DEATH QUOTES XVI

quotations about death


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We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream: it may be so the moment after death.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
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American Note-Books, 1836


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As the woodpecker taps in a spiral quest
From the root to the top of the tree,
Then flies to another tree,
So have I bored into life to find what lay therein,
And now it is time to die,
And I will fly to another tree.

SIDNEY LANIER

Songs Against Death


Death stands above me, whispering low
I know not what into my ear:
Of his strange language all I know
Is, there is not a word of fear.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

Death Stands above Me


In literature and in art, alike, this gloomy fashion of regarding Death has been characteristic of Christianity. Death has been painted as a skeleton grasping a scythe, a grinning skull, a threatening figure with terrible face and uplifted dart, a bony scarecrow shaking an hour-glass--all that could alarm and repel has been gathered round this rightly-named King of Terrors.

ANNIE WOOD BESANT

Death--and After


Death and the sun can't be looked at steadily.

FRANÇOIS DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

Moral Maxims


To those who view the voyage of life from the port of departure the bark that has accomplished any considerable distance appears already in close approach to the farther shore.

AMBROSE BIERCE

"The Death of Halpin Frayser"


Death has a hundred hands and walks by a thousand ways.

T.S. ELIOT

Murder in the Cathedral


Oh! that "eternal shore,"
When Death shall be no more!
How widely differing from this mortal state,
Where we but draw our earliest breath
To yield it up again in death,
Obedient to the unchanging laws of fate!

ANNE S. BUSHBY

"Easter Morning"


When a great life sets it leaves an afterglow on the sky far into the night.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself.

PUBLILIUS SYRUS

Maxims


Death is a fisherman, the world we see
His fish-pond is, and we the fishes be;
His net some general sickness; howe'er he
Is not so kind as other fishers be;
For if they take one of the smaller fry,
They throw him in again, he shall not die:
But death is sure to kill all he can get,
And all is fish with him that comes to net.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Poor Richard's Almanack, 1733


Death tripped down the corridor, changing step, struck out here and there, danced pirouettes; often I felt his breath on my face when he was miles away; often I fell asleep and dreamed while he stood leaning over my bed.

ARTHUR KOESTLER

Dialogue with Death


It is an error to divide people into the living and the dead: there are people who are dead-alive, and people who are alive-alive. The dead-alive also write, walk, speak, act. But they make no mistakes; only machines make no mistakes, and they produce only dead things. The alive-alive are constantly in error, in search, in questions, in torment.

YEVGENY ZAMYATIN

A Soviet Heretic


Death makes angels of us all
& gives us wings
where we had shoulders
smooth as raven's
claws

JIM MORRISON

An American Prayer


Even as a child I was fascinated by death, not in a spiritual sense, but in an aesthetic one. A hamster or guinea pig would pass away, and, after burying the body, I'd dig it back up: over and over, until all that remained was a shoddy pelt. It earned me a certain reputation, especially when I moved on to other people's pets. "Igor," they called me. "Wicked, spooky." But I think my interest was actually fairly common, at least among adolescent boys. At that age, death is something that happens only to animals and grandparents, and studying it is like a science project.

DAVID SEDARIS

When You Are Engulfed in Flames


The dead's dead ... get 'em in the ground and look to the live ones.

KEN KESEY

Sometimes a Great Notion


Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?

PLATO

Phaedo


When you're Dead ... you stay up all night long.

KELLY LINK

"The Specialist's Hat", Stranger Things Happen


I cannot tell you if the dead,
Who loved us fondly when on earth,
Walk by our side, sit at our hearth,
By ties of old affection led....
But this I know--in many dreams
They come to us from realms afar,
And leave the golden gates ajar
Through which immortal glory streams.

ALBERT LAIGHTON

"The Dead"


Death, vicious death,
Leave a green branch for love.

FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA

Blood Wedding