Some of the links in this post may be affiliate links. See our disclosure for more info.
If you’ve lost someone close, or know others struggling with their own grief, you know it’s difficult to find words of comfort. These sympathy quotes are a great place to start so you can center yourself and find solace when you need it.
When we lose someone special to us, the sense of loss can be overwhelming. We all want to say something meaningful that conveys a sense of how sorry we are for loss, but often can’t seem to find the right words.
Whether it was sudden or expected, taking the time to properly mourn our loss is an essential part of a healthy grieving process.
Whatever kind of loss has led you to this page, we hope you’ll find the right words to help you express your feelings.
Losing a friend or family member is one of the hardest things that can happen in our lives, but sharing the sorrow of someone who is grieving can be equally difficult.
We hope these quotes about sympathy and condolences give you a way to express your feelings at times when it’s hard knowing what to say.
Sympathy Quotes
Sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load.
Charles Henry Parkhurst
It is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it is to have sympathy with thought.
Oscar Wilde
What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.
Helen Keller
To sympathize with the suffering of others forges understanding, but that doesn’t mean they’ll put up with you.
Benson Bruno
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud.
Walt Whitman
All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.
George S. Patton
Your life was a blessing, your memory a treasure. You are loved beyond words and missed beyond measure.
Renee Wood
Developing our sympathetic compassion is not only possible but the only reason for us to be here on earth.
George Saunders
Those who weep recover more quickly than those who smile.
Jean Giraudoux
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 Wordswrth
There is something very morbid about modern sympathy with pain.
Oscar Wilde
Be kind, be all sympathy, for each and every human being is forced to fight against himself.
Sri Chinmoy
A human life is a story told by God.
Hans Christian Anderson
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.
Khalil Gibran
Besides love and sympathy, animals exhibit other qualities connected with the social instincts which in us would be called moral.
Charles Darwin
Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.
Oscar Wilde
Darkness may hide the trees and the flowers from the eyes but it cannot hide love from the soul.
Rumi
Grant but memory to us and we lose nothing by death.
John Whittier
He will cover you with his feathers, and under His wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
Psalm 91:4, NIV
Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.
Victor Hugo
We should feel sorrow, but not sink under its oppression.
Confucius
Any mind that is capable of real sorrow is capable of good.
Hariet Beecher Stowe
Seashells remind us that every passing life leaves something beautiful behind.
Unknown
One has to all the time feel others’ sufferings as one’s very own. Sympathy has to be the first and foremost thing in one’s life, sympathy and the feeling of oneness.
Sri Chinmoy
Woman’s fatal weakness is to desire sympathy and comprehension.
Ouida
If there was less sympathy in the world, there would be less trouble in the world.
Oscar Wilde
Condolences Quotes
A great soul serves everyone all the time. A great soul never dies. It brings us together again and again.
Maya Angelou
Sorrow is so easy to express and yet so hard to tell.
Joni Mitchell
The Remembrance of the good done those we have loved is the only consolation when we have lost them.
Demoustier
The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives.
Norman Cousins
The light has gone out of my life.
Theodore Roosevelt
We understand death only after it has placed its hands on someone we love.
Anne L. de Stael
Like a bird singing in the rain, let grateful memories survive in time of sorrow.
Robert Louis Stevenson
To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.
Erich Fromm
Each departed friend is a magnet that attracts us to the next world.
Jean Paul Richter
The world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.
Hellen Keller
Compassion only plagues those with hearts, much like a field of thorns only troubles those who bleed.
Rachelle E. Goodrich
While we are mourning the loss of our friend, others are rejoicing to meet him behind the veil.
John Taylor
There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart.
Mahatma Gandhi
Only by joy and sorrow does a person know anything about themselves and their destiny. They learn what to do and what to avoid.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Oh heart, if one should say to you that the soul perishes like the body, answer that the flower withers, but the seed remains.
Kahlil Gibran
Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain.
Unknown
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 Ingles Wilder
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
Richard Bach
The tragedy of life is in what dies inside a man while he lives.
Norman Cousins
We meet but briefly in life, if we touch each other with stardust – that is everything.
Unknown
Death – the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening.
Sir Walter Scott
Nothing you love is lost. Not really. Things, people–they always go away sooner or later. You can’t hold them anymore than you can hold moonlight. But if they’ve touched you, if they’re inside you, then they’re still yours. The only things you ever really have are the ones you hold inside your heart.
Bruce Coville
Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine.
Thomas Aquinas
The memory of the righteous is a blessing, but the name of the wicked will rot.
Proverbs 10:7 (ESV)
We hope these sympathy quotes help you express your feelings, whether you are currently grieving or expressing condolences to someone else. Be gentle with yourself throughout this process. Your loss will always hurt, but things will get easier with time.
