Widows Quotes

“May a man live well-enough and long-enough, to leave many joyful widows behind him.”
― Roman Payne, Cities & Countries

“It's never too late to start over!”
― Lynne Gentry, Reinventing Leona

“May a man live well-, and long-enough, to leave many joyful widows behind him.”
― Roman Payne

“People go around mourning the death of God; it's the death of sssin that bothers me. Without ssin, people aren't people any more, they're just ssoul-less sheep.”
― John Updike, The Widows of Eastwick

“WIDOW. The word consumes itself, said Sylvia Plath, who consumed herself.”
― Lauren Groff, Fates and Furies

“Widowers marry again because it makes their lives easier. Widows often don't, because it makes their lives harder. [p. 61]”
― Siri Hustvedt, The Summer Without Men

“Additionally, many widows took over family shops or businesses- and, not uncommonly, ran them better than their dead husbands. Y.pestis [black death germ] turns out to have been something of a feminist.”
― John Kelly, The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time

“Officially, the New Testament church at an early stage took seriously their responsibility for widows who lacked family or other resources. The office of deacon was instituted initially to address this pressing need.”
― Carolyn Custis James, The Gospel of Ruth: Loving God Enough to Break the Rules

“Feel sorry for yourself.
Sure, your tiny steel-ribbed mother told you never to do that,
But who the hell is going to do it for you?
"Piangi, piangi," the old man in the opera tells Violetta.
"Cry, honey, cry." Do it right.
Do it yourself.”
― Lise Menn

“Was it possible to love a man who made you feel ridiculous? Of course [.....], love was complicated, that was all. Or was love simple, and marriage was complicated? In seventeen years of marriage David had often left her feeling frustrated, and furious, and disgusted, yes - but he had also made her feel beautiful, and protected, and loved. And oh, what she would give to feel loved right now.”
― Laura Brodie, The Widow's Season

“To put a new spin on an old adage, one could lead a widow to a party, but one couldn't make her dance.”
― Roseanna M. White, Christmas at Sugar Plum Manor

“Young widows are always a painful sight to see. Jilted brides are even more pitiful than young widows—at least widows had been loved and cherished.”
― Cristiane Serruya, Not A Book

“Look, it's like falling out of a twenty-story building.
All your good friends,
they try to puff themselves up for you as soft as possible,
But they're still only couch pillows.
They may save your life when you hit them,
But you're still gonna break every bone in your body.”
― Lise Menn

“I have yet to meet one widow who hasn't changed in monumental ways as she has coped with her loss. Most of us have gotten to the point where we are not the "pleasers" we once were. We say what we think, we realize that life is precious, and we don't have time to be anything less than who we really are.”
― Catherine Tidd

“But she was a widow and she had to watch her behavior. Not for her the pleasures of unmarried girls. She had to be grave and aloof. Ellen had stressed this at great length after catching Frank's lieutenant swinging Scarlett in the garden swing and making her squeal with laughter. Deeply distressed, Ellen had told her how easily a widow might get herself talked about. The conduct of a widow must be twice as circumspect as that of a matron.

'And God only knows,' thought Scarlett, listening obediently to her mother's soft voice, 'matrons never have any fun at all. So widows might as well be dead.'

A widow had to wear hideous black dresses without even a touch of braid to enliven them, no flower or ribbon or lace or even jewelry, except onyx mourning brooches or necklaces made from the deceased's hair. And the black crepe veil on her bonnet had to reach to her knees, and only after three years of widowhood could it be shortened to shoulder length. Widows could never chatter vivaciously or laugh aloud. Even when they smiled, it must be a sad, tragic smile. And, most dreadful of all, they could in no way indicate an interest in the company of gentlemen. And should a gentleman be so ill bred as to indicate an interest in her, she must freeze him with a dignified but well-chosen reference to her dead husband. Oh, yes, thought Scarlett, drearily, some widows do remarry eventually, when they are old and stringy. Though Heaven knows how they manage it, with their neighbors watching. And then it's generally to some desperate old widower with a large plantation and a dozen children.”
― Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

“I felt like I was failing at widowhood. I missed my husband, but no one knew that when they looked at me. They just saw a mom with blonde highlights going to yoga, picking up her daughter from school, buying groceries at Trader Joe’s. And now I was at a party with a date when I should have been home, grieving, all alone.
I didn’t look like a widow. I wasn’t acting like a widow. But I felt like a widow.
I guess I was just widowish.”
― Melissa Gould, Widowish: A Memoir

“How much she's learned through love
about everything, including that quadrant of self
visible only to others but exceptionally
accessed through the one who knows her best.”
― Natasha Sajé

“Days are not the way they were when he was alive.”
― Christine Thiele

“Each day for me is filled with things that I used to look forward to in the morning. Now they feel empty and stressful. Handling my life by myself is sad for me. I liked being part of a team. I liked having someone else to share my day with every night.”
― Christine Thiele

“Some things you have to do for yourself if you want them done right.
Ironing your favorite dress with the tricky collar,
Making hot chocolate the way you like it.
Feeling sorry for you.
Nobody else can do it properly.”
― Lise Menn

“You think you've stopped crying
And then the blues come back,
You wonder what brought them:
The red pen?
The wind in the yard?
The plaid shirt in the bank?

Your buried grief seeps to the surface,
Like oil under tar sands.

Let it go. It's the rich black residue of the past,
Dead life becomes this stuff that sticks to the soles of your feet,
Welling up when it damned well pleases.
Let it go.”
― Lise Menn

“I have walked through many wars, carried the infant from the mother in a pool of red.”
― Valentine Okolo, I Will Be Silent

“In a socialist society, people are always motivated to achieve unity and the truest form of freedom—Organising themselves and coming to help those who are in need. You will find organisations such as social welfare, that take great care and give support to the poor, unemployed, old people, widows, etc.”
― Mwanandeke Kindembo, Treatise Upon The Misconceptions of Narcissism

“Yes, and what widows would stand on the shore at Rackwick this night and every night till all the bodies were found? Bella of The Harp and Jess of Topmast and Margaret-Ann of Sheepsay and Willa of Two-Waters and Mary of Hawkfell and Sara of Malthouse and Amos's Rachel with the unborn child in her, dark shrouded figures among the round red rocks of the beach. Night would come down from the hills on them, still their eyes would stare at this moving thing and that small glimmer out in the bay, bits of driftwood only, fleeting phosphorescence. They would shake their heads to one another. Then it would be too dark to know sea from land. They would walk home separately across the steep fields. Then in the lamplight an unfolding of shrouds, an opening of black bibles, a stony intentness of grief.”
― George Mackay Brown, A Time To Keep and Other Stories

“Do not refuse to help widows nor orphans.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Do no wrong to the widows.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Widows to me are like war heroes, people who have seen their loved ones die in their arms, and yet picked up and kept marching up the hill.”
― Adam McHugh

“As it turns out, the whole place was a purgatory for gray-haired widows and divorced men, content to eat frozen dinners and watch Deep Space Nine until they fell asleep alone and covered in potato chip crumbs.”
― Samantha Bee, I Know I Am, But What Are You?

“We're bad luck, of course, we widows. We know it. Awkward silences occur around us. People tiptoe. Should we be invited to dinner, or will we cast a pall? We certainly try not to cast palls: palls are unpleasant.”
― Margaret Atwood, Old Babes in the Wood: Stories

“All the women in this family are widowed quick. The men burn out on us like church candles and not long after we're married all that's left of them is a stain on the sheets that won't come off for all the scrubbing in the world.”
― Layla Martínez, Carcoma