Gallery 0019 — permanent collection

Grief

Q: Who said “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”?

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850), canto XXVII, written in mourning for his friend Arthur Hallam.

Lines for the moment when your own words run out: a card, a eulogy, an order of service. Each one is traced to the poem, letter or verse it comes from. None of them is advice; they are what other people found to say.

Forged for this room · every print in the Studio below is one of a kind

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“’Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson
What it means. From a long elegy for a friend named on the title page only as A. H. H., who died in 1833. It is not a consolation offered lightly: the poet holds it true, he says, even “when I sorrow most”.

In Memoriam A. H. H., canto XXVII, 1850

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“Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak / Whispers the o’er-fraught heart, and bids it break.”

William Shakespeare
What it means. Malcolm to Macduff, who has just learned that his wife and children have been killed. Grief kept silent overloads the heart; saying it is how it is carried.

Macbeth, act 4, scene 3

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“Better by far you should forget and smile / Than that you should remember and be sad.”

Christina Rossetti
What it means. The sonnet begins by asking to be remembered and ends by letting the request go. Rossetti puts the living person's happiness first.

“Remember”, in Goblin Market and Other Poems, 1862

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“To live in hearts we leave behind / Is not to die.”

Thomas Campbell
What it means. A person goes on in the people who loved them, and to be remembered is a way of not dying.

“Hallowed Ground”, stanza 6, 1825

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“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven … a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance.”

The Bible
What it means. Not a promise that grief will pass on schedule, but a permission: mourning has its time, and so, later, does laughter.

Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4, King James Version

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“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.”

The Bible
What it means. A psalm often heard at funerals. Its comfort is companionship rather than escape: the valley is still walked through.

Psalm 23:4, King James Version

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“Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”

The Bible
What it means. One of the Beatitudes, from the Sermon on the Mount, in which those the world pities are called blessed.

Matthew 5:4, King James Version

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“He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.”

The Bible
What it means. Grief described as an injury, and healing as something done to it, slowly, like binding a wound.

Psalm 147:3, King James Version

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“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying.”

The Bible
What it means. A vision of an end to sorrow, from the last book of the Bible.

Revelation 21:4, King James Version

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“Let us see to it that the recollection of those whom we have lost becomes a pleasant memory to us.”

Seneca
What it means. Written to Lucilius on the death of his friend Flaccus. Seneca does not tell him not to grieve; he says the aim, in time, is for the memory to give pleasure rather than pain.

Moral Letters to Lucilius, letter 63, trans. Richard M. Gummere (1917)

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“One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally, / And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.”

John Donne
What it means. The last lines of a sonnet that argues with death and wins. Donne's faith makes death a short sleep, and the final half-line turns the tables on it.

Holy Sonnet X (“Death be not proud”), first printed 1633; spelling as in H. J. C. Grierson's edition (1912)

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“Grief is the price we pay for love.”

Queen Elizabeth II
What it means. Read on her behalf by the British ambassador, Sir Christopher Meyer. It treats grief not as something gone wrong but as the cost of having loved, which is why so many people have repeated it since.

Message read at St Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York, in September 2001, after the attacks of 11 September

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When the words are not yours

There is nothing wrong with borrowing words at a time like this; it is what quotations are for. The lines in this room are here because they are traced, so the name under each one is the right name. If the line you want is not one we have traced, it can be printed without a name, or with “author unknown”, rather than with a name that may be wrong. The Quote Checker shows what we know about the lines we hold.

A note on old spelling

Donne's sonnet is printed here as it appears in the standard scholarly edition, with its seventeenth-century spelling: “sleepe”, “wee”. Many orders of service modernise it to “One short sleep past, we wake eternally”. Both are the same poem; choose whichever suits the page.

What is a good short quote for a sympathy card?

Thomas Campbell's “To live in hearts we leave behind / Is not to die” (1825) and the words of Queen Elizabeth II's 2001 message, “Grief is the price we pay for love”, are both short and traced to their sources.

Who said “’Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all”?

Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in In Memoriam A. H. H. (1850), canto XXVII, written in mourning for his friend Arthur Hallam.

Who said “Grief is the price we pay for love”?

Queen Elizabeth II, in a message read by the British ambassador at St Thomas Church in New York in September 2001, after the attacks of 11 September.

Next door, in the dictionary

ya aburnee

the Arabic wish to die before someone you love, rather than live to grieve them.

Read the full entry →