DEATH QUOTES XIV

quotations about death

Death has this much to be said for it:
You don't have to get out of bed for it.

KINGSLEY AMIS

"Delivery Guaranteed", Collected Poems


The thorn of death falls from heaven, and its myriad forms leave us no room to move.

KOBO ABE

The Woman in the Dunes


The death for the driver was egregiously bad: being impaled is never anyone's exit of choice.

JEFF ABBOTT

The Last Minute


The dead are too much with us.

ROGER ZELAZNY

Isle of the Dead


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


As the woodpecker taps in a spiral quest
From the root to the top of the tree,
Then flies to another tree,
So have I bored into life to find what lay therein,
And now it is time to die,
And I will fly to another tree.

SIDNEY LANIER

Songs Against Death


As soon as one is born, one starts dying.

LUIGI PIRANDELLO

Henry IV


Whatever it is that occurs at death, I believe it deserves to be called a miracle. The miracle, ironically, is that we don't die. The cessation of the body is an illusion, and like a magician sweeping aside a curtain, the soul reveals what lies beyond.

DEEPAK CHOPRA

Life After Death


To death we owe our life; the passing of one generation opens a way for another.

CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

Intuitions and Summaries of Thought


There was that feeling one gets in a ride to a cemetery trailing a body in a coffin -- an impatience with the dead, a longing to be back home where one could get on with the illusion that not death but daily life is the permanent condition.

E. L. DOCTOROW

Homer & Langley


To die for others is the highest purpose a person may achieve.

CHRISTOPHER GOLDEN & NANCY HOLDER

Ghost Roads


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

GEORGE ELIOT

Adam Bede


Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

Death Stands above Me


You cannot avoid mortality. But you can choose your way of meeting it. And that is the most that any man can hope for.

DAVID GERROLD

The Man Who Folded Himself


Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling when a day of our life comes and we say, "Tomorrow, success or failure won't matter much: and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil.

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY

Vanity Fair


The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

EDGAR ALLAN POE

"The Premature Burial"


In literature and in art, alike, this gloomy fashion of regarding Death has been characteristic of Christianity. Death has been painted as a skeleton grasping a scythe, a grinning skull, a threatening figure with terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony scarecrow shaking an hour-glass--all that could alarm and repel has been gathered round this rightly-named King of Terrors.

ANNIE WOOD BESANT

Death--and After


Death, lonely death,
Beneath the withered leaves.

FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA

Blood Wedding


Death left its old tragic heaven and became the lyrical core of man: his invisible truth, his visible secret.

MICHEL FOUCAULT

The Birth of the Clinic


Death is the loss of everything all at once.

JULIE SALAMON

Hospital