Quotes · Skopia

Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.

10 quotes

SortEditorial Year Length

Topic·Loss✕clear

Philosophical literature

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss-an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc.-is sure to be noticed.

Soren Kierkegaard

Sickness Unto Death · 1849

★ 3.7

Treatise

No man can lose what he never had.

Izaak Walton

The Compleat Angler · 1653

★ 3.6

Letter

How often are we to die before we go quite off this stage? In every friend we lose a part of ourselves, and the best part.

Alexander Pope

1732

★ 3.6

Poem

I heard the old, old men say, "All that's beautiful drifts away Like the waters."

W.B. Yeats

1903

★ 3.6

The world is gradually becoming a place where I do not care to be any more.

John Berryman

1968

★ 3.5

Scripture · Religious literature

O my son Absalom—my son, my son Absalom—if only I had died in your place! O Absalom my son, my son!

David

2nd Samuel, 18:33 · 722 BC

★ 2.9

Scripture · Religious literature

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

Jesus

Matthew 5:4 · 60

★ 2.3

Song · Rock music

Something touched me deep inside The day the music died.

Don McLean

American Pie · 1971

★ 2.0

Poem

Though I grieve, there is no help; Vainly I long to see her. Men tell me that my wife is In the mountains of Hagai- Thither I go, Toiling along the stony path; But it avails me not, For of my wife, as she lived in this world, I find not the faintest shadow.

Kakinomoto no Hitomaro

759

★ 1.9

Autobiography and memoir

We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all.

Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking · 2005

★ 1.0

Sourced and curated.