DEATH QUOTES XXV

quotations about death


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Death is the dropping of the flower, that the fruit may swell.

HENRY WARD BEECHER
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Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit


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What is
Death, so it be but glorious? 'Tis a sunset;
And mortals may be happy to resemble
The Gods but in decay.

LORD BYRON

Sardanapalus


No matter how much you've been warned, Death always comes without knocking. Why now? is the cry. Why so soon? It's the cry of a child being called home at dusk.

MARGARET ATWOOD

The Year of the Flood


O Death, the Consecrator!
Nothing so sanctifies a name
As to be written--Dead.
Nothing so wins a life from blame,
So covers it from wrath and shame,
As doth the burial-bed.

CAROLINE SPENCER

"Death the Consecrator"


Death is just--to the just.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


It is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realise the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life.

HERMAN MELVILLE

Moby Dick


A man's life breath cannot come back again--
no raiders in force, no trading brings it back,
once it slips through a man's clenched teeth.

HOMER

The Iliad


Of all the Gods, Death only craves not gifts:
Nor sacrifice, nor yet drink-offering poured
Avails; no altars hath he, nor is soothed
By hymns of praise. From him alone of all
The powers of Heaven Persuasion holds aloof.

AESCHYLUS

fragment


When one existentially awakens from within, the relation of birth-and-death is not seen as a sequential change from the former to the latter. Rather, living as it is, is no more than dying, and at the same time there is no living separate from dying. This means that life itself is death and death itself is life. That is, we do not shift sequentially from birth to death, but undergo living-dying in each and every moment.

MASAO ABE

A Study of Dogen: His Philosophy and Religion


Whatever is certain in death is slightly alleviated by what is not so infallible; the time when it shall happen is undefined, but it is more or less connected with the infinite, and what we call eternity.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of Mankind", Les Caractères


We give our dead
To the orchards
And the groves.
We give our dead
To life.

OCTAVIA E. BUTLER

Parable of the Talents


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


Death is repose, but the thought of death disturbs all repose.

CESARE PAVESE

This Business of Living, Jun. 7, 1938


Now death is death! and yet is not one death
Another death? Stabbing is not the same
As shooting! Would you say a strangled man
Was drown'd? The end is one, the means are many,
And there the difference lies!

SHERIDAN KNOWLES

True Unto Death


He had no conscious knowledge of death, but like every animal of the Wild, he possessed the instinct of death. To him it stood as the greatest of hurts. It was the very essence of the unknown; it was the sum of the terrors of the unknown, the one culminating and unthinkable catastrophe that could happen to him, about which he knew nothing and about which he feared everything.

JACK LONDON

White Fang


Living, the nearest claim them; but the dear
Great dead belong to any humble heart.

KARLE WILSON BAKER

"W. V. M.", Blue Smoke


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


The fear of death has been raised too much and set up on high, especially by preachers, like the brazen serpent in the wilderness over the heads of the Israelites; but not with so good excuse as that symbol had, for this fear has not been curative, I think, nor made into pleasant or graceful shape, but rather a horrid spectacle, to affright people. For that men can be frightened into piety has been one of the legacies of religion which barbarous ages have bequeathed us plentifully.

JAMES VILA BLAKE

Essays


Death is the monster we all fear, yet with each day, we walk toward it, and can't help doing so; we can't help but walk toward the one thing we're most trying to avoid.

BILL MAHER

"On Being Over 50", HuffPost, Oct. 3, 2011


Death is only a small interruption.

ANITA BROOKNER

Latecomers