quotations about death
It is abundantly evident that, however natural it may be for us to feel sorrow at the death of our relatives, that sorrow is an error and an evil, and we ought to overcome it. There is no need to sorrow for them, for they have passed into a far wider and happier life. If we sorrow for our own fancied separation from them, we are in the first place weeping over an illusion, for in truth they are not separated from us; and secondly, we are acting selfishly, because we are thinking more of our own apparent loss than of their great and real gain.
C. W. LEADBEATER
The Science of the Sacraments
All that day and into the night, my mother knelt before her altar, before the icon of the Virgin, before the candles burning, and rolled her rosary between her hands, beating her chest and calling for mercy, for some intercession. As I watched her, I realized that she could see death, and I too, and it wasn't some ugly skeleton with a scythe--death is a beautiful woman, eyes soft from morning dew, lips pulled back in the saddest smile, praying at an altar for her husband's life.
CHRIS ABANI
Song for Night
The key here, I think, is to not think of death as an end. But ... but ... think of it more as a very effective way of cutting down on your expenses.
BORIS (WOODY ALLEN)
Love and Death
First our pleasures die -- and then
Our hopes, and then our fears -- and when
These are dead, the debt is due,
Dust claims dust -- and we die too.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"Death"
Death finds out our weakness. Possibly this is a reason why death was sent.
ARTHUR FOLEY WINNINGTON-INGRAM
"The Silence of the Grave", Thoughts on Love and Death
What does thou ail, O mortal man, or to what purpose is to spend thy life in groans and complaints, under the apprehensions of Death? Where are thy past years and pleasures? Are they not vanish'd and lost in the flux of time, as if thou hadst put water into a sieve? Bethink thyself then of retreat, and leave the world with the same content and satisfaction as a well satisfied guest rises from an agreeable feast.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
on his 75th birthday, New York Times Magazine, Nov. 1, 1964
If I was dead, I wouldn’t know I was dead. That’s the only thing I have against death. I want to enjoy my death.
SAMUEL BECKETT
Eleutheria
Morn after morn dispels the dark,
Bearing our lives away;
Absorbed in cares we fail to mark
How swift our years decay;
Some maddening draught hath drugged our souls,
In love with vital breath,
Which still the same sad chart unrolls,
Birth, eld, disease, and death.
BHARTRHARI
"Against the Desire of Worldly Things"
The reason we think of death in celestial terms is that the visible firmament, especially at night ... is the most adequate and ever-present symbol of that vast silent explosion.
VLADIMIR NABOKOV
"That in Aleppo Once...", Nabokov's Dozen
Death walks faster than the wind and never returns what he has taken.
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
"The Story of a Mother"
Dying men think of funny things--and that's what we all are here, aren't we? Dying men?
TAD WILLIAMS
Otherland: City of Golden Shadow
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
STEVE JOBS
Commencement address at Stanford University, Jun. 12, 2005
In real life, good people die all the time and a**holes can live long and happy lives. It's a crapshoot.
BENTLEY LITTLE
"Bentley Little: The Elusive Dark Scribe Speaks", Dark Scribe Magazine
Death is ... a travelling asunder into elemental chaos. And from the elemental chaos all is cast forth again into creation. Therefore death also is but a cul-de-sac, a melting-pot.
D. H. LAWRENCE
"Love"
Death cancels all engagements.
MAX BEERBOHM
Zuleika Dobson
Death, like birth, is one of nature's mysteries, the combining of primal elements and dissolving of the same into the same.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
We know well what we lose by death, but we know not what we gain.
GEORGE BERKELEY
A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
Some men are like oak leaves -- they don't know when they're dead, but still hang right on; and there are others who let go before anything has really touched them.
GEORGE HORACE LORIMER
Old Gorgon Graham
The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.
HERMANN HESSE
letter, 1950