quotations about death
Death fosters life that life may suckle death.
SRI AUROBINDO
Vasavadutta
Death ... was the only kept promise out of all life's false starts and switchbacks, all there was at the end of the dusty road.
WILLIAM GAY
Provinces of Night
Always be thou prepared, and so live that death may never find thee unprepared.
THOMAS A. KEMPIS
The Imitation of Christ
The thought of death deceives us; for it causes us to neglect to live.
LUC DE CLAPIERS
MARQUIS DE VAUVENARGUES, Reflections and Maxims
I dream of the face of Death. It's an ever-changing face, worn by many at the wrong time, worn by all eventually.
CODY MCFADYEN
The Face of Death
In every cradle decked with rosy wreath
Lurk germs of death.
VICTOR HUGO
"Hope"
Being dead will be no different from being unborn -- I shall be just as I was in the time of William the Conqueror or the dinosaurs or the trilobites. There is nothing to fear in that.
RICHARD DAWKINS
The God Delusion
When a man has the rope about his neck, you don't ask him about his health!
LEONID ANDREYEV
He Who Gets Slapped
If thou hadst a good conscience thou wouldst not greatly fear death.
THOMAS A. KEMPIS
The Imitation of Christ
Death strips all men of dignity.
TOBSHA LEARNER
The Witch of Cologne
Death is real. Death changes things. Everything else is filler, merely a message from our sponsor.
MICHAEL MARSHALL
The Upright Man
Better to live or die, once and for all, than die by inches.
HOMER
The Iliad
Health care is, at its core, about improving the odds of life in its struggle against death. Of extending that game which we will all lose, each and every one of us unto eternity, extending it another year or month or second.
KEITH OLBERMANN
Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Oct. 7, 2009
In a study we did of bereavement, we found that rather impressive numbers of widows and widowers had not simply gone back to their pre-loss functioning, but grown. This was due to a kind of increased existential awareness that resulted from this confrontation with the death of another. And I think it brought them in touch with their own death, so they began to experience a kind of preciousness to life that comes with an experience of its transiency.
IRVIN D. YALOM
interview, Salon Magazine
From too much love of living
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
"The Garden of Proserpine"
Man dies, his white bones are dumb without a word
When the green pines feel the coming of spring.
Looking back, I sigh; looking before, I sigh again.
What is there to prize in the life's vaporous glory?
LI BAI
"The Old Dust"
That's the happiest moment. When it's all done. When we stop. When we can stop.
EDWARD ALBEE
Three Tall Women
Death had a curious way of ennobling people. Of washing away their flaws and elevating their reputations to a new purity. Sinners became saints once their bodies were lowered into the ground.
JOANNA CAMPBELL SLAN
Paper
Death! great proprietor of all! 'tis thine
To tread out empire, and to quench the stars.
EDWARD YOUNG
Night Thoughts
Flirting with death is the spice of life.
MARGARET LOCK
Twice Dead