Coping with the Loss of a Friend: Quotes to Help Heal
Death of a friend can be painful, but you do not know pain unless you have lost a close friend. A friend is someone with whom you have grown up or spent a considerable amount of time together. Shared secrets, stories, memories, milestones, and so much more. A place of a true friend in your heart is irreplaceable.
Here are some quotes that will help you cope with the death of your friend:
- “Those we love and lose are always connected by heartstrings into infinity.” -Terri Guillemets.
- “You meet people who forget you. You forget people you meet. But sometimes you meet those people you can’t forget. Those are your friends.” -Mark Twain.
- “Your lost friends are not dead, but gone before, / Advanced a stage or two upon that road / Which you must travel in the steps they trod.” -Aristophanes.
- “You don’t lose friends, because real friends can never be lost.” -Mandy Hale.
- “To lose a friend is the greatest of all losses.” -Publilius Syrus.
- “The comfort of having a friend may be taken away, but not that of having had one.” -Seneca.
- “There’s a thing that keeps surprising you about stormy old friends after they die; their silence.” -Ben Becht.
- “Nothing endears so much a friend as sorrow for his death. The pleasure of his company has not so powerful an influence.” -David Hume.
- “Don’t be surprised if you grieve more for a friend than you did for a recently deceased relative. The old saying, ‘You pick your friends, relatives are thrust upon you,’ holds true here. Friends are special people in our eyes because we hold them to be. Friends fill time in our lives that will be vacant when they die.” -Helen Fitzgerald.
- “On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world.” -Henry David Thoreau.
- “Painful though parting be, I bow to you as I see you off to distant clouds.” -Emperor Saga.
- “He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.” -Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
- “There are no happy endings. Endings are the saddest part. So just give me a happy middle and a very happy start.” -Shel Silverstein.
- “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.
- “When someone you love becomes a memory, that memory becomes a treasure.” -Unknown.
- “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.” -Anonymous.
- “And meeting again, after moments or lifetime, is certain for those who are friends.” -Richard Bach.
- “Words seem so feeble in moments like these. Life is so precious, and death such a thief. The depth of your pain I cannot comprehend, but I’ll stand alongside you in the darkness, my friend. Love is a bond that death cannot part. Gone from your arms, but still held in your heart.” -John Mark Green.
- “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.” -Leo Buscaglia.
- “You’ll never be forgotten that simply cannot be. As long as I am living, I’ll carry you with me. Safely tucked within my heart your light will always shine; a glowing ember never stilled, throughout the end of time. No matter what the future brings, or what may lie ahead, I know that you will walk with me along the path I tread. So rest my angel, be at peace and let your soul fly free. One day I’ll join your glorious flight for all eternity.” -Unknown.
- “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.
- “The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to.” -Elisabeth Kubler Ross.
- “When our friends are alive, we see the good qualities they lack; dead, we remember only those they possessed.” -Jean Antoine Petit-Senn.
- “What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. For all that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” -Helen Keller.
- “A friend who dies, it’s something of you who dies.” -Gustave Flaubert.
- “Death is as casual- and often as unexpected- as birth. It is as difficult to define grief as joy. Each is finite. Each will fade.” -Jim Bishop.
- “The bond between friends cannot be broken by chance; no interval of time or space can destroy it. Not even death itself can part true friends.” -John Cassian.
- “Without you in my arms, I feel an emptiness in my soul. I find myself searching the crowds for your face—I know it’s an impossibility, but I cannot help myself.” -Nicholas Sparks.
- “You cannot stop loving your friend because he’s dead, especially if he was better than anyone alive, you know?” -J.D. Salinger.
- “Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.” -Vicki Harrison.
Conclusion
We never want to imagine losing a close friend, we don’t even want to think about the possibility yet, death is a natural part of life. Coping and healing from the death of a friend can be a long and challenging process. Yet we go on that journey not only for ourselves but also in honour of the person we lost.