quotations about death
When Death puts out our Flame, the Snuff will tell,
If we were Wax, or Tallow by the smell.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanack, 1739
Weep strong men must,
Since all before us now is lifeless dust;
Majestic clay
Is all, good friends, death leaves to us today.
ELIZA ALLEN STARR
"Col. James A. Mulligan"
We're ever making plans for life,
But seldom plans for death,
Though death we know must come to us,
And life is but a breath.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
Thoughts
She had nut painted arms that were hers to keep
And in her fear she sought cracked pleasures
The passion of lovers is for death, said she
Licked her lips and turned to feather
BAUHAUS
"The Passion of Lovers"
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
Life and death are different sides of the same coin.
NEIL GAIMAN
American Gods
I ... shall die, I do suppose, with a full consciousness of my being and with a great fear in my eyes. And though many die decrepit and senile, that is not the normal death of men, for men have in them something of a self-creative power, which pushes them on to the further realization of themselves, right up to the edge of their doom.
HILAIRE BELLOC
On Nothing & Kindred Subjects
Death--some form of termination--is the universal ending of all living things; but only man, by virtue of his verbally reportable introspective life, can conceptualize his own cessation.
EDWIN SHNEIDMAN
A Commonsense Book of Death
Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Moby Dick
Death hides within every religion. And at any time it can flash forth--not with healing in its wings but with poison, with that which wounds.
PHILIP K. DICK
Valis
Birds of Hell awaiting
With the wings on fire
Insane old Phoenix, baby
It's your death desire
The birds of Hell awaiting
With the wings on fire
MARILYN MANSON
"Birds of Hell Awaiting", The Pale Emperor
When you die it's the end of your life.
SAM SHEPARD
Tongues
To forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.
ELIE WIESEL
Night
This flesh and the other will be consumed,
the flower will doubtless perish without residue,
when death--sterile dawn, desiccated dust--
comes one day into the girdle of the haughty island,
and you, statue, daughter of man, will remain
gazing with the empty eyes that rose
up through one and another hand of the absent immortals.
PABLO NERUDA
"The Builders of Statues"
There must be some unwritten law that says about fifty people have to move into your house when somebody dies. If it weren’t for the smell of death clinging to the walls, you might think it was your family’s turn to host the month neighborhood potluck supper.
ADAM RAPP
Under the Wolf
There are too many poems about death. Death, churchyards, wormy cadavers. Death is really a small part of life, and it's not the part that you want to concentrate on, because life is life and it's full of untold particulars.
NICHOLSON BAKER
The Anthologist
The seeds of Death are sown in us when we begin to live, and grow up till, like rampant weeds, they choak the tender flower of life.
SAMUEL RICHARDSON
Clarissa
People living deeply have no fear of death.
ANAIS NIN
The Diary of Anais Nin
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
It hath been often said, that it is not death, but dying, which is terrible.
HENRY FIELDING
Amelia