Sympathy Quotes for Loss: Looking for inspiring sympathy quotes for loss or pictures, or images? Check out our collection of Top sayings on sympathy, and condolence. Certainly, the hardest thing about life is death. Whether you are experiencing grief yourself or have the unpleasant fortune of watching a loved one grieve, sympathy can be difficult to express. However, if it’s hard for you to find the words to convey your sympathy, there are always the words of others—the beautiful, emotional words of others—to fall back on when offering sympathy in a card or note. Or if you’re going through a difficult time yourself, these messages of sympathy might just resonate with you. Here are 180 emotional sympathy quotes and messages.
Sympathy Quotes
#1. “There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.” —Dante Alighieri
#2. “When you lose someone you love, you gain an angel you know.”
#3. “Death ends a life, not a relationship. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on- in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here.”—Mitch Albom
#4. “Friends are the pillars on your porch. Sometimes they hold you up, sometimes they lean on you.”
#5. “Wishing you strength for today and hope for tomorrow.” —Renee Oneill
#6. “All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.” —C.S. Lewis
#7. “As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.” —Leonardo Da Vinci
Inspiring Sympathy Quotes
#8. “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
#9. “Sometimes the strongest people in the morning are the people who cried all night.”
#10. “When I am lonely, I think of you and all that you brought to my life. Your memory rests gently on my soul.”—Cindy Adkins
#11. “There is no death. Only a change of worlds.” —Chief Seattle
#12. “To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.” —Thomas Campbell
#13. “Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.” —Elizabeth Gilbert
#14. “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” —Hebrews 13:5
#15. “After a loved one passes, be encouraged by their passing and legacy. Instead of crying, live an inspired, spiritual and happy life like they did when they were here. Live each day with encouragement knowing that they are proud and smiling down on you from Heaven”
#16. “When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions.” – William Shakespeare
#17. “If it were possible to heal sorrow by weeping and to raise the dead with tears, gold were less prized than grief.” —Sophocles
#18. “Bear and endure: This sorrow will one day prove to be for your good.” —Ovid
#19. “Grief and love are conjoined—you don’t get one without the other.” —Jandy Nelson
#20. “Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives the height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That’s its balance.” —Osho
#21. “When he shall die Take him and cut him out in little stars And he will make the face of heaven so fine That all the world will be in love with night And pay no worship to the garish sun.” —William Shakespeare
#22. “If something comes to life in others because of you, then you have made an approach to immortality.” —Norman Cousins
#23. “A great soul serves everyone all the time. A great soul never dies. It brings us together again and again.” – Maya Angelou
#24. “Those we love and lose are always connected by heartstrings into infinity.”
#25. “What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” —Helen Keller
#26. “The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That’s the deal.” —C.S. Lewis
#27. “When you speak of her, speak not with tears, for thoughts of her should not be sad. Let memories of the times you shared give you comfort, for her life was rich because of you.”
#28. “The loss is unmeasurable but so is the love left behind.”
#29. “Perhaps they are not stars in the sky but rather openings where our loved ones shine down to let us know they are happy.”
#30. “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” —A.A. Milne
Sympathy Messages for a Card
#31. “A mother’s grief is as timeless as her love.” —Joanne Cacciatore
#32. “It’s hard to forget someone who gave you so much to remember.” —Unknown
#33. “When the heart grieves over what is has lost, the spirit rejoices over what it has left.” —Sufi
#34. “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.” —Leo Tolstoy
#35. “As we go through the journey of life, we must remember that the impressions we leave behind will define who and what we are. They are just as individual as the paths we have chosen to walk. So leave good impressions wherever you go.” —Dave Hedges
#36. “Our trials, our sorrows, and our grieves develop us.” – Orison Swett Marden
#37. “It’s hard to forget someone who gave you so much to remember.”
#38. “I am at a loss for words during this sorrowful time. Please know that I am thinking of you and praying for peace and comfort.”
#39. “When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” – Khalil Gibran
#40. “When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure.”
#41. “Our trials, our sorrows, and our grieves develop us.” —Orison Swett Marden
#42. “I hold you with hands you cannot feel. I whisper words you cannot hear. I will never leave your side. I never left you I’m still here.” —John F. Connor
#43. “No person is every truly alone. Those who live no more, whom we loved, Echo still within our thoughts, our words, our hearts.”
#44. ““The sun, the moon, the wind, the stars, will forever be around, reminding you of the love you shared, and the peace she’s finally found.”
#45. A great soul serves everyone all the time A great soul never dies. It bring us together again and again.” —Maya Angelou
#46. “When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” —Kahlil Gibran
#47. “If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them.” —James O’Barr
#48. “There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart.” – Mahatma Gandhi
#49. “The loss of a friend is like that of a limb; time may heal the anguish of the wound, but the loss cannot be repaired.” – Robert Southey
#50. “All things grow with time, except grief.” —Jewish Proverb
#51. “An Eternal memory until we meet again. Those special memories will always bring a smile if only I could have you back for just a little while. Then we could sit and talk again just like we used to do you always meant so very much and always will do too. The fact that you’re no longer here will always cause me pain but you’re forever in my heart until we meet again.”
#52. “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of overcoming it.” —Helen Keller
#53. “To desire and expect nothing for oneself and to have profound sympathy for others is genuine holiness.” —Ivan Turgenev
#54. “Your life was a blessing, your memory a treasure. You are loved beyond words and missed beyond measure.” —Renee Wood
Sympathy Quotes for a Card
#55. “No matter how prepared you think you are for death of loved one, it still comes as a shock, and it still hurts very deeply.” —Billy Graham
#56. “Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones are sealed inside to comfort us.” —Brian Jacques
#57. “Like a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow” – Robert Louis Stevenson
#58. “Ten long trips around the sun since I last saw that smile, but only joy and thankfulness that on a tiny world in the vastness, for a couple of moments in the immensity of time, we were one.” —Ann Druyan
#59. “There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.” —Thornton Wilder
#60. “Although no words can take away the sorrow that you bare. May it be comforting to you to know that others care.” — Unknown
#61. “There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathize with the color, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.” —Oscar Wilde
#62. “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”
#63. “Tears are the silent language of grief.” – Voltaire
#64. “We must embrace our pain and burn it as a fuel for our journey.” —Kenji Miyazawa
#65. “Every time a tear forms in your beautiful eyes, look up to the heavens and there you will see me, smiling down from God’s glorious skies.” —Injete Chesoni
#66. “Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”—Arthur Schopenhauer
#67. “How very softly you tiptoed into our world, almost silently, only a moment you stayed. But what an imprint your footsteps have left upon our hearts.” —Dorothy Ferguson
#68. “And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief.” —William Cullen Bryant
#69. “Grief is the price we pay for love.” —Queen Elizabeth II
#70. “Those who weep recover more quickly than those who smile.” —Jean Giraudoux
#71. “A family is a circle of love, not broken by a loss, but made stronger by the memories. We are forever blessed that God connected us to you.”
#72. “We should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression.” —Confucius
#73. “Those we love don’t go away, they walk beside us every day… unseen, unheard, but always near, still loved, still missed and very dear.”
#74. “Memories… let them fill your mind, warm your heart, and lead you through.”
#75. “However long the night, the dawn will break.” —African Proverb
#76. “Sympathy does not think. It acts. It acts to remove the ceaseless sufferings of the world.” – Sri Chinmoy
#77. “From the end spring new beginnings.” —Pliny the Elder
#78. “The darker the night, the brighter the stars; the deeper the grief, the closer is God!” —Fyodor Dostoevsky
#79. “You may be gone from my sight… But you are never gone from my heart.”
#80. “They say that a part of you dies when a special loved one passes away… I disagree… I say a part of you lives with your loved one on the other side.” —Daniel Yanez
#81. “If we never experience the chill of a dark winter, it is very unlikely that we will ever cherish the warmth of a bright summer’s day. Nothing stimulates our appetite for the simple joys of life more than the starvation caused by sadness or desperation. In order to complete our amazing life journey successfully, it is vital that we turn each and every dark tear into a pearl of wisdom, and find the blessing in every curse.” —Anthon St. Maarten
#82. “Loss and possession, death and life are one, There falls no shadow where there shines no sun.” – Hilaire Belloc
#83. “A great soul serves everyone all the time. A great soul never dies. It brings us together again and again.” —Maya Angelou
#84. “He spoke well who said that graves are the footprints of angels.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#85. “The Remembrance of the good done those we have loved is the only consolation when we have lost them.” —Demoustier
#86. “Grief changes shape, but it never ends.” – Keanu Reeves
#87. “For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity.” —William Penn
#88. “The season of mourning, Like spring, summer, Fall and winter, will also pass.” —Molly Fumia
#89. “Listen to God with a broken heart. He is not only the doctor who mends it but also the father who wipes away the tears.” —Criss Jami
#90. “Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.” —Rossiter W. Raymond
Sympathy Quotes and Sayings For Friends and Family
#91. “What we have once enjoyed we can never lose; all that we deeply love becomes a part of us.”
#92. “The pain of grief is just as much part of life as the joy of love: it is perhaps the price we pay for love, the cost of commitment.” —Dr. Colin Murray Parkes
#93. “Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.” —Joni Mitchell
#94. “It is not length of life, but depth of life.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
#95. “With Sympathy. Words can’t wipe away your tears. Hugs won’t ease your pain. But hold on to your memories. Forever they’ll remain.”
#96. “There should be a sympathy with freedom, a desire to give it scope, founded not upon visionary ideas, but upon the long experience of many generations within the shores of this happy isle, that in freedom you lay the firmest foundations both of loyalty and order.” – William E. Gladstone
#97. “So say it loud and let it ring. We are all part of everything. The future, present, and the past. Fly on proud bird. You’re free at last.” —Charlie Daniels
#98. “When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory become a treasure.” —Unknown
#99. “I know now that we never get over great losses; we absorb them, and they carve us into different, often kinder, creatures.” —Gail Caldwell
#100. “Some people come into our lives, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never the same.” —Unknown
#101. “Pain shared, my brother, is pain not doubled, but halved. No man is an island.” —Neil Gaiman
#102. “There will never be a day when I won’t think of you and wish you were here by my side.” —Narin Grewal
#103. “Gone is the face we loved so dear. Silent is the voice we loved to hear. Too far away for sight or speech. But not too far for thought to reach.”
#104. “Truly, it is in the darkness that one finds the light, so when we are in sorrow, then this light is nearest of all to us.” —Meister Eckhart
#105. “Grant but memory to us and we lose nothing by death.”—Whittier
#106. Sympathy Messages
#107. “Whoever you hold in the heart of you, is forever and always a part of you.” —Rossiter Raymond
#108. “Pain is certain, suffering is optional.” —Buddha
#109. “Those we love don’t go away, they walk beside us everyday.” – Unknown
#110. “You can’t truly heal from a loss until you allow yourself to really FEEL the loss.” – Mandy Hale
#111. “To have been loved so deeply, even though the person who loved us is gone, will give us some protection forever.” —J.K. Rowling
#112. “Though lovers be lost, love shall not; And death shall have no dominion.” —Dylan Thomas
#113. “Words cannot express my sadness. May the comfort of God help you through this difficult time.”
#114. “Your life was a blessing, your memory a treasure. You are loved beyond words and missed beyond measure.” – Renee Wood
#115. “Words, however kind, can’t mend your heartache, but those who care and share your loss wish you comfort and peace of mind. May you find strength in the love of family and in the warm embrace of friends.”
#116. “We are all the pieces of what we remember. We hold in ourselves the hopes and fears of those who love us. As long as there is love and memory, there is no true loss.” —Cassandra Clare
#117. “Absence and death are the same. Only that in death there is no suffering.” —Theodore Roosevelt
#118. “He will cover you with his feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge.”
#119. “I would trade all of my tomorrows for just one more day with you.” —Unknown
#120. “The comfort of having a friend may be taken away, but not that of having had one.” —Seneca
#121. “If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.” —Oscar Wilde
#122. “Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time. It tells us to tell each other right now that we love each other.” —Leo Buscaglia
#123. “What is lovely never dies, but passes into other loveliness.”
#124. “Death brings pain that time can only heal, no words could ease what we truly feel; but with God, her joy is eternally sealed, and cherish her memories that death can’t even steal. Lift up a smile for she is already in the paradise. Our deepest condolences.”
#125. “Happiness is beneficial for the body, but it is grief that develops the powers of the mind.” – Marcel Proust
#126. “That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not; rather find strength in what remains behind.” —William Wordsworth
#127. “End? No, the journey doesn’t end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take. The gray rain-curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass, and then you see it.” —J.R.R. Tolkien
#128. “There is no pain so great as the Memory of joy in present grief.” —Aeschylus
#129. “‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” —Alfred Lord Tennyson
#130. “In times of grief and sorrow I will hold you and rock you and take your grief and make it my own. When you cry I cry and when you hurt I hurt. And together we will try to hold back the floods of tears and despair and make it through the potholed street of life.” —Nicholas Sparks
#131. “And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.” – Walt Whitman
#132. “It’s so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” —John Steinbeck
#133. “The more sympathy you give, the less you need.” —Malcolm Forbes
#134. “Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.” —Victor Hugo
#135. “You can’t truly heal from a loss until you allow yourself to really feel the loss.” —Mandy Hale
#136. “Because God is never cruel, there is a reason for all things. […] The terrible pain of loss teaches humility to our prideful kind, has the power to soften uncaring hearts, to make a better person of a good one.” —Dean Koontz
Sympathy Quotes – Helpful Words for Loss and Death
#137. “Tenderly, may time heal your sorrow. Gently, may your friends ease your pain. Softly, may peace replace heartaches. And my warmest memories remain.” —Unknown
#138. “To lose someone you love is to alter your life forever. You don’t get over it because ‘it’ is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? […] This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no one else can fit it.” —Jeanette Winterson
#139. “After a loved one passes, be encouraged by their passing and legacy. Instead of crying, live an inspired, spiritual and happy life like they did when they were here. Live each day with encouragement knowing that they are proud and smiling down on you from Heaven.” —Matt Fraser
#140. “With sympathy, thinking of you at this sad time and sending love.”
#141. “What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.” —Richard Bach
#142. “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.” – Corrie Ten Boom
#143. “Do not think of me as gone. I am with you still in each new dawn.” —Native American Poem
#144. “The heart forgets its sorrow and ache.” – James Russell Lowell
#145. “Like a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow.” —Robert Louis Stevenson
#146. “Sympathy does not think. It acts. It acts to remove the ceaseless sufferings of the world.”—Sri Chinmoy
#147. “We should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression.” – Confucius
#148. “What is lovely never dies, But passes into other loveliness.” – Thomas Bailey Aldrich
#149. “I know for certain that we never lose the people we love, even to death. They continue to participate in every act, thought and decision we make. Their love leaves an indelible imprint in our memories.” —Leo Buscaglia
#150. “They mustn’t know my despair, I can’t let them see the wounds which they have caused, I couldn’t bear their sympathy and their kind-hearted jokes, it would only make me want to scream all the more.” —Anne Frank
Sympathy Quotes What to Write in a Sympathy Card
#151. “A thousand moments that I had just taken for granted, mostly because I had assumed that there would be a thousand more.” —Morgan Matson
#152. “Those we love can never be more than a thought away, for as long as there’s a memory they live in our hearts to stay.” —Unknown
#153. “God didn’t promise: days without pain, laughter without sorrow, nor sun without rain, but he did promise: strength for the day, comfort for the tears and light for the way.”
#154. “Sometimes I don’t want to talk about it. Not to anyone. No one. No one at all. I just want to think about it on my own, because it is mine, and no one else’s.” —Michael Rosen
#155. “No matter how prepared you think you are for the death of a loved one, it still comes as a shock, and it still hurts very deeply.” – Billy Graham
#156. “There is no way that i could being to explain to someone what it feels like being without you. I would say it’s like the earth without the sky.” —Cindy Adkins
#157. “You don’t get over it, you just get through it. You don’t get by it, because you can’t get around it. It doesn’t ‘get better’; it just gets different. Everyday grief puts on a new face.” —Wendy Feireisen
#158. “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
#159. “Gone from our sight, but never from our hearts.” —Unknown
#160. “Some losses don’t hurt just for a while, they hurt for a lifetime.” —Narin Grewal
#161. “What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” – Helen Keller
#162. “It’s sad when someone you know becomes someone you knew.” —Henry Rollins
#163. “I think loss of loved ones is the hardest blow in life.” – Marlo Thomas
#164. “Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.”—Emily Dickinson
#165. “The world is very quiet without you around.” —Lemony Snicket
#166. “Relationships can be strengthened through the veil with people we know and love. That is done by our determined effort to continually do what is right. We can strengthen our relationship with the departed individual we love by recognizing that the separation is temporary and that covenants made in the temple are eternal. When consistently obeyed, such covenants assure the eternal realization of the promises inherent in them.”
#167. “What is lovely never dies, but passes into another loveliness, star-dust or sea-foam, flower or winged air.” —Thomas Bailey Aldrich
#168. “May angels lead you in.” —Jimmy Eat World
#169. “May you take comfort in knowing there is one more angel above us.” —Unknown
#170. “While we are mourning the loss of our friend, others are rejoicing to meet him behind the veil.”—John Taylor
#171. “Only a moment you stayed, but what an imprint your footprints have left on our hearts.” —Dorothy Ferguson
#172. “Those we love can never be more than a thought away, for as long as there’s a memory they live in our hearts to stay.”
#173. “Had I not loved so much I would not hurt so much. I will hurt. And I will be grateful for that hurt for it bears witness to the depth of our meaning. And for that I will be eternally grateful.” —Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
#174. “Our joys will be greater, our love will be deeper, our life will be fuller because we shared your moment.” —Unknown
#175. “There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.” – Aeschylus
#176. “There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart.” —Mahatma Gandhi
#177. “Your absence has gone through me like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color.” —W.S. Merwin
#178. “When you find yourself weeping for what you have lost, remember that you are weeping for someone who blessed you with joy. How lucky we are to have all known such a wonderful person.” —Unknown
#179. “You don’t go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always will be.” —Nigella Lawson
#180. “Darkness may hide the trees and the flowers from the eyes but it cannot hide love from the soul.” —Rumi
#181. “Tenderly, may time heal your sorrow. Gently, may your friends ease your pain. Softly, may peace replace heartaches. And may warmest memories remain.”
#182. “Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.”
#183. “Those we love and lose are always connected by heartstrings into infinity.” —Terri Guillemets
#184. “Grief is the price we pay for love.” – Queen Elizabeth II
#185. “He spoke well who said that graves are the footprints of angels.” —Henry Longfellow
#186. “We thought of you in love today, but that is nothing new. We thought about you yesterday and days before that, too. We think of you in silence, we often speak your name. Now all we have is memories and your picture in frame. Your memory is our keepsake, with which we’ll never part. God has you in his keeping, we have you in our hearts.”
#187. “Losing a member if the family is never easy, especially one who offered such unconditional love.”
#188. “Perhaps they are not stars in the sky, but rather openings where our loved ones shine down to let us know they are happy.” —Eskimo Legend
#189. “When you lose a person you love so much, surviving the loss is difficult.” – Cristiano Ronaldo
