grief Quotes

“His grief he will not forget; but it will not darken his heart, it will teach him wisdom.”

“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”

“An experience of collective pain does not deliver us from grief or sadness; it is a ministry of presence. These moments remind us that we are not alone in our darkness and that our broken heart is connected to every heart that has known pain since the beginning of time.”

“Our silence about grief serves no one. We can’t heal if we can’t grieve; we can’t forgive if we can’t grieve. We run from grief because loss scares us, yet our hearts reach toward grief because the broken parts want to mend. C.S. Lewis wrote, ‘No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.’ We can’t rise strong when we’re on the run.”

“I measure every Grief I meet With narrow, probing, eyes – I wonder if It weighs like Mine – Or has an Easier size.”

“It hurts to live after someone has died. It just does. It can hurt to walk down a hallway or open the fridge. It hurts to put on a pair of socks, to brush your teeth. Food tastes like nothing. Colors go flat. Music hurts, and so do memories. You look at something you’d otherwise find beautiful—a purple sky at sunset or a playground full of kids—and it only somehow deepens the loss. Grief is so lonely this way.”

“Grief and resilience live together.”

There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness.

He sought to counsel and soothe the despairing by pointing to the resigned, and to transform the grief which sees only a pit into the grief with sees a star.

“I’ll fight when needed, revel when there’s occasion, mourn when there is grief, and die if my time comes … but I will not let anyone use me against my will.”

“Some griefs can never be put right.”

Joy and grief were mingled in the cup; but there were no bitter tears: for even grief arose so softened, and clothed in such sweet and tender recollections, that it became a solemn pleasure, and lost all character of pain.

“You were worth it, old friend, and a thousand times over.”

“I found her lying on her stomach, her hind legs stretched out straight, and her front feet folded back under her chest. She had laid her head on his grave. I saw the trail where she had dragged herself through the leaves. The way she lay there, I thought she was alive. I called her name. She made no movement. With the last ounce of strength in her body, she had dragged herself to the grave of Old Dan.”

“What I saw was more than I could stand. The noise I heard had been made by Little Ann. All her life she had slept by Old Dan’s side. And although he was dead, she had left the doghouse, had come back to the porch, and snuggled up by his side.”

“Some time in the night I got up, tiptoed to my window, and looked out at my doghouse. It looked so lonely and empty sitting there in the moonlight. I could see that the door was slightly ajar. I thought of the many times I had lain in my bed and listened to the squeaking of the door as my dogs went in and out. I didn’t know I was crying until I felt the tears roll down my cheeks.”

“Even extreme grief may ultimately vent itself in violence--but more generally takes the form of apathy”

“He smiled despite the grief he felt at the deaths of his men; he smiled because that was what he did. That was how he proved to the Lord Ruler-and to himself-that he wasn’t beaten.”

“No need my unlucky one, to grieve here any longer, no, don’t waste your life away. Now I am willing heart and soul to send you off at last.”

And overpowered by memory both men gave way to grief. Priam wept freely for man - killing Hector, throbbing, crouching before Achilles’ feet as Achilles wept himself, now for his father, now for Patroclus once again and their sobbing rose and fell throughout the house.

“That loss is common would not make My own less bitter, rather more: Too common! Never morning wore To evening, but some heart did break.”

“My lighter moods are like to these, That out of words a comfort win; But there are other griefs within, And tears that at their fountain freeze;”

“The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.”

“In words, like weeds, I’ll wrap me o’er, Like coarsest clothes against the cold: But that large grief which these enfold Is given in outline and no more.”

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.

For in grief nothing “stays put.” One keeps on emerging from a phase, but it always recurs. Round and round. Everything repeats. Am I going in circles, or dare I hope I am on a spiral?

Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape.

“Grief teaches the steadiest minds to waver.”

“If you hold back on the emotions—if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them—you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. You’re afraid of the pain, you’re afraid of the grief. You’re afraid of the vulnerability that loving entails.”

“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.”

“No matter how much time passes, those we have loved never slip away from us entirely.”

“They are too grievous for us to be able to reflect on them at once. If we did that, we should have been destroyed long ago.”

“She was at school, but you’d never know it if you didn’t actually look. She didn’t whip her hand through the air trying to get the teacher to call on her or charge through the halls getting to class. She didn’t make unsolicited comments for the teacher’s edification or challenge the kid who took cuts in the milk line. She just sat. Quiet. I told myself I should be glad about it—it was like she wasn’t even there, and isn’t that what I’d always wanted? But still, I felt bad.”

“I hung the painting across the room from my bed. It’s the first thing I see every morning and the last thing I see every night. And now that I can look at it without crying, I see more than the tree and what being up in its branches meant to me. I see the day that my view of things around me stated changing.”

“I own to you that when I cast an eye on this globe, or rather on this little ball, I cannot help thinking that God has abandoned it to some malignant being. I except, always, El Dorado. I scarcely ever knew a city that did not desire the destruction of a neighbouring city, nor a family that did not wish to exterminate some other family. Everywhere the weak execrate the powerful, before whom they cringe; and the powerful beat them like sheep whose wool and flesh they sell. A million regimented assassins, from one extremity of Europe to the other, get their bread by disciplined depredation and murder, for want of more honest employment. Even in those cities which seem to enjoy peace, and where the arts flourish, the inhabitants are devoured by more envy, care, and uneasiness than are experienced by a besieged town. Secret griefs are more cruel than public calamities. In a word I have seen so much, and experienced so much that I am a Manichean.”

“My mother is a fish.”

“Someone once said ‘Immature strategy is the cause of grief.’ That was a true saying.”

“Gerry was gone and he would never be back. That was the reality.”

“Her best friend was gone and nobody understood that no amount of makeup, fresh air or shopping was going to fill the hole in her heart.”

″‘You can’t fall apart,’ Gillian would insist in her rich, urgent voice. ‘That’s my job,’ she’d say.”

“Alive, Miss Emily had been a tradition, a duty, and a care; a sort of hereditary obligation upon the town . . .”

“They had never been there in the dark. But there was enough moon for them to find their way into the castle, and he could tell her about his day in Washington. And apologize. It had been so dumb of him not to ask if Leslie could go, too.”

“Now that the joy and sorrow are over, I have that to tell you about the land.”

“Forbear to trifle longer with thy grief, Which, vulture-like, consumes thee in this den.”

“The closest bonds we will ever know are bonds of grief. The deepest community one of sorrow.”

″‘She loved you, you know.’ He could tell from Bill’s voice that he was crying. ‘She told me once that if it weren’t for you…’ His voice broke completely. ‘Thank you,’ he said a moment later. ‘Thank you for being such a wonderful friend to her.‘”

“She let out a laugh, and then she put her hand over her mouth, like she was angry at herself for forgetting her sadness.”

“He screamed something without words and flung the papers and paints into the dirty brown water… He watched them all disappear. Gradually his breath quieted, and his heart slowed from its wild pace. The ground was still muddy from the rains, but he sat down anyway. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere. Ever again. He put his head down on one knee.”

“She hadn’t tied her scarf around her head yet this morning, and her bare scalp looked too soft, too fragile in the morning light, like a baby’s. It made Conor’s stomach hurt to see it.”

″ ‘Conor O’Malley,’ he said, his voice growing poisonous now. ‘Who everyone’s sorry for because of his mum. Who swans around school acting like he’s so different, like no one knows his suffering.’ ”

“The blackness was wrapping itself around Conor’s eyes now, plugging his nose and overwhelming his mouth. He was gasping for breath and not getting it. It was suffocating him. It was killing him.”

″ ‘What’s the use of you if you can’t heal her?’ Conor said, pounding away. ‘Just stupid stories and getting me into trouble and everyone looking at me like I’ve got a disease.’ ”

“He went over and sat next to her on the side facing the window. She ran her hand through his hair, lifting it out of his eyes, and he could see how skinny her arm was, almost like it was just bone and skin.”

“I’ve known forever she wasn’t going to make it, almost from the beginning. She said she was getting better because that’s what I wanted to hear. And I believed her. Except I didn’t.”

“Whether she died that quickly, I don’t know; but she was dead by the time Mr. Chickering reached her. He was the first one to her. He lifted her head, then turned her face to a slightly more comfortable position; someone said later that he closed her eyes before he let her head rest back on the ground. I remember that he pulled the skirt of her dress down—it was as high as midthigh—and he pinched her knees together.”

“Since her death, Owen had hinted that the strongest force compelling him to attend Gravesend Academy—namely, my mother’s insistence—was gone. Those rooms allowed us to imagine what we might become—if not exactly boarders (because I would continue to live with Dan, and with Grandmother, and Owen would live at home), we would still harbor such secrets, such barely restrained messiness, such lusts, even, as these poor residents of Waterhouse Hall. It was our lives in the near future that we were searching for when we searched in those rooms, and therefore it was shrewd of Owen that he made us take our time.”

“But sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the waves washed back, I found myself looking out over a brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that I could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead.”

“When a daughter loses a mother, the intervals between grief responses lengthen over time, but her longing never disappears. It always hovers at the edge of her awareness, prepared to surface at any time, in any place, in the least expected ways.”

“When a mother dies, a daughter grieves. And then her life moves on. She does, thankfully, feel happiness again.”

“But the missing her, the wanting her, the wishing she were still here—I will not lie to you, although you probably already know. That part never ends.”

“There is an emptiness inside of me -- a void that will never be filled. No one in your life will ever love you as your mother does. There is no love as pure, unconditional and strong as a mother’s love. And I will never be loved that way again.”

“A mother’s death also means the loss of the consistent, supportive family system that once supplied her with a secure home base, she then has to develop her self-confidence and self-esteem through alternate means.”

“I truly believe that the death of my mother has made me the way I am today. I am a survivor, mentally strong, determined, strong-willed, self-reliant, and independent.”

“I also keep most of my pain, anger and feelings inside. I refuse to be vulnerable to anyone, especially my husband. The only people who see that more emotional or softer side are my children. That too because of my mother.”

“No greater grief than to remember days Of joy, when mis’ry is at hand!”

“He’d lived long enough to know that everyone handled grief in different ways, and little by little, they all seemed to accept their new lives.”

“It was hard to let go of that; to let go of the life I had before, but the truth was, it was harder for me to stay there inside the pain. I wasn’t strong enough to live there no matter how much I wanted to.”

“And there, on the golden gravel of the bed of the stream, lay King Caspian, dead, with the water flowing over him like liquid glass […] And all three stood and wept. Even the Lion wept: great Lion-tears, each tear more precious than the Earth would be if it was a single solid diamond. And Jill noticed that Eustace looked neither like a child crying, nor like a boy crying and wanting to hide it, but like a grown-up crying.”

“The life I knew and loved was gone, and so was my father. No matter how many words I chose to reject.”

“At most, I could allow myself only a few minutes to cry for him—to grieve our lives, and then I had to push the memories away, burying them deep inside of me once again so that I could function. So that I could go on.”

“Although there are times I’d give anything to have her back, I’m glad she went first. Losing her was like being cleft down the middle. It was the moment it all ended for me, and I wouldn’t have wanted her to go through that. Being the survivor stinks.”

“‘But please, please—won’t you—can’t you give me something that will cure Mother?’ Up till then he had been looking at the Lion’s great feet and the huge claws on them; now, in his despair, he looked up at its face. What he saw surprised him as much as anything in his whole life. For the tawny face was bent down near his own and (wonder of wonders) great shining tears stood in the Lion’s eyes. They were such big, bright tears compared with Digory’s own that for a moment he felt as if the Lion must really be sorrier about his Mother than he was himself. ‘My son, my son,’ said Aslan. ‘I know. Grief is great. Only you and I in this land know that yet. Let us be good to one another.‘”

“I knew it wasn’t fair, I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t help it. And after a while, the anger I felt just sort of became part of me, like it was the only way I knew how to handle the grief. I didn’t like who I’d become, but I was stuck in this horrible cycle of questions and blame.”

“He christened the walls and wooden chair with the news of my death, and afterwards he stood in the guest room/den surrounded by green glass.”

“If you take in someone else’s poison – thinking you can cure them by sharing it – you will instead store it within you.”

“Tears alone were sweet to me, for in my heart’s desire they had taken the place of my friend.”

“And I kept trying to find the little pieces of joy in my life. That’s the only way I managed to make it through all of that death and change.”

“That is the inescapable math of tragedy and the multiplication of grief. Too many good people die a little when they lose someone they love. One death begets two or twenty or one hundred. It’s the same all over the world.”

“Is not my sorrow deep, having no bottom?”

“When Bump died Memo went wild with grief...her womb stirring at the image of his restoration. Yet she saw down a dark corridor that he was laid out dead, gripping in his fingers the glowing ball he had caught.”

“If, as a culture, we don’t bear witness to grief, the burden of loss is placed entirely upon the bereaved, while the rest of us avert our eyes and wait for those in mourning to stop being sad, to let go, to move on, to cheer up. And if they don’t — if they have loved too deeply, if they do wake each morning thinking, I cannot continue to live — well, then we pathologize their pain; we call their suffering a disease. We do not help them: we tell them that they need to get help.”

“You are grieving because you loved truly.”

“Why could not I by that strong arm be slain, And lie by noble Hector on the plain?”

“Many, my children, are the tears I’ve wept, And threaded many a maze of weary thought.”

“Wretch, may he pine in utter wretchedness!”

“Ah, woe is me! where shall I fly, where find Succor from gods or men?”

“He gave utterance to sighs fetched from the bottom of his heart (for it is not allowed the celestial features to be bathed with tears).”

“Strained silence, so I deem, Is no less ominous than excessive grief.”

“Mommy staggered about in an emotional stupor for nearly a year. But while she weebled and wobbled and leaned, she did not fall.”

“Tears were coursing down the faces of Kennedy’s moonstruck recruits. John Kennedy had inspired us with his vision. One by one, we left work to grieve in private. The flag was at half-staff in our hearts.”

“And I can’t be running back and fourth forever between grief and high delight.”

“As to those feebler spirits who, though they cannot be said to prefer earthly possessions to Christ, do yet cleave to them with a somewhat immoderate attachment, they have discovered by the pain of losing these things how much they were sinning in loving them. For their grief is of their own making.”

“There was no turning back after my mother died. I stayed on the black side because that was the only place I could stay. The few problems I had with black folks were nothing compared to the grief white folks dished out. With whites it was no question. You weren’t accepted to be with a black man and that was that.”

“Hell on earth had come, and Trace was really gone.”

“The pain of it slashed through my body in nauseating waves before settling heavily in the pit of my belly. I tried to hold it together, to hold it down, but I couldn’t.”

“In the expression of grief lies recovery from grief itself.”

“Gentle severity, repulses mild, Full of chaste love and pity sorrowing; Graceful rebukes, that had the power to bring Back to itself a heart by dreams beguiled; A tender voice, whose accents undefiled Held sweet restraints, all duty honoring; The bloom of virtue; purity’s clear spring To cleanse away base thoughts and passions wild; Divinest eyes to make a lover’s bliss, Whether to bridle in the wayward mind Lest its wild wanderings should the pathway miss, Or else its griefs to soothe, its wounds to bind; This sweet completeness of thy life it is Which saved my soul; no other peace I find.”

“He who perceives all beings as the Self for him how can there be delusion or grief, when he sees this oneness (everywhere)?”

“Chacko was Mammachi’s only son. Her own grief grieved her. His devastated her.”

“Do not draw back, for we will mourn with thee; O, could our mourning case thy misery!”

“It is, I suppose, the common grief of children at having to protect their parents from reality. It is bitter for the young to see what awful innocence adults grow into, that terrible vulnerability that must be sheltered from the rodent mire of childhood.”

“There was just something about her dying that I had understood but not really understood, if you know what I mean. I mean, you can know someone is dying on an intellectual level, but emotionally it hasn’t really hit you, and then when it does, that’s when you feel like shit.”

“Something broke in Neville’s throat. He sat there silently while tears ran slowly down his cheeks. In a week the dog was dead.”

“He had wandered through the streets for hours, neither knowing nor caring where he was going. All he knew was that he couldn’t return to the empty rooms of the house, couldn’t look at the things they had touched and held and known with him.”

“but none of these signs of malnourishment or illness or grief … detracted from Lux’s overwhelming impression of being a carnal angel.”

“I guess that means your heart’s so sad that it’s hard to get out from under the weight. Granny used to say grief is the heaviest thing to carry alone.”

“Medea: I agree, of course, that a foreigner should conform, adapt to his society.”

“All at once she felt weak, and the misery of her childhood, the disappointment of her first love, her nephew’s departure, the death of Virginie, all swept over her like a wave, rising into her throat, choking her.”

“And yet she hadn’t the air of a woman whose life had been touched by uncertainty or suffering. Pain, fear, and grief were things that left their mark on people. Even love, that exquisite torturing emotion, left its subtle traces on the countenance.”

“Grief is a form of validation; it says the wound mattered. It mattered. You mattered.”

The people of ‘The Tree’ see a new threat on the horizon but wait what are they in reality, friend or foe?This is revealed to Toby as he observes and then later lives the fragile life of the ‘Grass’.But even as Toby begins a new life and leaves the tree and his grief behind something Elisha had said naggs at him:You have only one life Toby

“Don’t you know a Sand-fairy when you see one?” It looked so grieved and hurt that Jane hastened to say, “Of course I see you are, now. It’s quite plain now one comes to look at you.” “You came to look at me, several sentences ago,”

“The worst part, the absolute worst part, is the constant slipping of your tongue into the new empty space, where you know a tooth supposed to be but a’int no more.”

“But maybe every day we let grief in, we’ll also let a little bit of it out, and eventually we’ll be able to breathe again.”

“Given that grief remained the most general of afflictions its literature seemed remarkably spare.”

“That I was only beginning the process of mourning did not occur to me. Until now, I had only been able to grieve, not mourn. Grief was passive. Grief happened. Mourning, the act of dealing with grief, required attention.”

“Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it.”

“Allah saved him from the grief of the ark, so he pierced natural darkness by what Allah gave him of divine knowledge, while he did not depart from nature. He tested him with many trials (9) and gave him experience in many places so that he might realize patience in himself in the trials Allah gave him.”

“Pops told me the other day that grief something we all gotta carry. I never understood that till now. Feel like I got a boulder on my back. It weigh down my whole body, and I be wanting to cry out to make the pain go away. Men ain’t supposed to cry. We supposed to be strong enough to carry our boulders and everybody else’s.”

“I started to understand the spasm of grief. Once someone close to you dies, you feel loss more plainly, as it is a part of your everyday experience. It feels crushing as the wave hits you, but then you can see the tide begin to drift in and out again after the storm.”

“The men around me moved their lips and then gave voice. Our voices rose together as one, proclaiming faith, joining in grief. At the end of the reading, some crossed themselves, others wiped their eyes. I stood straight and tall.”

“I held my breath and waited for the earth to stop spinning. The sun need not rise again. There was no reason for the rivers to flow. Birds would never sing.”

“Grief is one big, gaping hole, isn’t it? It’s everywhere and all consuming.”

“with grief? There is no dealing; he knows that much. There is simply the stubborn, mindless hanging on until it is over. Until you are through it. But something has happened in the process. The old definitions, the neat, knowing pigeonholes have disappeared. Or else they no longer apply. His eyes move again to the calendar. Wednesday, November fifth. Of course. Obvious. All the painful self-examination ; the unanswered questions. At least he knows what is wrong today. Today is Jordan’s birthday. Today he would have been nineteen.”

“Because I can’t just sit in our room right now. Because ever since my mother died, there’s a version of me inside that wants to break things and scream.”

“They all began the same way: Dear Nobody. I sat there feeling bleak, with a growing kind of grief in me. Once she and I were the most important people in our world. Is this what I’d become to her? Nobody?”

″‘Because she is dead!’ She screamed the last word so loudly it burned in her throat. ‘Because she is dead, and I am left with my worthless life!‘”

“All she knew was that whatever and whoever climbed out of that abyss of despair and grief would not be the same person who had plummeted in.”

″‘Would you hold me when my time is come? I am at peace. Do not grieve.’ ‘If I grieve,’ I said, ‘it is not for you, but for myself, beloved, for how shall I endure to live without you, who are my love and my life?‘”

“Grief is a form of validation; it says the wound mattered. It mattered. You mattered. That’s not the way life was supposed to go.”

“But what the wisdom of the ages says is that we do well not to grieve on and on. ”

“The boy was crying now. Not that there was any new or sudden sorrow. There just seemed to be nothing else to fill up the vast lostness of the moment.”

“It has meant getting in touch with my body and feelings in real time, and learning to express them. I am learning to engage in generative conflict, to say no, to feel my limits, taking time to feel my heartache when it comes—from living in America, from interpersonal trauma or grief, from movement losses.”

“Do you not believe that animals know grief and fear and pain? The world of men is not an easy one for them.”

“As usual, Cut-throat Jake is determined to give the Captain as much grief as possible, and he has a dastardly plot up his sleeve.”

“This is a book about falling in love, grief, family relationships, friends, winning, loosing, pain, New Zealand in the late fifties.”

“But sometimes, unexpectedly, grief pounded over me in waves that left me gasping; and when the waves washed back, I found myself looking out over a brackish wreck which was illumined in a light so lucid, so heartsick and empty, that I could hardly remember that the world had ever been anything but dead.”

“You’re not eating anything,” said Marilla sharply, eying her as if it were a serious shortcoming. Anne sighed. “I can’t. I’m in the depths of despair.”

“It makes me very sad at times to think about her. But really, Marilla, one can’t stay sad very long in such an interesting world, can one?”

Anne always remembered the silvery, peaceful beauty and fragrant calm of that night. It was the last night before sorrow touched her life; and no life is ever quite the same again when once that cold, sanctifying touch has been laid upon it.

“I want to be quite silent and quiet and try to realize it. I can’t realize it. Half the time it seems to me that Matthew can’t be dead; and the other half it seems as if he must have been dead for a long time and I’ve had this horrible dull ache ever since.”

O Fiend, whose talisman was that fatal symbol, wouldst thou leave nothing, whether in youth or age, for this poor sinner to revere?—such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin.

It seemed a small loss to others, but to Jo it was a dreadful calamity, and she felt that it never could be made up to her.

Jo’s only answer was to hold her mother close, and in the silence which followed the sincerest prayer she had ever prayed left her heart without words.

How dark the days seemed now, how sad and lonely the house, and how heavy were the hearts of the sisters as they worked and waited, while the shadow of death hovered over the once happy home. Then it was that Margaret, sitting alone with tears dropping often on her work, felt how rich she had been in things more precious than any luxuries money could buy—in love, protection, peace, and health, the real blessings of life.

When he had gone, she went to her little chapel, and sitting in the twilight, prayed for Beth, with streaming tears and an aching heart, feeling that a million turquoise rings would not console her for the loss of her gentle little sister.

It was easy to promise self-abnegation when self was wrapped up in another, and heart and soul were purified by a sweet example. But when the helpful voice was silent, the daily lesson over, the beloved presence gone, and nothing remained but loneliness and grief, then Jo found her promise very hard to keep. How could she ‘comfort Father and Mother’ when her own heart ached with a ceaseless longing for her sister, how could she ‘make the house cheerful’ when all its light and warmth and beauty seemed to have deserted it when Beth left the old home for the new, and where in all the world could she ‘find some useful, happy work to do’, that would take the place of the loving service which had been its own reward?

Poor Jo, these were dark days to her, for something like despair came over her when she thought of spending all her life in that quiet house, devoted to humdrum cares, a few small pleasures, and the duty that never seemed to grow any easier.

Alone! he was alone again! again condemned to silence—again face to face with nothingness! Alone!—never again to see the face, never again to hear the voice of the only human being who united him to earth!

“Oh, believe me, that when three great passions, such as sorrow, love, and gratitude fill the heart, ennui can find no place.”

The minutes passed; Madame de Villefort could not drop the curtain which she held like a funeral pall over the head of Valentine. She was lost in reverie, and the reverie of crime is remorse.

A sob was the only sound he heard. He saw as though in a mist, a black figure kneeling and buried in a confused mass of white drapery. A terrible fear transfixed him. It was then he heard a voice exclaim “Valentine is dead!”

I knew nothing of this engagement, of this love, yet I, her father, forgive you, for I see that your grief is real and deep; and besides my own sorrow is too great for anger to find a place in my heart. But you see that the angel whom you hoped for has left this earth—she has nothing more to do with the adoration of men. Take a last farewell, sir, of her sad remains; take the hand you expected to possess once more within your own, and then separate yourself from her forever.

“I believed you dead; why did I survive you? What good has it done me to mourn for you eternally in the secret recesses of my heart?”

I began to understand that everything in the room had stopped, like the watch and the clock, a long time ago. I noticed that Miss Havisham put down the jewel exactly on the spot from which she had taken it up. As Estella dealt the cards, I glanced at the dressing-table again, and saw that the shoe upon it, once white, now yellow, had never been worn. I glanced down at the foot from which the shoe was absent, and saw that the silk stocking on it, once white, now yellow, had been trodden ragged. Without this arrest of everything, this standing still of all the pale decayed objects, not even the withered bridal dress on the collapsed form could have looked so like grave-clothes, or the long veil so like a shroud.

She was insensible, and I was afraid to have her moved, or even touched. Assistance was sent for, and I held her until it came, as if I unreasonably fancied (I think I did) that, if I let her go, the fire would break out again and consume her.

“Be with me always—take any form—drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you!”

You had distinctly impressed on me the idea that Catherine was the whole joy of your life: I can’t imagine how you think of surviving her loss.

“What now, then?”, Gregor asked himself as he looked round in the darkness. He soon made the discovery that he could no longer move at all. This was no surprise to him, it seemed rather that being able to actually move around on those spindly little legs until then was unnatural. He also felt relatively comfortable. It is true that his entire body was aching, but the pain seemed to be slowly getting weaker and weaker and would finally disappear altogether. He could already hardly feel the decayed apple in his back or the inflamed area around it, which was entirely covered in white dust. He thought back of his family with emotion and love. If it was possible, he felt that he must go away even more strongly than his sister. He remained in this state of empty and peaceful rumination until he heard the clock tower strike three in the morning. He watched as it slowly began to get light everywhere outside the window too. Then, without his willing it, his head sank down completely, and his last breath flowed weakly from his nostrils.

Vronsky could not answer questions, could not speak to anyone. He turned, and without picking up his cap that had fallen off, walked away from the race course, not knowing where he was going. He felt utterly wretched. For the first time in his life he knew the bitterest sort of misfortune, misfortune beyond remedy, and caused by his own fault.