quotations about death
Could we draw back the covering of the tomb; could we see, what those are now, who once were mortals, oh! how would it surprise and grieve us! Surprise us, to behold the prodigious transformation that has taken place on every individual; grieve us, to observe the dishonor done to our nature in general, within these subterraneous lodgments!
WELLINS CALCOTT
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Thoughts Moral and Divine
When I think of the joy awaiting,
Beyond the bier and the shroud,
Death seems but a transient shadow,
A passing Summer cloud.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"Summer Clouds"
Here was a man who now for the first time found himself looking into the eyes of death--who was passing through one of those rare moments of experience when we feel the truth of a commonplace, which is as different from what we call knowing it, as the vision of waters upon the earth is different from the delirious vision of the water which cannot be had to cool the burning tongue. When the commonplace 'We must all die' transforms itself suddenly into the acute consciousness 'I must die--and soon,' then death grapples us, and his fingers are cruel; afterwards, he may come to fold us in his arms as our mother did, and our last moment of dim earthly discerning may be like the first.
GEORGE ELIOT
Middlemarch
Think what you like. There are people who die by remaining alive and others who gain life by dying.
EIJI YOSHIKAWA
Musashi
O, the one happiness, when, out of breath,
Our feet slip, and we stumble upon death!
ARTHUR SYMONS
"The Beggars"
The thorn of death falls from heaven, and its myriad forms leave us no room to move.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
When he was dead I realized that I had hardly ever spoken to him. When he had been dead a long time I began to wish I had.
JAMES BALDWIN
Notes of a Native Son
Why is a door-knob deader than anything else?
D. H. LAWRENCE
Sons and Lovers
Which, I wonder, brother reader, is the better lot, to die prosperous and famous, or poor and disappointed? To have, and to be forced to yield; or to sink out of life, having played and lost the game? That must be a strange feeling when a day of our life comes and we say, "Tomorrow, success or failure won't matter much: and the sun will rise, and all the myriads of mankind go to their work or their pleasure as usual, but I shall be out of the turmoil.
WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY
Vanity Fair
In accepting death as inevitable, we don't label it as a good thing or a bad thing. As one of my teachers once said to me, "Death happens. It is just death, and how we meet it is up to us."
JOAN HALIFAX
Being with Dying
Death, lonely death,
Beneath the withered leaves.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
Blood Wedding
The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
EDGAR ALLAN POE
"The Premature Burial"
Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret to life is to "die before you die"--and find that there is no death.
ECKHART TOLLE
The Power of Now
Death is everywhere
The more I look
The more I see
The more I feel
A sense of urgency
Tonight
DEPECHE MODE
"Fly on the Windscreen"
Death is the liberator of him whom freedom cannot release, the physician of him whom medicine cannot cure, and the comforter of him whom time cannot console.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
From too much love of living
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives for ever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
"The Garden of Proserpine"
Ah! hear the dirge that all mankind must learn:
Place not on earth thy trust,
For dust thou art, to dust shalt thou return,
Dust unto dust.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"Fame"
They say death comes like a thief in the night, where is he? I'll hug his neck.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Suttree
There is a strange sense of uplifting--a kind of new-found feeling of benediction--that arises in the hearts of those who lay themselves open to learn the lessons that death will teach. How many have borne witness to this, to a fulness and richness which has entered their life after the departure (it almost seems because of the departure) of those they love!
ARTHUR FOLEY WINNINGTON-INGRAM
"The Silence of the Grave", Thoughts on Love and Death
When you look at a corpse you can always sense your own breath better.
ZONA GALE
"Miggy"