DEATH QUOTES XXIV

quotations about death

People living deeply have no fear of death.

ANAIS NIN

The Diary of Anais Nin


Of all the Gods, Death only craves not gifts:
Nor sacrifice, nor yet drink-offering poured
Avails; no altars hath he, nor is soothed
By hymns of praise. From him alone of all
The powers of Heaven Persuasion holds aloof.

AESCHYLUS

fragment


There must be some unwritten law that says about fifty people have to move into your house when somebody dies. If it weren’t for the smell of death clinging to the walls, you might think it was your family’s turn to host the month neighborhood potluck supper.

ADAM RAPP

Under the Wolf


Odd thing about death ... it reaffirms life.

RITA MAE BROWN

Hounded to Death


Life and death are different sides of the same coin.

NEIL GAIMAN

American Gods


When one existentially awakens from within, the relation of birth-and-death is not seen as a sequential change from the former to the latter. Rather, living as it is, is no more than dying, and at the same time there is no living separate from dying. This means that life itself is death and death itself is life. That is, we do not shift sequentially from birth to death, but undergo living-dying in each and every moment.

MASAO ABE

A Study of Dogen: His Philosophy and Religion


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


By protracting life, we do not deduct one jot from the duration of death.

LUCRETIUS

De Rerum Natura


What is
Death, so it be but glorious? 'Tis a sunset;
And mortals may be happy to resemble
The Gods but in decay.

LORD BYRON

Sardanapalus


My spirit is too weak--mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.

JOHN KEATS

"On Seeing the Elgin Marbles"


Whatever is certain in death is slightly alleviated by what is not so infallible; the time when it shall happen is undefined, but it is more or less connected with the infinite, and what we call eternity.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of Mankind", Les Caractères


There is a time in a patient's life when the pain ceases to be, when the mind slips off into a dreamless state, when the need for food becomes minimal and the awareness of the environment all but disappears into darkness. This is the time when the relatives walk up and down the hospital hallways, tormented by the waiting, not knowing if they should leave to attend the living or stay to be around for the moment of death. This is the time when it is too late for words, and yet the time when the relatives cry the loudest for help--with out without words.... It is the hardest time for the next of kin as he either wishes to take off, to get it over with; or he desperately clings to something that he is in the process of losing forever.

ELISABETH KUBLER-ROSS

On Death and Dying


Graves are for the living, not the dead. It gives us something to concentrate on instead of the fact that our loved one is rotting under the ground. The dead don't care about pretty flowers and carved marble statues.

LAURELL K. HAMILTON

Guilty Pleasures


When you die it's the end of your life.

SAM SHEPARD

Tongues


Birds of Hell awaiting
With the wings on fire
Insane old Phoenix, baby
It's your death desire
The birds of Hell awaiting
With the wings on fire

MARILYN MANSON

"Birds of Hell Awaiting", The Pale Emperor


Death is the dropping of the flower, that the fruit may swell.

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


If we were sensible we would seek death--the same blissful blank which we enjoyed before we existed.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"Nietzscheism and Realism"


The seeds of Death are sown in us when we begin to live, and grow up till, like rampant weeds, they choak the tender flower of life.

SAMUEL RICHARDSON

Clarissa


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 tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.

OSCAR WILDE

The Canterville Ghost


The road to death is a long march beset with all evils, and the heart fails little by little at each new terror, the bones rebel at each step, the mind sets up its own bitter resistance and to what end? The barriers sink one by one, and no covering of the eyes shuts out the landscape of disaster, nor the sight of crimes committed there.

KATHERINE ANNE PORTER

"Pale Horse, Pale Rider"