Widows Quotes

• All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy - and Jill a wealthy widow.

  Evan Esar

  Funny, Work, Sarcasm

  102 Copy quote

• The poor fatherless baby of eight months is now the utterly broken-hearted and crushed widow of forty-two! My life as a happy one is ended! the world is gone for me! If I must live on (and I will do nothing to make me worse than I am), it is henceforth for our poor fatherless children - for my unhappy country, which has lost all in losing him - and in only doing what I know and feel he would wish.

  Queen Victoria

  Life, Country, Baby

  Queen Victoria, Victoria Victoria, A. C. Benson (2014). “The Letters of Queen Victoria”, p.602, Cambridge University Press

  65 Copy quote

  Show source

• It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is. And it's always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parades.

  Paddy Chayefsky

  Memorial Day, War, Technology

  Paddy Chayefsky (1995). “The Collected Works of Paddy Chayefsky: The Screenplays”, Applause Theatre & Cinema Books

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• Drying a widow's tears is one of the most dangerous occupations known to man.

  Dorothy Dix

  Women, Tears, Occupation

  5 Copy quote

• Widows are divided into two classes - the bereaved and relieved.

  Victor Robinson

  Class, Two, Widowhood

  Victor Robinson (1907). “William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft”

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• A widow is a fascinating being with the flavor of maturity, the spice of experience, the piquancy of novelty, the tang of practiced coquetry, and the halo of one man's approval.

  Helen Rowland

  Maturity, Men, Halos

  Helen Rowland (2017). “A Guide to Men: Being Encore Reflections of a Bachelor Girl”, p.45, Litres

  20 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm ultimately a widow and a single mother, who's not even getting to be a mother right now. I am so alone, it's freaky.

  Courtney Love

  Mother, Freak, Right Now

  15 Copy quote

• It is easier for a woman to be a good wife than a good mother. A widow has two duties with contrary obligations: she is a mother and she must exercise paternal authority. Few woman are strong enough to understand and to play this role.

  Honore de Balzac

  Mother, Strong, Exercise

  4 Copy quote

• Widow. The word consumes itself.

  Sylvia Plath

  Widowhood, Widowers, Widowed

  'Widow' (1971)

  58 Copy quote

  Show source

• Every widow wakes one morning, perhaps after years of pure and unwavering grieving, to realize she slept a good night's sleep, and will be able to eat breakfast, and doesn't hear her husband's ghost all the time, but only some of the time. Her grief is replaced with a useful sadness. Every parent who loses a child finds a way to laugh again. The timbre begins to fade. The edge dulls. The hurt lessens. Every love is carved from loss. Mine was. Yours is. Your great-great-great-grandchildren's will be. But we learn to live in that love.

  Jonathan Safran Foer

  Good Night, Hurt, Morning

  7 Copy quote

• It is better to be the widow of a hero than the wife of a coward.

  Dolores Ibarruri

  Hero, Wife, Coward

  15 Copy quote

• When a man marries a widow his jealousies revert to the past: no man is as good as his wife says her first husband was

  Samuel Johnson

  Jealousy, Husband, Past

  8 Copy quote

• Widowers marry again because it makes their lives easier. Widows often don't, because it makes their lives harder. [p. 61]

  Siri Hustvedt

  Easier, Harder, Widowers

  10 Copy quote

• Steven [Sebring] was documenting me as a widow with two children, going from 50 to 60 years old. My focus, during that time, was to rediscover myself, stay healthy, take care of my kids and reestablish a relationship with the people.

  Patti Smith

  Children, Kids, Years

  Source: www.pbs.org

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Love, Breakup, Two

  Ernest Hemingway (2002). “Death in the Afternoon”, p.100, Simon and Schuster

  54 Copy quote

  Show source

• A lot of widows feel that they have betrayed their spouse by continuing to live. It's deranged thinking. I know that, but that doesn't stop you feeling it.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Thinking, Feelings, Betrayed

  "Joyce Carol Oates: 'I had a dream about a woman whose make-up was dried and cracking, she made a fool of herself'". Interview with Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. February 25, 2012.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Continuous persecution of widows and orphans is a crime. Even the Bible says there is a specific place in hell for those who oppress widows.

  Imelda Marcos

  Widows And Orphans, Hell, Crime

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• Widows tend either to fade away when husbands die, committing emotional suttee, or else find that a new life burgeons. Here in Christchurch, a lot of burgeoning goes on.

  Fay Weldon

  Husband, Emotional, New Life

  "'Only One Way Out of Here'". www.theguardian.com. October 28, 2006.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• In a study we did of bereavement, we found that rather impressive numbers of widows and widowers had not simply gone back to their pre-loss functioning, but grown. This was due to a kind of increased existential awareness that resulted from this confrontation with the death of another. And I think it brought them in touch with their own death, so they began to experience a kind of preciousness to life that comes with an experience of its transiency.

  Irvin D. Yalom

  Loss, Thinking, Numbers

  10 Copy quote

• Most people think that a widow is inhabiting some elegiac world of - it's like Mozart's 'Requiem Mass.' You know, it's very beautiful and elevated thoughts and some measure of dignity. I didn't have that experience at all. I had one pratfall after another.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Beautiful, Thinking, People

  "Author Joyce Carol Oates on Widowhood’s ‘World of Absurdity’". Interview with Jeffrey Brown, www.pbs.org. February 3, 2011.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• A person may rightfully be happy if in this life he could do a great favor for widows and orphans, could assist support than, and facilitate fate of people.

  Islom Karimov

  Fate, Widows And Orphans, People

  13 Copy quote

• There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than that man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Love, Life, Relationship

  Ernest Hemingway (2002). “Death in the Afternoon”, p.100, Simon and Schuster

  19 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nobody's life is a bed of roses. We all have crosses to bear and we all just do our best.

  Yoko Ono

  Bed Of Roses, Bears, Life Is

  Source: articles.latimes.com

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• Of the widow's countless death-duties there is really just one that matters: on the first anniversary of her husband's death the widow should think I kept myself alive.

  Joyce Carol Oates

  Death, Husband, Thinking

  6 Copy quote

• In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who loses a child.

  Jodi Picoult

  Sad, Children, Parent

  Jodi Picoult (2009). “My Sister's Keeper: A Novel”, p.493, Simon and Schuster

  15 Copy quote

  Show source