Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Quotes

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

The opinion which other people have of you is their problem, not yours.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms you would never see the true beauty of their carvings.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

I think that modern medicine has become like a prophet offering a life free of pain. It is nonsense. The only thing I know that truly heals people is unconditional love.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Religious patients seemed to differ little from those without a religion.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

The beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of those depths.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one, you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

The ultimate lesson all of us have to learn is unconditional love, which includes not only others but ourselves as well.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star, one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

I believe we are solely responsible for our choices and we have to accept the consequences of every deed word and thought throughout our lifetime.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

There are no mistakes no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Learn to get in touch with silence within yourself and know that everything in life has a purpose.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out but when the darkness sets in their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Denial helps us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. It is nature's way of letting in only as much as we can handle.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

It is important to feel the anger without judging it, without attempting to find meaning in it. It may take many forms: anger at the health-care system, at life, at your loved one for leaving. Life is unfair. Death is unfair. Anger is a natural reaction to the unfairness of loss.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is no death the way we understood it. The body dies, but not the soul.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Those who learned to know death, rather than to fear and fight it, become our teachers about life.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

It is difficult to accept death in this society because it is unfamiliar. In spite of the fact that it happens all the time, we never see it.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

For years, I have been stalked by a bad reputation. Actually, I have been pursued by people who have regarded me as the 'Death and Dying' Lady. They believe that having spent more than three decades in research into death and life after death qualifies me as an expert on the subject. I think they miss the point.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Learning lessons is a little like reaching maturity. You're not suddenly more happy, wealthy, or powerful, but you understand the world around you better, and you're at peace with yourself. Learning life's lessons is not about making your life perfect, but about seeing life as it was meant to be.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

The five stages - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Consciously or not, we are all on a quest for answers, trying to learn the lessons of life. We grapple with fear and guilt. We search for meaning, love, and power. We try to understand fear, loss, and time. We seek to discover who we are and how we can become truly happy.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Live, so you do not have to look back and say: 'God, how I have wasted my life.'

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

I didn't fully realize it at the time, but the goal of my life was profoundly molded by this experience - to help produce, in the next generation, more Mother Teresas and less Hitlers.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

We need to teach the next generation of children from day one that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We can make our choices built from love or from fear.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

When I came to this country in 1958, to be a dying patient in a medical hospital was a nightmare. You were put in the last room, furthest away from the nurses' station. You were full of pain, but they wouldn't give you morphine. Nobody told you that you were full of cancer and that it was understandable that you had pain and needed medication.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

I was destined to work with dying patients. I had no choice when I encountered my first AIDS patient. I felt called to travel some 250,000 miles each year to hold workshops that helped people cope with the most painful aspects of life, death and the transition between the two.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

I say to people who care for people who are dying, if you really love that person and want to help them, be with them when their end comes close. Sit with them - you don't even have to talk. You don't have to do anything but really be there with them.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

People are like stained - glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

I believe that we are solely responsible for our choices, and we have to accept the consequences of every deed, word, and thought throughout our lifetime.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth - and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up, we will then begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.

~ Elisabeth Kübler-Ross