quotations about death
That's the happiest moment. When it's all done. When we stop. When we can stop.
EDWARD ALBEE
Three Tall Women
When a man has the rope about his neck, you don't ask him about his health!
LEONID ANDREYEV
He Who Gets Slapped
Why is a door-knob deader than anything else?
D. H. LAWRENCE
Sons and Lovers
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"
And last of all comes death.
ANACREON
Odes
Death always leaves one singer to mourn.
KATHERINE ANNE PORTER
Pale Horse
Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.
BERTOLT BRECHT
The Mother
There are always potential rogues who, seeing an opportunity, will flirt with death and then, at the very last moment, will be surprised to have met with it so easily.
PIERRE MAGNAN
The Messengers of Death
In every cradle decked with rosy wreath
Lurk germs of death.
VICTOR HUGO
"Hope"
You still believe in death... that's just so... quaint. Well, sorry to pop your death bubble, but there's no such thing. So make the best of things. Any real belief in death is just wishful thinking. Don't waste good drugs on killing yourself. Share them with friends and have a party. Or send them to me.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
The Independent Review, Mar. 25, 2004
O, the one happiness, when, out of breath,
Our feet slip, and we stumble upon death!
ARTHUR SYMONS
"The Beggars"
Death has no need to be cruel, taking people's lives is more than enough.
JOSé SARAMAGO
Death with Interruptions
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
Flirting with death is the spice of life.
MARGARET LOCK
Twice Dead
Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one ... to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
The House of the Seven Gables
Dying was just an extended version of Ash Wednesday.
DON DELILLO
Underworld
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 had a curious way of ennobling people. Of washing away their flaws and elevating their reputations to a new purity. Sinners became saints once their bodies were lowered into the ground.
JOANNA CAMPBELL SLAN
Paper
Death ends at last the fear of it.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome, Pandora's box, but to re-enter life in a richer, more compassionate manner.
IRVIN D. YALOM
interview, Wise Counsel