quotations about death
The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.
PUBLILIUS SYRUS
Maxims
So when the friends we love the best lie in their churchyard bed, we must not cry too bitterly over the happy dead; because, for our dear Saviour's sake, our sins are all forgiven; and Christians only fall asleep to wake again in Heaven.
CECIL FRANCES ALEXANDER
"Child's Funeral"
Feeling funny in my mind, Lord
I believe I'm fixing to die
Well, I don't mind dying
But I hate to leave my children crying
Well, I look over yonder to that burying ground
Look over yonder to that burying ground
Sure seems lonesome, Lord, when the sun goes down
BOB DYLAN
"Fixin' To Die"
Death hath this also; that it openeth the gate to good fame, and extinguisheth envy.
FRANCIS BACON
Essays
Unjustly men hate death, which is the greatest defence against their many ills.
AESCHYLUS
fragment
Who knows but life be that which men call death,
And death what men call life?
EURIPIDES
Phrixus [fragment]
The grave itself is but a covered bridge,
Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness!
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
The Golden Legend
Taunting Death ... means pitting oneself against a wily enemy who cannot lose.
J. K. ROWLING
The Tales of Beedle the Bard
Even as a child I was fascinated by death, not in a spiritual sense, but in an aesthetic one. A hamster or guinea pig would pass away, and, after burying the body, I'd dig it back up: over and over, until all that remained was a shoddy pelt. It earned me a certain reputation, especially when I moved on to other people's pets. "Igor," they called me. "Wicked, spooky." But I think my interest was actually fairly common, at least among adolescent boys. At that age, death is something that happens only to animals and grandparents, and studying it is like a science project.
DAVID SEDARIS
When You Are Engulfed in Flames
When I read obituaries I always note the age of the deceased. Automatically I relate this figure to my own age. Four years to go, I think. Nine more years. Two years and I'm dead. The power of numbers is never more evident than when we use them to speculate on the time of our dying.
DON DELILLO
White Noise
Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
letter to Cecil Spring-Rice, Mar. 12, 1900
Give me to die like a beast, afar, alone
With but the hawk and crow
To watch beside me while I cast my soul,
And but the sky to know
What my racked lips have uttered, what last groan,
Or curse or prayer, I breathed to heaven above.
KENNETH RAND
"Straw-Death"
To live in hearts we leave behind
Is not to die.
THOMAS CAMPBELL
Hallowed Ground
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 is a great revealer of what is in a man, and in its solemn shadow appear the naked lineaments of the soul.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.
MACKEY MILLER
Mouse Attack 5!!!
It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes; only machines make no mistakes, and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in search, in questions, in torment.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
A Soviet Heretic
Death ... doesn't take her eyes off us for a minute, so much so that even those who are not yet due to die feel her gaze pursuing them constantly.
JOSé SARAMAGO
Death with Interruptions
Death is simply the soul's change of residence.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
There is no god but death.
MAXWELL ANDERSON
Elizabeth the Queen