quotations about 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
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
You can only go into mourning by transfiguration or disfigurement. There is no rational form of the absorption of death.
JEAN BAUDRILLARD
Cool Memories
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
To be human is inevitably, to hate oneself sometimes, to hunger for the perfect stability and in a way the perfect justice -- or at least perfect punishment for our numerous imperfections -- called death.
JOHN GARDNER
In the Suicide Mountains
There is death and love
And awful things
The sunlight takes away
All that it brings
BLACK MOTH SUPER RAINBOW
"Seeeds", Start a People
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
A corpse is what's left after waking too often.
CESARE PAVESE
"Imagination's End"
Death commences too early--almost before you're half acquainted with life--you meet the other.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
How beautiful is death, when earn'd by virtue!
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato
A man begins dying at the moment of his birth. Most people live in denial of Death's patient courtship until, late in life and deep in sickness, they become aware of him sitting bedside.
DEAN KOONTZ
The Husband
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"
Death lieth still in the way of life,
Like as a stone in the way of a brook;
I will sing against thee, Death, as the brook does,
I will make thee into music which does not die.
SIDNEY LANIER
Songs Against Death
A life of action and danger moderates the dread of death. It not only gives us fortitude to bear pain, but teaches us at every step the precarious tenure on which we hold our present being.
WILLIAM HAZLITT
Table Talk: Essays on Men and Manners
Death is God's way of telling you not to be such a wise guy.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs
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
God, give us each our own death,
the dying that proceeds
from each of our lives.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
The Book of Hours
Death anxiety is the mother of all religions, which, in one way or another, attempt to temper the anguish of our finitude.
IRVIN D. YALOM
Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death
That death is not to be judged an evil which is the end of a good life; for death becomes evil only by the retribution which follows it.
ST. AUGUSTINE
The City of God