quotations about death
No matter what the circumstances of our death, we overcome the horrors of our lives and find peace at last.
ROSEMARY ALTEA
A Matter of Life and Death
In the end, living is defined by dying. Bookended by oblivion, we are caught in the vice of terror, squeezed to bursting by the approaching end.
BERNARD BECKETT
Genesis
For death is but a passing phase of Life;
A change of dress, a disrobing;
A birth into the unborn again;
A commencing where we ended;
A starting where we stopped to rest;
A crossroad of Eternity;
A giving up of something, to possess all things.
The end of the unreal, the beginning of the real.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Song of the Soul"
Death aims only once, but never misses.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
A couch of thorns, or an embroidered bed,
Are matters of indifference to the dead.
THEOGNIS OF MEGARA
"Sumptuous Obsequies"
There comes a time when living becomes something like a competition, when one shamelessly rejoices over the death of one's neighbour, as if he were a rival who has been eliminated.
PIERRE MAGNAN
The Messengers of Death
He that shrinks from the grave with too great a dread, has an invisible fear behind him pushing him into it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
All interest in disease and death is only another expression of interest in life.
THOMAS MANN
The Magic Mountain
Golden lads and girls all must
As chimney-sweepers come to dust.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Cymbeline
God, give us each our own death,
the dying that proceeds
from each of our lives.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
The Book of Hours
To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.
EDWARD ABBEY. "The Dead Man at Grandview Point"
Desert Solitaire
Few people know death, we only endure it, usually from determination, and even from stupidity and custom; and most men only die because they know not how to prevent dying.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims
DEEPAK CHOPRA
Life After Death
You’ve never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.
JEAN COCTEAU
The Dick Cavett Show, Oct. 6, 1981
You are the true master of death, because the true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands that there are far, far worse things in the living world than dying.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Even dead,
we bony creatures do our best
to leave a mark--
if not a mask of beaten gold
or a casket engraved with feathers, perhaps
a richer concentration of fungus,
a patch where grass is younger and thicker,
a sunken place in a field.
SARAH LINDSAY
"Ritual Sandwich", Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower
Death lieth still in the way of life,
Like as a stone in the way of a brook;
I will sing against thee, Death, as the brook does,
I will make thee into music which does not die.
SIDNEY LANIER
Songs Against Death
Death commences too early--almost before you're half acquainted with life--you meet the other.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
A corpse is what's left after waking too often.
CESARE PAVESE
"Imagination's End"
Now can it be men die and carry thence no memory of death, only this curious lightness of the hands, only this curious darkness of the mind, only to be still changeless with the winters passing; not gray, not lined, not stricken down, but stamped forever on the moving air, and echo and an image?
MAXWELL ANDERSON
High Tor