No matter your age, religion, or the relationship you had to your father, coping with his death is likely filled with complicated emotions and anguish. Grief may feel overwhelming as you not only miss his companionship and ponder his legacy, as well as think of all the memories you had shared, but also as you mourn all of the future events (like Father’s Day, birthdays, and mundane days) without him there. There can also be a lot of sacred joy as you recall the good times, cherish the lessons your dad taught you, and pass down his words of wisdom to younger generations. As you go about your days, you may still feel his presence in your heart and know that part of him will always be with you. May you find comfort and peace as you reflect on his life and find solidarity with these 55 loss of father quotes.
55 Loss of Father Quotes
- “To lose your father is to lose the one whose guidance and help you seek, who supports you like a tree trunk supports its branches.” — Yann Martel
- “If you love your dad, it’s tough when he dies. If you don’t like your dad, it’s tough when he dies. Because you lose that guy. Whatever you didn’t get, you miss. And what you did get, you miss.” — Jimmy Iovine
- “Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.” — Mitch Albom
- “No matter how old we are, we still need our dads, and wonder how we’ll get by without them.” — Jennifer Williamson
- “His death brings new experience to my life - that of a wound that will not heal.” — Ernst Jünger
- “What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” — Helen Keller
- “The loss of my father was the most traumatic event in my life – I can’t forget the pain.” — Frank Lowy
- “I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren’t trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.” — Umberto Eco
- “This is what you remember of the people you love when they’re gone—the ways they knew you that no one else did—even you. In that way, their passing is a death of a piece of yourself.” — Jeff Zentner
- “Let me tell you, he is the hole in my heart. His loss is my scar. But let me tell you something, his memory drives me forward every single day of my life.” — Michelle Obama
- “You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.” — Anne Lamott
- “The loss of my father will always sting. But now, everything that I do is in honor of him and celebrates his life.” — Adrienne C. Moore
- “My father gave me my dreams. Thanks to him, I could see a future.” — Liza Minnelli
- “Love doesn’t die with death. Love is like liquid; when it pours out, it seeps into others’ lives. Love changes form and shape. Love gets into everything. Death doesn’t conquer all; love does. Love wins every single time. Love wins by lasting through death. Love wins by loving more, loving again, loving without fear.” — Kate O’Neill
- “He was a father. That’s what a father does. Eases the burdens of those he loves.” — George Saunders
- “Death ends a life, not a relationship.” — Mitch Albom
- “To know you’ll never see your father again is to realize one of life’s greatest pains.” — Saim .A. Cheeda
- “My daddy was my hero—he was always there for me when I needed him.” — Bindi Irwin
- “This is the price you pay for having a great father. You get the wonder, the joy, the tender moments – and you get the tears at the end, too.” — Harlan Coben
- “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” — Kahlil Gibran
- “They live in your mind, the way they always lived inside you. You keep their light alive. If you remember them well enough, they can still guide you, like the shine of long-extinguished stars could guide ships in unfamiliar waters.” — Matt Haig
- “Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.” — Elizabeth Gilbert
- “I am not ashamed to say that no man I ever met was my father’s equal, and I never loved any other man as much.” — Hedy Lamarr
- “Going through a dead parent’s memorabilia is a hazardous undertaking; there is a fine line between pleasure and pain.” — Anne Fadiman
- “My father was always there for me when I lost. But, then, I never really lost when my father was there.” — Laurie Beth Jones
- “Those we love don’t go away, they sit beside us every day.” — Liane Moriarty
- “Everyone grieves in different ways. For some, it could take longer or shorter. I do know it never disappears. An ember still smolders inside me. Most days, I don’t notice it, but, out of the blue, it’ll flare to life.” — Maria V. Snyder
- “It was a portion of my own self-analysis, my reaction to my father’s death—that is to say, to the most important event, the most poignant loss of a man’s life.” — Sigmund Freud
- “One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.” — George Herbert
- “My father gave me the greatest gift anyone could ever give another person. He believed in me.” — Jim Valvano
- “So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.” — E.A. Bucchianeri
- “I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.” — J.R.R. Tolkien
- “For the rest of my life, whenever I fall down, I get back up. Whenever I am hurt, I drive on. Whenever I am brought low, I rise. That is not because I am virtuous, strong, resilient, it is simply because [my father] was.” — Meghan McCain
- “That’s the thing when your parents die, you feel like instead of going in to every fight with backup, you are going into every fight alone.” — Mitch Albom
- “It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.” — Anne Sexton
- “The death of any loved parent is an incalculable lasting blow. Because no one ever loves you again like that.” — Brena Ueland
- “It hurts when they’re gone. And it doesn’t matter if it’s slow or fast, whether it’s a long drawn-out disease or an unexpected accident. When they’re gone the world turns upside down and you’re left holding on, trying not to fall off.” — Walter Mosley
- “Of course, losing my father was traumatic. I was an only child. But from the time my father died, my general theme in life has been to turn adversity into opportunity.” — Thomas G. Stemberg
- “And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly.” — Maya Angelou
- “Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.” — Leo Tolstoy
- “Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.” — Arthur Schopenhauer
- “Many people long for a father’s love. I had it. I have it still.” — Jennifer Grant
- “To his very last days, dad’s life was instructive.” — George W. Bush
- “Old as she was, she still missed her daddy sometimes.” — Gloria Naylor
- “I guess by now I should know enough about loss to realize that you never really stop missing someone-you just learn to live around the huge gaping hole of their absence.” ― Alyson Noel
- “Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.” — Anne Roiphe
- “Dad, wherever you are, you are gone but you will never be forgotten.” — Conrad Hall
- “When my father didn’t have my hand, he had my back.” — Linda Poindexter
- “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” — C.S. Lewis
- “A father’s love is forever imprinted on his child’s heart” — Jennifer Williamson
- “The sorrow we feel when we lose a loved one is the price we pay to have had them in our lives.” — Rob Liano
- “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.” — William Shakespeare
- “Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal.” — Richard Puz
- “Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, how it holds you in place.” — Sarah Dessen
- “Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart.” — José N. Harris Check out:- 74 therapist-approved tips for coping with grief- 100 tough times quotes- 125 sympathy quotes and messages- Laurie Burrows Grad: 5 tips for plowing through grief—and surviving
