Public Grief Quotes

Ask anyone where they were when they heard of Diana's death, and they won't hesitate, because nobody can forget. Along with 9/11, it remains the most poleaxeing public event, news so shocking it made me shake, and drove everything else from my mind for days.

Nearly all Americans felt they knew JFK intimately, his charm and wit regularly lighting up the television screen at home. This is why polls showed that millions of Americans took his assassination like a 'death in the family.'

In my hometown of New Orleans, grief is a public spectacle that, somewhat paradoxically, necessitates celebration. The dead are not mourned so much as they are posthumously venerated with music and dance.

The death of my husband, coming immediately after the general knowledge of the discoveries with which his name is associated, was felt by the public, and especially by the scientific circles, to be a national misfortune.

What I am trying to do is bring people into grief in relation to the society we have.

My mother had just died, and I had to walk a long way behind her coffin, surrounded by thousands of people watching me while millions more did on television. I don't think any child should be asked to do that under any circumstances.

None mourn more ostentatiously over the death of Germanicus than those who most rejoice at it [a death].

Social media reactions to celebrity death have taken on a predictable pattern: an outpouring of shock with expressions of grief, followed by a ghoulish need to know all the details, to see the scene of the death and the family in mourning. Then a post-mortem dissection of all the perceived flaws the celebrity had.

... how much of our inner substance is it good for us to give to public griefs? The whole modern tendency to agonize over the suffering of the entire globe is surely something new.

I was in Boston, Massachusetts, when Princess Diana died.

When Princess Diana died, I couldn't understand why people were mourning her death in such an enormous, hysterical way when they didn't actually know her for real.

Grief is at once a public and a private experience. One's inner, inexpressible disruption cannot be fully realized in one's public persona.

There's always a sense of tragedy with icons. It happened to both the Princess of Wales and Diana Dors. A lot of people had grown up with them, and everybody loved them. Then, when they had at last found happiness, they were taken in the most dreadful way.

The death of a famous person is different from the death of a loved one, whether it is Michael Jackson, Frank McCourt, or Walter Cronkite. We didn't know any of them personally, and yet, we experience a sense of loss.

I had to tell the city that 2Pac passed, and I had to be on the radio early after Biggie passed. Those were awful, emotional.

The tolling of yon dismal bell and the loud but solemn discharge of artillery hath announced to the nation the melancholy tidings - Thomas Jefferson no longer lives!

His death eclipsed the gayety of nations, and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure.

Any attempts at humor immediately after September 11th were deemed tasteless.

It has been the most extraordinary occasion, the most comprehensive and controlled display of public grief I am ever likely to witness.

Around the globe, millions more are mourning the death and celebrating the life of Pope John Paul II .Could any other world leader have drawn so many people to one place?

The dead man is on the trolley and the woman collapses across his chest. That's what the ghouls want a shufti at, like at that Princess Diana's funeral, they want to scrutinise those who really knew her, to drink the misery out of their faces.

Every time we have a mass murder we're gonna go to the memorial or we're gonna grade the president's performance at the memorial to determine whether or not we're being effective in dealing with it?

Great were the lamentation and the cry when the news of this mischance was noised about the city. Such a tumult of mourning was never before heard, for the whole city was moved.