DEATH QUOTES XVIII

quotations about death

We may, indeed, say that the hour of death is uncertain, but when we say this we think of that hour as situated in a vague and remote expanse of time; it does not occur to us that it can have any connexion with the day that has already dawned and can mean that death -- or its first assault and partial possession of us, after which it will never leave hold of us again -- may occur this very afternoon, so far from uncertain, this afternoon whose time-table, hour by hour, has been settled in advance.

MARCEL PROUST

The Guermantes Way


Life is a waste of woes,
And Death a river deep,
That ever onward flows,
Troubled, yet asleep.

WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE

"Lines To --", Imogen and Other Poems


Ay, but to die, and go we know not where;
To lie in cold obstruction, and to rot;
This sensible war motion to become
A kneaded clod, and the dilated spirit
To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
In thrilling region of thick-ribbèd ice;
To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,
And blown with restless violence round about
The pendant world; or to be worse than worst
Of those that lawless and incertain thought
Imagine howling -- 'tis too horrible!
The weariest and most loathèd worldly life
That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment
Can lay on nature is a paradise
To what we fear of death.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

Measure for Measure


Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

MACKEY MILLER

Mouse Attack 5!!!


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


Death to the wicked is all loss, to the righteous all gain.

JOHN THORNTON

Maxims and Directions for Youth


Death is the stone into which our oblivion hardens.

PABLO NERUDA

Evening LXXVIII


Death is a great revealer of what is in a man, and in its solemn shadow appear the naked lineaments of the soul.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words


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

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

letter to Cecil Spring-Rice, Mar. 12, 1900


There's really nothing quite like someone's wanting you dead to make you want to go on living.

ROGER ZELAZNY

This Immortal


That is the gods' work, spinning threads of death
through the lives of mortal men,
an all to make a song for those to come.

HOMER

The Odyssey


Death was everywhere,
In the air
And in the sounds
Coming off the mounds
Of Bolton's Ridge.
Death's anchorage.
When you rolled a smoke
Or told a joke,
It was in the laughter
And drinking water
It approached the beach
As strings of cutters,
Dropped in the sea and lay around us.

PJ HARVEY

"All and Everyone", Let England Shake


Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have.

JAMES BALDWIN

"Letter from a Region of My Mind", The New Yorker, November 17, 1962


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


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

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

American Note-Books, 1836


Scientists have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is life after death -- though they say it's virtually impossible to get decent Chinese food.

DAVID LETTERMAN

Late Show with David Letterman, October 13, 2014


Every twinge of sensation, even of agony, was a negation of death.

ROBERT E. HOWARD

"A Witch Shall Be Born", Weird Tales, 1934


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


How terrible is Death to one man, yet to another it appears the greatest providence in nature; even to all ages and conditions it is the wish of some, relief of many, and the end of all. It puts us all upon a level; the prince and peasant are doomed to the same fate.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine


Death is the side of life which is turned away from us.

RAINER MARIA RILKE

letter to W. von Hulewicz, The Duino Elegies