quotations about death
Death is the veil which those who live call life;
They sleep, and it is lifted.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Prometheus Unbound
It is necessary to meditate early, and often, on the art of dying to succeed later in doing it properly just once.
UMBERTO ECO
The Island of the Day Before
Death is only a small interruption.
ANITA BROOKNER
Latecomers
To death we owe our life; the passing of one generation opens a way for another.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Taunting Death ... means pitting oneself against a wily enemy who cannot lose.
J. K. ROWLING
The Tales of Beedle the Bard
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
CHUCK PALAHNIUK
Fight Club
Death is an antidote for this life, and it makes another more stable form of life which is insoluble in everything.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
There is a certain seductiveness about dead things. You can ill treat, alter and recolour what's dead. It won’t complain.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Death comes black and hard, rushing down on me from the future, with no possible chance of escape.
DAVID GERROLD
The Man Who Folded Himself
The grave itself is but a covered bridge,
Leading from light to light, through a brief darkness!
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
The Golden Legend
Death is not regarded as a natural affair by primitive man. Death is believed to be due to the intervention of some malevolent or at least not well disposed power. Normally it should not take place. So we have all through history crude explanations of death, as e.g., the influence of the serpent, the devil, sin.
JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON
The Field of Philosophy
It is a curious thing, the death of a loved one. We all know that our time in this world is limited, and that eventually all of us will end up underneath some sheet, never to wake up. And yet it is always a surprise when it happens to someone we know. It is like walking up the stairs to your bedroom in the dark, and thinking there is one more stair than there is. Your foot falls down through the air, and there is a sickly moment of dark surprise as you try and readjust the way you thought of things.
DANIEL HANDLER (as Lemony Snicket)
The Reptile Room
There is nothing frightening about an eternal dreamless sleep. Surely it is better than eternal torment in Hell and eternal boredom in Heaven.
ISAAC ASIMOV
I, Asimov
Leap through the Mystery of death as the circus-rider leaps through the papered hoop ... find Life ambling along beneath us on the Other Side?
SIDNEY LANIER
Songs Against Death
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.
OSCAR WILDE
The Canterville Ghost
About the presence of death and dying I don't remember the society in the 1950s being so skittish as it has since become. People still died at home, among relatives and friends, often in the care of a family physician. Death was still to be seen sitting in the parlor, hanging in a butcher shop, sometimes lying in the street.
LEWIS H. LAPHAM
"Momento Mori", Lapham's Quarterly: Death, fall 2013
Death cannot touch the higher consciousness of man ... it can only separate those who love each other so far as their lower vehicles are concerned; the man living on earth, blinded by matter, feels separated from those who have passed onwards, but ... there is no such thing as Death at all.
ANNIE WOOD BESANT
Death--and After
Death makes equal the high and low.
JOHN HEYWOOD
Be Merry Friends
The dead's dead ... get 'em in the ground and look to the live ones.
KEN KESEY
Sometimes a Great Notion
Far happier he, who, young and full of pride
And radiant with the glory of the sun,
Leaves earth before his singing time is done.
All wounds of Time the graveyard flowers hide,
His beauty lives, as fresh as when he died.
JOYCE KILMER
"The Clouded Sun"