quotations about death
Where I am, death is not; where death is, I am not.
IRVIN D. YALOM
Staring at the Sun
The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
JEAN COCTEAU
"Postambule," La Fin du Potomac
Death is a new office building filled with modern furniture,
A wise thing, but which has no purpose for us.
JOHN ASHBERY
"A Last World"
A couch of thorns, or an embroidered bed,
Are matters of indifference to the dead.
THEOGNIS OF MEGARA
"Sumptuous Obsequies"
No matter what the circumstances of our death, we overcome the horrors of our lives and find peace at last.
ROSEMARY ALTEA
A Matter of Life and Death
For death is but a passing phase of Life;
A change of dress, a disrobing;
A birth into the unborn again;
A commencing where we ended;
A starting where we stopped to rest;
A crossroad of Eternity;
A giving up of something, to possess all things.
The end of the unreal, the beginning of the real.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Song of the Soul"
To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.
EDWARD ABBEY. "The Dead Man at Grandview Point"
Desert Solitaire
Golden lads and girls all must
As chimney-sweepers come to dust.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Cymbeline
Death commences too early--almost before you're half acquainted with life--you meet the other.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
And death, that sits in marble silence cold,
Will furnish hope to those who may behold
The meaning in the everlasting change
Of all that dies, returning, wondrous strange.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Quest for God"
You’ve never seen death? Look in the mirror every day and you will see it like bees working in a glass hive.
JEAN COCTEAU
The Dick Cavett Show, Oct. 6, 1981
There comes a time when living becomes something like a competition, when one shamelessly rejoices over the death of one's neighbour, as if he were a rival who has been eliminated.
PIERRE MAGNAN
The Messengers of Death
Every loss which we incur leaves behind it vexation in the memory, save the greatest loss of all, that is, death, which annihilates the memory, together with life.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
He that shrinks from the grave with too great a dread, has an invisible fear behind him pushing him into it.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
You are the true master of death, because the true master does not seek to run away from Death. He accepts that he must die, and understands that there are far, far worse things in the living world than dying.
J. K. ROWLING
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
In the end, living is defined by dying. Bookended by oblivion, we are caught in the vice of terror, squeezed to bursting by the approaching end.
BERNARD BECKETT
Genesis
How beautiful is death, when earn'd by virtue!
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
For man, the death of the body is inevitable, and is determined by time and circumstance; but, with proper precaution, the death of the soul may be totally avoided.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
Socialistic
God, give us each our own death,
the dying that proceeds
from each of our lives.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
The Book of Hours
DEEPAK CHOPRA
Life After Death