quotations about death
Every deceased friend is a magnet drawing us into another world.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
As soon as one is born, one starts dying.
LUIGI PIRANDELLO
Henry IV
When a great life sets it leaves an afterglow on the sky far into the night.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Death is the veil which those who live call life;
They sleep, and it is lifted.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Prometheus Unbound
Even as a child I was fascinated by death, not in a spiritual sense, but in an aesthetic one. A hamster or guinea pig would pass away, and, after burying the body, I'd dig it back up: over and over, until all that remained was a shoddy pelt. It earned me a certain reputation, especially when I moved on to other people's pets. "Igor," they called me. "Wicked, spooky." But I think my interest was actually fairly common, at least among adolescent boys. At that age, death is something that happens only to animals and grandparents, and studying it is like a science project.
DAVID SEDARIS
When You Are Engulfed in Flames
To those who view the voyage of life from the port of departure the bark that has accomplished any considerable distance appears already in close approach to the farther shore.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"The Death of Halpin Frayser"
Life is hard, but death is even harder.
PETER KREEFT
Between Heaven and Hell
In statistics, what disappears behind rows of numbers is death.
GUNTER GRASS
Crabwalk
Death ... doesn't take her eyes off us for a minute, so much so that even those who are not yet due to die feel her gaze pursuing them constantly.
JOSé SARAMAGO
Death with Interruptions
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
Death has a hundred hands and walks by a thousand ways.
T.S. ELIOT
Murder in the Cathedral
Death is a fisherman, the world we see
His fish-pond is, and we the fishes be;
His net some general sickness; howe'er he
Is not so kind as other fishers be;
For if they take one of the smaller fry,
They throw him in again, he shall not die:
But death is sure to kill all he can get,
And all is fish with him that comes to net.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1733
Death is release, if you've lived all right.
EDWARD ALBEE
Seascape
When you look at a corpse you can always sense your own breath better.
ZONA GALE
"Miggy"
Oh! that "eternal shore,"
When Death shall be no more!
How widely differing from this mortal state,
Where we but draw our earliest breath
To yield it up again in death,
Obedient to the unchanging laws of fate!
ANNE S. BUSHBY
"Easter Morning"
To will the obligatory in relation to death is to fall in line with the major immutable cycles of Nature, especially human nature, and to understand that (whether or not there is a purpose or meaning to life or a life of the spirit beyond the life of the body) no one, absolutely no one, escapes being finite and mortal. And knowing this, and then to accept it, to will it, and not to be in an unnecessary state of angst or rebellion or terror over it.
EDWIN SHNEIDMAN
A Commonsense Book of Death
Death was everywhere,
In the air
And in the sounds
Coming off the mounds
Of Bolton's Ridge.
Death's anchorage.
When you rolled a smoke
Or told a joke,
It was in the laughter
And drinking water
It approached the beach
As strings of cutters,
Dropped in the sea and lay around us.
PJ HARVEY
"All and Everyone", Let England Shake
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
Leap through the Mystery of death as the circus-rider leaps through the papered hoop ... find Life ambling along beneath us on the Other Side?
SIDNEY LANIER
Songs Against Death
My soul defense against the natural horror which death inspires, is to love beyond it.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Thoughts", The Writings of Madame Swetchine