1,727 Death Quotes

The irrevocable Hand That opes the year's fair gate, doth ope and shut The portals of our earthly destinies; We walk through blindfold, and the noiseless doors Close after us, for ever. Pause, my soul, On these strange words - for ever - whose large sound Breaks flood-like, drowning all the petty noise Our human moans make on the shores of Time. O Thou that openest, and no man shuts; That shut'st, and no man opens - Thee we wait!

Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased with tales, so is the other.

If they had said that the sun or the moon had gone out of the heavens, it could not have struck me with the idea of a more awful and dreary blank in creation than the words: 'Byron is dead!'

We now to peace and darkness And earth and thee restore Thy creature that thou madest And wilt cast forth no more.

A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.

Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty.

The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.

Let us love the passing hour, let us hurry up and enjoy our time.

What is our life but a succession of preludes to that unknown song whose first solemn note is sounded by death?

Accordingly, death is a harbor of peace for the just, but is believed a shipwreck for the wicked.

Casting the body's vest aside, My soul into the boughs does glide.

Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details.

I always wished I had died, and I still wish that, because I could have gotten the whole thing over with.

I never think that people die. They just go to department stores.

Any time you are with anyone or think of anyone you must say to yourself: I am dying and this person too is dying, attempting the while to experience the truth of the words you are saying. If every one of you agrees to practice this, bitterness will die out, harmony will arise.

Whatever is truly alive must die. Look at the flowers; only plastic flowers never die.

The fetus, in many cases, dies just as a human adult or child would: It bleeds to death as it is torn from limb from limb. The fetus can be alive at the beginning of the dismemberment process and can survive for a time while its limbs are being torn off.

Time crumbles things; everything grows old under the power of Time and is forgotten through the lapse of Time.

Thou wilt find rest from vain fancies if thou doest every act in life as though it were thy last.

To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill.

After all the highways, and the trains, and the appointments, and the years, you end up worth more dead than alive.

The task I've been given seems absurd: To wait here on earth until I no longer exist.

The entire universe will eventually disintegrate but by then I hope to be in a safer place.

Dying is a part of living, but only a very small part.

If I can survive death, I can probably survive anything.

I've learned to accept birth and death . . . but sometimes I still worry about what lies between.

Why does a person even get up in the morning? You have breakfast, you floss your teeth so you'll have healthy gums in your old age, and then you get in your car and drive down I-10 and die. Life is so stupid I can't stand it.

Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.

The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.

So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it.

I'm so old they've cancelled my blood type.

A man must live like a great brilliant flame and burn as brightly as he can. In the end he burns out. But this is far better than a mean little flame.

What is the flesh and blood compounded of But a few moments in the life of time? This prowling of the cells, litigious love, Wears the long claw of flesh-arguing crime.

Teach him how to live, And, oh still harder lesson! how to die.

The ports of death are sins; of life, good deeds: Through which our merit leads us to our meeds. How willful blind is he then, that would stray, And hath it in his powers, to make his way! This world death's region is, the other life's: And here, it should be one of our first strifes, So to front death, as men might judge us past it. For good men but see death, the wicked taste it.

You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good:Joan Crawford is dead, good!

Money can't buy life.

Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried.

Every body is a book of blood; Wherever we're opened, we're red.

So blend the turrets and shadows there That all seem pendulous in air, While from a proud tower in the town Death looks gigantically down.

A death-bed 's a detector of the heart.

Lovely in death the beauteous ruin lay; And if in death still lovely, lovelier there; Far lovelier! pity swells the tide of love.

'Guess now who holds thee?'-'Death,' I said. But there The silver answer rang-'Not Death, but Love.'

It is worthy the observing, that there is no passion in the mind of man, so weak, but it mates, and masters, the fear of death; and therefore, death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so many attendants about him, that can win the combat of him. Revenge triumphs over death; love slights it; honor aspireth to it; grief flieth to it; fear preoccupieth it.

'A person doesn't die when he should but when he can.' (p. 241)

Do not try to live for ever. You will not succeed.

Love makes us poets and the approach of death makes us philosophers.

A conflation of the last two quotes has also sometimes been reported as his last statement: 'It is well. I die hard but am not afraid to go'

I'm in the danceband on the Titanic Singing 'Nearer my God to thee' and the iceburgs on the starboard bow Won't you dance with me?

For ever so our thoughtful hearts repeat On fields of triumph dirges of defeat; And still we turn on gala-days to tread Among the rustling memories of the dead.

And I will die, and you will die, and we all will die, and even the stars will fade out one after another in time.

Dying is not a crime.

The patient decides when it's best to go [die].

But life is sweet, though all that makes it sweet Lessen like sound of friends' departing feet; And Death is beautiful as feet of friend Coming with welcome at our journey's end. For me Fate gave, whate'er she else denied, A nature sloping to the southern side; I thank her for it, though when clouds arise Such natures double-darken gloomy skies.

The glories of our blood and state Are shadows, not substantial things; There is no armour against fate; Death lays his icy hand on kings: Sceptre and Crown Must tumble down, And in the dust be equal made With the poor crooked scythe and spade.

Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind. Me and my mother and father, and a grandmother and a grandfather. were driving through the desert, at dawn, and a truck load of Indian workers had either hit another car, or just - I don't know what happened - but there were Indians scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death. So the car pulls up and stops. That was the first time I tasted fear. I musta' been about four - like a child is like a flower, his head is just floating in the breeze, man. The reaction I get now thinking about it, looking back - is that the souls of the ghosts of those dead Indians... maybe one or two of 'em... were just running around freaking out, and just leaped into my soul. And they're still there.

The program for this evening is not new. You have seen This entertainment through and through. You've seen your birth, your life and death; you might recall all of the rest - (did you have a good world when you died?) - enough to base a movie on?

The Angel of Death has been abroad throughout the land; you may almost hear the beating of his wings. There is no one, as when the first-born were slain of old, to sprinkle with blood the lintel and the two side-posts of our doors, that he may spare and pass on; he takes his victims from the castle of the noble, the mansion of the wealthy, and the cottage of the poor and lowly.

'To take life,' went on the old man in a voice which, though charged with strong emotion, seemed to be speaking to itself, 'was the chief mark of the insensate barbarism still prevailing in those days. It sprang from that most irreligious fetish, the belief in the permanence of the individual ego after death. From the worship of that fetish had come all the sorrows of the human race. ... They did not stop to love each other in this life; they were so sure they had all eternity to do it in. The doctrine was an invention to enable men to act like dogs with clear consciences. Love could never come to full fruition till it was destroyed.'

At the piping of all hands, When the judgment-signal's spread- When the islands and the lands And the seas give up their dead, And the South and North shall come; When the sinner is dismayed, And the just man is afraid, Then Heaven be thy aid, Poor Tom.

Methought I saw my late espoused saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave.

Call for the robin-redbreast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men.

Call for the robin redbreast and the wren, Since o'er shady groves they hover, And with leaves and flowers do cover The friendless bodies of unburied men.

I know death hath ten thousand several doors For men to take their exits.

It is impossible that any thing so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind.

Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old.

We think that powerful and lifeful movement is impossible without differences - 'true conformity' is possible only in the cemetery.

The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.[1]

Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies - 'God damn it, you've got to be kind.'

Requiem: The crucified planet Earth, should it find a voice and a sense of irony, might now well say of our abuse of it, 'Forgive them, Father, They know not what they do.' The irony would be that we know what we are doing. When the last living thing has died on account of us, how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon, 'It is done.' People did not like it here.

It's... a transcendental act. Making life. I thought about that when I was carrying Miles. 'By this act, I bring one death into the world.' One birth, one death, and all the pain and acts of will between.

I die-but first I have possessed, And come what may, I have been blessed.

For the Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast.

Yes, thou art gone! and round me too the night In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade. I see her veil draw soft across the day, I feel her slowly chilling breath invade The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey; I feel her finger light Laid pausefully upon life's headlong train; - The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew, The heart less bounding at emotion new, And hope, once crush'd, less quick to spring again.

What is the course of the life Of mortal men on the earth?- Most men eddy about Here and there-eat and drink, Chatter and love and hate, Gather and squander, are raised Aloft, are hurl'd in the dust, Striving blindly, achieving Nothing; and, then they die- Perish; and no one asks Who or what they have been, More than he asks what waves In the moonlit solitudes mild Of the midmost Ocean, have swell'd, Foam'd for a moment, and gone.

Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history or in legend as having died of laughter.

In the stories about life and death, the soul often floats above the goodbye moment, hovering over police cars at highway accidents, or clinging like a spider to hospital room ceilings. These are people who receive a second chance, who somehow, for some reason, resume their place in the world. Eddie, it appeared, was not getting a second chance.

Yet now despair itself is mild, Even as the winds and waters are; I could lie down like a tired child, And weep away the life of care Which I have borne and yet must bear, Till death like sleep might steal on me, And I might feel in the warm air My cheek grow cold, and hear the sea Breathe o'er my dying brain its last monotony.

Death will come when thou art dead, Soon, too soon - Sleep will come when thou art fled; Of neither would I ask the boon I ask of thee, beloved Night - Swift be thine approaching flight, Come soon, soon!

O wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being, Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves dead Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing, Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, Pestilence-stricken multitudes: O thou, Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed.

Love's overbrimming mystery joins death and life. It has filled my cup of pain with joy.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying, And this same flower that smiles today Tomorrow will be dying. The glorious Lamp of Heaven, the Sun, The higher he's a-getting The sooner will his race be run, And nearer he's to setting.

Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you fore-defeated Challengers of oblivion Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down, The square-limbed Roman letters Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain.

Tell them to put more life into dying.

I'd say - 'I used to know his father well; Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap.' And when the war is done and youth stone dead I'd toddle safely home and die - in bed.

Even such is time, that takes on trust Our youth, our joys, our all we have, And pays us but with earth and dust; Who, in the dark and silent grave, When we have wandered all our ways, Shuts up the story of our days; But from this earth, this grave, this dust My God shall raise me up, I trust!

The world itself is but a larger prison, out of which some are daily selected for execution.

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways - I to die and you to live. Which is the better, only God knows.

Be of good cheer about death and know this as a truth - that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

Death is always and under all circumstances a tragedy, for if it is not, then it means that life itself has become one.

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth A youth to Fortune and to Fame unknown. Fair Science frowned not on his humble birth. And Melancholy marked him for her own.

'Justice' was done, and the President of the Immortals (in Aeschylean phrase) had ended his sport with Tess. And the d'Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength, they arose, joined hands again, and went on.