quotations about death
A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners
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
Someone dying asks if there is life after death. Yes, comes the answer, only not yours.
E. L. DOCTOROW
Homer & Langley
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
And death, that sits in marble silence cold,
Will furnish hope to those who may behold
The meaning in the everlasting change
Of all that dies, returning, wondrous strange.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Quest for God"
Death commences too early--almost before you're half acquainted with life--you meet the other.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
JEAN COCTEAU
"Postambule," La Fin du Potomac
Only where there are graves are there resurrections.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
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
Every loss which we incur leaves behind it vexation in the memory, save the greatest loss of all, that is, death, which annihilates the memory, together with life.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
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
Death is a new office building filled with modern furniture,
A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us.
JOHN ASHBERY
"A Last World"
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
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
Golden lads and girls all must
As chimney-sweepers come to dust.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Cymbeline
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
God, give us each our own death,
the dying that proceeds
from each of our lives.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
The Book of Hours
For man, the death of the body is inevitable, and is determined by time and circumstance; but, with proper precaution, the death of the soul may be totally avoided.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
Socialistic
A man begins dying at the moment of his birth. Most people live in denial of Death's patient courtship until, late in life and deep in sickness, they become aware of him sitting bedside.
DEAN KOONTZ
The Husband
Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude.
IRVIN D. YALOM
Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death