quotations about death
There are always potential rogues who, seeing an opportunity, will flirt with death and then, at the very last moment, will be surprised to have met with it so easily.
PIERRE MAGNAN
The Messengers of Death
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
Perhaps the best cure for the fear of death is to reflect that life has a beginning as well as an end. There was a time when we were not: this gives us no concern--why, then, should it trouble us that a time will come when we shall cease to be?
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners
How fine is the mesh of death. You can almost see through it.
JANE HIRSHFIELD
"The Present"
When a man has the rope about his neck, you don't ask him about his health!
LEONID ANDREYEV
He Who Gets Slapped
The death for the driver was egregiously bad: being impaled is never anyone's exit of choice.
JEFF ABBOTT
The Last Minute
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
We shall see later on that the diversity of the forms of death that circulate invisibly is the cause of the peculiar unexpectedness of obituary notices in the newspapers.
MARCEL PROUST
Sodom and Gomorrah
When he was dead I realized that I had hardly ever spoken to him. When he had been dead a long time I began to wish I had.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
Death ends at last the fear of it.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
No matter who you are, you will be put abed at last with a shovel.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Dying was just an extended version of Ash Wednesday.
DON DELILLO
Underworld
Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.
BERTOLT BRECHT
The Mother
Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one ... to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The House of the Seven Gables
My years have limped; but I
Have tried so hard to fly!
And now, suppose Death brings
Gulls' wings
At last, for me to keep?
KARLE WILSON BAKER
"Alternatives", Burning Bush
We must die alone. To the very verge of the stream our friends may accompany us; they may bend over us, they may cling to us there; but that one long wave from the sea of eternity washes up to the lips, sweeps us from the shore, and we go forth alone! In that untried and utter solitude, then, what can there be for us but the pulsation of that assurance, "I am not alone, because the Father is with me!"
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
You still believe in death... that's just so... quaint. Well, sorry to pop your death bubble, but there's no such thing. So make the best of things. Any real belief in death is just wishful thinking. Don't waste good drugs on killing yourself. Share them with friends and have a party. Or send them to me.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
The Independent Review, Mar. 25, 2004
Better to live or die, once and for all, than die by inches.
HOMER
The Iliad
No one on his deathbed ever said, "I wish I had spent more time on my business."
PAUL E. TSONGAS
New York Times, Jan. 14, 1987