quotations about death
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
Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Heartbreak House
The fear of death has been raised too much and set up on high, especially by preachers, like the brazen serpent in the wilderness over the heads of the Israelites; but not with so good excuse as that symbol had, for this fear has not been curative, I think, nor made into pleasant or graceful shape, but rather a horrid spectacle, to affright people. For that men can be frightened into piety has been one of the legacies of religion which barbarous ages have bequeathed us plentifully.
JAMES VILA BLAKE
Essays
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
When do the dead die? When they are forgotten.
LAURA ESQUIVEL
The Law of Love
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
Death is the continuing of life ... the next part of our life. It's like walking through a door, you know? Walking through the door marked "Death": It's the beginning of a new part of our journey.
ROSEMARY ALTEA
interview, Larry King Live, Mar. 15, 2000
When we pray for death we really desire a fuller life.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Death is like an old whore in a bar--I'll buy her a drink but I won't go upstairs with her.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY
To Have and Have Not
It is not desirable that we should live as in the constant atmosphere and presence of death; that would unfit us for life; but it is well for us, now and then, to talk with death as friend talketh with friend, and to bathe in the strange seas, and to anticipate the experiences of that land to which it will lead us. These forethinkings are meant, not to make us discontented with life, but to bring us back with more strength, and a nobler purpose in living.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
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
He steps upon death that stirs a foot.
THOMAS DEKKER
Blurt
It has always seemed to me that the only painless death must be that which takes the intelligence by violent surprise and from the rear so to speak since if death be anything at all beyond a brief and peculiar emotional state of the bereaved it must be a brief and likewise peculiar state of the subject as well and if aught can be more painful to any intelligence above that of a child or an idiot than a slow and gradual confronting with that which over a long period of bewilderment and dread it has been taught to regard as an irrevocable and unplumbable finality, I do not know it.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom
Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life.
CHARLES FROHMAN
his last words before going down on the Lusitania
Remember the coffin where men
All must to dust be returning.
HENRI CAZALIS
"Always"
Life was to these a dream fulfilled,
And death a starry night.
HERMAN MELVILLE
"Chattanooga"
When I take a full view and circle of myself, without this reasonable moderator, and equal piece of justice, Death, I concieve myself the most miserable person extant; were there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities of this world should not entreat a moments breath from me.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
I don't know what's waiting for us when we die--something better, something worse. I only know I'm not ready to find out yet.
CHARLES DE LINT
The Onion Girl
I don't mean to imply that I'm afraid of Death. I'm just not ready to go out on a date with him.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Thomas
I don't necessarily view death as something negative. Death gives meaning to life. Living in fear of death is living in denial. Actually, it's not really living at all, because there is no life without death. It's two sides of the one. You can't pick up one side and say, "I'm just going to use the 'heads' side." No. It doesn't work like that. You have to pick up both sides because nothing is promised to anyone in this world besides death.
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