163 Beautiful Death Quotes & Grief Words of Condolence
Quotes have always been a source of comfort and inspiration to me when my emotions feel too big.
I find it soothing to hear how other people have been able to articulate what I could not.
These comforting quotes are ideal for those moments when words fail us, whether it's sending a supportive text, writing condolences in a sympathy card, or delivering a memorial speech.
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Here are the death quotes that made me feel all the feels during my Mum’s illness and after she passed.
My Mum taught me how to live, and how to die: accept things as they are, and laugh lots.
If you’re supporting a grieving loved one, remember that there are no right words really, just be there.
Let them know you’re thinking of their loved one, and them, and check in for longer than you think you need to.
I especially love it when people share memories about Mum, or ask questions about her.
There were two books in particular that were full of poignant quotes for grief, and got me through my Mums illness and passing:
The next place - this book is so hard to describe. I bought it to read to my daughter but I think it was me that really needed it. It only takes a few minutes to read and I’m always crying happy tears by the end.
The Tibetan book of living and dying - this book gave us all so much peace. I read one quote (see quote 47) to Mum twice. Once the day before she died - she had been non responsive for 24 hours by then and her breathing had become laboured. The moment she heard the quote, her breathing calmed and she was at peace. I read it to her again the next day and she cried a single tear to show she had heard me. She passed away peacefully 15 minutes later. I didn’t know what to expect, but I didn’t think that death could be so beautiful.
Facing Death Quotes
Upon hearing her prognosis, Mum was so at peace and said that there’s no need to be sad if you’ve lived a life as full as hers.
I’ve tried to capture some of Mum’s zen mindset with this first group of quotes about facing death.
1) “Honest listening is one of the best medicines we can offer the dying and the bereaved.”
– Jean Cameron
2) “Thinking and talking about death need not be morbid; they may be quite the opposite. Ignorance and fear of death overshadow life, while knowing and accepting death erases this shadow.”
– Lily Pincus
3) “It is as natural to die as it is to be born.”
– Francis Bacon
4) “The truth I have been seeking — this truth is Death. Yet Death is also a seeker. Forever seeking me. So — we have met at last. And I am prepared. I am at peace.”
— Bruce Lee
5) “Life has more meaning in the face of death.”
- Robert Greene
6) "Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important."
- Steve Jobs
7) “Death and pain are windows to great insight if you have the strength to look through them.”
- James Pierce
8) "I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain."
- Frank Herbert
9) “To live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.”
– Thomas Campbell
10) “When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home.”
- Tecumseh
11) “When we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.”
- Sogyal Rinpoche
12) “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
13) “When the sun goes down the stars come out.”
- Unknown
14) "As a well spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death."
- Leonardo da Vinci
15) “We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
—Joseph Campbell
16) “Forgive yourself before you die. Then forgive others.”
– Morrie Schwartz
17) “What will survive of us is love.”
― Philip Larkin
18) “Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forget life, to be at peace.”
- Oscar Wilde
19) “As soon as you realize that it was a gift, you’ll be free.”
– Maxime Lagacé
20) “It’s better to die laughing than to live each moment in fear.”
― Michael Crichton
21) “The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.”
— Harriet Beecher-Stowe
22) “After your death, you will be what you were before your birth.”
– Arthur Schopenhauer
23) “Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone.”
- Jiddu Krishnamurti
24) “You were born a child of light’s wonderful secret— you return to the beauty you have always been.”
― Aberjhani
25) “I’m not afraid of death because I don’t believe in it. It’s just getting out of one car, and into another.”
– John Lennon
26) “If the only miracle we are looking for is the big one... then we will most likely miss the other miracles that are unfolding before our very eyes, each and every day.”
—Wayne Charlton
27) “How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
—A.A. Milne
28) “Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.”
– Arthur Miller
29) “The funny thing about facing imminent death is that it really snaps everything else into perspective.”
- James Patterson
30) “The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows.”
― Socrates
31) “Anything that’s human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be more manageable. When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting, and less scary. The people we trust with that important talk can help us know that we are not alone.”
- Fred Rogers
32) “Dying is like coming to the end of a long novel, you only regret it if the ride was enjoyable and left you wanting more.”
- Jerome P. Crabb
33) “When your fear touches someone’s pain, it becomes pity. When your love touches someone’s pain, it becomes compassion.”
– Stephen Levine
34) “A dying man needs to die, as a sleepy man needs to sleep, and there comes a time when it is wrong, as well as useless, to resist”
– Stewart Alsop
35) “I regret not death. I am going to meet my friends in another world.”
- Ludovico Ariosto
36) “Death is like a mirror in which the true meaning of life is reflected.”
– Sogyal Rinpoche
37) “Death helps us to see what is worth trusting and loving and what is a waste of time.”
– J. Neville Ward
38) “Death may be the greatest of all human blessings”
– Socrates
39) “The connections we make in the course of a life – maybe that’s what heaven is”
– Fred Rogers
40) “Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back.”
― Marcus Aurelius
41) “Happiness can exist only in acceptance”
– George Orwell
42) “Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.”
- Amelia Burr
43) “Men fear death, as if unquestionably the greatest evil, and yet no man knows that it may not be the greatest good.”
– William Mitford
44) “Death is beautiful when seen to be a law, and not an accident.”
- Henry David Thoreau
45) “In your life you touched so many, in your death many lives were changed.”
– Melinda Jones
Here is Mum’s favourite quote. One of us would start saying it, and then the other would join in with a big smile on their face:
46) “Everything will be all right in the end. If it’s not all right, it is not yet the end”
- The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
Here is the quote that I read to Mum:
47) “I am here with you and I love you. You are dying and that is completely natural; it happens to everyone. I wish you could stay here with me, but I don’t want you to suffer anymore. The time we have had together has been enough and I shall always cherish it. Please now don’t hold on to life any longer. Let go. I give you my full and heartfelt permission to die. You are not alone, now or ever. You have all my love.”
Funny death quotes
My two year old daughter, Willow, and I moved back home to England to be with Mum.
Those last few months were full of joy, laughter and naps.
In fact, Mum & I laughed so much throughout her short sickness that several doctors were worried that we’d misunderstood the seriousness of her prognosis.
We cried more happy tears than sad ones, and it taught me that you can find the humour in anything, even death.
These next quotes prove that some of the best quotes about loss are ones that make you smile:
48) “If life must not be taken too seriously, then so neither must death”
—Samuel Butler
49) “Death is nature’s way of saying, ‘Your table is ready.’”
— Robin Williams
50) “Life is hard. After all, it kills you.”
- Katharine Hepburn
51) "Sometimes I wish my first word was 'quote' so that on my deathbed, my last words could be 'end quote.'"
—Steven Wright
52) “Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.”
- Isaac Asimov
53) “No one here gets out alive.”
– Jim Morrison
54) “Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?”
—Epicurus
55) “To the most trivial actions, attach the devotion and mindfulness of a hundred monks. To matters of life and death, attach a sense of humor.”
- Zhuangzi
56) “I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
— Mark Twain
57) “Everybody has to die, but I always believed an exception would be made in my case.”
- William Saroyan
58) “It’s funny the way most people love the dead. Once you’re dead, you’re made for life.”
—Jimi Hendrix
59) “I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.”
— Winston Churchill
60) “Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatsoever to do with it.”
—William Somerset Maugham
61) “I have a positive approach to death. I'm positive I'm going to die. You know, sometime.”
- Greg Tamblyn
62) “You cannot stop loving your friend because he’s dead, especially if he was better than anyone alive, you know?”
– Jerome Salinger
63) “Even the best of friends cannot attend each other’s funeral.”
– Kehlog Albran
64) “Believe me, when you die, it’s everybody else’s but your problem.”
― Cecelia Ahern
Inspirational death quotes
Mum’s serenity was contagious, and as sad as it was to lose her, those last few months were beautiful and have completely changed my outlook on life, and beyond.
We’re not a religious family, but it was an undeniably spiritual & inspirational experience.
These quotes have inspired me to look at life, and death differently.
65) “What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.”
— Albert Pike
66) “What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.”
– Helen Keller
67) “Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality.”
– Emily Dickinson
68) “Death must exist for life to have meaning.”
― Neal Shusterman
69) “Death never takes the wise man by surprise, he is always ready to go.”
- Jean de La Fontaine
70) “Everything that happens before death is what counts.”
― Ray Bradbury
71) “Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to “die before you die” — and find that there is no death.”
― Eckhart Tolle
72) “Death can come at any age, but the pride of life fools a person into thinking that day is far away.”
– John Buttrick
73) “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”
– Norman Cousins
74) “It is nothing to die. It is frightful not to live.”
– Victor Hugo
75) “The pace of our lives is so hectic that the last thing we have time to think of is death. We smother our secret fears of impermanence by surrounding ourselves with more and more goods, more and more things, more and more comforts, only to find ourselves their slaves. All our time and energy is exhausted simply maintaining them.”
- The Tibetan book of living & dying
76) “People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if possible, sincerely. It’s too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies.”
- Haruki Murakami
77) “Neither fire nor wind, birth nor death can erase our good deeds.”
- Buddha
78) “Man alone chimes the hour. And, because of this, man alone suffers a paralyzing fear that no other creature endures. A fear of time running out”
– Mitch Albom
79) “Lives are like rivers: Eventually they go where they must. Not where we want them to.”
– Richard Russo
80) “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
81) “Let life be beautiful like summer flowers and death like autumn leaves.”
- Rabindranath Tagore
82) “Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose.”
— Steve Jobs
83) “Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all”
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
84) “Many people die at twenty five and aren’t buried until they are seventy five.”
– Benjamin Franklin
85) “No one really knows why they are alive until they know what they’d die for.”
– Martin Luther King Jr
86) “We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”
— Chuck Palahniuk
87) “If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.”
— Stephen King
88) “Be the things you loved most about the people who are gone”
- Unknown
89) “Each time we don’t say what we wanna say, we’re dying.”
― Yoko Ono
90) “The question is not whether we will die, but how we will live.”
– Dr. Joan Borysenko
91) "Everyone dies but not everyone lives."
- William Wallace
92) “Every story is a story about death. But perhaps, if we are lucky, our story about death is also a story about love.”
― Helen Humphreys
93) “If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character. Would you slow down? Or speed up?”
– Chuck Palahniuk
94) “Death is something inevitable. When a man has done what he considers to be his duty to his people and his country, he can rest in peace.”
— Nelson Mandela
95) “Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it.”
- Haruki Murakami
96) “People living deeply have no fear of death.”
- Anaïs Nin
97) “He who is not busy being born is busy dying.”
- Bob Dylan
Quotes for Grieving
Mum’s passing was so beautiful, spiritual and peaceful that I wasn’t even sad right away.
I was in England still, surrounded by our loved ones.
I loved laughing and sharing stories about her all day, every day.
It was like she was still with us.
My grief started to hit once I moved back to Canada.
I went through the motions of getting back to reality, but often I just wanted to crumple to the floor and weep. Sometimes I still do.
I did not expect grief to feel so heavy, physical, and exhausting.
I didn’t expect the brain fog, insomnia or feelings of rage.
These quotes about grief and life carrying on without our loved ones help to validate my emotions and make me feel less alone.
For me, no one can capture my grieving process like Sara Rian, please check out her books if you connect with her words too.
These were some of the most comforting quotes for loss of a loved one that I’ve found.
98) “And if nothing else, today I am thankful that you were mine to lose”
- Sara Rian
99) “Where grief is fresh, any attempt to divert it only irritates.”
– Samuel Johnson
100) “Grit your teeth and let it hurt. Don’t deny it, don’t be overwhelmed by it. It will not last forever. One day, the pain will be gone and you will still be there.”
– Harold Kushner
101) “It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.”
- John Steinbeck
102) “Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.”
- Rumi
103) “The two hardest things to say in life is hello for the first time and goodbye for the last time.”
- Moira Rogers
104) “When someone you love dies, you don’t lose them all at once. You lose them in pieces over time, like how the mail stops coming.”
– Jim Carrey
105) “There are some that bring a light so great to the world that even after they have gone the light remains.”
- Unknown
106) “I would never let anyone tell me that I loved you too much. So I will not let them tell me that I grieve you too much either.”
- Sara Rian
107) “But she wasn’t around, and that’s the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going into every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone.”
― Mitch Albom
108) “Grieving is not weakness nor absence of faith. Grieving is as natural as crying when you are hurt, sleeping when you are tired or sneezing when your nose itches. It is nature’s way of healing a broken heart.”
– Doug Manning
109) “We live in a culture where people need us to move through our grief for the sake of their own comfort but grief does not have a timeline. It takes as long as it takes.”
-Brene Brown
110) “She was no longer wrestling with the grief, but could sit down with it as a lasting companion and make it a sharer in her thoughts.”
– George Eliot
111) “Like a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson
112) “Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”
- Edna St. Vincent Millay
113) “A mother understands what a child does not say.”
– Jewish Proverb
114) "We understand death only after it has placed its hands on someone we love."
—Madame de Stael
115) “There are some days when I don’t look at your picture. I won’t think of your hands. Not because I have forgotten you. I just can’t bear to miss you more than I already do.”
- Sara Rian
116) “Grief is the price we pay for love”
– Queen Elizabeth II
117) “When a loved one dies, grief moves in. It becomes a part of your family. It sits at your dining room table and it attends every family holiday. You can try to wait it out, thinking that if you don’t make space for grief it will eventually leave, but this never works because grief will just cram itself into corners and closets and all the other empty spaces it can find.”
- Eleanor Haley
118) "Those we love don't go away, they sit beside us every day."
- Liane Moriarty
119) “Each person’s grief is unique as their fingerprint. But what everyone has in common is that no matter how they grieve, they share a need for their grief to be witnessed. That doesn’t mean needing someone to try to lessen it or reframe it for them. The need is for someone to be truly present to the magnitude of their loss without trying to point out the silver lining.”
- David Kessler
120) “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
121) “Grief can take care of itself, but to get the full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with”
– Mark Twain
122) “Now I know why you always told me to be strong. You knew that one day I would need the strength to bear your loss.”
- Unknown
123) “Your death is the only thing about you that brings me pain. You were pure love.”
- Sara Rian
124) “I realized when you look at your mother, you are looking at the purest love you will ever know.”
- Mitch Albom
125) “What is lovely never dies, but passes into other loveliness.”
– Thomas Bailey
126) “I truly never learned what the words ‘I miss you’ were until I reached for my mom’s hand and it wasn’t there.”
- Unknown
127) “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
– C.S. Lewis
128) “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
129) “My heart is heavy. Not only because you are gone, but because that is where I carry you.”
- Sara Rian
130) “There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart.”
- Mahatma Gandhi
131) “You were unsure which pain is worse —the shock of what happened or the ache for what never will”
- @healingafteraloss on IG
132) “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 them.”
– Leo Tolstoy
(A little note on this next quote as I know how debilitating grief can feel and I wouldn’t want anyone to feel shamed for inaction or not coping with everyday tasks. I interpreted this as the action being things like crying, talking about your loved one, and in my case, writing this post.)
133) “The only cure for grief is action.”
– George Henry Lewes
134) “I thought we’d be different. I thought you’d appear everywhere. You’d visit me all day and all night. Our life love was so strong and special, I almost thought I could bypass having to miss you forever. But I sit here like every griever. Wondering where you’ve gone.”
- Sara Rian
135) “Normal is having tears waiting behind every smile when you realize someone important is missing from all the important events in your family’s life.”
- Unknown
136) “Losing a parent is something like driving through a plate-glass window. You didn’t know it was there until it shattered, and then for years to come you’re picking up the pieces — down to the last glassy splinter.”
– Saul Bellow
137) “We cannot think our way out of grief. We must feel our way out of grief.”
― Angie Corbett-Kuiper
138) “You give yourself permission to grieve by recognizing the need for grieving. Grieving is the natural way of working through the loss of a love.”
– Doug Manning
139) “Those we love and lose are always connected by heartstrings into infinity.”
- Terri Guillemets
140) “People in grief need someone to walk with them without judging them.”
– Gail Sheeny
141) “First, we shared a body. Then, we shared a life. Now, we share a soul”
- Sara Rian
142) “When someone we love dies, we get so busy mourning what died that we ignore what didn’t”
– Ram Dass
143) “You taught me lots of things, but you didn’t teach me how to survive the holidays without you.”
- Chelsea Ohlemiller
144) “Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.”
- Anne Roiphe
145) “One often calms one’s grief by recounting it.”
– Pierre Corneille
146) “My love couldn’t save you. But yours saves me over and over again.”
- Sara Rian
147) “No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.”
- Terry Pratchett
148) “The actuality of death and the experience of grief sinks in at different times for everyone.”
– Valerie Orr
149) “With grief, you know, the only way to get through it is through it.”
– Dana Reeve
150) “Holding someone you love while mourning someone you’ve lost is one of lifes most beautiful aches.”
- Sara Rian
151) “People leave strange little memories of themselves behind when they die.”
― Haruki Murakami
152) “They say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”
- Banksy
153) “Weeping is not the same thing as crying. It takes your whole body to weep, and when it’s over, you feel like you don’t have any bones left to hold you up.”
― Sarah Ockler
154) “Hold dear to your parents for it is a scary and confusing world without them.”
– Emily Dickinson
155) “Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”
- C.S. Lewis
156) “You may have thought you were not needed here. But even the sun misses your smile and the moon prays for one more night.”
- Sara Rian
157) “Those we love never truly leave us, Harry. There are things that death cannot touch.”
― Jack Thorne
158) “The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.”
— Marcus Tullius Cicero
159) "Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while."
- The Princess Bride
160) “Being here without you is an exhaustion that no amount of rest can fix. And a burning pain that no amount of tears can wash away.”
- Sara Rian
161) “But fate ordains that dearest friends must part.”
– Edward Young
162) “Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”
– Arthur Schopenhauer
163) “We come into this world crying for our mothers. We will leave it just the same.”
- Sara Rian
Conclusion
Whether you’re facing health issues, supporting a dying loved one, living with grief, looking for quotes for condolences, or death has just been on your mind recently - I hope these death quotes & grieving quotes provided some small comfort today.
Like everything in life, I feel like death becomes less scary the more we talk about it and bring it into the light.
Sending you love and strength xx
