quotations about death
And death, that sits in marble silence cold,
Will furnish hope to those who may behold
The meaning in the everlasting change
Of all that dies, returning, wondrous strange.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Quest for God"
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
To die alone, on rock under sun at the brink of the unknown, like a wolf, like a great bird, seems to me very good fortune indeed.
EDWARD ABBEY. "The Dead Man at Grandview Point"
Desert Solitaire
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
What happens when the thought of death occurs, this very simple and basic thought about death, that I will most certainly die, and that you will most certainly die, is that all these other questions are stripped down to basic, that the very basis for knowledge and existence is shivering, whether one is trembling in tears for another or oneself shivering in anxiety and awe. Hence, at the end we return to the place where we began, at the graveside.
MARIUS TIMMANN MJAALAND
Autopsia
The day of my birth, my death began its walk. It is walking toward me, without hurrying.
JEAN COCTEAU
"Postambule," La Fin du Potomac
Only where there are graves are there resurrections.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
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
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
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
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
God, give us each our own death,
the dying that proceeds
from each of our lives.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
The Book of Hours
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
Death, like generation, is a secret of Nature.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Death commences too early--almost before you're half acquainted with life--you meet the other.
TENNESSEE WILLIAMS
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
DEEPAK CHOPRA
Life After Death
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
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
Now can it be men die and carry thence no memory of death, only this curious lightness of the hands, only this curious darkness of the mind, only to be still changeless with the winters passing; not gray, not lined, not stricken down, but stamped forever on the moving air, and echo and an image?
MAXWELL ANDERSON
High Tor
How beautiful is death, when earn'd by virtue!
JOSEPH ADDISON
Cato