quotations about death
Sweet lovely death
I am waiting for your breath
Come sweet death, one last caress
METALLICA
"Last Caress"
There's really nothing quite like someone's wanting you dead to make you want to go on living.
ROGER ZELAZNY
This Immortal
When a house has just lost its soul, a stricken silence falls over the sudden emptiness that no one will fill again. And all the noises that may be made later in that house will be like a scandalous din, ugly echoes from one room to another, from one corridor to another, sharp and discordant as if the walls are no longer able to absorb any music once the source of harmony has been taken away. But this strange detail about the power of death can only be picked up by ears that are very attentive to the smallest murmurs of life. Rational people go through these empty spaces with the serenity of a lawyer, and their indulgent smiles categorise you if you decide to point out in their presence that there is something lacking in the atmosphere.
PIERRE MAGNAN
The Messengers of Death
It is necessary to meditate early, and often, on the art of dying to succeed later in doing it properly just once.
UMBERTO ECO
The Island of the Day Before
Death is the side of life which is turned away from us.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
letter to W. von Hulewicz, The Duino Elegies
Death is a fisherman, the world we see
His fish-pond is, and we the fishes be;
His net some general sickness; howe'er he
Is not so kind as other fishers be;
For if they take one of the smaller fry,
They throw him in again, he shall not die:
But death is sure to kill all he can get,
And all is fish with him that comes to net.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1733
Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible war motion to become
A kneaded clod, and the dilated spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbèd ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling -- 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathèd worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Measure for Measure
Death to the wicked is all loss, to the righteous all gain.
JOHN THORNTON
Maxims and Directions for Youth
Death is an antidote for this life, and it makes another more stable form of life which is insoluble in everything.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Death augments distance and dulls the memory. Death reconciles.
LEONID ANDREYEV
He Who Gets Slapped
When bones and flesh have finished their business together,
we lay them carefully, in positions they're willing to keep,
and cover them over.
Their eyes and ours won't meet anymore. We hope.
SARAH LINDSAY
"Shanidar, Debt to the Bone-Eating Snotflower
Alone in a room
needless I sit
I close my eyes
and try to forget
Death is calling
get in line
JAY REATARD
"Death Is Forming", Blood Visions
A man dies not for the many wounds that pierce his
breast, unless it be that life's end keep pace with
death, nor by sitting on his hearth at home doth he the
more escape his appointed doom.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
Certain, when I was born, so long ago,
Death drew the tap of life and let it flow;
And ever since the tap has done its task,
And now there's little but an empty cask.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
The Canterbury Tales
Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force.
YODA
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
The dead's dead ... get 'em in the ground and look to the live ones.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
For though Death be a dark passage, it leads to immortality, and that is recompence enough for suffering of it.
WILLIAM PENN
Some Fruits of Solitude
Dying makes what is left of living seem precious. The dying, and those about to die, feel that these last moments must be made beautiful. The cannot be permitted to include the bitterness and the enmities of the living that seem so inexhaustible. So often we hear people who, in dying, resign the old enmities and ask and grant forgiveness. Through such forgiveness they help to make dying beautiful. And, incidentally, they offer a lesson to those who go on living the apparently inexhaustibel life.
JOHN DANIEL BARRY
"The Dead", Reactions and Other Essays
Who knows but life be that which men call death,
And death what men call life?
EURIPIDES
Phrixus [fragment]
Old man death sits all alone
In quiet contemplation
Picking at his blackened nails
Waiting for his next victim
Watching as your life force drains
VENOM
"Death & Dying", Metal Black