quotations about death
Death is the end of one story and the beginning of another.
PHILIP MOELLER
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Helena's Husband
Death fixes forever the relation existing between the departed spirit and the survivors upon earth.
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
journal, Jul. 24, 1831
As men, we are all equal in the presence of death.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
Maxims
That which we call Death is but a pause of suspension; and in truth a progress to life, only our thoughts look downwards upon the body, and not upwards upon things to come.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Life was to these a dream fulfilled,
And death a starry night.
HERMAN MELVILLE
"Chattanooga"
Dying is like coming to the end of a long novel--you only regret it if the ride was enjoyable and left you wanting more.
JEROME P. CRABB
Death Quotes and Quibbles
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
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
It used to be I thought of death as a man something like Grandfather a friend of his a kind of private and particular friend like we used to think of Grandfather's desk not to touch it not even to talk loud in the room where it was.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
The Sound and the Fury
Death is not earnest in the same way the eternal is. To the earnestness of death belongs precisely that remarkable capacity for awakening, that resonance of a profound mockery which, detached from the thought of the eternal, is an empty and often brash jest, but together with the thought of the eternal is just what it should be, utterly different from the insipid solemness which least of all captures and holds a thought with tension like that of death.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
Works of Love
There is no birth, there is no death; there is no coming, there is no going; there is no same, there is no different; there is no permanent self, there is no annihilation. We only think there is.
THICH NHAT HANH
No Death
He that begins to live, begins to die.
FRANCIS QUARLES
Hieroglyphics
Death was far more certain than God.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Quiet American
The reaction to death is sometimes as violent as death itself. Shock throws a cautious coolness over your senses, but your stomach still has knots, your skin stings as if the Reaper is glaring at you as well.
TIM LEBBON
Fears Unnamed
She had nut painted arms that were hers to keep
And in her fear she sought cracked pleasures
The passion of lovers is for death, said she
Licked her lips and turned to feather
BAUHAUS
"The Passion of Lovers"
Oh the grave!--the grave!--It buries every error--covers every defect--extinguishes every resentment! From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can look down upon the grave even of an enemy, and not feel a compunctious throb, that he should ever have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies mouldering before him!
WASHINGTON IRVING
"Rural Funerals", The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon
Spending your life concentrating on death is like watching a whole movie and thinking only about the credits that are going to roll at the end. It’s a mistake of emphasis.
NICHOLSON BAKER
The Anthologist
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly long'd for death.
ALFRED TENNYSON
The Two Voices
It is not desirable that we should live as in the constant atmosphere and presence of death; that would unfit us for life; but it is well for us, now and then, to talk with death as friend talketh with friend, and to bathe in the strange seas, and to anticipate the experiences of that land to which it will lead us. These forethinkings are meant, not to make us discontented with life, but to bring us back with more strength, and a nobler purpose in living.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
In his bleak mercy, Death forever strips
The soul of light and memory, rendering blind
Our vision, lest surmounted deeps appal,
As when on mountain-heights a glance behind
Betrays with knowledge, and the climber slips
Down gulfs of fear to some enormous fall.
CLARK ASHTON SMITH
"The Unremembered"