off.

-Johnny Carson

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

-Robert Frost

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love."

-Washington Irving

When it seems that our sorrow is too great to be borne, let us think of the great family of the heavy-hearted into which our grief has given us entrance, and inevitably, we will feel about us, their arms and their understanding

-Helen Keller