quotations about death
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
Life and death appeared to me ideal bounds, which I should first break through, and pour a torrent of light into our dark world.
MARY SHELLEY
Frankenstein
There is no god but death.
MAXWELL ANDERSON
Elizabeth the Queen
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
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
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
Tell me the truth about death. I don't know what it is. We have them, then they are gone but they stay in our minds. Their stories are part of us as long as we live and as long as we tell them or write them down.
ELLEN GILCHRIST
Good Housekeeping, May 2011
Death hath this also; that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
After a person dies, there is always something like a feeling of stupefaction, so difficult is it to comprehend this unexpected advent of nothingness and to resign oneself to believing it.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Madame Bovary
Here lies one whose name was writ in water.
JOHN KEATS
epitaph for himself
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
SYLVIA PLATH
The Bell Jar
Fear ye not
The wrath of any man, nor hide your word
Within your breast: the day of death and doom
Awaits alike the freeman and the slave.
AESCHYLUS
The Libation Bearers
Death is only a small interruption.
ANITA BROOKNER
Latecomers
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Fight Club
Death is not an end, but a transition-crisis. All the forms of decay are but masks of regeneration--the secret alembics of vitality.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Death will come in any case, and there is a long afterwards if the priests are right and nothing to fear if they are wrong.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Honorary Consul
There is a Reaper, whose name is Death,
And, with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath,
And the flowers that grow between.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The Reaper and the Flowers"
Death was an accident like any other, and, moreover, one as certain as hunger or as sleep.
HILAIRE BELLOC
On Nothing & Kindred Subjects
There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven.
ISAAC ASIMOV
I, Asimov
Now that you are dead,
You are splendid.
Photographs of people who have just died
Are worth twenty percent more,
And for suicides
There is an additional five percent.
Now that you are dead
You are much in demand.
KOBO ABE
The Ghost is Here