Confucius Quotes

Do not mourn the dead with the belly.

In poetry you can express almost inexpressible feelings. You can express the pain of loss, you can express love. People always turn to poetry when someone they love dies, when they fall in love.

Grief is fantastical, and loves the dead, And the apparel of the grave.

When a man has died, he wants you to know about it.

Moderate lamentation is the right of the dead, excessive grief the enemy to the living.

I know he's dead! Don't you think I know that? I can still like him, though, can't I? Just because somebody's dead, you don't just stop liking them, for God's sake--especially if they were about a thousand times nicer than the people you know that're alive and all.

We simply rob ourselves when we make presents to the dead.

... I have no letter from the dead, yet daily love them more.

I know why we try to keep the dead alive: we try to keep them alive in order to keep them with us.

I hate funerals. They aren't for the guy who's dead. They're for the guys who are left alive and enjoy mourning.

We do not want to lose our grief, because our grief is bound up with our love and we could not cease to mourn without being robbed of our affections.

What does one do about the dead? They live forever.

Thou hast death in thy house, and dost bewaile anothers.

It's very shocking, I think, for people caring for the dying to realise how unsaintly they feel, how much anger is mixed up with their grief. In fact, often I think the anger that they feel is a form of grief; it's a kind of raging against what's happening.

When Dick Avedon died, I was so upset that I just started painting.

Here's a thing about the death of your mother, or anyone else you love: You can't anticipate how you'll feel afterward. People will tell you; a few may be close to right, none exactly right.

Excess of grief for the dead is madness; for it is an injury to the living, and the dead know it not.

Funeral by funeral, theory advances.

I've had dialogues with my dead mother over the 40 years since she died.

Father's Day was great, but all the family gatherings brought up my mother's death. Maybe it's me, because I am a wimp. We would get together, but there was someone missing!

Grief and memory go together. After someone dies, that's what you're left with. And the memories are so slippery yet so rich.

Poetry is what we turn to in the most emotional moments of our life - when a beloved friend dies, when a baby is born or when we fall in love.

Mourning is not forbidden, you know.

From the moment my dad died, from the moment I found out there was the possibility of his dying, there were many surprises - years after, minutes after. The moments I was okay were as surprising as the ones that I wasn't. Making it through the eulogy without losing it. And then the guilt I felt about it. Surprise!

There's death and there's loss, but there's also celebrations, right?