DEATH QUOTES XXV

quotations about death

Remember the coffin where men
All must to dust be returning.

HENRI CAZALIS

"Always"


We live as we die, and die as we live.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


I don't mean to imply that I'm afraid of Death. I'm just not ready to go out on a date with him.

DEAN KOONTZ

Odd Thomas


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


He steps upon death that stirs a foot.

THOMAS DEKKER

Blurt


We are the fools of Time and Terror: Days
Steal on us, and steal from us; yet we live,
Loathing our life, and dreading still to die.

LORD BYRON

Manfred


Living, the nearest claim them; but the dear
Great dead belong to any humble heart.

KARLE WILSON BAKER

"W. V. M.", Blue Smoke


The death anxiety of many people is fueled ... by disappointment at never having fulfilled their potential. Many people are in despair because their dreams didn't come true, and they despair even more that they did not make them come true. A focus on this deep dissatisfaction is often the starting point in overcoming death anxiety.

IRVIN D. YALOM

Staring at the Sun


Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Heartbreak House


Death is like an old whore in a bar--I'll buy her a drink but I won't go upstairs with her.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

To Have and Have Not


Weep strong men must,
Since all before us now is lifeless dust;
Majestic clay
Is all, good friends, death leaves to us today.

ELIZA ALLEN STARR

"Col. James A. Mulligan"


O Death, the Consecrator!
Nothing so sanctifies a name
As to be written--Dead.
Nothing so wins a life from blame,
So covers it from wrath and shame,
As doth the burial-bed.

CAROLINE SPENCER

"Death the Consecrator"


Most of us were not afraid of death, only of the act of dying; and there were times when we overcame even this fear. At such moments we were free--men without shadows, dismissed from the ranks of the mortal; it was the most complete experience of freedom that can be granted a man.

ARTHUR KOESTLER

Dialogue with Death


When I take a full view and circle of myself, without this reasonable moderator, and equal piece of justice, Death, I concieve myself the most miserable person extant; were there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities of this world should not entreat a moments breath from me.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine


Dying is an art.
Like everything else,
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I have a call.

SYLVIA PLATH

Ariel


No matter how much you've been warned, Death always comes without knocking. Why now? is the cry. Why so soon? It's the cry of a child being called home at dusk.

MARGARET ATWOOD

The Year of the Flood


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


Life is what you celebrate. All of it. Even its end.

JOANNE HARRIS

Chocolat


There is no Death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

"Resignation"


So long as men die, life will reassert its tragic interest from time to time with fresh energy, and to this interest Christianity alone can respond. If the scientific people could rid us of death, they might indeed hope to win over the heart and conscience of the world, permanently, to some form of non-theistic speculation. As it is, the tide ebbs, as I believe, only that it may flow again.

HENRY PARRY LIDDON

letter to C. T. Redington, June 27, 1877