Nothing could be more tragic than the loss of a loved one. The death of a beloved person can shatter people’s dreams, hopes, and ambitions. It can fundamentally change their life forever. If you know someone who just recently lost such an important person, you may wish to offer your condolences. However, finding the right words can be exceptionally difficult. You may wish to express so many things but adequate words seem to escape you. In these situations, it can be quite helpful to have a couple of sympathy quotes at hand. These thoughtful condolences quotes will inspire you to express your sympathy and compassion. Therefore, we’ve created a collection of 80 sympathy quotes to help you find the right words.
In general, expressing sympathy can be quite difficult. At the same time, it is important to express your condolences – especially when you are close to the bereaved. This is because your words of sympathy will show them that they are not alone. You’re also offering your compassion, which lets them know how much you care. At the same time, expressing your sympathy will show the griever that you honor their tragic loss.
“What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
Richard Bach
While it’s important to express your sympathy, it may not always be easy to say the right thing. On one hand, you wish to communicate how sorry you feel for the tragic loss.
In the following, you can find our selection of sympathy quotes to express your condolences.
On the other hand, you may be at a complete loss for words. Similarly, you may feel that most words simply do not adequately describe how sad you are.
“May you find the strength and resolve today, to allow a deeper sense of healing to begin.”
Eleesha
To make things even more complicated, you may feel that there’s simply no beautiful way to phrase your feelings. Nonetheless, you may still want to express your warm sympathy to show the grieving person that you are honoring their loss. For this reason, we’ve created a collection of sympathy quotes to help you with this difficult task.
80 Sympathy Quotes to Express Your Condolences
As we all know, tragic losses often come unexpectedly – like a swift wind. Therefore, it’s safe to say that no one is really prepared for such a loss. But what to do when you want to express your sympathy when a friend or relative of yours loses someone? For such situations, it can be quite helpful to have a couple of words of sympathy and condolences quotes at hand. Such statements will help you in finding the right words to tragic events when you’re at a loss for words.
Table of contents
Universal sympathy quotes
Sympathy quotes for loss of mother
Condolences quotes for loss of father
Sympathy quotes for loss of wife or husband
Condolences quotes for loss of child
Condolences quotes for loss of grandparent
Sympathy quotes for loss of pet
In the following, you can find a wide range of sympathy quotes. Many of these quotes universally apply to all kinds of different situations. But you can also have a look at the condolences quotes for specific occasions.
If you want to, you can also include the following in your condolence message:
- I’m sorry for your tragic loss
- With heartfelt condolences
- You are in my thoughts – you are not alone
- With loving memories of [NAME] – I love you and care about you
- I will miss [NAME]
- I am therefore you if you need me
- My sincere sympathy
- It must be so hard for you
- You are in my prayers and thoughts
- Words cannot express how sad I feel
- My prayers and thoughts are with you in your time of sorrow
- My warmest condolences
Ideally, you find a sympathy quote in the following that directly speaks from your heart.
Universal sympathy quotes
1.
„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
2.
„Seashells remind us that every passing life leaves something beautiful behind.“
Unknown
3.
„In the godforsaken, obscene quicksand of life, there is a deafening alleluia rising from the souls of those who weep, and of those who weep with those who weep. If you watch, you will see the hand of God putting the stars back in their skies one by one.“
Ann Weems
4.
„The darker the night, the brighter the stars,
The deeper the grief, the closer is God!“
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5.
„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
6.
„We meet but briefly in life, if we touch each other with stardust – that is everything.“
Unknown
7.
„Love is stronger than death even though it can’t stop death from happening, but no matter how hard death tries it can’t separate people from love. It can’t take away our memories either. In the end, life is stronger than death.“
Unknown
8.
„We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.“
Anyon Chekov
9.
„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. We find comfort in knowing that our lives have been enriched by having shared their love.“
Leo Buscaglia
10.
„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 to tears and despair and make it through the potholed street of life“
Nicholas Sparks
11.
„Those we love and lose are always connected by heartstrings into infinity.“
Terri Guillemets
12.
„Tears are God’s gift to us. Our holy water. They heal us as they flow.“
Rita Schiano
13.
„Perhaps they are not the stars, but rather openings in Heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy.“
Unknown
14.
„Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.“
Lord Alfred Tennyson
15.
„When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure.“
Unknown
16.
„“Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.“
Richard Puz
17.
„It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but retire a little from sight and afterwards return again.“
Ralph Waldo Emerson
18.
„The ones that love us never really leave us.“
Sirius Black
19.
„The most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love and to be greater than our suffering“
Ben Okri
20.
”It is the unknown we fear when we look upon death and darkness, nothing more.“
J.K. Rowling
21.
„For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.“
Khalil Gibran
22.
„Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.“
Ernest Hemingway
23.
„The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen, nor touched, but are felt in the heart.“
Helen Keller
24.
„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
25.
„Unable are the loved to die. For love is immortality.“
Emily Dickinson
26.
„No one is actually dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.“
Terry Pratchett
27.
„Perhaps some day the sun will shine again,
And I shall see that still the skies are blue,
And feel one more I do not live in vain,
Although bereft of you.“
Vera Brittain
28.
„Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart.“
José N. Harris
29.
„What is lovely never dies, But passes into other loveliness.“
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
30.
„God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.“
J.M. Barrie
31.
„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
32.
„Remember me with smiles and laughter, for that is how I will remember you all. If you can only remember me with tears, then don’t remember me at all.“
Laura Ingalls Wilder
33.
„Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.“
Emily Dickinson
34.
„We bereaved are not alone. We belong to the largest company in all the world—the company of those who have known suffering.“
Helen Keller
35.
„Someday you’re gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You’ll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing…”
Elizabeth Gilbert
36.
„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
37.
„The song is ended but the melody lingers on…”
Irving Berlin
38.
„If tears could build a stairway,
And memories a lane,
I’d walk right up to Heaven
And bring you home again.“
Unknown
39.
„Anything you lose comes round in another form.“
Rumi
40.
„I still miss those I loved who are no longer with me but I find I am grateful for having loved them. The gratitude has finally conquered the loss.“
Rita Mae Brown
41.
„Grief is not a disorder, a disease or a sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve.“
Earl Grollman
42.
„We can endure much more than we think we can; all human experience testifies to that. All we need to do is learn not to be afraid of pain. 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
43.
„What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.“
Helen Keller
Sympathy quotes for loss of mother
44.
„Grace was in all her steps, heaven in her eye, in every gesture, dignity, and love.“
John Milton
45.
„There is something about losing a mother that is permanent and inexpressible – a wound that will never quite heal.“
Susan Wiggs
46.
„There’s magic in a Mother’s touch and sunshine in her smile. There’s love in everything she does to make our lives worthwhile. We can find both hope and courage just by looking in her eyes. Her laughter is a source of joy, her works are warm and wise. There are a kindness and compassion to be found in her embrace and we see the light of heaven shining from a Mother’s face.“
Unknown
47.
„Love as powerful as your mother’s for you leaves its own mark… To have been enough so deeply will give us some protection forever.“
J.K. Rowling
48.
„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.“
Unknown
49.
„My mom is a never-ending song in my heart of comfort, happiness, and being. I may sometimes forget the words but I always remember the tune.“
Graycie Harmon
50.
„Once upon a memory, someone wiped away a tear, held me close and loved me, thank you, Mother dear.“
Unknown
51.
„A mother holds her children’s hands for a while, their hearts forever.“
Unknown
52.
„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
53.
„I wonder if my first breath was as soul-stirring to my mother as her last breath was to me.“
Lisa Goich
54.
„My mom was there, in some form, in some sense, in some universe. My mom was still my mom, even if she only lived in books and door locks and the smell of fried tomatoes and old paper. She lived.“
Kami Garcia
55.
„Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.“
Robert Browning
Condolences quotes for loss of father
56.
„What I really want to tell him is to pick up that baby of his and hold her tight, to set the moon on the edge of her crib and to hang her name up in the stars.“
Jodi Picoult
57.
„The heart of a father is the masterpiece of nature.“
Abbé Prévost
58.
„If I had a single flower for every time I think about you, I could walk forever in my garden.“
Claudia Ghandi
59.
„I suddenly remember being very little and being embraced by my father. I would try to put my arms around my father’s waist, hug him back. I could never reach the whole way around the equator of his body; he was that much larger than life. Then one day, I could do it. I held him, instead of him holding me, and all I wanted at that moment was to have it back the other way.“
Jodi Picoult
60.
„Say not in grief he is no more, but live in thankfulness that he was.“
Hebrew proverb
61.
„He didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it.“
Clarence Budington Kelland
62.
„I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.“
Umberto Eco
63.
„Dad, your guiding hand on my shoulder will remain with me forever.“
Unknown
Sympathy quotes for loss of wife or husband
64.
„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
65.
„I have lived with you and loved you, and now you are gone. Gone where I cannot follow until I have finished all of my days.“
Victoria Hanley
66.
„As long as I can I will look at this world for both of us, as long as I can, I will laugh with the birds, I will sing with the flowers, I will pray to the stars, for both of us.“
Unknown
67.
„They say (she had read somewhere) that no one ever disappears, up in the atmosphere, stratosphere, whatever you call space—atoms infinitely minute, beyond the conception of existence, are up there forever, from the whole world, from all time.
Nadine Gordimer
68.
„We’ve shared our lives these many years. You’ve held my hand; you’ve held my heart. So many blessings, so few tears – yet for a moment, we must part.“
Unknown
Condolences quotes for loss of child
69.
„Only a moment you stayed, but what an imprint your footprints have left on our hearts.“
Dorothy Ferguson
70.
„Those we have held in our arms for a short while we hold in our hearts forever.“
Unknown
71.
„A gift for such a little while, your loss seems so wrong, you should not have left before us it’s with loved ones you belong.“
Unknown
72.
„And we wept that one so lovely should have a life so brief.“
William Cullen Bryant
73.
„Parents hold their children’s hands for just a little while… their hearts forever.“
Unknown
Condolences quotes for loss of grandparent
74.
„I still loved Granny. It flowed out of my chest. With Granny gone, where would my love go?”
Jessica Maria Tuccelli
75.
“I miss him still today: his long, whiskery eyebrows, his huge hands and hugs, his warmth, his prayers, his stories, but above all his shining example of how to live and how to die.”
Bear Grylls
Sympathy quotes for loss of pet
76.
„Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.“
Anatole France
77.
„A pet is never truly forgotten until it is no longer remembered.“
Lacie Petitt
78.
„His ears were often the first thing to catch my tears.“
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
79.
„Dogs are not our whole life, but they make our lives whole.“
Roger Caras
80.
„I believe all animals were created by God to help keep man alive.“
Iwao Fujita
81.
„A good dog never dies, he always stays,
he walks beside you on crisp autumn days
when frost is on the fields and winter’s drawing near,
his head within our hand in his old way.“
Unknown
82.
„Dogs have a way of finding the people who need them, Filling an emptiness we don’t even know we have.“
Thom Jones
83.
„Not the least hard thing to bear when they go from us, these quiet friends, is that they carry away with them so many years of our own lives.“
John Galsworthy
I hope these sympathy quotes have given you the courage and inspiration it takes to find the right words for the tragic loss of a loved one. Feel free to share the beautiful words that help you to express your condolences.
Stay victorious – especially during difficult times!
