quotations about death
You cannot avoid mortality. But you can choose your way of meeting it. And that is the most that any man can hope for.
DAVID GERROLD
The Man Who Folded Himself
Ah! hear the dirge that all mankind must learn:
Place not on earth thy trust,
For dust thou art, to dust shalt thou return,
Dust unto dust.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"Fame"
Could we draw back the covering of the tomb; could we see, what those are now, who once were mortals, oh! how would it surprise and grieve us! Surprise us, to behold the prodigious transformation that has taken place on every individual; grieve us, to observe the dishonor done to our nature in general, within these subterraneous lodgments!
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Death tripped down the corridor, changing step, struck out here and there, danced pirouettes; often I felt his breath on my face when he was miles away; often I fell asleep and dreamed while he stood leaning over my bed.
ARTHUR KOESTLER
Dialogue with Death
In literature and in art, alike, this gloomy fashion of regarding Death has been characteristic of Christianity. Death has been painted as a skeleton grasping a scythe, a grinning skull, a threatening figure with terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony scarecrow shaking an hour-glass--all that could alarm and repel has been gathered round this rightly-named King of Terrors.
ANNIE WOOD BESANT
Death--and After
Death and the sun can't be looked at steadily.
FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD
Moral Maxims
The dead are too much with us.
ROGER ZELAZNY
Isle of the Dead
To die for others is the highest purpose a person may achieve.
CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN & NANCY HOLDER
Ghost Roads
Death will come and it will have your eyes.
CESARE PAVESE
Death Will Come and It Will Have Your Eyes
Death is no more than a turning of us over from Time to Eternity.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying.
DON DELILLO
White Noise
Every deceased friend is a magnet drawing us into another world.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Death, lonely death,
Beneath the withered leaves.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
Blood Wedding
You feel sorry for yourself. You think you're missing something and you don't know what it is. You're lonely inside your life. You have a job and a family and a fully executed will, already, at your age, because the whole point is to die prepared, die legal, with all the papers signed. Die liquid, so they can convert to cash.
DON DELILLO
Underworld
How terrible is Death to one man, yet to another it appears the greatest providence in nature; even to all ages and conditions it is the wish of some, relief of many, and the end of all. It puts us all upon a level; the prince and peasant are doomed to the same fate.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Death hath this also; that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Death is not a self-evident phenomenon. The margins between life and death are socially and culturally constructed, mobile, multiple, and open to dispute and reformulation.
MARGARET LOCK
Twice Dead
It was mad, but I just couldn't shake it. I was Death, Destroyer of Life, and all I wanted was a cottage by a stream, a pot of hot soup on the stove, and someone to love me.
GEORGE PENDLE
Death: A Life
Death is the loss of everything all at once.
JULIE SALAMON
Hospital
Death is a great revealer of what is in a man, and in its solemn shadow appear the naked lineaments of the soul.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words