Quotes about death

The dead should be judged like criminals, impartially, but they should be allowed the benefit of the doubt.

— Samuel Butler

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.

— Samuel Butler

I have seen a thousand graves opened, and always perceived that whatever was gone, the teeth and hair remained of those who had died with them. Is not this odd? They go the very first things in youth and yet last the longest in the dust.

— Lord Byron

Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, and yet a third of life is passed in sleep.

— Lord Byron

There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.

— Albert Camus

Men are convinced of your arguments, your sincerity, and the seriousness of your efforts only by your death.

— Albert Camus

Men are never really willing to die except for the sake of freedom: therefore they do not believe in dying completely.

— Albert Camus

He who is obsessed by death is made guilty by it.

— Elias Canetti

For days after death hair and fingernails continue to grow, but phone calls taper off.

— Johnny Carson

I look upon life as a gift from God. I did nothing to earn it. Now that the time is coming to give it back, I have no right to complain.

— Joyce Cary

Along with the lazy man... the dying man is the immoral man: the former, a subject that does not work; the latter, an object that no longer even makes itself available to be worked on by others.

— Michel De Certeau

Well, there's a remedy for all things but death, which will be sure to lay us flat one time or other.

— Miguel De Cervantes

Tis the maddest trick a man can ever play in his whole life, to let his breath sneak out of his body without any more ado, and without so much as a rap o'er the pate, or a kick of the guts; to go out like the snuff of a farthing candle, and die merely of the mulligrubs, or the sullens.

— Miguel De Cervantes

Death eats up all things, both the young lamb and old sheep; and I have heard our parson say, death values a prince no more than a clown; all's fish that comes to his net; he throws at all, and sweeps stakes; he's no mower that takes a nap at noon-day, but drives on, fair weather or foul, and cuts down the green grass as well as the ripe corn: he's neither squeamish nor queesy-stomach d, for he swallows without chewing, and crams down all things into his ungracious maw; and you can see no belly he has, he has a confounded dropsy, and thirsts after men's lives, which he gurgles down like mother's milk.

— Miguel De Cervantes

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a dirty sump or in a marble tower on top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you.

— Raymond Chandler

Woe, woe, woe... in a little while we shall all be dead. Therefore let us behave as though we were dead already.

— Raymond Chandler

He had been, he said, an unconscionable time dying; but he hoped that they would excuse it.

— Charles II

We are not victims of aging, sickness and death. These are part of scenery, not the seer, who is immune to any form of change. This seer is the spirit, the expression of eternal being.

— Deepak Chopra

I am ready to meet my maker, but whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

— Winston Churchill

That last day does not bring extinction to us, but change of place.

— Marcus T. Cicero

The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.

— Marcus T. Cicero

I have a piece of great and sad news to tell you: I am dead.

— Jean Cocteau

Since the day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.

— Jean Cocteau

An orphan's curse would drag to hell, a spirit from on high; but oh! more horrible than that, is a curse in a dead man's eye!

— Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.

— Charles Caleb Colton

I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat.

— Joseph Conrad

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

— Leonardo Da Vinci

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

— Leonardo Da Vinci

These have not the hope to die.

— Dante Alighieri

I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure.

— Clarence Darrow

I am not the least afraid to die.

— Charles R. Darwin

To be born free is an accident; To live free a responsibility; To die free is an obligation.

— Mrs Hubbard Davis

Few cross the river of time and are able to reach non-being. Most of them run up and down only on this side of the river. But those who when they know the law follow the path of the law, they shall reach the other shore and go beyond the realm of death.

— Dhammapada

Death doesn't frighten me.

— Princess of Wales Diana

He would make a lovely corpse.

— Charles Dickens

Dying is a wild night and a new road.

— Emily Dickinson

Let us go in; the fog is rising.

— Emily Dickinson

The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.

— Denis Diderot

When I die I want to decompose in a barrel of porter and have it served in all the pubs in Dublin.

— J. P. Donleavy

I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him merely seize me, and only declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwreck, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotency might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.

— John Donne

As virtuous men pass mildly away, and whisper to their souls to go, whilst some of their sad friends do say, the breath goes now, and some say no.

— John Donne

When one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language.

— John Donne

Life is a series of diminishments. Each cessation of an activity either from choice or some other variety of infirmity is a death, a putting to final rest. Each loss, of friend or precious enemy, can be equated with the closing off of a room containing blocks of nerves and soon after the closing off the nerves atrophy and that part of oneself, in essence, drops away. The self is lightened, is held on earth by a gram less of mass and will.

— Coleman Dowell

All human things are subject to decay, and when fate summons, monarchs must obey.

— John Dryden

He was exhaled; his great Creator drew His spirit, as the sun the morning dew.

— John Dryden

Like pilgrims to the appointed place we tend; The world's an inn, and death the journey's end.

— John Dryden

To die is landing on some distant shore.

— John Dryden

A dead atheist is someone who is all dressed up with no place to go.

— James Duffecy

I'm trying to die correctly, but it's very difficult, you know.

— Lawrence Durrell

The last suit that you wear, you don't need any pockets.

— Wayne Dyer

He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.

— Albert Einstein

When death comes it is never our tenderness that we repent from, but our severity.

— George Eliot

Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.

— George Eliot

Death is the king of this world: 'Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet

— George Eliot

And what the dead had no speech for, when living, they can tell you, being dead: the communication of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living.

— T. S. Eliot

Death is the last enemy: once we've got past that I think everything will be alright.

— Alice Thomas Ellis

Let death be daily before your eyes, and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything.

— Epictetus

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men all live in a city without walls.

— Epicurus

The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.

— Epicurus

Remember man as you walk by, as you are now so once was I, as I am now, so you will be, so prepare for death and follow me.

— Epitaph

But learn that to die is a debt we must all pay.

— Euripides

We all have to die some day, if we live long enough.

— Dave Farber

It hath often been said that it is not death but dying that is terrible.

— Henry Fielding

It is not death, but dying, which is terrible.

— Henry Fielding

Death destroys a man, the idea of Death saves him.

— Edward M. Forster

The Sea of Galilee and the Dead Sea are made of the same water. It flows down, clean and cool, from the heights of Herman and the roots of the cedars of Lebanon. the Sea of Galilee makes beauty of it, the Sea of Galilee has an outlet. It gets to give. It gathers in its riches that it may pour them out again to fertilize the Jordan plain. But the Dead Sea with the same water makes horror. For the Dead Sea has no outlet. It gets to keep.

— Harry Emerson Fosdick

The pride of dying rich raises the loudest laugh in hell.

— John W. Foster

I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.

— Benjamin Franklin

Many people die at twenty five and aren't buried until they are seventy five.

— Benjamin Franklin

Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life.

— Charles Frohman

To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable.

— Erich Fromm

Plan for this world as if you expect to live forever; but plan for the hereafter as if you expect to die tomorrow.

— Ibn Gabirol

Fish die belly upward, and rise to the surface. Its their way of falling.

— Andre Gide

Death is the only inescapable, unavoidable, sure thing. We are sentenced to die the day we're born.

— Gary Mark Gilmore

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A useless life is an early death.

— Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

— Thomas Gray

We are all of us resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to.

— Graham Greene

Man has the possibility of existence after death. But possibility is one thing and the realization of the possibility is quite a different thing.

— George Gurdjieff

A considerable percentage of the people we meet on the street are people who are empty inside, that is, they are actually already dead. It is fortunate for us that we do not see and do not know it. If we knew what a number of people are actually dead and what a number of these dead people govern our lives, we should go mad with horror.

— George Gurdjieff

The death of what's dead is the birth of what's living.

— Arlo Guthrie

Oh you who have been removed from God in his solitude by the abyss of time, how can you expect to reach him without dying?

— Hallaj

I never think he is quite ready for another world who is altogether weary of this.

— Hugh Hamilton

In the last analysis it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions life puts to us.

— Dag Hammarskjold

If even dying is to be made a social function, then, grant me the favor of sneaking out on tiptoe without disturbing the party.

— Dag Hammarskjold

Your body must become familiar with its death -- in all its possible forms and degrees -- as a self-evident, imminent, and emotionally neutral step on the way towards the goal you have found worthy of your life.

— Dag Hammarskjold

To leave is to die a little... one leaves behind a little of oneself at any hour, at any place.

— Edmond Haracourt

I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

— Rutger Hauer

You haven't lost anything when you know were it is. Death can hide but not divide.

— Vance Havner

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization. It makes the meanest of us sacred --it installs the poet in his immortality, and lifts him to the skies. Death is the greatest assayer of the sterling ore of talent. At his touch the dropsy particles fall off, the irritable, the personal, the gross, and mingle with the dust --the finer and more ethereal part mounts with winged spirit to watch over our latest memory, and protect our bones from insult. We consign the least worthy qualities to oblivion, and cherish the nobler and imperishable nature with double pride and fondness.

— William Hazlitt

Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.

— William Hazlitt

Don't strew me with roses after I'm dead. When Death claims the light of my brow No flowers of life will cheer me: instead You may give me my roses now!

— Thomas F. Healey

Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.

— Martin Heidegger

When I die, I want people to play my music, go wild and freak out and do anything they want to do.

— Jimi Hendrix

Madam, Life's a piece in bloom death goes dogging everywhere: She's the tenant of the room he's the ruffian on the stair.

— William Ernest Henley

Only the young die good.

— Oliver Herford

Death is like an arrow that is already in flight, and your life lasts only until it reaches you.

— Georg Hermes

Death is a delightful hiding place for weary men.

— Herodotus

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

— Hermann Hesse