quotations about death
Only through the death experience could man fully understand his life experience. Only through the realization that his days on earth were finite could he grasp the importance of living those days with honor, integrity, and service to his fellow man.
DAN BROWN
The Lost Symbol
With death comes honesty.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
The Satanic Verses
Oh the grave!--the grave!--It buries every error--covers every defect--extinguishes every resentment! From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections. Who can look down upon the grave even of an enemy, and not feel a compunctious throb, that he should ever have warred with the poor handful of earth that lies mouldering before him!
WASHINGTON IRVING
"Rural Funerals", The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon
Death is not earnest in the same way the eternal is. To the earnestness of death belongs precisely that remarkable capacity for awakening, that resonance of a profound mockery which, detached from the thought of the eternal, is an empty and often brash jest, but together with the thought of the eternal is just what it should be, utterly different from the insipid solemness which least of all captures and holds a thought with tension like that of death.
SOREN KIERKEGAARD
Works of Love
Death was far more certain than God.
GRAHAM GREENE
The Quiet American
I don't like tombstones. They're like bookends to spent lives, trapping the person inside.
ELIZABETH DANIELS
"A Rose in the Willow Garden", Red Velvet and Absinthe
Death is one dream out of another flowing.
CONRAD AIKEN
The House of Dust