Condolence Quotes

Mother and daughter holding hands on sofa
Jose Luis Pelaez Inc/Getty Images

How do you express your condolence when someone you love is going through a traumatic period? What do you say, and how do you say it?

The Loss

Some time ago, a close friend lost her five-year-old son in a tragic accident. The bereaved mother was beside herself with grief. No words could comfort her. It's tough to comfort someone grieving about death. What can you say to comfort a mother who has just lost her child? Do you express grief or provide words of strength, or will your words seem empty?

Etiquette of Courtesy

Social norms emphasize on etiquettes of greeting people on happy occasions, such as birthdays, engagement, weddings, marriage anniversaries, or other personal and professional milestones. Gift shops abound with greeting cards and gifts that express joy and celebration. Our culture falls short of expressions that teach people how to express sadness during times of grief.

Tragedy and Loneliness Go Hand in Hand

Funerals and prayer meetings are social platforms for people to offer condolences. After the initial flurry of activity, everyone goes back to their lives, leaving the grieving family to face loneliness and despair. Few turn back to see how the grieving family is coping with the loss.

How to Help Others Overcome Grief

Grief is a difficult burden to bear. Initially, your friend may shun your companionship or words of solace, because he is hurting too much. To overcome grief, one has to come to terms with it. Your sympathy can help your loved ones. However great the tragedy, inspirational words can redeem the grieving soul.

Quotes to Offer Condolences

These condolence quotes will soothe the heartbroken. Help your loved ones pick themselves up, and move on. Share these condolence quotes at funerals, church services, or make a solemn toast in honor of the departed soul. Your words can give a glimmer of hope to the heartbroken.

  • William Wordsworth
    "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."
  • Bible, Matthew 5:4
    "Blessed are those who mourn; for they shall be comforted."
  • Beth Mende Conny
    "If the future seems overwhelming, remember that it comes one moment at a time."
  • Pierre Corneille
    "One often calms one's grief by recounting it."
  • Harriet Beecher Stowe
    "Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good."
  • Anne Grant
    "Grief is a normal and natural response to loss. It is originally an unlearned feeling process. Keeping grief inside increases your pain."
  • Aeschylus
    "There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief."
  • Queen Elizabeth II
    "Grief is the price we pay for love."
  • Jerome K. Jerome
    "It is in our faults and failings, not in our virtues, that we touch each other, and find sympathy. It is in our follies that we are one."
  • Nigella Lawson
    "You don't go around grieving all the time, but the grief is still there and always will be."
  • Benjamin Franklin
    "It is the will of God and Nature that these mortal bodies be laid aside, when the soul is to enter into real life; 'tis rather an embryo state, a preparation for living; a man is not completely born until he be dead: Why then should we grieve that a new child is born among the immortals?"
  • Dirk Benedict
    "If we wait until our lives are free from sorrow or difficulty, then we wait forever. And miss the entire point."
  • Robert Ingersoll
    "In the night of death, hope sees a star, and listening love can hear the rustle of a wing."
  • Rossiter Worthington Raymond
    "Life is eternal; and love is immortal; and death is only a horizon; and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight."
  • Khalil Gibran
    "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."
  • Ovid
    "Bear and endure: This sorrow will one day prove to be for your good."
  • Anne Morrow Lindbergh
    "Grief can't be shared. Everyone carries it alone. His own burden in his own way."
  • Confucius
    "We should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression."
  • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
    "Good-night! good-night! as we so oft have said
    Beneath this roof at midnight, in the days
    That are no more, and shall no more return.
    Thou hast but taken up thy lamp and gone to bed;
    I stay a little longer, as one stays
    To cover up the embers that still burn."
  • Arthur Schopenhauer
    "Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people."
  • Washington Irving
    "The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind."
  • John Taylor
    "While we are mourning the loss of our friend, others are rejoicing to meet him behind the veil."
  • Dante Alighieri
    "There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery."