DEATH QUOTES

quotations about death

Death quote

Cowards die many times before their deaths
The valiant never taste of death but once.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Julius Caesar


Life is the jailer, Death the angel sent
To draw the unwilling bolts and set us free.

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

"The Death of a Friend's Child"


A man dies ... only a few circles in the water prove that he was ever there. And even they quickly disappear. And when they're gone, he's forgotten, without a trace, as if he'd never even existed. And that's all.

WOLFGANG BORCHERT

The Outsider


Death is not the end; there remains the litigation over the estate.

AMBROSE BIERCE

"Epigrams of a Cynic"


It is the fear of death--24/7 in every shade of hospital white and doomsday black--that sells the pharmaceutical, political, financial, film, and food product promising to make good the wish to live forever.

LEWIS H. LAPHAM

"Momento Mori", Lapham's Quarterly: Death, fall 2013


I know death is the fascinating snake under the leaves, sliding and sliding; I know the heart loves him too, can't turn away, can't break the spell. Everything wants to enter the slow thickness, aches to be peaceful finally and at any cost. Wants to be stone.

MARY OLIVER

"Members of the Tribe", Dream Work


I hope to arrive at my death late, in love and a little drunk.

YURIZAN BELTRAN

Twitter post just months before she died of an apparent drug overdose, July 2017


To die will be an awfully big adventure.

J.M. BARRIE

Peter Pan


There are more dead people than living. And their numbers are increasing. The living are getting rarer.

EUGENE IONESCO

Rhinoceros


Death is the end of the struggle to make things work, to keep them together, to show a consistency of plan and action, a directionality of will.

ERMANNO BENCIVENGA

The Discipline of Subjectivity

Tags: Ermanno Bencivenga


Better to flee from death than feel its grip.

HOMER

The Iliad


The great thing about the dead, they make space.

JOHN UPDIKE

Rabbit is Rich


The world's an inn, and death the journey's end.

JOHN DRYDEN

Palamon and Arcite


Why do we precious ointments shower,
Nobler wines why do we pour,
Beauteous flowers why do we spread,
Upon the monuments of the dead?
Nothing they but dust can show,
Or bones that hasten to be so.

ANACREON

Ode IV, Odes


You only live twice. Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face.

IAN FLEMING

You Only Live Twice


Death, in itself, is nothing; but we fear,
To be we know not what, we know not where.

JOHN DRYDEN

Aureng-Zebe


Fear not Death; for the sooner we die, the longer shall we be immortal.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Poor Richard's Almanack, 1740


Dying is nothing. You have to know how to disappear.

JEAN BAUDRILLARD

Cool Memories

Tags: Jean Baudrillard


Death will be a great relief. No more interviews.

KATHARINE HEPBURN

The Mammoth Book of Zingers


Dying is like getting audited by the IRS--something that only happens to other people ... until it happens to you.

JEROME P. CRABB

Death Quotes and Quibbles