Inspiring Quotes & Sayings: Death of a Friend

Losing someone is never easy. In fact, the experience is unfathomable and we never wish it for anyone to go through it. Despite our deep desire to never have to bury someone near and dear to us, death is an inevitable fact of life. Tough and overwhelming as it is, we push and do everything we can to come out in one piece.

For one, the death of a friend is nothing short of shocking and hurtful. This person whom you have shared your life with has passed away and you can’t even begin to understand what you are going through.

If you are currently experiencing such a loss, know that you are alone. There are plenty of ways to find comfort, such as being inspired by the words of others who also went through such tragic times.

Allow these quotes and sayings about a friend’s death to provide you comfort, strength, and support. Know that you are not alone in your struggle.

1. “When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” – Henri J.M. Nouwen

2. “ True friends are the ones who never leave your heart, even if they leave your life for a while. Even after years apart, you pick up with them right where you left off, and even if they die they’re never dead in your heart.” – Anonymous

3. “He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.”

“On a day of burial there is no perspective — for space itself is annihilated. Your dead friend is still a fragmentary being. The day you bury him is a day of chores and crowds, of hands false or true to be shaken, of the immediate cares of mourning. The dead friend will not really die until tomorrow, when silence is round you again.

Then he will show himself complete, as he was — to tear himself away, as he was, from the substantial you. Only then will you cry out because of him who is leaving and whom you cannot detain.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery

4. “You and I will meet again / When we’re least expecting it / One day in some far off place / I will recognize your face / I won’t say goodbye my friend / For you and I will meet again.” – Tom Petty

5. “The deep pain that is felt at the death of every friendly soul arises from the feeling that there is in every individual something which is inexpressible, peculiar to him alone, and is, therefore, absolutely and irretrievably lost.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

6. “We all lose friends.. we lose them in death, to distance, and over time. But even though they may be lost, hope is not. The key is to keep them in your heart, and when the time is right, you can pick up the friendship right where you left off. Even the lost find their way home, when you leave the light on.” – Amy Marie Walz

7. “Distance of time and place generally cure what they seem to aggravate; and taking leave of our friends resembles taking leave of the world, of which it has been said, that it is not death, but dying, which is terrible.” – Henry Fielding

8. “At some of the darkest moments in my life, some people I thought of as friends deserted me — some because they cared about me and it hurt them to see me in pain; others because I reminded them of their own vulnerability, and that was more than they could handle. But real friends overcame their discomfort and came to sit with me. If they had not words to make me feel better, they sat in silence (much better than saying, “You’ll get over it,” or “It’s not so bad; others have it worse”) and I loved them for it.” – Harold Kushner

9. “Those we love and lose are always connected by heartstrings into infinity.” – Terri Guillemets

10. “Some people come into our lives and leave footprints on our hearts and we are never ever the same.” – Flavia Weedn