DEATH QUOTES XXVI

quotations about death

As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.

PUBLILIUS SYRUS

Maxims


When Death puts out our Flame, the Snuff will tell,
If we were Wax, or Tallow by the smell.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Poor Richard's Almanack, 1739


Be sure the safest rule is that we should not dare to live in any scene in which we dare not die. But, once realise what the true object is in life -- that it is not pleasure, not knowledge, not even fame itself, 'that last infirmity of noble minds' -- but that it is the development of character, the rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the perfect Man -- and then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust) go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow, but a light; not an end, but a beginning!

LEWIS CARROLL

preface, Sylvie and Bruno


We live as we die, and die as we live.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


Life is what you celebrate. All of it. Even its end.

JOANNE HARRIS

Chocolat


Most of us were not afraid of death, only of the act of dying; and there were times when we overcame even this fear. At such moments we were free--men without shadows, dismissed from the ranks of the mortal; it was the most complete experience of freedom that can be granted a man.

ARTHUR KOESTLER

Dialogue with Death


When we pray for death we really desire a fuller life.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


The longest-lived and the shortest-lived man, when they come to die, lose one and the same thing.

MARCUS AURELIUS

Meditations


Death is the continuing of life ... the next part of our life. It's like walking through a door, you know? Walking through the door marked "Death": It's the beginning of a new part of our journey.

ROSEMARY ALTEA

interview, Larry King Live, Mar. 15, 2000


Death--some form of termination--is the universal ending of all living things; but only man, by virtue of his verbally reportable introspective life, can conceptualize his own cessation.

EDWIN SHNEIDMAN

A Commonsense Book of Death


It is a sad weakness in us, after all, that the thought of a man's death hallows him anew to us; as if life were not sacred too--as if it were comparatively a light thing to fail in love and reverence to the brother who has to climb the whole toilsome steep with us, and all our tears and tenderness were due to the one who is spared that hard journey.

GEORGE ELIOT

Janet's Repentance


There is no Death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

"Resignation"


Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Heartbreak House


The death anxiety of many people is fueled ... by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential. Many people are in despair because their dreams didn't come true, and they despair even more that they did not make them come true. A focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming death anxiety.

IRVIN D. YALOM

Staring at the Sun


Death fixes forever the relation existing between the departed spirit and the survivors upon earth.

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS

journal, Jul. 24, 1831


When I take a full view and circle of myself, without this reasonable moderator, and equal piece of justice, Death, I concieve myself the most miserable person extant; were there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities of this world should not entreat a moments breath from me.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine


Dying is an art.
Like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I have a call.

SYLVIA PLATH

Ariel


There is something wonderful about a death, how everything shuts down, and all the ways you thought you were vital are not even vaguely important. Your husband can feed the kids, he can work the new oven, he can find the sausages in the fridge, after all. And his important meeting was not important, not in the slightest.

ANNE ENRIGHT

The Gathering


Death is the monster we all fear, yet with each day, we walk toward it, and can't help doing so; we can't help but walk toward the one thing we're most trying to avoid.

BILL MAHER

"On Being Over 50", HuffPost, Oct. 3, 2011


Death is repose, but the thought of death disturbs all repose.

CESARE PAVESE

This Business of Living, Jun. 7, 1938