I’ve always loved inspirational quotes. The following are a list of some of my favorites. A lot of them are used in “Widowed Too Soon.” I will continue to add more as I find them, or as they find me. Feel free to share a good quote or poem I may have missed by clicking on the “contact” button above.

Quotes

“If you learn from your suffering,
and really come to understand the lessons you were taught,
you might be able to help someone else
who is now in the phase you may have just completed.
Maybe that’s what it’s all about after all.”
--Source Unknown

“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
--Soren Kierkegaard

“And think not you can direct the course of love,
for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.”
-- Kahlil Gibran

“You can’t turn back the clock.
But you can wind it up again.”
-- Bonnie Prudden

“It’s not whether you get knocked down.
It’s whether you get up again.”
--Vince Lombardi

“To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die.”
--Clyde Campbell

“In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends.”
--John Churton Collins

“Never to suffer would have been never to have been blessed.”
--Edgar Allan Poe

“Every life has a measure of sorrow, and sometimes this is what awakens us.”
--Steven Tyler

“An eye for an eye only leads to more blindness.”
--Margaret Atwood

“Being defeated is often a temporary condition.
Giving up is what makes it permanent.”
--Marlene vos Savant

“You will not grow if you sit in a beautiful flower garden.
but you will grow if you are sick, if you are in pain, if you experience losses,
and if you do not put your head in the sand, but take the pain as a gift to you
with a very, very specific purpose.”
--Elizabeth Kübler Ross

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens,
but often we look so long at the closed door that we
do not see the one which has been opened for us”
--Helen Keller

“Pain nourishes courage. You can’t be brave if
you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.”
--Mary Tyler Moore

“Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain”
--Charlie Chaplin

“Life is like photography. You use the negatives to develop.”
--Swami Beyondananda

“Earth has no sorrow that heaven cannot heal.”
--Thomas Moore

“The courageous man is the man who forces himself,
in spite of his fears, to carry on.”
--General George S. Patton

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud
was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
--Anais Nin

“Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
--Mark Twain

“To forgive is to set the prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”
--Author Unknown

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
--Teilhard de Chardin

“Sit down before fact like a little child, and be prepared to give
up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to
whatever abysses nature leads, or else you shall learn nothing.”
--T.H. Huxley

“The first key to wisdom is this- constant and frequent questioning…
For by doubting, we are led to question, and by questioning,
we arrive at the truth.”
--Peter Abelard

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.
It is the source of all true art and all science.
He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause
to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead:
his eyes are closed.”
--Albert Einstein

“The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy.
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
--Richard Bach

“The best and most beautiful things in the world
cannot be seen or even touched.
They must be felt with the heart.”
--Helen Keller

“We are, each of us, angels with only one wing;
and we can only fly by embracing one another.”
--Luciano De Crescenzo

“I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts,
that hope always triumphs over experience,
that laughter is the only cure for grief.
And I believe that love is stronger than death.
--From the movie “The Crow”

“Belief consists of accepting the affirmations of the soul;
unbelief, in denying them.”
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.”
--Kahlil Gibran

“If you wish to be eternally happy, know and believe you will live after death.
Always remember this, for it is the truth.”
--Emmanuel Swedenborg

“Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart.
Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.”
--Carl Jung

“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

Poems

What is death?

Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am me and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
Call me by my old familiar name. Speak to me in the easy way which you always used to.
Put no difference in your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed together at little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, laugh, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of a shadow on it.
Life means all it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolutely unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind, because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you, for an interval. Somewhere very near, just around the corner.
All is well!

--Harry Scott Holland

*****

My Life is but a Weaving
My life is but a weaving between my God and me.
I do not choose the colors, he worketh steadily.
Often times he weaveth sorrow and I in foolish pride
Forget he sees the upper and I the underside.
Not ‘til the loom is silent and the shuttles cease to fly
Will God unroll the canvas and explain the reason why
The dark threads are as needful in the skillful weaver’s hand
As the threads of gold and silver in the pattern He has planned.

--Author Unknown

*****

When Does Grief End?

Grief hits us like a ton of bricks,
Flattens us like a steamroller,
Hurls us into the depths of despair.
We know in a flash when grief hits,
But when does it end?
Like the month of March,
Grief rushes in like a lion,
And tiptoes out like a lamb.
Sometimes, we don’t know when grief leaves,
Because we don’t let go of the lion’s tail.
Why do we hold on so long?
Grief offers us safety,
Protection from the world.
We don’t want to let go
Because we secretly fear
That we’ll forget our loved ones,
And we don’t want to forget- ever.
We don’t want to let go
Because we fear the future
And having to face life without our loved ones.
We don’t want to let go
Because we make the mistake
Of measuring our grief with the depth of our love-
When neither has anything to do with the other.
How do we know when grief has run its course?
How do we know when we’ve grieved enough?
Cried enough?
“Died” enough?
How do we know when it’s time to let go of the tail?
We know when we feel joy again, in something or someone.
Joy in living. Joy in life.
We know when we wake up in the morning
And our first thought is on something other than our loss.
We know when we look ahead with a smile
And back with fond memories,
And when we no longer dread the nights.
We know when our life starts filling up with new interests and people,
And we start reaching for the stars.
Grief ends when we let go of the tail.

--Margaret Brownley, Bereavement Magazine, Jan/Feb 2002

*****

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there, I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glint on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you wake in the morning hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry
I am not there, I did not die.

--Mary Frye

*****

And if I Go…

And if I go, while you’re still here…

Know that I still live on.
Vibrating to a different measure
Behind a thin veil you cannot see through.

You will not see me,
So you must have faith.
I wait the time when we can soar together again,
Both aware of each other.

Until then, live your life to the fullest,
And when you need me,
Just whisper my name in your heart,
…I will be there.

--Colleen Hitchcock